Cover image: Open pit of the Anglo-Canadian mining company Newmont-Goldcorp in Zacatecas. Photo: Adolfo Vladimir
President Andrés Manuel López Obrador published, on May 8th in the Official Gazette of the Federation (DOF), the reforms to the Mining, National Waters, Ecological Balance and Environmental Protection, and Prevention and Integral Waste Management Laws, approved on April 28 by the Plenary of the Senate of the Republic.
While the changes were celebrated by many environmental activists and organizations, the agrarian lawyer who is part of the legal team of the National Indigenous Congress (CNI), Carlos González, classified the reforms as “half-baked.”
“There is no room for half-measures. A deep and committed policy is needed. It is necessary to commit ourselves in a serious and decisive manner. Because humanity and life on this planet are really at risk,” he declared during the International Meeting The South Resists, at the Indigenous Center for Integral Training (Cideci), in Chiapas.
One of the “half” changes is the reduction of the duration of mining concessions from 100 to 80 years. The original text of the reform, sent by the Executive for approval by the Congress of the Nation, had previously provided for the reduction to 30 years.
“The President sent to Congress an initiative that, it must be said, contained important elements to restrict mining activity and to put limits on mining companies,” admits the lawyer.
However, the bill reached the Chamber of Deputies and was stopped. “Negotiations began with the Mining Chamber. Lobbyists from the Canadian government came. And the initiative was changed,” he says.
At this moment the President of the Republic is distancing himself from the legislative debate, he pointed out. “He got Covid-19 and the debate in the press was whether he had passed out or not, while this important mining initiative was being torn apart. They didn’t defend it, neither the president, nor those who represent him,” he added.
Contrary to the initial text, it was accepted that mining companies may continue to use the working water by simply giving “notice to the National Water Commission (Conagua) and that the rights for that water are granted” as stated in the text of the reform.
“When there is a mining operation, what happens is that the ground is broken, but when the earth is furrowed by water veins, these waters are released and this is the working water. And it is this water that the mining companies take advantage of and will continue to take advantage of without a concession,” explains González.
The percentage of the mining companies’ profit to be allocated to the communities was reduced from 10% to 7%. This percentage is on the amount that is fiscally proven by the mining companies. “Now we are going to ask if a cartel that is mining in the south of Jalisco, in Michoacán, in Colima, in Guerrero, in Oaxaca is going to pay taxes. They don’t even need a concession to operate,” the lawyer points out.
Another change is that concessions may include two or more minerals or substances, while the previous proposal allowed the mining of only one mineral. The objective was to have greater control over the production of resources.
The reform does not apply to concessions already granted, so only future permits will be subject to the new rules. Existing concessions total 120 million hectares, equivalent to 60% of the national territory.
More Control
The reform removed the preferential nature of mining over any other use or utilization of the land. Thus, the exploration, exploitation and processing of minerals will no longer be imposed over any other activity that the communities are developing in their territory, be it housing, agriculture or forestry. It also prohibits concessions in protected natural areas.
Another positive change was the end of the “free land” figure. Under the old law, “with the exception of the areas considered as mining reserves, which are very few, the entire national territory was considered free land. The first one to arrive and bid became a concessionaire,” explains Jorge Pelaez, coordinator of the Legal Clinic for Environmental Justice at the Ibero, member of the Cambiemos la Ya campaign.
The coordinator explains that the Mexican Geological Service (SGM) is strengthened by granting it a monopoly on exploration to the detriment of private companies.
However, “the person who has information from which it can be inferred that in an unassigned or concessioned lot there are minerals or substances that are not strategic or reserved to the State, can present it to the Secretary (of Economy) so that it can determine the advisability of ordering the Mexican Geological Service to carry out the exploration,” says the text of the reform.
The SGM may enter into a collaboration agreement with such party for the exploration of the lot, with a term of up to five years. If it is determined that there are usable minerals, a bidding process may be carried out to grant the concession.
It also becomes mandatory to consult with the peoples and communities before granting concessions on indigenous territories. Lawyer Gonzalez maintains that what exists in terms of the right to free, prior and informed consultation is contradictory jurisprudence and case law.
“One day they favor the people, the next day they do not. They have turned it into the main right of our peoples. This is how they have presented it: the right to consultation over the rights that are substantive, the right to territory and the right to autonomy. The right to consultation is an adjective right. Its central purpose is to allow States and business corporations to reach an agreement with the peoples to implement policies that are in their interest,” analyzes the lawyer.
Mining companies will also have to submit to Semarnat a mine restoration and closure program, a requirement that did not exist in the old law.
Important for the economy?
The Cambiemos La Ya (Let’s Change it Now) campaign made a study in the public reports of the Ministry of Finance on the economic, financial and debt situation, since 2019, of the mining sector. “The contribution that the mining sector has to public finances is minimal,” says Beatriz Oliveira, who is part of the campaign.
In the year 2019, the percentage of tax collection of the mining sector with respect to the general collection in Mexico as a whole was 0.13%. In 2020, it was 0.32%. In 2021, 0.97%. “Mining in general, with all the tax contributions it makes does not reach 1% of all federal government revenues,” Oliveira argues.
In relation to income tax, in 2019, it contributed 1.41% of the total collected by the Mexican state. In 2020, 1.37%. In 2021, 2.86%. “There is also no substantive income tax contribution,” Oliveira comments.
A mining company pays to the public treasury per hectare, to have the right to mine, 8 pesos for the first year. Second year, 12 pesos. “That’s what the law says,” says Oliveira. The maximum is 176 pesos.
Poverty
As for what is considered local development, of the 21 municipalities that are classified as gold producing centers, in 10 of them the population lives in conditions that exceed the national poverty levels, as revealed by the data presented by Oliveira.
Patagonia, southern Argentina, ancestral territory claimed by the Mapuche village and fought-over by transnational companies that combust hydrocarbons. Even though the land is quite far from the military conflict between Russia and Ukraine, energy price volatility has put them on the geopolitical map for being the second world reserve of unconventional gas and fourth in crude oil of the same origin.
Here, almost 28 thousand m³ of oil and 44 thousand m³ of gas is extracted daily, even though almost nobody talks about the impacts it leaves on the communities that live in this area.
It was in 2019, in a civil court in Santiago de Chile, when the Mapuche village presented cases of environmental damage and violations of human rights in Argentina by the exploitation of oil and unconventional gas, extracted by the method known as hydraulic fracturing (fracking), a technique that, according to the Instituto Argentino del Petróleo y el Gas (IAPG), has been used in the country since 1959.
Fracking consists of injecting additive fluids at a very high pressure to generate cracks in the bedrock, thus allowing the hydrocarbon to flow to the well. The mixture is “basically formed by water (more than 90%) and some sand,” announces the IAPG platform.
Photo: Alejo di Risio
The country’s Ministerio de Economía has documented, this year in 2023, in its report Argentina Productiva 2030 Plan para el Desarrollo Productivo, Industrial y Tecnológico, that “in an unconventional well, 60 million liters of water and 10 thousand tons of sand are injected.”
Three years after the Mapuche village’s complaint, between March 29 and April 5 of this year, various environmentalists from the Tribunal Internacional de los Derechos de la Naturaleza conducted an inspection in the Neuquén and Río Negro region, where Cuenca Neuquina is found, that makes up the main hydrocarbon producer of the country, better known as Vaca Muerta. The delegation managed to verify and document several environmental impacts and human rights violations that fracking has caused.
One of the main problems the delegation has focused on has been water use. Environmentalists warn that the region is already experiencing a water crisis, when barely five of the 31 companies that have concessions in the the region are in the exploitation phase. Meanwhile, this year the demand for water could possibly double. Furthermore, this is added to the storage of the toxic waste left by the extraction of these energies.
Environmentalists have registered the presence of oil landfills, trash containers and mountains of waste accumulation, products of drilling the wells, which do not have any security measures. This has led observers to conclude that the authorities are complicit.
“Without a shadow of a doubt, there are institutions in charge of controlling all these activities. But they’re on the edge, or they’re total accomplices of what’s happening. It would be enough to look at the open-air landfills of accumulated petroleum,” said Alberto Acosta, former presidential candidate of Ecuador, who has also been part of the environmental delegation in Neuquén.
Since 2020, the Asociación Argentina de Abogados/as Ambientalistas has promoted before the law an order to enter the plants where they are depositing the petroleum waste from Vaca Muerta. It criminally accused the company Comarsa for accumulating and concentrating toxic waste in its installations. It denounced petroleum companies like YPF, Shell, Chevron, among others, for producing these residues in the drilling marks.
Among the irregularities the lawyers registered, they found what they classified as “petroleum trash.” Trash that, they declared in a statement, “contains radioactive remains and heavy metals. Also found was ground contaminated by petroleum, liquids with oil and liquids with petroleum, whose origins are not found registered.”
Photos: Alejo di Risio
The spokesperson of the Argentinian lawyers, who has also joined the delegation that has reviewed the south of the country, affirmed/stated/claimed that only the company Comarsa, between 2016 and 2019, assembled/gathered around 720 thousand metric tons of toxic trash in open-air.
Acosta, the Ecuadorian, has warned that what’s currently happening on these lands is a huge social environmental disaster. “This region is literally drying up. A region where rural inhabitants, above all, the indigenous Mapuche villages, are being robbed of the rivers. The rivers are disappearing and that water goes to extractivist activities,” the Ecuadorian affirmed and added that “only a well can use up to 90 million m³.”
The observer team concluded that “what’s more, the Mapuches were not consulted, even though the country ratified Convenio 169 of the OIT which establishes the requirement of free and informed enquiry and the need for consent from indigenous villages. Not only that, they’ve been victims of other forms of violence. They even try to deny their ancestral presence in said territories,” it recorded.
Furthermore, it’s not just the use of millions of cubic meters of water, but also the quantity of toxic chemical products that are filtered from the well and affect the flow of underground water. “Añelo (department) is one of the clearest examples. It’s the petroleum capital of the region, and water can’t be consumed there,” says the first recommendation conducted by the members of the Argentinian government delegation.
The observers have also documented a large quantity of seismic movement in the area, highlighting furthermore that cancer indications are on the rise, just like diseases caused by heavy metals in the blood.
More petroleum to get out of poverty
When the exploitation of Vaca Muerta was beginning, they promised there would be energy autonomy, external debt and poverty in the country would be over. One decade later, in Argentina “40% of the population lives in poverty, at least 4 million people live in destitution, which represents 8% of the population,” detailed Natalia Greene, secretary of the Tribunal Internacional de los Derechos de la Naturaleza.
The same discourse gained strength again in 2023. The country’s Ministerio de Economía clearly affirms in its document called Plan para el Desarrollo Productivo, Industrial y Tecnológico 2030 that “the context of the war between Russia and Ukraine has opened a new opportunity for Argentina to earn participation in the global energy markets. The maturation of the Vaca Muerta oil field coincides with this setting,” through which it will be possible to generate quality jobs and lower poverty.
It even justifies the exploitation of the Cuenca del Neuquén, considering that this gas is considered clean and necessary for the so-called energy transition. “We’re sure it’s possible to double exportations: the energy transition brings us a favorable backdrop so we can develop the potential Vaca Muerta exporter, of low-emission hydrogen and minerals like lithium or copper,” points out the development plan.
The environmentalist Greene strongly affirms that these discussions that justify extractivism to deal with poverty, “that run across Latin America from top down, from north to south, from east to west, are always false.”
Court
This court made up of prominent figures in the care of the environment was born in Quito, Ecuador, in 2014 as a space of civil society that judges the cases of violation of rights of nature and environmentalists. In this way, it considers Nature as a legal subject with rights equal to humans.
Photo: Alejo di Risio
Those who join the court have traveled various countries documenting and denouncing the affectations to nature, mainly, the conflicts caused by the exploitation of hydrocarbons and megaprojects.
In this instance, they’ve traversed not only the area exploited by fracking in the Argentine Patagonia, but also they’ve joined government representatives, oil companies, social organizations and communities affected by the activity.
The environmental delegation will present a report that will be analyzed by a panel of more than 60 judges that make up part of the court, elected by their career path, like the Hindu doctor, physicist, philosopher and writer Vandana Shiva, to present the relevant recommendations. Although it’s not binding, it is a precedent to be consider by the rulers in office. “We hope this sentence serves, in one sense, to provoke society’s conscience, to mobilize in something the conscience of the rulers, which is often difficult, if not impossible. Above all, we hope that it will serve as an element for the communities’ struggles”, said the Ecuadorian economist Acosta.
Autonomous authorities of the Zapatista Council of Good Government (JBG) of Caracol IX, denounced the unjust imprisonment of Manuel Gómez Vázquez, member of the support bases of the Zapatista Army of National Liberation (EZLN). He was detained illegally on December 4, 2020, and remains imprisoned in CERSS No. 16, in the municipality of Ocosingo, Chiapas.
According to a statement from the Zapatistas and the Fray Bartolomé de las Casas Human Rights Center (Frayba), the detention of Manuel Gómez was carried out by an armed civilian group, and is an act of criminalization for his adherence to the EZLN.
Gómez Vázquez is a 22-year-old Maya-Tseltal campesino, originally from the Rebel Zapatista Autonomous Municipality (MAREZ) of Ricardo Flores Magón, located in Nuevo Jerusalén, in the official state municipality of Ocosingo, Chiapas.
“The truth is, they’ve come after him for being a Zapatista. For the bad governments being a Zapatista is a crime that is punishable by slander, persecution, imprisonment, and death,” the autonomous authorities emphasized in a public statement.
After more than two years of arbitrary detention, in a press conference on Tuesday April 18 in the offices of Frayba, human rights defenders explained that Gómez is “falsely accused of homicide after violent events which took place in the ejido El Censo, in the municipality of Ocosingo.” In the press conference they also described how the member of the Zapatista support bases has been a victim of torture and cruel, inhumane, and degrading punishment.
Fabricated Case File
In a communique released in March of this year, Frayba explained that on December 4-5 of 2020, violent events left four people dead in the ejido El Censo, in the municipality of Ocosingo. “The prosecutor’s office didn’t carry out a thorough or scientific investigation. Rather, they pinned the homicide on Manuel who at the time of the events was at home with his family,” explained the human rights center.
For their part, the authorities of the Zapatista Council of Good Government shared that they’d carried out an investigation of the events confirming Manuel Gómez Vázquez’s innocence. However, in spite of “the official authorities of the ejido El Censo knowing that the accusations against the compañero Manuel Gómez Vázquez are a lie, they are afraid to say so because they are being threatened with death by the families of the killers,” denounced the Zapatistas.
According to authorities of the Zapatista Council of Good Government, the Indigenous Justice Prosecutor’s Office, a wing of the State Attorney General’s Office, “fabricated the case file with false evidence already disproven by the municipal agent.” These statements support those made by Frayba in March, when they explained that the prosecutor’s office lacks the evidence to accuse and maintain Gómez Vázquez in prison.
“The prosecutor’s office fabricated evidence, not presenting the supposed witnesses to give their testimonies, which has resulted in the oral hearing being postponed. There are no autopsies for the homicides, and the state judiciary has exceeded the limit on preventive detention, which in no case should exceed two years,” Frayba contextualizes.
The Zapatista authorities maintain that responsibility for the illegal detention of the member of the Zapatista support bases lies with the governor of Chiapas, Rutilio Escandón, and the municipal president of Ocosingo, Jesús Alberto Oropeza Nájera, both belonging to the political party MORENA.
“We know well that they are against us because we are Zapatista support bases, they unjustly imprison us…they are devastating the community, dividing the lands. They are destroyers of our community. What happened to the president saying first the poor? First they are trampling on and killing us, the poor,” sustained the autonomous authorities.
Cover image: A farmer guides us toward the mangrove region in the Central American Pacific where work is underway to build an airport. Photo: Juliana Bittencourt
Don Elmer, a 63-year-old rural dweller, feels happy. “I cheer up when they come to sing to me,” shares the farmer about the birds chirping in the forest, in an ecological buffer zone of mangroves called El Tamarindo, a Protected Natural Area on the Pacific Coast of El Salvador.
“If they make the airport, all these birds, what are they going to have to land on?” laments Don Elmer, who makes up part of the 57 families in the Flor de Mangle community, in the Conchagua municipality, that are being displaced for the implementation of the International Pacific Airport megaproject.
According to formal complaints of the residents consulted by the team of this report, since February 8, 2023, personnel that introduced itself as part of the Guatemalan company Rodio Swissboring, hired by the Port Authority Executive Commission (CEPA in its Spanish abbreviation), began work in the Condadillo and Flor de Mangle communities, saying they would conduct a ground study in the area and move forward with the construction of a new airport terminal.
Machinery invades and destroys agricultural land in preparation for the construction of the Pacific International Airport.
The testimonies recount how the workers entered with machinery and crew in the agricultural and housing land plots, “without authorization from the proprietors or a court order to do so,” they emphasized during the public complaints. Community members report that members of the Armed Forces and the National Civil Police are being mobilized to act as security for the company's machinery.
The workers drilled and excavated the ground, forming ditches with dimensions up to 40 meters wide, 60 meters long and more than nine meters deep. “In one of the plots of land, the ditch has come to span almost the whole area. Less than one kilometer away in this same plot are the mangroves of the El Tamarindo estuary,” says the complaint.
The rural inhabitants point out that upon finishing work in the invaded plots of land, the workers stopped and left, leaving the area unusable for agriculture and creating risky conditions, for both people and the rural families’ grazing livestock.
In March, reporting by the El Salvador media outlet MalaYerba proved that work had begun on the new airport, despite the fact that they still did not have the environmental permit currently required by law. In a report, they highlight the conduct of the CEPA director who, on national television on February 8, lied to assure that they had permits, even when the media confirmed that the resolution of the license was not made available by the environmental authorities until March 22.
Photo: Juliana BittencourtPhoto: Juliana BittencourtPhoto: Aldo Santiago
“Not just Flor de Mangle will be affected. Here we have Condadillo, we have Llano Los Patos, a part of El Carrizal and also El Embarcadero,” stated Don Elmer with bitterness while he listed the populations threatened not just by the airport infrastructure, but also by what the development of this special economic zone will trigger, involving touristic, industrial and commercial complexes.
Development Pole
The team of this report traveled through the Condadillo territory in La Unión municipality, in the department of the same name, located in the eastern region where the Salvadoran government is looking to transform into a “development pole.”
To strengthen the plan, in addition to the new airport terminal, other efforts are in the works: standing out among them, so-called Bitcoin City, the Pacific Train and the modernization of ports in the strip of the Pacific coast, from Acajutla to La Unión; mega infrastructure projects that make part of Plan Cuscatlán, a government proposal that Nayib Bukele presented during the 2019 presidential elections, but that dates back to previous administrations.
“It’s a Special Economic Zone (ZEE in its Spanish abbreviation). It’s the privatization of territories. The previous administration had already launched the project by law on July 19, 2018, to establish it,” points out agroecology professor José Ángel Flores, member of the Asociación Intercomunal de Intipucá, which belongs to the Vida Digna Communication Network, an organization that brings together communities in the east of El Salvador threatened by megaprojects.
At the time, they distributed an agreement between the administration of the Farabundo Martí National Liberation Front (FMLN in its Spanish abbreviation) and China, which sought to invest in the development of a 2,800 square kilometer Special Economic Zone between La Libertad port, in the Lempa River, reaching La Unión port, in the geostrategic Golfo de Fonseca.
Previously, since 2014, the progressive FMLN administration was considering building El Jagüey International Airport, a project renamed and currently put into motion by Bukele in the same territory in Pacific Central America.
Without defense
As we passed through the forest, we noticed a pattern of sign posts; orange paint covers the tree trunks. Santos Cruz, a rural inhabitant of the region, mentions that they’re marks left over from an odd census in which, for days, workers from CEPA and the Ministerio de Obra Pública measured and evaluated the site for construction of the airport.
Local residents have reported unusual activity since the announcement of the construction of the airport terminal. Photo: Juliana Bittencourt
Since the first few months of 2022, Condadillo residents noticed more activity by the State workers, who in addition to taking measurements of the land, would photograph the dwellings and plots of land that belong to the rural inhabitants. For them, that added to the presence of military contingents and police, which was standardized from the month of March on, when an emergency government was declared in the whole country, justified by the rise in homicides and gang-related violence.
The residents’ situation worsened, given that various communities don’t possess deeds. Nor do they have formalized possession of the land. That means they can be dispossessed at any point, emphasized Professor Flores, who joined us on the traverse through the affected communities, while highlighting that the right to have appropriate information has been stripped away, and the populations have not been consulted.
Laws on the fast track
While we visit the mangrove forest in the ecological buffer zone of the airport project, Flores contextualizes the actions of the legislative power and environmental institutions, and emphasizes how they’re at the mercy of President Bukele, who has fast-tracked these megaprojects.
As an example, he mentions the passage of the Law of Eminent Domain of Property for Municipal and Institutional Works on November 24, 2021. In said regulations, mechanisms are established for the expropriation of properties due to “public utility or social interest,” a law approved only three days after the announcement, on the part of Bukele himself, of the construction of the mega undertaking that encompasses the so-called Bitcoin City.
According to the professor, the law omits the conciliation phase, that is to say, a space for dialogue does not exist, “while the process starts up, the Salvadoran state can go on building and installing the megaprojects until a resolution emerges. The population remains dispossessed and does not have any kind of state entity that it can turn to,” Flores maintained.
He affirms that the passed laws intend to ease the process of establishing mega investment projects. In this way, the Legislative Assembly also passed the Law for the construction, administration, operation and maintenance of the International Pacific Airport and the Law of the special regime for the simplification of procedures and administrative acts related to the Pacific Train. Both regulations have been criticized because they permit both the train and the airport to be exempt from the Law of Acquisitions and Recruitment of the Public Administration, remaining totally outside the transparency standards.
For his part, Don Elmer expresses worry about the uncertainty of his land in Flor de Mangle. He complains about the constant visits from bureaucrats, who pressure the rural inhabitants in the context of an expropriation process. Both residents of this community and those of Condadillo have publicly denounced CEPA’s pressure to sell their land at prices that they consider unfair, which has led them to reject the valuation signature; even though the countryman affirms that some families have ended up conceding out of fear.
Before the increase in threats, in October 2022, the rural residents publicly rejected negotiations with CEPA. Representatives of the two communities pointed out that the institution valued its land at an amount of $8,000 USD per manzana (equal to 0.70 hectares or 1.73 acres), though they think the true value is higher.
Santos Cruz, a farmer with land in the area, accused CEPA officials of visiting landowners to give an ultimatum. “If you don’t sign, you could end up with nothing,” the rural inhabitant said about the behavior of the state workers. “As the farmers, the poor people of the country, we’re suffering so much for megaprojects the government brings. Why not take this airport somewhere else? The country doesn’t need two airports,” he complained, maintaining that dozens of families would be left without sources of income if the project is implemented.
“Green” airport
According to the Cuscatlán Plan, the core ideas guiding the Bukele administration, constructing the Pacific Airport represents the consolidation of the first “green” airport terminal in Central America. To do so, it assures that its implementation will be based on the standards of the Leadership in Energy and Environmental Design (LEED) certification from the United States Green Building Council, “protecting the buffer zone and establishing new legislations for the development of ecotourism in the region.”
The International Pacific Airport, with an investment of approximately $300 million USD, intends to encompass a surface area of almost 20 thousand square meters. Even though CEPA still has not specified if it will be administered by the state or by a public-private entity, the feasibility studies were run by UDP CONSORCIO PEYCO–ALBEN 4000, property of Grupo SEG, of the Spanish capital.
According to CEPA’s projections, the airport will bring “poles of (economic) development” for the eastern zone and generate jobs for residents. Federico Anliker, president of the Commission, assures that the new airport terminal will be converted into an “air-tropolis,” a city of industrial plants, hospitality, resort centers and factories for the exportation of technological goods.
Contrary to the promises of sustainable development, the environmental impact study stresses that construction of the airport terminal poses a threat to more than 44 species of birds that live in El Tamarindo swamp.
Photo: Aldo SantiagoMangroves on the Pacific coast of El Salvador. Photos: Aldo Santiago
“The impact includes the destruction of nesting sites, obstructing the flow of migratory birds, and the death of bird species and specimens that are endangered or in threat of extinction, like the Yellow-naped amazon, Orange-chinned parakeet, Pacific parakeet and the Many-colored rush tyrant,” it says, referring to the danger that looms over the fauna, where other species, like mammals and reptiles that inhabit the mangrove swamp and its ecological buffer zone, will also be affected.
According to data from MARN, El Salvador has 13 swamp ecosystems along the Pacific coast, whose surface area has reduced 60% in the past six decades. The construction of the Pacific Airport would pose a continued decrease of the area’s swamps, affecting the populations that live off the fish and the extraction of other marine species for its survival.
Despite the effects, the investigation media GatoEncerrado revealed in a report released at the end of 2022, that the chief of the Environmental and Natural Resources Department (MARN in its Spanish abbreviation), Fernando López Larreynaga, promoted less-restrictive directives to facilitate the construction of the Pacific Airport, although in September 2021 specialists of the institution designated the project as “environmentally unfeasible” for affecting a PNA and altering the swamps in La Unión area.
Machinery invades and destroys agricultural land to prepare for the construction of the Pacific International Airport.
As Secretary Larreynaga justified, the implementation of new guidelines complied with at least 53 investment projects that had not been executed in the seven municipalities of the coastal strip, due to the fact that the environmental regulations were holding up the works. Because of that, the institution made the regulations more flexible with the objective of preparing the coastal territories, previously cataloged as “high protection,” to be home to the construction of huge infrastructure undertakings.
Integration for the dispossession
Despite the narrative spread by President Bukele, for professor Flores, the news of these megaprojects are not in the slightest novel.
“It’s something that comes from the era of Alliance for Progress,” he said referring to the long history of incorporation driven by the United States with the Central America region since the second half of the past century through agreements that were promoted by that country “to guarantee the economic policy of North America.”
The agroecologist emphasized the logistical component through which the existence of the Pacific Airport is justified, like the train and other megaprojects that seek to consolidate key infrastructure, through the use of public resources, for the operation and interest of the large capital transnationals.
Sources of water in the Condadillo community are threatened by projects for the new airport terminal
“It secures everything with a more regional rationality. In this case it comes from the Maya Train in Mexico, then its extension in Guatemala (referring to the Bicentennial Train that will connect the border with Chiapas, Mexico, to Puerto Barrios on the Atlantic Coast) and then continuing with the Pacific Train in El Salvador (...) all these logistics are the extraction of natural resources of the few natural ecosystems left in Latin America, for the purpose of transforming goods.”
Flores points out the historical interference of the United States in El Salvador, which has implemented various strategies to deepen neoliberalism. The creation of the free commerce zone firmed up the Free Trade Agreement between the United States, Central America and the Dominican Republic, just as with the most recent cooperation programs like FOMILENIO II, which defined vital highway infrastructure for the later development of the specific coast.
“They’ve worked to configure the country like a small logistical passageway where the objective is the assembly, the storage, the distribution and the commercialization of goods, at an extremely low cost, without the sound judgment to avoid the depredation of the environment,” the professor upheld.
On the cover: Advance of the construction work on the Mayan Train cause the deforestation of hundreds of hectares of jungle.
It is more than a slogan. The phrase, “the land is not for sale”, reiterated in the testimonies shared by participants of the most recent Assembly of the National Indigenous Congress (CNI), held on March 4 and 5, embodies the fierce defense of native peoples in the southeast of Mexico, where they are already experiencing the negative effects of the imposition of one of the star projects of the so-called Fourth Transformation: the Maya Train in the Yucatan Peninsula.
In its advancement, it links a series of megaprojects to offer the territories of indigenous communities to the markets: industrial parks, energy plants, infrastructure for the circulation of goods and military barracks, to mention just a few.
As Avispa Mídia has documented, since the beginning of the administration of Andrés Manuel López Obrador (AMLO), the use of diverse tactics to implement, at any cost, both the Interoceanic Corridor in the Isthmus of Tehuantepec, in Oaxaca, and the Mayan Train in the territories of the Yucatán peninsula has been evident.
In this installment, we take up the testimony of organizational processes in Quintana Roo from where they make a call to unveil the strategies and the intertwining of actors, legal and illegal, who promote the engines of reconfiguration in the Mexican Southeast.
It is important to highlight the role of the Armed Forces who, under the pretext of executing the works, have extended their presence in the indigenous territories. At the same time as militarization is advancing, the communities charge that organized crime is also making inroads and, with it, violence through executions, disappearances and other crimes within the native populations.
Elements of the Armed Forces during their deployment in territories of the Yucatan peninsula to direct the works of the megaproject.
This publication is part of a series of dialogues we held with participants in the CNI Assembly held in Tehuacán, Puebla. Here you can read the first installment on indigenous organizations in Michoacán.
The Assembly of Defenders of the Maya Múuch’ Xíinbal Territory, which celebrated five years of existence last January, defines itself as an itinerant Assembly through which different communities of the Yucatán peninsula share the problems surrounding the megaprojects that are landing in their territories in order to build agreements on strategies for their defense.
Made up of ejidatarios and peasants from Mayan communities, one of the main agreements of the Múuch’ Xíinbal Assembly is not to sell or rent land in the face of “megaprojects implemented by companies that, in classic conquistador fashion, come to take our lands to develop their business,” according to its members.
The Mayan organization has denounced the negative effects unleashed by the avalanche of extractive projects, including those disguised as “green”, among which are the plans to erect 25 wind and photovoltaic farms on the peninsula. They have also raised their voices against the proliferation of hundreds of pig farms that threaten to contaminate the largest subway water reserve in the country and, of course, against the devastation caused by the construction of the Tren Maya.
The following are excerpts from a conversation with Alexis Juuj, a member of the community of Chunhuhub and a member of the Múuch’ Xíinbal Assembly. He talks to us about the progress of Section 6, which runs from Tulum to Chetumal, and whose construction is being carried out by the Mexican army, which, he accuses, has led to the militarization of the communities.
Avispa Mídia (AM): Can you give us an update on the progress of the train megaproject in your region?
Alexis Juuj (AJ): For the so-called Mayan train project, they have practically opened the road into the jungle. In spite of the fact that they have been constantly changing the tracks where the train is going to pass, because it does not really have an executive plan.
Other organizations, communities and collectives have been protesting against the advance of the train construction.
They have been improvising, passing over cenotes, caves, which they have been filling with stone material and garbage. From the beginning we pointed out that the ground is not suitable for a project of this magnitude.
Currently the project of the train, wrongly-named Maya, is already very advanced. This has also led to the communities filling up with military personnel, who are in charge of some sections of the construction of the train.
AM: The CNI Assembly that convenes us today proposes to reflect on the relationship between violence, militarization and megaprojects, how is this being expressed in the specific instance of the train?
AJ: Since the construction of the train and the militarization of the area began, there is something very clear: the rate of violence has shot up since the arrival of the military in the communities, whose presence was justified by the need for greater security. However, the opposite is true.
Sections 6 and 7 of the Tren Maya are among the most complex due to the geography they cross. Both are being built by the Sedena and go from Quintana Roo to reconnect with Campeche. The Armed Forces project the completion of these sections by December 31, 2023.
There is something very interesting here, because previously in the small communities of Quintana Roo and Yucatan you did not hear anything about disappearances or about “levantones”, about confrontations with the drug traffickers. However, since the beginning of the construction, we started to hear a lot about this. And it is happening specifically in the communities, not in the big cities as it used to be: Cancun, Playa del Carmen, Tulum. Now they are already inside the communities. So, women, children and men are disappearing, but the interesting thing is that most of the young men and adult men who disappear are found executed and the women are not found, nor are the children, which leads us to think that it is really trafficking in women and children. This is what is happening now in the communities. In addition, there is a link between the National Guard and organized crime, which is something we already know. Organized crime has flooded the communities with drugs to enlist in their ranks the young people of the communities, who are then used as cannon fodder for drug trafficking.
AM: What other actors show up in the territories and what are the effects of the advancement of the project?
AJ: The project does not mention the secondary effects that the train will bring. There are communities right now where companies are moving in, especially energy companies, wanting to set up in ejidos that are close to where the train is going to pass.
In my community of Chunhuhub, there is a town very close to where a substation of the Federal Electricity Commission (CFE) is being installed. Fonatur (National Fund for the Promotion of Tourism) presented the plans for the substation, which is being built exclusively to feed the Section 6 station that will be in Felipe Carrillo Puerto, 60 kilometers from where the train will pass. In that same ejido, a 2,000 hectare solar park is to be installed.
In that area, for example, in my community, there are 400 people who are not from the peninsula, who are working on these energy projects. This has caused violence within the social fabric, because of the ways that these people have brought with them. The people working there are also getting involved with the women of the communities and this has caused family problems.
In addition, in other areas, where the construction of the train has advanced much more, such as in the Izamal area, there are not only workers from all over the country, but also Central Americans who are migrating to the US. Many people are being hired to move forward as quickly as possible with the construction work, regardless of whether they are undocumented. This has also brought drug addiction problems within the communities, because many of these people bring other ways of life, which is spreading to the community.
The Republic of Mexico president, Andrés Manuel López Obrador, published a new order in the Official Journal of the Federation (DOF in its Spanish abbreviation, the main government publication where all rules and regulations must be published) on February 13 that establishes new actions in matters of glyphosate and genetically modified corn. In December 2020, the president passed a first order, now repealed, which decided to gradually eliminate genetically modified corn and the herbicide glyphosate by 2025.
The new publication was a response to the ultimatum the United States gave to Mexico by requesting the scientific basis facing the ban of genetically modified corn and glyphosate, said Malin Jönsson, coordinator of the Fundación Semillas de Vida, in an interview with Avispa Mídia.
The publication was issued one day before the deadline set by the new United States chief agricultural negotiator, Doug McKalip, and the under secretary of agriculture for trade and foreign agricultural affairs, Alexis Taylor, so the Mexican government could explain its decision for the ban.
The recent order maintains the ban on growing genetically modified corn, as well as its use in the dough and tortilla sector.
The previous “does not represent some affectation to commerce nor imports, among other reasons,” maintained the Secretary of the Economy in a press release.
The new order removes the deadline to ban genetically modified corn in animal feed and the food industry. In the release, the Secretary of the Economy explains that “with regard to the use of genetically modified corn for feed and the industry, the deadline has been removed to ban its use, leaving it subject to what exists in supply. Committees will be created with the national and international private sector to achieve an orderly transition.”
Furthermore, the date to stop importing glyphosate and substitute it with agroecological alternatives will be modified from January to March 2024.
In the press release, the Secretary of Economy maintained that “the Federal Commission for the Protection against Sanitary Risks (Cofepris in its Spanish abbreviation) will conduct scientific research surrounding the possible health impacts genetically modified corn has on people. Such studies will be completed with health agencies from other countries.” With this, “Mexico reiterates its commitment to fulfilling the Agreement between the United States of America, the United Mexican States, and Canada, according to which the decisions to preserve organic life should be based on scientific evidence.”
USMCA
The United States government is threatening Mexico with resorting to formal measures associated with the Agreement between the United States of America, the United Mexican States, and Canada (USMCA), previously NAFTA. For the organizations that join the “Sin Maíz no Hay País” campaign, the controversy shows that free trade treaties jeopardize sovereignty when some of the parties are at a disadvantage.
Nevertheless, as Jönsson argues, USMCA contains articles that protect sovereignty, meaning Mexico can ban the use of modern technology products or genetically modified organisms (GMO).
Obrador and Biden meet in the US. The U.S. government declared itself "disappointed" with the decree issued on Monday, February 13.
“USMCA does not have an obligation to accept (the U.S. complaints). We can use those arguments we have. There are many studies that are showing the damage they cause to biodiversity, to health, to life,” added Jönsson. He said they could even put a deadline on closing the border to imports.
Not compliant
Various studies on corn flour contaminated with transgenics and glyphosate exist. “The two are being mixed,” Jönsson said.
Even studies by the National Autonomous University of Mexico (UNAM in its Mexican abbreviation) and the Asociación de Consumidores Orgánicos showed discoveries of glyphosate and transgenics in tortillas. Using yellow corn in this food would mean government controls have failed.
“How are we going to eliminate the consumption of contaminated flours that we currently have? How are we actually going to implement the order? How are we going to assure that we’re not consuming it? What has been done to guarantee that we’re not consuming it directly?” asked Malin Jönsson. Seeing as there are several problems, “the order is not compliant,” because it doesn’t resolve them.
The Semillas de Vida researcher reminded that the corn is genetically modified to resist herbicides “go hand-in-hand”. That’s how glyphosate application ends up with other plants. “It controls, but it kills all other life, killing biodiversity.”
The items in the new presidential order recognize the scientific research that warns of the harmful effects of herbicide on the health of human beings, the environment and biological diversity. Furthermore, it recognizes it as a likely carcinogen, as established by the International Agency for Research on Cancer.
The Intersecretary Commission on Genetically Modified Organism Biosecurity, a dependent of the National Council of Science and Technology, published an extensive document on the subject. But, according to Mexican organizations, the United States government nor companies consider these studies valid. “They want to take us down a dead-end street.”
It’s an entirely complicated situation, insisted Jönsson, also because of the interests of large capitals of transnationals that control the glyphosate business and the production of genetically modified corn, like the company Bayer - Monsanto, Syngenta, among others.
“Incompatible realities”
Mexico is a constant center of origin and diversification of corn. It’s the world’s largest living genetic corn shelter. Indigenous villages have been saving, selecting and improving the seeds for some ten thousand years, the researcher highlighted.
Fifty-nine native races are registered, but millions of corn varieties exist as the essence of Mexican food culture, which was domesticated more than seven thousand years ago. In contrast, in the United States, corn is merchandise and supply for animal feed, to make ultra-processed products and to generate agrofuel.
“They’re two different and incompatible realities,” agreed the researcher. “But we come from a neoliberal economic model where the agricultural population has not been supported at all, where genetically modified corn has been allowed in,” she said.
The organizations highlight the self-sufficiency of Mexico in the production of corn it consumes. “That’s why it’s essential to establish concise and transversal public policies its respective proposal, that guarantee that in a fixed amount of time there will be permanent self-sufficiency of non-genetically modified corn for the food supply chain in its group,” she said.
Reaction
On Tuesday, February 14, the United States agriculture secretary highlighted that they are carefully revising the details of the new order “and we intend to work with the USTR to assure that our commitment is based on science and the rules remain firm.”
Fernando Bejarano, of the Pesticidal Action Committee, considers that the agencies and organizations of the Federal Public Administration should complete the corresponding actions with the effect of carrying out the gradual substitution of glyphosate until reaching its ban in March 2024.
He highlighted the eighth article of the 2023 order that speaks about the research protocol group that will join the Federal Commission and the same requests by other countries in a study about the consumption of genetically modified corn and the possible damages to health.
The organizations that join the national campaign convened people to join the proposals, so they can establish laws and rulings that include sanctions.
Currently some 17 million metric tons of genetically modified corn are imported to Mexico, due to the Free Trade Agreement between Canada and the United States of America.
