The production of a subordinated space on the coast of Manzanillo,Colima, Mexico

Abstract

In this article I analyze the production process of a subordinate space in need of environmental
protection. I focus on the discursive analysis of some journalistic notes about the construction of a
regasification plant on the western coast of Mexico, between 2005 and 2007; The same that I propose
influenced the declaration of a part of its extension as a Ramsar Site for the Conservation of wetlands,
in February 2011.
I start from the premise that journalistic notes were the “spearhead” for the projection of imaginaries
not only with the capacity to create ideological links, but also in the materialization of environmental
policy and its apparent social legitimacy, without losing sight of the fact that newspapers, as a reliable
means of communication and that of its own authors, are also questionable, since its acceptance will
depend directly on the reader’s affinity with the arguments presented.
Now, how can journalistic notes question the production of space and a specific public? What social,
political, economic, and ideological effects could continue to produce subordinate spaces have? To
answer these questions, I took up some journalistic notes and my ethnographic work, carried out on
the coast of Manzanillo, Colima, between 2007 and 2015, to focus on the production of different
public opinions and private audiences around “what was happening” in the area, to emphasize the
assumptions that were projected outwards, the influence they had and the way they influenced the
production of space.