El Bosque climate-displaced community in Tabasco demands government support to keep fishing traditions alive after relocation to El Nuevo Bosque subdivision.
Residents of the former coastal hamlet of El Bosque, Tabasco, are waging a quiet battle to maintain their fishing way of life—now from ten kilometers inland. In 2019, relentless coastal erosion and rising sea levels forced 51 families to abandon their homes. Today, those same families—officially Mexico’s first recognized climate-displaced community—scramble each night to reach the sea by dawn, hoping to salvage their livelihoods.
Guadalupe Cobos, a community leader, remembers El Bosque before it vanished beneath the tides. “My freedom was the sea,” she says. Back then, the breeze carried salt and promise; nets burst with fish. Now, her home sits amid grasslands and concrete in the newly built El Nuevo Bosque subdivision in Centla. Although the houses are safe, the promise of a steady living remains uncertain.
Every fisherman in the group except one still wakes at 2:00 a.m. to drive toward the coast, fishing without permits, equipment, or official backing. They rely on unmarked boats and hand‑me-down nets—what they call “free fishermen,” a freedom that often feels more like abandonment.
“We’re organized, yes,” Guadalupe explains, “but we have nothing to do with Conapesca. No permits, no cooperative, no shelter. That makes all the difference.” Without support from programs such as Bienpesca, they lack the tools and safety nets given to registered fishing communities.
The road back to old El Bosque lies in disrepair. Potholes and crumbling pavement make the pre-dawn commute a gamble. Water and power in El Nuevo Bosque flicker without warning, and the old shoreline has become littered with tourist trash. As Antonio Mayoral, Guadalupe’s husband, puts it, “It’s as if we no longer exist. Authorities helped us move, then left us to fend for ourselves.”
Challenges Facing the climate-displaced community in Mexico
El Bosque’s plight attracted international attention in February 2023, when it featured in the first hearing on climate migration at the Inter‑American Commission on Human Rights. More recently, on July 4, the Inter‑American Court of Human Rights ruled that states must protect communities driven from their homes by climate change. The decision marks a milestone—but Mexico still lacks a clear legal framework to uphold the rights of environmental migrants.
“We had to knock on doors for years,” Guadalupe recalls. “No one knew who was in charge. They sent us from one office to another, as if we were invisible.”
The new subdivision offers some relief. A mobile school now serves the children, and homes stand dry even when the coast floods. But the emotional toll lingers. Parents wake far from the ocean, and no law yet guarantees their right to fish the waters they once called home.
“Climate change changes your life,” Guadalupe says, her voice balanced between hope and sorrow. “It’s something so powerful that words fall short.”
As Mexico grapples with the legal status of climate migrants, El Bosque’s fishermen press on through darkness, nets in hand, determined to keep their heritage afloat—no matter how far they’ve drifted from the shore.
El Bosque, Tabasco, climate displacement, fishing rights, relocated communities, environmental migrants
