ABSTRACT
This chapter discusses the origins, goals and strategies of the Comité de Defensa Popular (CDP) of Durango, Mexico, with particular emphasis on the development and accomplishments of the environmental programme of activity undertaken by this popular social movement. It opens with a discussion of the context within which the predecessors of the CDP in the Durango area were formed, and goes on to analyse the process by which members of the organization became convinced that attention to ecological issues was essential to the social, economic and physical health of the community, and to discuss how the organization was able to make an impact in this area. It is argued that the popular movement which was eventually successful in addressing many of the environmental problems of the region originated with a concern for the social and physical well-being of the community, and retained its focus on its social point of departure: it has never centred its activities around a purely ‘environmentalist’ concept as such.
