Cover image: Indigenous Binniza residents of Puente Madera, in the municipality of San Blas Atempa, protest against the imposition of an industrial park on their communal lands.
The Mexican government, through the Ministry of Economy, announced that the first tenders towards the creation of planned industrial zones in the Interoceanic Corridor of the Isthmus of Tehuantepec (CIIT), in Oaxaca, will be open for bids in February.
“We hope that each development zone will generate investments of around one billion dollars,” said Raquel Buenrostro Sánchez, Minister of Economy, who anticipated that, in addition to government investment, resources from the United States government will be forthcoming.
At the end of 2022, the former head of the CIIT, Rafael Marín Mollinedo, announced that ten plots of land were ready for the construction of industrial parks. “At the beginning of the year, they will be opened for bidding so that developers can take charge and fill them with businesses,” he said in an interview with an infrastructure industry media outlet.
Now, in 2023, the Minister of Economy is also including the participation of the U.S. “We have presented the logistics corridor project to the United States and they were very interested. Perhaps Gina Raimondo, U.S. Secretary of Commerce, will join us at the official presentation,” said the minister.
In its first phase, the Corridor foresees the rehabilitation of 200 kilometers of railroad tracks connecting the ports of Salina Cruz, Oaxaca, and Coatzacoalcos, Veracruz, in addition to the construction of ten industrial parks referred to as Well-Being Development Zones (PODEBI).
“The idea is that in each zone there is a private operator who commits to an investment plan with employment generation goals and a short, medium, and long term development vision,” said the Minister of Economy.
In this regard, the federal official added that there exists a high probability that included among the economic stimuli for the project will be resources from the U.S. government, in addition to those that may be provided by the Mexican government and which will be determined by the Ministry of Finance.
Buenrostro’s recent statements contradict those of Andrés Manuel López Obrador, who, since December 2018, when he assumed the presidency of Mexico, said that for reasons of “sovereignty” there would only be Mexican investment fueling the CIIT project.
Semiconductors
The Minister of Economy also elaborated on the possibility that part of the resources from the United States, coming from the Semiconductors Law or CHIPS Act, with 390 million dollars in spending, could be channeled towards the production of semiconductors in southern Mexico.
“Part of these funds could be invested in Mexico. This makes sense for the United States because there is an urgency in relocating (those resources). One issue that complicates rapid relocation is the shortage in their labor market. Taking that into consideration, Mexico is the best place to move companies that are now in Asia,” Buenrostro shared during a Mexico City meeting with financial media outlets.
At the same time, she pointed out that there exists between 1.8 and 2.8 billion dollars from the Inter-American Development Bank (BID) to fund the relocation of companies to Mexico. As a result, she mentioned, the administration will give priority to projects that choose to establish themselves in the Interoceanic Corridor.
“We have suggested they locate their investments in the south because in northern Mexico there is not enough water and, as well, it will allow for other problems to be attended to and resolved, such as those related to migration and development in southern Mexico and Central America,” said the minister.
Repression
The federal government’s announcement comes one week after the arrest of activist David Hernández Salazar, who, as a member of the municipal government of Puente Madera, an Indigenous Binniza community in the Isthmus of Tehuantepec, supported the demands of his community in opposing the construction of an industrial park on their communal lands.
Following Salazar’s arrest, his community and social organizations mobilized. He was released after a few hours.
Indigenous Binniza residents of Puente Madera, in the municipality of San Blas Atempa, protest against the imposition of an industrial park on their communal lands.
“It is not right that for defending our land, territory, human rights, and ourselves as Indigenous peoples we are criminalized, assaulted, and threatened for deciding to defend life when faced with their Megaprojects of Death,” denounced the Community Assembly of Puente Madera and the Assembly of the Indigenous Peoples of the Isthmus in Defense of Land and Territory (APIIDTT) following the release of Salazar.
In a statement, the above organizations once again stood firm in rejecting the installation of an industrial park linked to the CIIT and called for decentralized actions in solidarity with the peoples of the Isthmus of Tehuantepec on February 9, with an emphasis on the struggle against the imposition of the Interoceanic Corridor project.
Keving Hernán Sánchez, an Indigenous Zoque man from Oaxaca, Mexico, left his community at a young age to move to the state’s capital and study literature. He never imagined that after graduating and returning to his territory he would have to learn how to defend it, but that is what happened when a mining project threatened to tear apart the social and environmental fabric of his town.
Hernán hails from Los Chimalapas, a region in southern Mexico spanning 1,468,000 acres (594,000 hectares)—1,137,000 (460,000 ha) in Santa María Chimalapa and 331,000 (134,000 ha) in San Miguel Chimalapa. According to the National Commission for Knowledge and Use of Biodiversity (CONABIO), the region contains areas of “extreme priority for conservation” because they function as a biological corridor that, along with other ecosystems, make Oaxaca the most biodiverse state in the country.
Data from the National Institute of Ecology and Climate Change (INECC) indicates that today Los Chimalapas “is one of the most important tropical areas and resource banks in Mexico and Mesoamerica. One sole hectare of undisturbed tropical vegetation in this region is estimated to contain up to 900 plant species.” It’s also home to endangered species such as cycads in the Ceratozamia genus and palms in the Chamaedora genus.
More than 200 animal species also live there, including several that are vulnerable or threatened: the mealy parrot, great curassow, keel-billed motmot, black solitary eagle, wood stork, and others.
However, despite its natural riches, 422 mining concessions have been authorized throughout the state of Oaxaca as of December 2022, putting its residents, flora, and fauna at risk. There is great concern over the significant amount of water used by mining operations, as well as groundwater contamination. On top of that, as the sources consulted for this report show, the Indigenous peoples who live in areas marked for mining don’t know what kinds of metals the companies want to extract from their territories and have not been consulted about the matter.
A study published in December 2020 by the University of Paraná’s Electronic Journal System states that Sonora, the state with the highest number of mines in the extraction phase in Mexico, suffers from significant water pollution from toxic substances. These include sulphuric acid, cyanide, and others. “Several mines have reported more than one spill and all of them are frequent, which causes concern as to how many have occurred over the course of the mine’s entire life cycle,” states the report, titled “Extractive mining and socio-environmental conflicts over water in arid northwest of Mexico: a political ecology analysis.”
Cover Image: Signing of the declaration of bicentennial friendship in Mexico City
In December 2022, the United States government commemorated 200 years of political and economic ties with Mexico, celebrating the United States-Mexico-Canada Agreement (USMCA) as one of the principle achievements. The US government also highlighted a new bilateral security deal which has revamped some of the original objectives of the Merida Initiative.
At the end of 2022, the Special Presidential Advisor for the Americas, Christopher Dodd, the United States Ambassador to Mexico, Ken Salazar, and the Mexican Minister of Foreign Affairs, Marcelo Ebrard, signed a declaration of bicentennial friendship in Mexico City.
Since October 2021, talks related to the agreement—known as the Mexico-United States Bicentennial Framework for Security, Public Health and Safe Communities—have been ongoing. The United States has outlined three guiding principles: 1) investments in public health solutions for drug use; 2) prevention of transborder crime, including the reduction of arms and human trafficking; 3) dismantling of illicit financial networks linked to organized crime in both countries.
In early discussions, Marcelo Ebrard said that the plan would include: “11 areas of coordination, 26 joint objectives, and 102 actions of cooperation, which have been jointly developed and approved (between the United States and Mexico).”
United States Ambassador to Mexico and the Mexican Minister of Foreign Affairs
While this new agreement advances, the United States Congress is evaluating the results of the Merida Initiative, which was launched in 2007 with then president of Mexico, Felipe Calderón. According to the US Congressional Research Service, prior to the Merida Initiative, “Mexico didn’t receive large amounts of security aid from the United States, in part because of Mexico’s sensibility toward the implications of United States influence in Mexico’s internal affairs.”
The Merida Initiative, an aid package oriented toward strengthening the rule of law and the war on drugs, was key for the United States government’s entrance into Mexico.
Up until 2021, $3.5 billion dollars have been earmarked for the Mexican government. Part of these resources were used for Foreign Military Financing (FMF) which allows the buying of military equipment, planes, and helicopters. The US also provided equipment and training for the now defunct Federal Police.
Assessments carried out by the United States Congress have cast doubt on the Merida Initiative’s success seeing as organized crime violence is increasing in Mexico. The number of drug overdose deaths in the US is also on the rise. This has led to questions about “the efficacy of the security cooperation between the United States and Mexico,” according to the US Congressional Research Service.
That same research team reported that homicides in Mexico reached record levels between 2016 and 2019, before slightly declining in 2020 due to the pandemic. “Yet they increased again in 2021, and maintained elevated levels in 2022. Furthermore, since 2019, Mexico has surpassed China to become the leading source of United States fentanyl, representing around 66% of the nearly 108,000 lethal drug overdoses in the United States in 2021.”
Merida Initiative in the Background
Since López Obrador took power in Mexico in 2018, he has criticized the Merida Initiative. According to the Congressional Research Service, he has decided to “reduce federal security cooperation with the United States.” Following pressure from ex-president Donald Trump, the Merida Initiative focused most of its activity on border security.
In this way, there was a reorientation of the Merida Initiative toward migration control, which became the principle objective of the United States, “while the promotion of human rights and the rule of law remained secondary,” according to the Congressional Research Service.
During that same time, President López Obrador mobilized more than a thousand members of the National Guard toward southern Mexico in order to contain migrants coming from other countries. The National Guard, which since then has become a fundamental part of the border police, inherited the equipment acquired from the Merida Initiative.
National Guard represses migrants in Chiapas
In a document produced by the US Congress in December of 2022, it states that bilateral security operations and priorities have changed with the new security agreement. Although some of the old objectives of the Merida Initiative have been revamped, the new agreement seeks primarily to “secure borders and ports; and combat transnational organized crime, including opium poppy cultivation and heroin, fentanyl, and methamphetamine production.”
According to the Congressional Research Service, “the revitalization of bilateral security cooperation” is on the horizon with the new bicentennial agreement. In March of 2022, Congress enacted the Consolidated Appropriations Act (Public Law 117-103), designating over $122 million dollars to kick-start the new security pact. Meanwhile, for the year 2023, the United States Congress is debating a budget request of $141.6 million dollars for bilateral aid with the government of López Obrador.
A portion of these resources will also be destined to implement aid projects in Central America.
Progress
In October 2022, the United States and Mexico presented a report on the agreement’s first year (2021-2022) via a joint communique. “We protected the health of our citizens, expanding collaboration to reduce drug addiction and its related damages,” the governments informed.
One of the most noteworthy activities is the increased patrolling of the borders. To this end, the United States Justice Department created the Joint Task Force Alfa (JTFA), “which increased coordination with the Department of Homeland Security and other law enforcement partners, including in Mexico and Central America, to disrupt human smuggling networks,” the statement said.
According to the US Department of Justice, this task force is meant to disrupt and dismantle human smuggling and human trafficking networks that operate in El Salvador, Guatemala, Honduras, and Mexico.
A memorandum of understanding was signed between the National Customs Agency of Mexico and the US Customs and Borders Protection to improve the exchange of information related to air cargo shipments. Furthermore, Mexico joined the Global Container Control Program of the United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime (UNODC) to minimize the use of marine containers in order to combat illicit drug trafficking.
According to the communique, the armed forces in Mexico confiscated more than 32,000 guns, 17 million ammo cartridges, and 3,200 grenades between 2019 to 2022. Meanwhile, United States law enforcement agencies confiscated more than 600,000 firearms in 2021.
On the other hand, there is plans to implement an infrastructure and cyber security arrangement between the National Guard and the US Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency. With these different security agreements, the governments of Mexico and the United States are commemorating and celebrating 200 years of bilateral relations.
Cover Image: Zapatista youth in the Caracol of La Realidad, Chiapas
In the early morning hours of January 1, 2023, Zapatista children and youth with their faces covered, along with women, men, and elders, celebrated the 29-year anniversary of the uprising of the Zapatista Army of National Liberation in different political spaces of the organization in Chiapas, in southern Mexico.
One of the events took place in the Caracol of Jacinto Canek, located in CIDECI-UniTierra, a space where throughout the year, Zapatista youth study and learn different trades.
There, in the municipality of San Cristóbal de las Casas, the Indigenous Zapatistas celebrated another year of their declaration of war against the Mexican government with activities that included sporting, cultural, and political events, along with dancing.
In the Caracol known as “Flower of Our Word and Light of Our Peoples Reflected for All,” the presence of Zapatista youth stood out, who represent the fourth generation of the EZLN.
“Continue in struggle, in resistance. The work still isn’t finished. There are things to come in which the collaboration of the communities is necessary. We ask the new generations that they learn the organizational forms, that they learn to organize from inside their towns and communities,” were the words shared by a woman and man of the armed movement with the younger generations.
“We are gathered here to remember this date which is of great importance for us. It may be only a few hours that we are together, but we are remembering a date that is important for everyone. A date in which people gave their lives so that we could have a good life, so that we could live good,” shared the Zapatista woman in a speech in the last few minutes of 2022.
Zapatista mobilization against all wars. March 2022. Photo: Jeny Pascacio
On the 29-year anniversary of the Zapatista uprising, the Zapatista woman also remembered the validity of the demands which have still not been fulfilled by the Mexican government, now almost thirty years later: work, land, housing, food, healthcare, education, independence, freedom, democracy, justice, and peace.
“It is of great importance that we remember those who have lost their lives, the men and women who died during those difficult days. Continue working in unity. It is a long road that has already been traveled, but left behind by those who have died. We continue in search of justice,” shared the Zapatista woman.
For his part, the Zapatista man directed his comments to the youth of the political-military organization, asking them not to change their way of thinking and to honor the people who have died for the organization.
“Don’t change your way of thinking, continue as you are. We continue thinking this way because up until now the organization is on strong footing. We continue the legacy and thinking of those who have already died. And while the project has transformed, it has transformed in community. It is important that we continue learning all of this,” he announced in Tsostil, directing his comments to the youth who were present.
At the stroke of midnight, together with music and fireworks, the Zapatistas celebrated another anniversary of the armed uprising with the cry of “Long live resistance and rebellion!”
Cover Image: Migrants wait at the edge of the Rio Grande River to cross into the United States in the context of the end to restrictions imposed by Title 42.
The Government of Texas has deployed soldiers from the Texas National Guard to the southern border in order to contain the passage of migrants crossing into the United States seeking asylum.
Hundreds of soldiers were deployed along the Rio Grande River, equipped with a dozen armored vehicles, in an area commonly used by migrants to enter into the United States. The deployment of soldiers takes place in the context of the City of El Paso declaring a state of emergency over the migrant situation.
The Mayor of El Paso, Oscar Leeser, justified the state of emergency declaration referencing the recent decision from a US judge ordering Title 42—a restrictive pandemic-era border policy—to end on December 21.
Texas National Guard soldiers at the border with Mexico. Photo: Gabriela Minjáres
The soldiers belonging to the 606th Military Police Battalion are part of a Security Response Force trained in civil disturbance operations and mass migration response. The Security Response Force “…is used to safeguard the border and repel and turn-back illegal immigrants,” the National Guard said in a statement.
Within the context of border militarization, migrants are overflowing the shelters, being forced to sleep in freezing temperatures in the streets of El Paso as their only option left.
With the emergency declaration, the city has also announced that it will create an operations center and organize a plan to assist and protect migrants from the harsh weather conditions.
While shelters are being set up and expanded throughout the city, the Texas Division of Emergency Management (TDEM) has begun to transport migrants in busses from El Paso to New York and Chicago, considered “sanctuary cities” for people on the move.
According to the El Paso Deputy City Manager, Mario D’Agostino, the response to the migratory crisis will remain in effect until the appeal to Title 42, which is currently working its way through the courts, is ruled upon.
Chief Justice John Roberts temporarily blocked a federal ruling which called for Title 42 to end on Wednesday, December 21. The suspension will continue while the Supreme Court considers an appeal from Texas and other states who seek to maintain Title 42 in place.
As of publication, Mexican authorities have not commented on the deployment of Texas soldiers to the border of Ciudad Juárez.
On the cover: Explosions at the San Xavier mine, owned by New Gold, on San Pedro Hill, San Luis Potosí, Mexico. The Canadian company, which began mining in 2007, calls its work "environmentally responsible mining," despite the fact that its operations displaced most of the surrounding inhabitants. Photo: Aldo Santiago.
Governments across the planet have implemented energy transitions as urgent economic policies to deal with climate change. Although territories and the international division of labor are being reconfigured in several ways globally, the old frameworks of dispossession and theft continue to be reproduced in Latin America.
High temperatures have taken people by storm across the planet. Others have had to deal with catastrophic flooding. Losses range from real estate, to crops, to hundreds of deaths, to entire forests devastated by fire or water. While some have felt this hell firsthand, others remain comfortably distant. The idea that has been sold about climate change or global warming is that the market solves everything, with new production chains of goods and services that are part of what is now known as "sustainable development."
For environmental organizations, governments, academic circles, and the business world, the problem is the old fossil fuel energy system, and so-called “renewable energies” are the solution. In other words, a new assembly line is being laid out in the name of “climate change,” claiming to change everything, so that everything in fact remains the same. As Samir Amin explains, capitalist accumulation—even if it calls itself sustainable—is synonymous with "exponential growth," which, "like cancer, carries death" (Amin, 2009).
These supply chains debut their new “eco-friendly” look, promising to be the solution to climate change while failing to name or question the true reality: a “climatic, systemic, and civilizational crisis,” in Amin’s words, that heaps risks onto those who are already most vulnerable.
Our current society, disciplined for sustainable markets, makes justifications for a "green neoliberalism" that has been privatizing and commodifying common goods such as wind, solar energy, river water, ocean waves, lava from volcanoes—the list goes on.
The discourse on these not-so-new solutions takes different forms across the globe. This reconfiguration of markets and territories is not the same in Europe as it is in Africa or Latin America. Paraphrasing André Gunder Frank, we first need to understand how the rich countries reached their phase of “development” and the countries of the South remained in an eternal “underdevelopment” (Gunder Frank, 2005), which has led supranational financial institutions to describe them romantically as “developing or emerging countries.”
It’s important to understand this historical context in order to track where reconfigurations of green capitalism are already starting to lead, especially when the replacement of the energy matrix is repeating the same dynamics.
Renewable energies not only resort to the old international division of labor—in which some lose and others win and the South produces exclusively for the waste of the global North—but at the same time, they redouble environmental racism towards the South. In our case, this means Latin America, and more specifically Native peoples, Black communities, artisans, and autonomous communities.
Energy for the North
The United States, with only 4% of the world's population—a little over 332 million inhabitants—consumes more than 25% of global energy production. Its oil consumption exceeds 18 million barrels per day.
In 2000, the California ISO—a non-profit public benefit corporation that manages 80% of California’s energy flow—began issuing temporary “flex alerts” at times when electricity demand would outpace supply. The alerts urge businesses, government, and consumers to voluntarily reduce their electricity usage.
The California legislature passed a renewable energy mandate in 2011 stipulating that by 2020, 33% of electricity sold by California utility companies must come from renewable sources. To achieve this goal, however, California would need 10,000 of megawatts of additional capacity, according to a 2009 USAID report.
The report mentions Mexico as a potential source of this additional power, especially Oaxaca, with a production capacity of 2,600 MW—an “opportunity” for Mexican wind energy, in the USAID’s words. However, at the time, the high voltage networks necessary to sell electricity to the US did not yet exist.
Years before the Mexican government, led at the time by President Enrique Peña Nieto, began its Special Program for Energy Transition, the United States had already suggested that Mexico implement an energy reform. The US government argued that, despite sharing more than 3,000 km of border, electricity trade between Mexico and the United States was relatively limited and the advantages of proximity should be utilized.
The Peña Nieto government launched its energy reform in 2013, together with the 2014-2018 National Infrastructure Program, claiming that the main obstacles in the electricity sector were the saturation of transmission lines and the need for “high voltage networks” to connect to areas where renewable electricity is generated.
These transmission lines from Oaxaca have advanced slowly and have not yet met the goal of bringing energy to the US. However, they have been connected to major automobile assembly plants owned by General Motors, Ford, Chrysler, and others. Maquiladoras and shopping centers in Mexico, owned by US and European capital, have also benefited. In addition, the first interconnection networks in Baja California were established with the Western Electric Coordination Council (WECC) in California through two private interconnections. The state-owned Federal Electricity Commission (CFE) also has seven interconnections with Texas in the northern part of its system. In exchange, Mexico imports shale gas from the US.
The Isthmus of Tehuantepec region continues to spearhead wind energy production, with 28 of the 31 wind farms in operation throughout Mexico. According to the General Panorama of Renewable Energies, these generate a combined total of 7.7 GW.
The wind farm Biìo Hioxo Energía is owned by Gas Natural Fenosa and continues its advance on communal lands in Juchitán, Oaxaca. Photo: Santiago Navarro F.
According to data from the CFE, Mexico produced 48,958 GWh of “clean energy” in 2021. Of this, 67.2% came from hydroelectric sources, followed by nuclear power with 23.7%. Geothermal, wind, and photovoltaic power combined made up 9.1%.
Mexico has positioned itself as the second largest producer of solar energy in Latin America, just behind Brazil, with an installed photovoltaic capacity of more than 7 GW in 2021.
Interconnection networks are advancing rapidly in southern and southeastern Mexico, where the Andrés Manuel López Obrador (AMLO) administration has focused its stategic work through the Program for the Expansion and Modernization of the National Transmission Network and General Distribution Networks of the Wholesale Electricity Market.
The AMLO government recently established agreements with 17 US companies to increase the production of solar and wind energy. In turn, United States Secretary of EnergyJennifer Granholm stated on Twitter that "Mexico’s sun and renewable resources could power Mexico’s needs 100 times over — not to mention creating whole new clean energy industries."
According to the US Department of Energy, Mexico has enough capacity to produce 24,918 GW in solar energy alone. The Department also states that wind energy production can be increased to 3,669 GW, conventional geothermal energy by 2.5 GW, and hydroelectric energy by 1.2 GW. This would mean installing thousands of solar panels, more wind farms, and other renewable energy generation complexes that would affect hundreds of communities—the same ones that have to pay high costs for energy access.
Meanwhile, interconnection networks are also being built in Central America, claiming to "contribute to the sustainable development of the region" through the Central American Electricity Market Framework Treaty. Central American Electrical Interconnection System (SIEPAC) member countries have named integration of renewable energies as one of their objectives. These networks connect with Mexico to the north and extend to Colombia in the south.
SIEPAC will make it possible for privately held renewable energy plants to connect to each other through a network financed by governments in the region. Their goal is to insert renewable energy into the regional market, destined for maquiladoras, assembly plants, and extractive industries such as “green mining.”
The Development of Underdevelopment Continues
The Energy Policy Research Foundation, Inc. (EPRINC), a non-profit research organization focused on energy economics and policy, recently warned that the energy matrix replacement strategy promoted by the International Energy Agency (IEA) was not working as planned. This transition means “halting new investment in oil and gas exploration” based on “a false belief that the world will not require additional supplies of oil and gas in the medium term.” This, along with COVID-19 and the war between Russia and Ukraine, has led to an increase in "energy prices and energy poverty," wrote EPRINC spokesman Iván R. Sandrea Silva in a May 2022 report.
Sandrea unintentionally dealt a heavy blow to the argument supporting the economic policies promoted by the UN 2030 Agenda, which aims at a considerable reduction in carbon emissions by 2030 through the replacement of fossil fuels with renewables. He maintained that "even in the best-case scenario of reaching net zero [emissions], over 1.5 trillion barrels of oil and gas will be needed until 2070.”
Sandrea stated that African and Latin American countries should not "[shut] down the hydrocarbon industry," noting that they depend on it for their "economic growth and fiscal stability."
Community protest to demand the cancellation of oil drilling in Zoque territories in Chiapas. Photo by Mexican Alliance Against Fracking. June 22, 2017.
While the countries of the global North rapidly replace their energy sources, Latin American countries will serve as a bridge towards that transition. Not only will we continue to supply fossil fuel energy; we will also have to cede more land to produce green energy and expand mining areas, since we will have to supply aluminum, copper, lead, lithium, manganese, nickel, silver, steel, zinc, and other rare earth minerals for new production chains.
The World Bank estimates that more than three billion tons of minerals and metals will be needed to implement new technologies for wind, solar, and geothermal energy as well as for electric cars.
A fierce dispute has begun within the capitalist class itself to control and manage the exploitation and commercialization of these minerals. During the Security in the Western Hemisphere 2022 Concordia Americas Summit held in July 2022, General Laura Richardson, Commander of the US Southern Command, expressed her concern about the presence of Russia and China in Latin America, stating, “I think they’re there to undermine America, they’re there to undermine democracies.” Richardson reminded attendees that “the ‘lithium triangle’ is in this region. There are many things that this region has to offer.”
Months prior, in a panel talk at the Reagan National Defense Forum held in December 2021, Richardson stated: “60% of the lithium in the world is in the Lithium Triangle; Argentina, Bolivia, Chile. You've got a lot of rare earth minerals, resources and capabilities that in my mind go hand in hand with what the Chinese are doing with the Belt and Road Initiative and expanding their reach into Latin America.”
Lithium is just one of the minerals essential to the new markets, especially for batteries for the electric cars that rich countries think will solve the problem of climate change. This new commodity is an example of how the reconfiguration of green capitalism reproduces the old international division of labor and, at each stage of production, destructive consequences that classical economics calls "market failures" or "negative externalities."
Open pit in Azacualpan, Honduras. Drilling at the site has uncovered geothermal sources that are being developed by North American companies. Photo: Aldo Santiago
While in poor countries electric vehicles are still seen as a thing of the distant future, a record 6.6 million of them sold in 2021 alone in the world’s most powerful economies. More than 16.5 million electric cars are already out on these countries’ roads and this is only the beginning.
The old fleet of internal combustion vehicles will not be destroyed, merely displaced to poor countries such as Mexico and Central America, as has always been done historically with obsolete technology. In the end, the solution presented by the individual car does not solve the problem, but it does represent a new niche of opportunities that take the form of greater "sustainable economic growth." On the other hand, it will continue to reproduce an individualistic, selfish, and competitive society—larger vehicles, including those used for collective transport, only represented 0.3% of global sales in 2021.
According to the IEA, the emergence of this green industry is due to the fact that in 2021, subsidies and incentives for electric vehicles in countries with the greatest economic power added up to 30 billion dollars. The increase in sales of electric vehicles was led by the People's Republic of China, with 3.3 million. 2.3 million were sold in Europe and 630,000 in the US.
“[Electric vehicle] sales are still lagging in other emerging and developing economies, where the few models that are available remain unaffordable for mass-market consumers,” states the IEA report. However, Latin America and the Caribbean make up one of the regions where renewable energy production has accelerated, mainly hydroelectricity. According to a 2019 report by the Inter-American Development Bank, hydroelectric power "provides about half of the electricity of this region and is the main source of generation in many countries," including Paraguay, Colombia, Costa Rica, Ecuador, and Brazil.
With that fact in mind, the cost that users have to pay is far higher than it should be in countries like Haiti, Guatemala, and Honduras, where according to USAID, more than 70% of the population is energy poor. In addition to lacking energy access, they are dispossessed and expelled from their territories. This is the face of the "sustainable development" promoted by governments, academia, and above all, business. The discourse of sustainability is a smoke screen ensuring a new cycle of expansion of capital and this represents an escalation of dispossession. Meanwhile, many sectors of society have been meekly accepting the false solutions that green capitalism is offering.
A Green Economy Stained Blood Red
The Belo Monte project in Brazil, Barro Blanco in Panama, Chixoy in Guatemala, and the San Antonio Hydroelectric Project in Mexico have something in common besides being large-scale hydroelectric projects: murders of Indigenous people have stemmed from all of them. These are just a few examples of the bloodstained projects that have imprisoned and persecuted people and displaced or dispossessed entire communities. The Sustainable Development Goals, bank reports, governments, and businesses do not talk about it.
Indigenous people from the Amazon basin protest in Brasilia against the construction of the Belo Monte hydroelectric dam on February 8, 2011.
Although it does not name the murders, even the controversial USAID reported in its Trend Analysis 2020-2030 that in 2017 alone, hydroelectric dams impacted 5.7 million people in South America. In addition, dams built to generate “renewable energy” also generate deforestation and negative impacts on a great diversity of species.
If we also consider the environmentalists killed by the other electrical plants and "development" projects in general, we are talking about hundreds of communities affected in the name of "climate change" and the energy transition. There is a reason that for years, the organization Global Witness has consistently ranked Latin America as the deadliest region for environmental defenders. Although renewable energy in the region—mainly privately owned and linked to European and US companies—represents more than double the world average in terms of its percentage on the grid, the results are less than stellar, since “energy poverty still undermines livelihoods in many areas,” according to USAID. We can infer that this energy transition is not about solving the climate crisis and much less about improved access for consumers. It is strictly the continuation of the expanded reproduction of capital.
This new market niche is under dispute by the most powerful countries and companies in the world, including those in the oil sector. So, asking them to include us in their agendas, reforms, or strategic plans is like getting blood from a stone. The underlying logic is still exponential growth.
Instead, we must envision and build alternatives outside this "renewed," greenwashed system. Repurposing technology and producing our own energy, independently of companies and state administration, becomes subversive. We must name the crisis and rethink alternatives from below, outside of what the concepts of "development" and "growth" have led us to believe. The solutions will either be subversive or, with so-called "sustainable development," we will head complacently towards the solutions offered by the green market and remain a disciplined army of consumption. The energy transition does not seek to solve the climate crisis, only to sustain the pace of capital accumulation at any cost.
