ABSTRACT
The Mexican highlands, and especially the Basin of Mexico, are among the regions of the world that have suffered some of the greatest environmental alterations in history. When the Europeans arrived in Mexico in 1519, the region was already greatly transformed by agriculture, water projects constructed for the development of chinampa agriculture, deforestation, and faunal extinction (Ezcurra, 1992). The rate of environmental change, however, has increased continuously since then, and, with the growing ecological deterioration, the awareness of the problem by different social groups has increased accordingly.
