Draft of letter sent to the Catholic Bishop of Sinaloa Father Benjamin Jiminez in

Culiacan, and Father Juan Sandoval Iniguez, the Cardinal in Guadalajara ,

To Your Emminence and Your Excelence :
The General Director of Acuicola Paraiso, SA de CV in Los Mochis, Sinaloa will deleiver
this information for your consideration. We respectfully and humbely ask for your support
to establish programs of sanitation and economic development in the Municipality of
Ahome and in all of the state of Sinaloa. The municipal program is located on the land of
five ejidos PLAN DE GUADALUPE, TORTUGAS DOS, TOPOLOBAMPO, MEDANOS DE
SAN ESTEBEN and PLAN DE AYALA DOS, a collector drainage system from Los Mochis
passes through their lands and discharges into the Bay of Santa Maria without any type of
treatment, provocing a great contamination in the Bay.
During much of the past three years I have spent my time working on a program with the
purpose of improving the conditions of those who presently lie in poverty in the rural areas
of Vietnam. The people who live under these conditions, while honest, hardworking,
intelligent, find in general that their lives are without hope and that their childrens future is
also without hope. This is a terrible condemnation of the system in which they live.
Unfortunately, this condemnation is not only to applied to the communist system which
exists in Vietnam but is also true in almost all other countries of the world irrespective of
their form of government.
The program for providing a future of hope for these rural poor is a program which has
developed with the aid and assistance of many who are dreamers of a better life for all.
The program which I am pleased to present to you the result of these collective dreams
and aspirations and efforts-it cannot be said to be the result of only my work as my work
has been only the organization and coordination of the talents and experience and
expertise of others who have agreed to work with me. In reality, the proposal which has
been developed is the result of all these efforts as well as the result of talking and listening
to the people who live under the conditions of extreme poverty in the rural areas of
Vietnam and other countries to which I have traveled during the past thirty years.
The program which we have developed has been presented to many important people for
their consideration and for their review and comment. We have presented it to the Prince
of Wales, to Dr. Henry Kissinger, to the President of the Pontifical Council for Justice and
Peace, to many professors at universities, to leaders within the World Bank, the UN and,
of course to the peoples and leaders of Vietnam. Without exception, their reply has been
favorable and they have encouraged me, us, to continue our efforts to realize the
implementation of our proposal. At this time we are in what I hope are final discussions
with authorities in Vietnam which will lead to the implementation of our first
Environmentally Clean Community.
Our program, our proposal, our plan to help the poor of the rural areas is centered around
developments in technology which have been created during the past thirty years. It is
also centered around our belief in the goodness of the human spirit and its ability and wish
to improve if given the chance.

Intensive fish production, as much as 200-300 metric tons per hectare per year is now
possible to achieve (this translates into an income stream well in excess of $20 million per
year). Intensive organic agricultural production of as much as 20-30 tons of produce per
hectare per year is now possible to achieve. Clean water, regardless of the source is now
possible to achieve. The enviornmentally safe treatment of liquid and solid wastes so that
they can be re-utilized is now possible to achieve. Low cost housing providing a clean,
attractive, safe environment can now be provided. Improved health conditions for the
family, for the children can now be provided to all. Improved educational opportunity
together with the benefits it provides is now available to all regardless of how remote their
home or village. Environmental protection and restoration of the already damaged
environment can be realized when the people who live there are empowered to have a life
of opportunity and hope rather than of despair and hopelessness.
We can and will do all these, leading and training the people who live in our communities
to become part of the solution for the future bringing hope and all its benefits to those who
have heretofore been excluded, precluded and shut outside.
Our program, our proposal is called ENVIRONMENTALLY CLEAN COMMUNITIES.

This program is designed to achieve and accomplish all that we show above but, perhaps
most importantly, it is based on our recognition and inclusion of the people who live in this
community.
Give us 200 hectares of land and allow us to choose 100 families to live and work together
and provide us a location which has a dependable supply of water together with a budget
of five million dollars. Together we will create a community which can and will provide all
the benefits and opportunities noted above and more. We will do this by offering to the
people who live in our community an ownership interest through the formation of
cooperatives for the economic activities which will be developed. We will do this by
offering to the people who live in our community the ownership of their own home. We will
do this by offering, even by insisting, that the people who live in our community utilize their
skills and experience and wisdom to solve the difficult problems which will face the very
development of hope and opportunity.
Achieving these goals the ECC community can grow.
The people who come to live in the first community will become the teachers and trainers
and leaders of others who live in other villages and communities which want to have hope
and opportunity for the future. The profits can be utilized for rural infrastructural
development: roads, communications, water, education, health care, more. People from
villages and communities which are far distant will be able to come to this ECC community
to learn and study and work before returning to their own homes to brig this knowledge
and skill and capability to their own people and beginning the work of improving their lives.
While, in all candor, I was not aware of the words which I will quote below at the time I
began or even when I completed the documents which will be presented to you, I find that
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the ideas which I-we are presenting to you are reflected by what others within the Church
have written and said.
Roger Cardinal Etchegaray writes in LAND, A COMMON GOOD FOR ALL OF
HUMANITY: Agrarian Reform: A Practical Utopia, The suggested approach...calls for a
reformist political stance, capable of activating all the factors, from the cultural ones to the
social ones, from the economic ones to the political ones. It is not sufficient to press just
one or two buttons...the buttons must be harmonized and all pressed together! This
reform, then, must be capable of using the markets to offer technology, adequate services
and infrastructure, to remove barriers to the access of credit and to the education of the
poor and to the most disadvantaged, including women. A reformist political stance which
is capable of offering more opportunities of integration between agriculture and other
sectors, especially in relation to the work market, as a form of insurance against the risks
to which the rural family is exposed; capable, as well, of removing the institutional ties
which block the natural rooting and expansion of the family-run business up to the point of
reaching stable and efficient economical dimensions.
Cardinal Etchegary goes on to rite in the same document: The Pontifical Council for
Justice and Peace wanted to give a universal voice to the many local voices and Churches
which find themselves on a daily basis facing the grave issues of the distribution of land.
These voices which arise from the Church, together and ever more often, call for the
construction of a society in the evangelical sign of justice and peace. Even the challenge
of agrarian reform, proposed...positions itself along these difficult and necessary lines. It
is a challenge which solicits the responsibility of everyone, especially of those, at the
national and international levels, who are inherently responsible for the common good.
Pope John XXIII advanced an ownership solution as a way to address the divisive trends
which are allowing the rich to become richer and the poor to become poorer. Writing in
Mater et Magistra (1961), he argued, Economic progress must be accompanied by a
corresponding social progress, so that all classes of citizens can participate in the
increased productivity...From this it follows that the economic prosperity of a nation is not
so much its total assets in terms of wealth and property, as the equitable division and
distribution of this wealth....Experience suggests many ways in which the demands of
justice can be satisfied. Not to mention other ways, it is especially desirable today that
workers gradually come to share in the ownership of their company, by ways and in the
manner that seems most suitable.

Pope Paul VI, in his POPULORUM PROGRESSIO ENCYCLICAL ON THE

DEVELOPMENT OF PEPLES, March 26,1967 found: The progressive development of
the peoples is an object of deep interest and concern to the Church. This is particularly
true in the case of those peoples who are trying to escape the ravages of hunger, poverty,
endemic disease and ignorance; of those who are seeking a larger share in the benefits of
civilization and a more active improvement of their human qualities; of those who are
consciously striving for fuller growth. The Holy Father went on to say in the same
document, ...the Church judges it her duty to help all men explore this serious problem in
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all its dimensions, and to impress upon them the need for concerted action at this critical
juncture.
During his recent visit to Cuba in January 1998, Pope John Paul VI commented on the
fast-growing dominance of free market policies, cautioning against the resurgence of a
philosophy that subordinates the human person to blind market forces and conditions
human development on the operation of those forces. In the international community,
he observed, we thus see a small number of countries growing exceedingly rich at the
cost of the increasing impoverishment of a great number of other countries; as a result, the
wealthy grow ever wealthier, while the poor grow ever poorer. This statement by the Holy
Father echoes a precedent in his remarks in Laborem Exercens (1981) cautioning against
a risk that a radical capitalistic ideology could spread and suggesting [I]t is unacceptable
to say that the defeat of so-called real-socialism leaves capitalism as the only model of
solidarity. He advocated initiatives that can and should also aim at correcting-with a view
to the common good of the whole society-everything defective in the system of ownership
of the means of production or in the way these are managed.
To date, the Church has taken the stance that Property is first acquired through work and
is to be used for work. (Laborem Exercens). The concept of cooperative ownership which
is an integral part of our ECC program is clearly consistent wit Pope John Paul IIs
endorsement in Laborem Exercens of proposals for joint ownership of the means of
production, sharing by workers in the management and/or profits of business so-called
share holding by labour with the ownership of capital, as far as possible. He also
acknowledged the keen psychological benefits that can accompany this component of an
ownership strategy arguing that [E]very effort must be made to ensure that in this kind of
system also the human person can preserve his awareness of working for himself. Pope
John Paul II put well the challenge facing those struggling to discard an unworkable
property system in order to give birth to a new, more equitable model: In the struggle
against such a system, what is being proposed as an alternative is not the socialist
system, which in fact turns out to be state capitalism, but rather a society of free work, of
enterprise and of participation. Such a society is not directed against the market, but
demands that the market be appropriately controlled by the forces of a society and by the
States, so as to guarantee that the basic needs of the whole society are satisfied.
Pope John Paul II sets forth several key operating principles that should serve Christian
business leaders well when crafting a vision statement or otherwise articulating the firms
broader purpose. In Centesimus Annus, he notes the challenge in advancing human wellbeing to ...the reality of interdependence among peoples, as well as the fact that human
work, by its nature, is meant to unite peoples, not divide them. Peace and prosperity, in
fact, are goods which belong to the whole human race; it is not possible to enjoy them in a
proper and lasting way if they are achieved and maintained at the cost of other people and
nations, by violating their rights or excluding them from the sources of well-being.
I was recently reading a book in which the Holy Father said after his first visit to Mexico
that faith and works of faith could move the mountain of injustice. It is with a great faith
that we have prepared the program for sustainable rural development which we call
Environmentally Clean Communities.

It is with substantial respect and humility that we submit our proposal and program for
Environmentally Clean Communities for your consideration for support in implementation
in Ahome, Sinaloa Mexico.
Please accept our sincere thanks and appreciation for this opportunity to present this
information and proposal to you.
Most respectfully,
Brian Lewis, J.D.
Chairman
ENVIRONMENTALLY CLEAN COMMUNITIES