Southeastern Mexico for Sale, with U.S. Embassy Help

Por

11 July, 2022

AMLO Desarrollo Istmo — VERACRUZ, VERACRUZ, 22ABRIL2022.- Andrés Manuel López Obrador, presidente de México, encabezó el acto protocolario del evento "Desarrollo del Istmo de Tehuantepec" . Lo acompañaron: Ken Salazar, embajador de Estados Unidos en México; Cuitláhuac García Jiménez, gobernador Constitucional del Estado de Veracruz; Adán Augusto López, secretario de Gobernación; Rosa Icela Rodríguez, secretaria de Seguridad y Protección Ciudadana; Rafael Ojeda Durán, secretario de Marina; Luis Cresencio Sandoval Gónzalez, secretario de la Defensa Nacional. FOTO: PRESIDENCIA/CUARTOSCURO.COM

^{Above: AMLO heads the event “Development of the Isthmus of Tehuantepec” in the company of Ken Salazar, the US ambassador to Mexico. April 2022.}

Versión en español ↳ publicado en en el mes de junio

Translated by Scott Campbell

In the last six months, a series of meetings has been held between the seven governors of southern and southeastern Mexican states, Mexican federal government institutions, representatives of the United States and Canadian governments, and corporate representatives from those countries. According to social media posts from U.S. ambassador to Mexico Ken Salazar, the objective has been to promote “the conservation and sustainable development” of the region, bolstered “through private investment.”

During the fifth meeting, headed by Salazar in mid-May in Mexico City, the diplomat announced that “the government of Mexico has a plan, a very good security agenda for the Isthmus [of Tehuantepec],” the location for the planned construction of the Interoceanic Corridor and ten industrial parks.

Demonstrating enthusiasm for the Mexican government’s plans, at a press conference following his meeting with the governors, Salazar maintained that the key to resolving drug trafficking and the flow of migration to the United States lies in the the Isthmus of Tehuantepec. “It is easier to monitor the 180 miles that make up the Isthmus of Tehuantepec than the 2,000 miles of desert on Mexico’s northern border,” said the diplomat.

The region is a “priority” for the United States and the idea is for the megaprojects to function as retaining walls. “Our focus has been the Transoceanic [Corridor],” he explained.

He announced an increase in investments in the region by the U.S. government, under an initiative called PromoSur – From the people of the United States for the conservation and sustainable development of southern Mexico.

Territorial Intervention

A promotional video for the program, published on the U.S. embassy’s social media accounts, states that the U.S. government, through the efforts of USAID (U.S. Agency for International Development), will increase its international assistance to southeastern Mexico.

“PromoSur is the name we have chosen for our increased investment destined for southeastern Mexico. With PromoSur, the U.S. government will work to reduce greenhouse gas emissions, supporting nature-based solutions (…) It will also seek to boost investments in emerging markets,” the video announces.

The Deputy Assistant Administrator for USAID’s Bureau for Latin America and the Caribbean, Mileydi Guilarte, present at the governors’ meeting, announced an investment of 30 million dollars in the region beginning at the end of summer 2022. It will also include agreements between private industry and the state governments of Campeche, Chiapas, Oaxaca, Quintana Roo, Tabasco, Veracruz and Yucatán.

Ana Esther Ceceña, founder and coordinator of the Latin American Observatory of Geopolitics, warns of the historic role that USAID has played in Latin America. “The idea is that international development aid from the United States is the means to intervene in the territories and social dynamics of countries,” she points out.

To illustrate this point, Ceceña recalls that, throughout the twentieth century, all the military dictatorships in Latin America were preceded by moments of intense activity and budgetary support from USAID to these countries. “In Brazil, two years before the military coup took place (1964), it received a huge number of resources from USAID, which provided the material conditions for the coup to happen,” she explains.

Ceceña also draws attention to the “proactive” role the U.S. ambassador has taken on in promoting the “development” of southeastern Mexico, taking on the role of “quasi-governor of the southeastern region.”

“Now it is the U.S. ambassador breaking news even before the Mexican government. We’ve now moved into the category of ‘Banana Republic,’ as has happened in other Latin American countries throughout the twentieth century, where to know what policy a country was going to adopt, you would have to ask the US embassy,” said the researcher.

Promoting the South

In addition to the direct investments already announced by the U.S. government, PromoSur’s agenda includes promoting southeastern Mexico so that private companies will invest in the region.

In his press conference, Salazar announced that companies including Amazon, AT&T, Cisco, Google, Mercado Libre, Microsoft, Uber, Ibiza, and Visa were present at his last meeting with the governors. “All are committed to helping,” he said.

The governor of Oaxaca, Alejandro Murat, who was in the meeting, said that, “we were able to have a wide-ranging conversation and give feedback to different companies and were able to build an agenda for the Summit of the Americas, and a later meeting with the CEOs of companies in Washington, certainly in the coming months.”

According to the governor, an agenda is being created that seeks to bring in concrete investments. “I can say that important investments are coming in for the Interoceanic Corridor, we already have more than 200 million dollars in place…. The Corridor is being called upon to be the great engine of growth in Mexico.”

The governor celebrated the fact that, according to him, it is “the first time in the history of modern Mexico where not only have the states and the federal government been aligned, but also the governments of the U.S. and Canada, to develop the Mexican southeast.”

Mexico’s Secretary of Finance, Rogelio Ramírez, presented the infrastructure plan for the south-southeast. He mentioned that the regional infrastructure plan of President López Obrador’s government forecasts investments of more than 30.5 billion dollars between now and the end of his term. Among the plans are the construction, development, and modernization of trains, airports, refineries, maritime ports, and border crossings.

Other Topics

During the meeting, discussion groups were also held. The topics addressed included, “Helping Rural Communities with Business Opportunities and Conservation Priorities in the Seven States of the South-Southeast,” “Identifying a Sustainability and Conservation Fund,” and “Reducing Emissions through Accelerated Forestry Financing.”

Observers withdraw from Zapatista territory after increase in violence

Por

Jeny Pascacio

6 July, 2022

Translated by Scott Campbell

Five observers from the Civil Observation Brigades (BriCO) withdrew from the Tzotzil community of Nuevo San Gregorio, Chiapas, due to lack of security guarantees and the intensification of attacks against this Zapatista territory.

The attacks appear to be coming from people from the San Gregorio ejido, Ranchería San Andrés Puerto Rico, Ranchería Duraznal, and Ranchería Rancho Alegre—four villages in the area—who are trying to displace the Zapatistas and take their territory.

The attacks began in 2019 and have not let up since then, according to the Fray Bartolomé de Las Casas Human Rights Center (Frayba). As a result, the BriCo camp was set up in the community on March 3, 2021.

In 2022 alone, observers documented 21 attacks against five families—27 people—who live in Nuevo San Gregorio. The community is part of the collectivized territory of the Lucio Cabañas Autonomous Zapatista Rebel Municipality, part of Caracol 10 “Flowering of the Rebel Seed,” of the “New Dawn in Resistance and Rebellion for Life and Humanity” Good Government Council.

In video recordings from their observation work, a young girl reports that one of the “invaders” threatened to kidnap her. “I was very afraid. We used to be able to go out and walk, to carry firewood with my siblings and my parents, but since the trouble started it’s scary. I came back trembling.”

The youngest drew pictures to express what is happening to the community. “There are no days that they don’t come. As you can see in the drawings, they come with sticks and machetes,” said a teenage girl. Meanwhile, a child said he felt very sad about what they are living through.

Despite three years of complaints made both publicly and directly to the Mexican state, there has been no attention and no progress made. In the meantime, the violence continues, including intimidation, death threats, sexual violence and torture, physical attacks, livestock theft and property destruction, water shutoffs, surveillance, obstruction, traffic blockades and tolls, and even kidnapping.

Proposed solutions

The 155 hectares of Nuevo San Gregorio are located in Hixtán, Chiapas. They are part of territories reclaimed in 1995 following the armed uprising of the Zapatista Army of National Liberation (EZLN),

“We saw a daily presence of invaders. They put barbed wire up everywhere; the inhabitants are practically kidnapped in their own town; they can’t live freely: the women have to stay at home, the children can’t go to school normally and are behind; they can’t grow crops either,” said an observer who left the community on June 28 after receiving direct threats.

On June 10, 15, and 19, 2022, the brigade once again documented aggressive actions that put the life, security, and personal well-being of the BAEZLN (EZLN Support Base) at risk. These actions also pose a risk of forced displacement of the entire community and serious violations of the right to free movement in the region.

The inhabitants, together with the Good Government Council, tried to dialogue with the invaders. They offered three proposals: work in common, one hectare for each invader, or half of the recovered land.

“They never accepted. Their intention is to take over possession, and they want us to leave despite the fact that we’re residents. We are not taking over anything; we’re guardians,” said the inhabitants. “The land is for working, not for turning into a business,” they added.

They have been psychologically affected, they say, having to halt all activities in order to be alert when the invaders arrive and attack the peoples’ autonomy and self-determination.

Concern grows with the attacks and obstruction of the work of the observers, who are a fundamental part of documenting and reporting on what is happening in this community.

“It would be impossible to know what is going on. They are people who want to live in peace and who have a collective philosophy, they are land defenders,” added two French observers who relayed some of the events to the UN Special Rapporteur on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples and the Special Rapporteur on the Human Rights of Internally Displaced Persons.

Frayba noted that this is not the only community under attack out of the 110 observation camps currently in place, where 11,000 people from different continents are documenting.

“We hope the Mexican state is called upon by other institutions to comply with its obligations,” added Frayba.

“We Must Not Be Afraid of Autonomy,” says the Mazatec Community School

Por

Santiago Navarro F

1 July, 2022

Among the trees and the cornfields of the Sierra Mazateca in Oaxaca, Mexico, children of the Agua de Lluvia Community School run towards each other, delighted to be together, laughing and speaking their Mazatec language. They know that a new solidarity brigade is visiting their school and are excited because they’ve been told that they will learn how to make film and radio content.

The people teaching them these techniques are part of a solidarity brigade from Colombia and Chile that has visited several self-organized and autonomous initiatives in Mexico, eager to share their knowledge.

This school, which bears the name of the community, Agua de Lluvia, was built by the hands of the community’s children, youth, a teacher, and campesinos, each of whom have thrown their weight behind a different type of education. It is inspired by the autonomous schools created in rebel Zapatista territory in Chiapas. From that perspective, their thought and trajectory regarding the education of the community’s children has taken the road less traveled.

Nicolás Aguirre and Tierra Negra, the collective that he is a part of, have worked for three years with children in working class neighborhoods in Cali, like Comuna 18[1], where they have taught the use of communication technologies. “We consider communication to be an indispensable tool of struggle, as a response to disinformation and media manipulation. We have seen that children are very interested in communication, and with the little knowledge we have acquired along the way, we seek to strengthen ourselves together,” he states.

Aguirre prepares his audio recorder to share it with the children of Agua de Lluvia. He doesn’t think it takes too much specialized knowledge for communities to be able to produce their own communications. “In Colombia, we work with the voices of children, youth, and adults, because these three voices must be heard. We have put this into practice in assemblies, where the three voices are heard,” Aguirre says.

Children in the Agua de Lluvia School learning to shoot video. Photo by Santiago Navarro F.

This is the first time the children of Agua de Lluvia have gotten their hands on video and audio equipment. They conduct interviews with each other, their teacher, their neighbors, and even the participants in the solidarity brigade. “This [school] has a lot of similarities to the work we are involved with in Cali. It’s an organizational initiative with children, it is an autonomous process built from scratch, from the heart,” says Nathalí Aguirre, also part of the Tierra Negra Cooperative in Cali.

The Fear of Autonomy

Rocio Escudero Rodríguez is a Mazatec woman who has worked as a teacher in multiple communities in the region over the last 30 years. After several political and social crises that Oaxaca has lived through since 2006, including the COVID-19 pandemic, together with her community she has sought to create an alternative educational space.

It hasn’t been easy, with few economic resources, not even furniture. Even the children and parents got involved to build the first classroom. In addition to this, they have been hindered by local political bosses. Even the teacher’s union disapproves of the project, considering it a threat.

Escudero says that “this is a community project and does not affect the teachers. On the contrary, it complements the children’s education. The difference is that this project is autonomous and here nobody receives a salary. The aim is to teach other things that the government schools don’t teach. We must not be afraid of autonomy.”

Juan Carlos Alvarado, a young co-founder of the school, is excited to be able to welcome another brigade to his community to share their knowledge. “Familiarity with these technologies is important for the children, because here in the community they are not accessible. It’s not possible for these children to have contact with people from other parts of Mexico, much less from other countries.”

Crescencio Juárez García, a farmer, has also helped in the construction of the school because he thinks it’s important for other possibilities to exist for the children. “Here, nobody receives a salary and the children don’t have to pay anything,” says Juárez. “It’s a commitment to the community. The school is still short on many things, like windows, tables, and other supplies, but we’re not asking for anything from the authorities or politicians. Even so, we see how it’s advancing, slow but surely.” He speaks with pride.

Learning by Doing

According to Camila Camacho, another member of the brigade, from Bogotá, Colombia, the workshops the group has shared are aimed at overcoming the limitations imposed by conventional forms of teaching, and in this respect differ from “professional” methodologies. “It’s from learning by doing, from play and chance. Using images to discover other forms of seeing reality and how dreams can be built from the imagination,” says Camacho.

Camila is part of the VER collective (Visuality, Epistemology, and Reality), which emerged due to the lack of academic spaces that address visual components in relation to the social sciences. “The kids always have something to say,” she says. “We think it’s only adults whose voices matter, but that’s not the case. We have to think about other narratives of another possible world.”

Learning to use audio equipment in the Agua de Lluvia Community School, Oaxaca. Photo by Santiago Navarro F

Iñaki Tiña of Santiago, Chile, who shares his knowledge of neighborhood and community cinema, lights up when he sees how the children use his camera. He knows first hand that self-organized projects are not easy. “There’s no money, supplies, or infrastructure, but hey, you’ve gotta do what you can with what you have,” says Tiña. He’s part of the Popular Film School and the Social and Antisocial Film Festival.

Camila concludes with a motto that has inspired the children she has worked with previously. “If we dream it, we create it. I believe that’s the key to everything. To learn that if we live by community self-organization, if we have community, it can enable projects of autonomy and resistance. This school is an example that it is possible to dream and build another possible world.”

[1] Translator: Neighborhoods within Colombian cities are called “comunas,” or “communes,” but this does not carry the same political connotation as it does in English or, indeed, in Spanish in other contexts.

Honduras: Feminist Caravan Occupies Garifuna Territory with Art and Memory

Por

Sare Frabes

24 May, 2022

^{Translated by Aline Scátola}

Women with at least 16 independent feminist organizations from different parts of Honduras joined the “Viva OFRANEH!” Caravan and occupied the Garifuna territory between May 19^th and 22^nd—more specifically, the Triunfo de la Cruz community, in the state of Atlántida, a disputed territory where the African-Indigenous population faces the threat of displacement.

The women occupied the Garifuna territory to “not only know, but comprehend that solidarity is about being together, knowing the names and the stories that make us stronger,” they wrote in a statement.

“This is a very powerful act, a camp in a territory marked by many conflicts driven by corporate interests. The very presence of women is an act of resistance,” says Melissa Cardoza, one of the members of the National Network of Women Human Rights Defenders in Honduras who took part in the activities.

The actions carried out by the women included a tour of the territory, activities for children, and activities in memory of four Garifuna men who have been forcibly disappeared—all activities were marked by art, music, and drums. “The spirituality of the Garifuna people is probably one of the most important hearts of the struggle,” Cardoza says.

The goal of the caravan was to fight the logic in which state and companies empty territories. “The patriarchal, militaristic, capitalist, and racist oppression system aims to displace people from their lands, take over them, and make people earn miserable wages, making them work in the services industry, turning them into human beings with no life projects beyond trying to secure a precarious livelihood; this is how they rob them of their time and appetite for life,” Miranda argues.

The Black Fraternal Organization of Honduras (Organización Fraternal Negra Hondureña—OFRANEH) has struggled for more than four decades in defense of land and territory, “because it is exactly, materially, and concretely the place where community life is established, where there is a pursuit of common good and happiness, the aspiration for being in a world where people are appreciated, the arena inhabited by the great spirits that protect the people,” stated the Feminist Caravan.

The community-strengthening processes of the Garifuna people therefore grow in health care community centers, in sexual dissidence collectives, in reclaiming coconut oil and ancestral food that fill the Garifuna land, and also in the resistance against extractivist companies that want to grab their territory.

“In face of the forced emptying of territories, we call Indigenous people back to this ancestral space. We call us to listen and be together, to support the struggle for life where our navel strings are planted,” the women stated. It is not a coincidence that OFRANEH has so many enemies and detractors, who use all the tools they can against organizing processes: killing, arresting, exiling, and disappearing long-standing leaders who are vital to their communities.

“We, the diverse feminists and fighters who organize with the National Network of Women Defenders, not only feel acknowledged in the struggles, but we also feel part of the aspirations and victories of the organizations. This is why today we are calling for this week at the rebellious territory of the Garifuna people, to be present, to speak with each other, to be able to learn with each other, to feel the sea breeze, and feel life ruling our days and our dreams,” they stated.

A Great Memorial

On July 18^th, 2020, four young Garifuna men were brutally taken from their homes and have been missing to this day. Since then, the community has continuously demanded official explanations, but silence remains.

The women left a big memorial for the missing in the center of the community: a mural with the faces of the four kidnapped young men: Snaider Centeno, former president of the Triunfo de la Cruz Association, Milton Joel Martínez Álvarez, Suami Aparicio Mejía García, and Gerardo Mizael Róchez Cálix.

Local residents report that, at the dawn of July 18^th, three trucks stormed into the community, each with a group of armed men. One by one, the four young men were taken from their homes. The operation lasted about forty minutes.

Inter-American Court

The human rights violations perpetrated against the Garifuna community of Triunfo de la Cruz were taken to the Inter-American Court of Human Rights (IACHR) in the case Garífuna Triunfo de la Cruz Community and its Members v. Honduras. The regional court held the state of Honduras internationally accountable for the violation of several rights of the Garifuna community, including the right to collective land. It also addressed the impact of tourism projects or residential projects built without the community’s consent, as it happened with the population of Triunfo de la Cruz and other communities in Bahía de Tela.

While Honduras was found guilty by the IACHR in this case, the administration of the former president Juan Orlando Hernández, who was recently extradited to the United States, did very little—virtually nothing—to comply with the series of reparations established by the regional court.

Solidarity

The caravan received support from women and organizations from several parts of the world, including the Mesoamerican Initiative for Women Human Rights Defenders. “The Garifuna people and the communities organized within the OFRANEH are one of the hearts of our hope. Not only because they have been facing the most destroying, violent, destructive power, the oppressive power of bad government, of extractivist companies, and their thugs and organized crime groups (…), but also because they have made true and given life to this other world that we need and dream of, bringing back Indigenous crops, community radios, traditional community health care centers, with their struggle for food sovereignty, the experience of the Faya liberated territory, with their worldview rooted in the earth, connected with their ancestors, spirituality, and art,” the initiative stated.

Sembrando Vida: Counterinsurgency, Neoliberalism, and Clientelism

Por

Aldo Santiago

15 May, 2022

John Kerry y AMLO dialogan sobre Sembrando Vida — Special Envoy on Climate Changes for the United States, John Kerry, accompanies the President of Mexico in a tour of parcels of Sembrando Vida in Palenque, Chiapas, October 2021.

^{English translation by Schools for Chiapas.} ^{Cover photo: Special Envoy on Climate Changes for the United States, John Kerry, accompanies the President of Mexico in a tour of parcels of Sembrando Vida in Palenque, Chiapas, October 2021.}

While Andrés Manuel López Obrador tours the various countries of Central America to promote the extension of governmental assistance programs such as Jóvenes Construyendo el Futuro (Youth Constructing the Future) and Sembrando Vida (Sowing Life), the latter is implicated in undermining community organization in indigenous and campesino communities in Mexico, according to a report published by the Center of Studies for Change in the Mexican Countryside (Ceccam).

“The indigenous and campesino communities in Mexico have an extensive tradition of collective management of territory, supported by social ownership of the land with the assembly acting as the highest authority. The Sembrando Vida program is intentionally undermining these structures that allow the communities a certain level of autonomy,” Ana de Ita writes in the publication elaborated by Ceccam, Community and Autonomy in the face of Sembrando Vida.

“In addition to this denunciation, there are other consequences of the program: that of causing deforestation in order to enter into the program, the opacity in the management of the government budget, as well as the creation of parallel organizations to that of the communities for decision-making, which is used to buy wills.

*^{Deforestation in the Yucatan Peninsula as a result of Sembrando Vida.}*

Among these problems, identified by campesino and indigenous communities of Oaxaca, Chiapas, Tlaxcala, Veracruz, Campeche, Quintana Roo, and Yucatan, they underscore that the most damaging effect of the program is the destruction of the community fabric and of the organizing structures of decision-making.”

Ceccam’s publication also brings together the perspectives of agroecologists, researchers and civil organizations that accompany community members in various regions of the country. Because of this, one of the publication ‘s research projects is to be able to identify the uses that Sembrando Vida can have in the the regions where the intent is to impose megaprojects like the Mayan Train, the Transithmic Corredor, “and other where it is urgent that the communities are not an obstacle.”

It is difficult for the participants in the Sembrando Vida program to participate in “social resistance movements, for example, in the face of the government’s megaprojects, or the extractive interest of companies, when they fear that they will lose the benefits of the program,” Ana de Ita reports in her text entitled “Sowing Envy,” included in the publication.

For Ita, this explains the coincidence in the new lines of the “Mayan Train” with the locations of Sembrando Vida, as well as the express instructions to include the municipalities of the Interoceanic Corridor in Oaxaca.

Neoliberalism and the reorganization of the countryside

The director of Ceccam indicates that the implementation of the program weakens community organization due to the fact that it follows the neoliberal logic “that leaves the realm of rights and places itself in the realm of handouts, granted to whomever the government decides.” This wayd, the resources are given to individual producers, who spend the money on personal consumption rather than strengthening community organization.

“In regions in which the program is operating, an increase in luxury spending has been noted, such as beer in a can, since in the rural communities there are not many alternatives for consumption of other goods; health, education, culture, nutrition, etcetera, and what is most readily available is junk food,” Ita denounces.

Another common problem is that young people and women don’t have land, and in many cases they don’t have the 2.5 hectares required, personally, in order to enter the program. According to the program, in these cases, individuals can access the required acreage by establishing a share-cropping contract with the agrarian nucleus until at least 2024.

To Ita, this means that the program encourages collective social property to be parceled and individualized. “In lands of common use that the ejido cedes for a period of time to campesinos that don’t have it, they will plant fruit and timber trees that will just be producing when the program ends, so it will be very difficult to return this land to the common use of the agrarian nucleus,” the director of Ceccam maintains.

Sembrando Vida proposes the coordination of the program through so-called Campesino Learning Communities (CAC), which in fact form a parallel organization to the community or ejidal assembly, which is the main authority in the territories. “Contrary to the strategy of better organized communities which strengthen the power of their assemblies, the CAC do not report to, nor are they held accountable by the agrarian assemblies,” Ana de Ita reports.

Deforest, in order to re-forest?

The goal of Sembrando Vida is the reforestation of a million hectares, and for this, between 600 million to a billion trees are needed, according to federal government figures.

It does not have this number of trees, however, and since the announcement of the program, forestry experts warned of the absence of capacity for production of such a quantity of plants in Mexico. According to the data from the Secretary of Welfare, in 2019 only 14% of the goal of 575 million trees were planted and survived.

Among the complaints that Ceccam compiled, campesinos reported that they are obligated to plant trees that don’t belong in the region, which is why they frequently die and, despite this, “they demand that they replant them, instead of planting trees that are adapted to their own climatic conditions. For example, in the Northern Sierra of Oaxaca, they are demanding that they plant cedars that need a lot of water which is scarce in the region, which is why many plants have died,” Ita maintains.

This is in addition to the evidence that has emerged in states such as Puebla, Campeche and Chiapas, where farmers, organizations and the press have documented the deforestation of land for the purpose of registering it with Sembrando Vida.

“But this problem can’t be demonstrated, because the government hasn’t made public the location data of each of the 430 thousand parcels,” clarifies the Ceccam researcher.

Audits

The budget assigned to Sembrando Vida in 2022 reaches 29 billion 231 million pesos, an amount close to the total which corresponds to the Secretary of Agriculture (32 billion 750 million). Notwithstanding its resources, the program is only destined for 430 thousand campesinos of the 5.5 million agricultural producers and around 2.5 million agricultural day laborers that exist in the country, according to data from the National Institute of Statistics and Geography.

In this context, the program has been evaluated by entities like the Federal Superior Audit Office (ASF), which detected shortcomings in its design, content and implementation. According to its Individual Report of the Results of the Superior Audit of the 2019 Public Account, “the objective of achieving that agrarian subjects in rural locales with income below the line of welfare, have enough resources to make the land productive,” is at risk.

Without participation of the communities

For the researcher, the execution Sembrando Vida, like other federal programs, has avoided the social participation in the design of its public policies in accusing the campesino organizations of being corrupt.

For Ana de Ita, it is necessary to remember that during the current federal administration, the recognition of indigenous rights has not received any impetus, and “and the guardians of the forests and the jungles are threatened and persecuted for their labor of caring for them.” According to data by Global Witness, in 2020, 30 environmental defenders were murdered in the country, placing Mexico at the second-most violent in the world.

In this context, the Ceccam member writes, “to not take into account the agrarian authorities, the forms of organization in the countryside, the systems of community charges, the forms of collective work, the ways of making decisions —and in not addressing the campesino agrarian nuclei as collective owners of the land, but instead as individuals, choosing some and not others —the end of this term [AMLO’s 4T] will not see a single difference, neither in the reduction of poverty, nor in reforestation and care of the forest.”

In Honduras, Chortí Maya cemetery is swallowed up by Aura Minerals

Por

Renata Bessi

12 April, 2022

^{Foto de portada: Renata Bessi}

The Chortí Mayan community of Azacualpa, in the state of Copán, northeastern Honduras, sits on a hill that is part of a huge gold vein mined by Minerales de Occidente S.A de C.V. (Minosa), a subsidiary of the Canadian mining company Aura Minerals.

Minosa began the on the lower part of the hill, near Azacualpa. “Every day at the foot of the hill they blow up dynamite,” Yesica Rodríguez, a resident of the community, told Avispa Midia. “The sound is incredible.”

The strip mine is expanding daily towards the top of the hill, destroying everything in its path. Now, the mining company is targeting the community’s traditional cemetery, which contains some 338 million ounces of gold, according to a report by the Center for Democracy Studies.

Minosa has spared no effort to dig up the remains of the community’s ancestors. Immediately in response to residents’ resistance and protest, police occupied the cemetery and surrounding area to guard the company’s equipment while it removed the bodies.

On February 20^th, Minosa employees came at dawn, protected by the armed forces and the National Police. It was later, when the soldiers and officials had left, that the family members who opposed the exhumations were allowed to enter and “obviously our souls ached seeing the disaster they had left. The ground was dug up everywhere,” said Rodríguez, who is part of the Committee of Those Affected by Minosa.

The company reported that it had exhumed all bodies from the cemetery. “According to them, they took out all the corpses, but we’re certain that it wasn’t all of them, only the ones in mausoleums. They wrecked the cemetery, dug up graves, all to make it look like they’d exhumed all the bodies. We believe that there are still remains of our relatives churned up in the land the excavated,” said Rodríguez.

Furthermore, she said, the community was not told where their families’ remains were taken. The new cemetery is on the same hill—however, according to Rodríguez, the graves are unmarked. “No one knows which bodies are which, we don’t know where they are, we can’t go visit them, and what’s more, the new cemetery will be moved again because it’s in the mining zone.”

What happens now, she said, is that the company will “clean the terrain,” to remove the earth already excavated in order to use dynamite. On February 22nd, Minosa “went so far as to enter the cemetery at four in the morning to begin removing the land.”

The conflict has been evident to the community since 2012, when the company’s plans to remove Azacualpa cemetery were made public. “It is unjust for outsiders to come in and destroy our territory, our culture, the land where our ancestors rest,” said Rodríguez.

Generations of Destruction

Just above the cemetery sits the community of Azacualpa, part of the area allotted to Minosa. “Destroying the part below will leave us hanging over a chasm. It’s logical that they want to destroy our village as well (...) but we won’t let them.”

Azacualpa wouldn’t be the first community in the area to disappear. The villages of San Andrés, Platanares, and San Miguel were relocated in the 1990s. In San Andrés, a church with colonial artifacts from the 18th century—which was even designated a cultural and historical heritage site—was abandoned in the mining area.

Land that had been full of life, animals, water, and pine forests is now dry, orange, covered in dust, and guarded by Minosa security. Huge craters and leach pads dot the slopes of the hill, along with an immense amount of machinery. The sound of the wind in the pine leaves has been replaced by the noise of bulldozers and dump trucks carrying tons of brush.

In 2016, when the battle over the cemetery was reaching its peak, the Avispa Midia team was in Azacualpa to document.

María Rodríguez Villanueva, now 52 years old, was a child when communities were being relocated. She said that her parents, along with many other families, came to live in Azacualpa because “there was nowhere left to build houses on the land the company had assigned them, Nueva San Andrés.” Furthermore, the company did not pay what it had promised for the houses’ construction.

When they uprooted San Andrés, her sister was president of the community trust. She remembers that some of the community were in agreement with the move, but not others. “Those who did not want to leave resisted. The last ones left faced off against company bulldozers that came to destroy the whole village. I remember one young man who didn’t want to leave—they fractured his spine with their machine. In the end they removed him because he was injured. He recovered and went to the United States.”

When Minosa first arrived in the 1980s, her father warned of the risks. “My dad said: ‘there’s a company coming and they’re going to be destructive, they’ll destroy the land and what’s on it.’ But we never thought it would go this far. If we’d realized at the time, we never would have let it begin.”

“I also remember that we would pass through here carrying firewood,” she said, pointing at the company’s operational area, where everything is arid. “Everything was forested, beautiful—there was even water here.”

Unlike Villanueva, Yesica Rodríguez isn’t lucky enough to remember an Azacualpa without the mining company. Rodríguez is 21. “I grew up in this battle with Minosa.” She recalls witnessing the conflict since she was a child. “I remember that people would hold demonstrations and the police would come, throw tear gas, beat people.”

She remembers, too, that children were told in school that the community could not exist without the mine. “There was one instructor who taught us that the company was everything to our survival. Now I see clearly that that’s not the case, it doesn’t help us, it destroys us, violates our rights, and humiliates us. If our ancestors could live off the land, I believe we can too,” said Rodriguez.

Cemetery in the courts

In 2015, the community of Azacualpa determined through an open town hall meeting that the cemetery is a cultural heritage site and therefore neither the exhumations nor the graveyard’s destruction would be permitted. “Despite this, the mining company, together with the municipality of La Unión and the Ministry of Health, began exhumation processes in the cemetery,” the Studies for Dignity Law Firm, which provides legal advice to the community, explained in a statement.

Legal remedies were pursued. The Supreme Court of Justice (CSJ) issued an injunction that protected the cemetery from destruction and mandated its repair.

Defying the Supreme Court’s decision, an October 2021 resolution by judge Rafael Rivera Tábora of the Court of Santa Rosa de Copán ordered the exhumation, transfer, and reburial of human remains from the Chortí Maya cemetery to be carried out “urgently.”

In November 2021, a nullification hearing was held against Judge Rivera’s ruling. “Despite ample demonstration that his authorization violated the CSJ’s decision, which ordered the protection of the cemetery, the judge declared the nullification request, the objective of which was the preservation and protection of the community cemetery, to be without merit,” the Studies for Dignity Law Firm explained on social media.

So, they forcibly exhumed remains against the wishes of family members of the deceased.

In his resolution, the judge also ignored the community’s Chortí Mayan identity and the cemetery’s heritage and historical value for the residents of Azacualpa.

Taking into account both the judicial proceedings and the contempt for the order of protection by the CSJ, the Studies for Dignity Law Firm filed a complaint of judicial malfeasance against Judge Rafael Rivera Tábora before the Special Prosecutor for Transparency and the Fight Against Public Corruption.

According to statements made by the firm's lawyers in local media, none of the local judicial authorities recognized the Chortí Mayan identity of Azacualpa’s residents, although the identity was recognized initially by the CSJ in its order of protection.

Green Mining

During Avispa Midia’s visit to Azacualpa, we interviewed José Armando Acosta Contreras, who worked for Minosa for some 20 years. Contreras was fired after being accused of acting against the company by defending his community cemetery, and later his blood was found to be contaminated with heavy metals such as arsenic, mercury, and lead, leading to ongoing health problems.

Despite evidence to the contrary, Minosa maintains that its business is “focused on sustainable development.” For Contreras, there is no such thing as an environmentally responsible mining company. “Sustainable development,” for those who understand mining from the inside, is a joke. “Otherwise they wouldn't harm the forests, or kill the animals. There used to be many animals in these hills, birds of all kinds, squirrels, deer, even coyotes. Also, the five springs we used to have no longer exist. Little by little, the company has destroyed all of this,” he told Avispa Midia.

There is no shortage of complaints of pollution. According to a report by the Center for Democracy Studies, there were cyanide and heavy metal spills in the Lara River in 2003, 2009, and 2017. “Several other studies have shown that the discharge of wastewater by the mining company into the waters of the Lara River presents a serious danger in the short and medium term to the health of local residents” and those in the surrounding municipalities, the report confirms.

The Azacualpa Environmental Committee stated that it believes there has been even more discharge than acknowledge, and that Minosa personnel clean up and collect the evidence. The situation is worrisome as no one controls the discharge and its effects, nor does the company face penalties.

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