On Tuesday, March 5, in front of the Supreme Court of the State of Chiapas, organizations demonstrated demanding an end to the criminalization of land defenders, who, the organizations argue, have had crimes systematically fabricated against them. The organizations demanded the immediate freedom of José Gómez, Zapatista political prisoner, and five land defenders from San Juan Cancuc.
José Díaz Gómez, Indigenous Ch’ol and Zapatista Support Base, is imprisoned in CERSS No. 17 in the municipality of Catazajá, Chiapas. “They fabricated a crime against José as payback for his participation in the Zapatista movement,” explained the Fray Bartolome de las Casas Human Rights Center (FRAYBA), in a communique. Díaz Gómez has been held in preventative detention since November 25, 2022.
According to the organization, his process has been maliciously postponed. The judge has approved the extension of the investigation three times to benefit the public prosecutor, regardless of no further investigation having been carried out.
“These delays are part of a pattern where prosecutors and judges extend these processes, and the consequences are extended imprisonment without sentences, all for simulation. During this time, his public defender has been changed multiple times, violating his right to a continuous and diligent defense,” denounced FRAYBA.
FRAYBA has solicited on three occasions his release from preventative detention, which would allow him to carry out his legal process in freedom, to mitigate negative effects on his health and the economy of his family. However, the response has been negative on each occasion.
The Five Land Defenders of Cancuc
At the demonstration, the organizations also denounced the criminalization of Manual Sántiz Cruz, Agustín Pérez Domínguez, Juan Velasco Aguilar, Agustín Pérez Velasco, and Martín Pérez Domínguez, Tseltal land defenders.
The first three were arrested by municipal and state police, the national guard, and elements of the Mexican military on May 29, 2022 in the municipality of Cancuc.
Afterwards, they were handed over to the Specialized Prosecutor of Indigenous Justice in San Cristóbal de Las Casas, “who held the three incommunicado and disappeared for more than 24 hours. This prosecutor fabricated a completely different version of the arrest, stating that the three had been detained on May 30—that is to say a day afterwards—in San Cristobal de las Casas for carrying drugs,” explains FRAYBA in the communique.
During their detention, they fabricated evidence to accuse them of a second crime that they didn’t commit, obtaining arrest warrants on that charge. After being freed for the first crime, they were arrested again after the opening of a second fabricated investigation. They were taken directly to CERSS No. 5. This situation “follows a pattern documented in dozens of cases by FRAYBA,” explains the organization.
On June 1, 2022, families of the three detained and two witnesses, accompanied by staff from FRAYBA and an international human rights organization, went to the control court for the first hearing against the three land defenders. Outside the CERSS, the police arrived and arrested the two witnesses, Martín Pérez Domínguez and Agustín Pérez Velasco, adding them to the list of criminalized and imprisoned land defenders.
Throughout the trial, FRAYBA has denounced the different human rights violations like the arbitrary detentions, illegal deprivation of freedom, inadequate translation during the trial, and the admission of evidence clearly deficient for the court.
“Unfortunately, the process has been a bureaucratic labyrinth that has prolonged the preventative detention for almost three years,” says FRAYBA.
The organization calls on the “judges to listen to the denunciations of the victims of human rights violations, and that they carefully study the fabricated evidence to ascertain its inconsistencies, and not to be part of the undue prolongation of preventative detention that is another form of punishment for the exercise of political rights.”
Cover image: Abandoned oil well leaks in the north of Veracruz. The leak affects the land and water sources of the nearby communities. Photo: Regina López
There are many cases in Mexico exemplifying the increasing violence used against campesino and Indigenous populations in order to impose megaprojects. Here, we share an analysis from inhabitants of northern Veracruz, in the region of Totonacapan, about the links between the three actors they consider to be fundamental for the dispossession of territories: business, state, and crime.
Óscar Espino, activist and human rights defender in Veracruz, who accompanies collectives looking for the disappeared and is also a member of the National Indigenous Congress (CNI), argues that the logic of terror imposed by these actors seeks to demobilize the population thus avoiding community organization and resistance.
According to the reflection of the communities of Totonacapan, the violence of these three actors facilitates the hollowing out of meaning of the territories for multidimensional dispossession: territorial, economic, organizational, and political, among others, in order to produce these areas as merely extraction zones.
“You cannot fight a logic of terror imposed on your territory, thus the logic of geoterror,” sustains Espino, exemplifing it with the context of northern Veracruz, a region plunged into violence with executions and disappearances, marked as a priority zone, historic and contemporary, for the extraction of hydrocarbons.
Photos: Regina López
For Óscar Espino, the intention of these strategies of geoterror is to get the communities out of their way, the communities that “interfere” with plans to impose “development” megaprojects.
Northern Veracruz is traversed by multiple megaprojects looking to exploit water resources, like the Proyecto Trasvase de Pánuco, that seeks to extract water to send it to the northern states of Tamaulipas and Nuevo León.
Also, it seeks to continue with the extraction of hydrocarbons through nonconventional methods, like hydraulic fracking, with the project Aceite Terciario del Golfo (ATG). According to the National Hydrocarbons Commission (CNH), in this region, 3,358 wells have been fracked.
Photo: Regina López
Added to this are the effects on the ecosystems of the Gulf of Mexico due to the passage of the Puerta al Sureste gas pipeline, a 715-kilometer underwater pipeline that will connect with infrastructure in the south of Texas, for the exportation of natural gas from the United States and Canada.
According to testimony of Espino, the actions of the companies, state, and organized crime have the objective of transforming campesino life, converting them into caretakers and promotors, submissive to the megaproject. According to the analysis, this is not achieved only through violence. “This logic of terror begins, not with weapons, but with seduction,” emphasizes the activist on the conditions that limit community articulation and organization for the defense of the territories in this part of the country.
This publication is part of a series of dialogues with participants in the assembly of the National Indigenous Congress carried out in Puebla in 2023. Below, we present extracts from the conversation with Óscar Espino.
Avispa Midia (AM): During the meetings with delegates of the National Indigenous Congress you shared some points of reflection that you all have carried out in northern Veracruz about what you call strategies of geoterror. Could you speak a little more about that?
Óscar Espino (OE): We have carried out this analysis collectively, between peoples, communities, and organizations in Totonacapan. First, we didn’t realize what mechanisms the state, companies, and organized crime were using in our territories, but we knew that these three actors were planting fear in the communities.
We saw these three things as isolated; organized crime doing its own thing, saying that they are dedicated to the narco question; companies planning their hydrocarbon megaprojects; the state making laws and carrying out harassment and repression, or pointing the finger at the communities.
But when we began to deepen our analysis, we realized that there is synergy, an alliance between these three actors and other powerful actors in the region, like local caciques who are entrenched in Indigenous and campesino communities functioning also as a mechanism of agglutination of these three actors planting terror and fear in the communities.
AM. What are the effects in the territories of Totonacapan derived from these strategies of geoterror?
OE: For the communities it has been very difficult to see how their territories began to be renamed. It stops being Totonacapan to convert, for example, into Zeta territory; a strategic field of extraction of hydrocarbons like the “Aceite Terciario del Golfo;” a buffer zone for strategic projects, of exploration and extraction of hydrocarbons. To name the territory in certain ways also gives it meaning. Renaming it is also a form of emptying out the territory. What we say is that there is synergy between these actors, both from the state, as well as organized crime and companies, to empty the territory of its heart and knowledge. It is not that we aren’t in the territory, but that we are losing our connection to it, and that connection is being lost because of this logic of terror.
Infrastructure for the extraction of hydrocarbons in the municipality of Papantla, Veracruz. Photos: Regina López
We see other communities that rise up and struggle. Yet its not the same, a community to which the mining company is just now arriving, and which has all the information and can stand up to the mining company, and Totonacapan that has lived through 120 years of exploration and extraction of hydrocarbons. What this means is that there are generations, including grandparents, great-grandparents, who were born with oil wells in their communities, with dispossession from the beginning of their lives, of not feeling at home because the first ones who were there were displaced and have been relegated to live in spaces of coexistence or permanent conflict with the exploration and extraction of hydrocarbons.
I am talking about the first wells at the beginning of the last century. We are talking about more than 100 years of exploration and extraction of hydrocarbons, but also an economic logic associated with the life of hydrocarbons. Yet the people didn’t imagine the devastation. They went out to the street, fascinated by the machines that arrived, but they began to see the destruction when under their houses or where they sought to plant their food, they began to see a network of pipelines. So, the control and decisions people had over their territory began to be limited.
The question here is how their lives have been threatened by the pipelines of the companies of Petroleo Mexicanos (PEMEX), and how their lives are at permanent risk.
There are communities that have, for example, turbine power plants with a deafening noise. Throughout the entire community, to be able to talk, you have to shout. It is a system of deprivation and risk that begins with health itself.
There are people with really bad health problems due to the gas vented in the zone that is not regulated and that the state says is within the controlled parameters of gas emissions. That is totally false. Furthermore, this is associated with a network of pipelines of infrastructure for the extraction of hydrocarbons that requires the use of water. For example, communities that do not have water, PEMEX arrives saying that they can give them water. So the communities say, “great,” but this has produced precarious conditions because they continue without water as the water is used for the extraction of hydrocarbons.
Water well contaminated by oil leaks in the north of Veracruz. Photo: Regina López
And an entire system of control is also associated with the territory. First, the depreciation of campesino life, and next, the rise in prices in their territories. So, they say, “Ok. How? My land isn’t useful for planting, ad then the private companies arrive.”
Because people from outside the community began to arrive, contracted by PEMEX and other companies to explore the mountains, valleys, and territories of the communities to locate zones for exploration.
We learned from a human rights center, that they drugged people so that they could endure the dehumanizing work days, in heat of more than 40 degrees Celsius in Totonacapan, and they would go locate the wells. After that, the work they gave to the local people isn’t work of engineers or oilmen, it is cleaning the sludge, the most unhealthy and depredatory work for the people.
AM: You were talking about the violent methods of dispossession of territories, but also of other strategies that do not imply the use of force. Could you give us some examples?
OE: The communities are a threat to the logic of the megaproject. This logic isn’t only hindering the relation of the campesino with his territory, but the campesino being campesino. They need the campesinos to be other things, to be caretakers of the megaproject, to submit to the megaproject. This logic of terror begins like that, it does not begin with arms, it begins with seduction. A hegemony is imposed, they call it a “soft” hegemony, imposed on the people in a way that convinces them, from the precarity of campesino and Indigenous life, abandoned by the state system. Then the companies arrive and they say, “what is the most important necessity you all have at this moment?”
And they invented a program called Program of Support for the Communities and Environment (PACMA). Imagine that, those who are doing the pillaging are talking about supporting the community and the environment. Well, with this program, they offered local infrastructure projects. So, a human rights defender arrives and says to the people of the communities “no, compañeros, they are tricking you,” but nothing comes of it. Meanwhile, those from the program arrived and said, “Here it is” the money for the infrastructure project.
This brought the logic of the companies to the communities. There is no longer direct conflict where the communities put themselves in front of the wells, because the people resisting began to be criminalized. Negotiations began, it wasn’t even negotiation, it was subjugation.
That logic began to introduce terror in the community, the fear of living in one’s own territory thinking that the following day they might be removed. That the following day, the wells are going to be exploited, that there is going to be a spill, an explosion, or that the following day, in your water well, in place of water, you get crude oil. Or that you will see dead animals because in the river where they were consuming water, there was a spill. It is a permanent fear of death.
AM: How does private capital fit into this scheme of imposing the logic of terror?
OE: The managers of private companies began to appear, contracted by PEMEX, for subcontracts for activities that Pemex couldn’t do. This transition was changing in such a way that, first, you saw only PEMEX, and afterwards we began to count up to more than 40 private companies. There were companies that manage the pipelines, that manage the liquids, that manage the chemicals, that manage the exploration, that provide the iron, that remove it; each company with its own logic and each one of them taking no responsibility. You no longer knew who to fight against.
There started to be private company security and, after that, we began to see how, at the same time, they began to introduce the megaproject; they began to introduce drugs and organized crime. What we didn’t know is that the objective was to displace complete families, displace complete communities, displace concrete actors in the communities, to install fear, to impose a logic of terror.
Photos: Regina López
We did not understand that it was linked to the megaproject. What do we defend ourselves from? Organized crime that began to arrive to our territory? Do we defend ourselves form the megaproject or from the company that is screwing us? Do we clean our stream? Do we do something about the venting gas? Or do we do something to protect our ears? That is the logic of terror.
AM: In what circumstances do you witness the link between crime and the state?
OE: When we began to organize with other collectives, families of human rights defenders looking for their disappeared, we began to encounter really weird logics. We are defending our territory so that the wells don’t do damage, and those collectives are searching inside the wells for their disappeared loved ones.
Because of the thousands of wells in Totonacapan, the majority aren’t being used. They are old wells, from deposits that have already been explored and exploited and that have very little (hydrocarbons) and are not profitable until they frack them. Yet the oil infrastructure remains.
For example, there is one old well and facility that looked like a hotel. Organized crime groups carried out their meetings there. They didn’t give it to the community who asked for it to convert it into a high school, but they did let organized crime occupy the space. So, we said, “This is not logical.” How can organized crime come and install a “kitchen” (what they call an extermination center) in one of the PEMEX zones, and PEMEX has security and the businesses have security but nothing happens.
The people of the community said to us, years afterwards, that they saw that organized crime stopped using the space for their meetings, they came to sweep it making piles of earth. Then they began dumping everything there, the remains of cars, things they that had stolen, human remains, barrels with holes where they dumped bodies. It is a perverse logic.
AM: You mentioned the dispossession is not only territorial. What are its other expressions?
OE: There is economic dispossession through the depreciation of campesino life, and at the same time, speculating on it, of people’s indebtedness, of loans.
Infrastructure for the extraction of hydrocarbons in the municipality of Papantla, Veracruz. Photo: Regina López
There is organizational dispossession taking away the strength of the assembly and its authorities. Political dispossession because the people can no longer make decisions over their territory. If there is a pipeline, the first thing you see in your plot of land is a “no digging” sign, so what are we to do? And next in your plot, the oil spill that you cannot clean up. How do you clean it up?
AM: How do the companies articulate with other actors to dispossess territories?
OE: The public universities were making alliances with businesses and with PEMEX to collaborate in the dispossession. If it wants to continue to call itself a public university it should carry out investigations on the dispossession and declare itself free of fracking. So too should the communities. The public university has to declare itself free of fracking. But the first thing they did was implement a “new educational offer: petroleum engineer,” that is to say, engineer of dispossession.
Oscar Espino emphasizes in sharing the analysis of the inhabitants of northern Veracruz, to reflect “as a mirror, as the CNI has taught us,” in order to collaborate with other communities and resistance processes to identify in advance the actors and the logics in which the imposition of megaprojects takes place.
“Sometimes we don’t imagine this perverse logic of terror imposed on our communities, and it takes us a long time to discover it,” sustains Espino about the importance of analyzing the power of companies, their connection with crime, and the consent of public officials to confront “projects of supposed development.”
“There are marvelous examples of the campesino and indigenous communities struggling against these projects, but we believe that this exercise of reflecting on the painful reality of some can help us heal and strengthen our own communities before the pain arrives,” he concludes.
Cover image: Members of the Otomí community during the Second National Assembly for Water and Life carried out in Amealco, Querétaro. Photo: Santiago Navarro F
Organizations, communities, and collectives in defense of water, from multiple geographies of Mexico, convoke the Fourth National Assembly for Water and Life to take place on March 23 and 24, in the community of La Magdalena Tlaltelulco, Tlaxcala.
To mark the International Day of Water, the invitation emphasizes that the territorial dispossession and plundering of water affecting Indigenous peoples and communities, isn’t only happening in this county, but throughout the world, part of the global capitalist war on the people.
They highlight that in spite of water being an essential element for life, the current water crisis shows that its availability serves the interests of industry and millionaires. In particular, they highlight the case of communities in Tlaxcala—the state which will host the next assembly—where water wells are being exploited by industry and real estate development projects without any regulation.
They say that the municipal seat, La Maddalena Tlaltelulco, is facing the “authoritarian and violent dispossession of water wells pertaining to the ejido community, putting at risk the only source of subsistence, agriculture, but also community life with its own autonomous dynamics and forms of organization.”
They also mention the transnational companies entering the state of Tlaxcala with green energy projects, where “they arrive to deprive the population of rain and water for the harvests.” These projects of “development” contaminate the earth, air, and waters of the rivers and lakes, damaging the health of the population.”
Mobilizations in front of the offices of CONAGUA in Mexico City. September 2023
The organizations give another example, that of the urban zone of the Valley of Mexico. The National Water Commission (CONAGUA) reported that “day zero,” which is to say, when the water supply will end and access to the liquid will be tightly rationed for this region, will arrive on June 26.
At the same time, they point out that private industry is demanding an “update” to the legal and regulatory frameworks to continue hoarding water. They denounce the “war for water” where CONAGUA “operates with impunity and complicity in benefit of the private sector, transnational companies, and major financial capital.”
Yes, There is Water. It is Being hoarded!
The invitation sent out on February 27 cites an investigation from the Autonomous Metropolitan University showing that “a reduced group of politicians and businessmen are responsible for the plundering of water. Among them are: the Cerveceria Cuauhtémoc Moctezuma, plundering 143,700 million liters of water yearly, Mexicana del Sobre, plundering 445,000 million liters of water yearly, and the Compañia Industrial Minera, plundering 8,000 million liters a year,” they detail.
They also list companies that produce junk food, like the transnational company, Coca Cola, that reports using 55,000 million liters of water yearly. Or the companies Danone and Nestlé, the first of which extracts 15,000 million liters yearly, and the second 10,000 million liters yearly. “The list goes on, with Bimbo, Bachoco—chicken companies, Walmart, real estate development companies, and many others that receive all the water that they want, while many people and families don’t have any,” they emphasize.
Institutionalized Dispossession and Territorial Reorganization
The communities and organizations sound the alarm in the face of different initiatives that from the governmental and legislative spheres that seek to institutionalize the dispossession of water.
They cite cases in Querétaro with the initiative of the Law that Regulates the Provision of Drinking Water, Sewage, and Sanitation Services of the State; in Puebla with the Law of Water and Sanitation; and in Tlaxcala with the Law for the Provision of Drinking Water, Sewage, and Sanitation Services.
It is important to remember that since March 2021 in Querétaro, the people have been resisting the so-called Water Law which is considering the possibility of municipalities and the State Water Commission (CEA) privatizing water by granting concessions to private companies for a time period of up to 20 years.
According to activists and members of the Otomí community of Santiago Mexquititlán, it was not enough to show evidence of the plunder of water and the multiple irregularities committed by public officials. This was not considered by the CEA, who favored private business, mostly real estate companies, above the rights of the people.
Worse still, in a report on February 5, CONAGUA pointed out that Querétaro is one of the entities most affected by serious drought.
At the same time, the call also eludes to the accelerated process of territorial reorganization through megaprojects being pushed by the so-called “fourth transformation.”
Among them is the Maya Train, the Interoceanic Corridor, the Santa Lucía International Airport, the Morelos Integral Project. “In Queretaro, CDMX, Tlaxcala, and Puebla, the reorganization is named: Train Mexico-Querétaro, General Program of Territorial Organization, Metropolitan Program of Puebla-Tlaxcala, respectively.”
The communities in resistance assert that these plans and programs are designed and orchestrated by a handful of people, “who seek to decide over the lives of entire communities, to satisfy their ambition and meet the demand of large investors who are designing the death and destruction of our communities.”
Third Assembly for Water and Life in Mexico City
In the invitation for the next assembly, emphasis is put on what they consider to be the structural crisis, as well as the violence, growing insecurity, and activities of organized crime with “the proliferation of paramilitary groups increasing under the protection of the political class and the current government; the objective, to contain the resistance and organization of the communities.”
In light of this, those organizing the National Assembly for Water and Life define its principles as anticapitalist, antipatriarchal, and antipolitical party, autonomous and self-managed. They emphasize: “We fight, defend, and resist with our existence, and we sustain ourselves through the construction of collective care in search of autonomy for our bodies-territories weaving community networks for the defense of life.”
You can consult the invitation and complete list of activities here in Spanish.
During the morning of February 20, in Amilcingo, Morelos, men and women arrived little by little to the Flores Velazquez family home, the majority with a bouquet of baby’s breath flowers beneath their arm, and as is custom in the region, a clay vase to put them in. With solemn faces, they sat down to listen to the priests and the seminarian who began the mass in honor of Samir Flores.
Meanwhile, Samir’s wife, Liliana Velázquez, ran from place to place without respite. Their daughters were with their friends and they entered the house to play. The neighbors greeted them with a quick handshake, and a hummingbird pecked at the flowers adorning the table where pictures of the deceased were displayed.
Tuesday, February 20, marked five years since the assassination of Samir. That day an armed group knocked on his door and shot him twice, changing his history, the history of his family, and of the entire community. Five years without justice.
While quite some time has passed, it also seems like it was just yesterday that he was walking through town, greeting the neighbors, and sharing news on the radio. In Amilcingo his presence is felt close, his name continues alive. His life and death mark the history of the community because Samir was assassinated for resisting the Morelos Integral Project (PIM), a megaproject of death that passes through the three states of Morelos, Puebla, and Tlaxcala, also passing through the community of Amilcingo.
The megaproject meant the construction of an aqueduct, a combined cycle thermoelectric plant, and a gas pipeline. The last of which passes through Samir’s home town. The three levels of government are implicated in the construction and imposition. Many of the early supporters of the megaproject continue serving in the current government, although the colors of the political parties have changed with the elections. The forms and discourses have changed with the different administrations, yet the people continue to resist the PIM.
The priests who led the mass remember the history of Samir as one of struggle in defense of territory, land, campesinos, and water. And the PIM is a serious threat amidst the current water crisis through most of the country, especially in the center of the country where Amilcingo is located.
Residents of the community know very well the implications of megaprojects, and the PIM is not the first struggle that the community has carried out. It is the latest in a long history of popular organization. It goes back to the revolution when the inhabitants joined the Zapatista army, the Southern Division, to struggle for land and freedom. Elders in the community still recount the experiences of their mothers and fathers, maintaining the Zapatista memory alive.
Afterwards, many of the residents became jaramillistas and in the 70’s they organized for the autonomy of the communities against the large landholders of the municipality. This struggle resulted in the creation of the municipality of Temoac—the current municipality of the community—and led to the defense of the rural teacher training colleges, led by Vinh Flores Laureano, a teacher and political organizer.
Vinh was assassinated together with his two compañeros before the Normal Rural Emiliano Zapata of Amilcingo was founded, yet the people continue remembering him with love and pain. The street where Samir lived was even named after him. Curiously, Vinh was Samir’s uncle.
At the end of the mass, the people began a walk toward the cemetery of the community. The family and close friends of Samir led the walk. Children from the elementary school joined with signs and posters bearing the name of the person who years before has been their organic agriculture teacher.
The first stop was in front of the community radio station where Samir was a DJ for two programs, and also the founder. In the radio station, the comparsa, a group with masks, was waiting to welcome the procession with guapachosa and protest music. The radio station is located in a family home who lent their space for the radio ten years ago. The wall that faces the street is painted with a mural of different faces from the popular struggle, among them Lucio Cabañas, Genaro Vázquez, Subcomandante Marcos, an Adelita, and now Samir Flores.
The second stop was the elementary school that now bears his name. The school exists because after the earthquake of September 19, 2017, the community prevented the state from demolishing the primary school, historically the only one in the community. The state’s intention was to close the school in order to divide the community and force them to relocate to another school constructed with funds from the gas pipeline company on the outskirts of the community.
For almost two years, the school lacked official recognition. However, the community organized to continue giving classes autonomously. It was then when Samir began as a teacher of organic agriculture. In March of 2019, the people obtained official recognition of the school and changed its name to the elementary school Samir Flores Soberanes. The director spoke of the life of Samir and those responsible for his assassination. After presentations from the children, the walk continued toward the cemetery where Samir current rests together with the ancestors of the community.
Since his assassination, Samir’s name has resounded in different geographies, crossing territories he didn’t know in life, being named and respected by people who he never met or knew. His name, life, and struggle are now a reference when talking about the defense of land and water. To remember his name and continue demanding justice is also an act of resistance against the war on Indigenous peoples.
During these five years, the memory has been indispensable for the inhabitants of Amilcingo. To remember is not only an act of resistance, but a tool for the construction of alternatives. It is from remembering of what was that one can glimpse and construct an alternative to the dispossession. Like Jorge Velázquez of the People’s Front explained: “We will continue resisting, we will continue with what our grandparents taught us.”
In 2021, campesinos witnessed people passing through their territories with equipment. It caught their attention because it wasn’t people who were known in the region. They didn’t think much of it at first, but it turned out that they were engineers and technicians carrying out mining exploration in the municipalities of San Miguel Chimalapa and Santo Domingo Zanatepec, Oaxaca, one of Mexico’s largest tropical forest zones. The miners confirmed that, in the entrails of these mountains, there is a major gold and copper deposit.
Shortly before entering this region of the Zoque people, the Canadian company, Minaurum Gold S.A. de C.V., in 2021, sold 23,000 shares in Canada, raising $9.2 million Canadian dollars to continue exploration for its mining projects in Mexico. One of those projects is named Santa Marta.
The communal lands commissioner of San Miguel Chimalapa, Vicente Contreras, told Avispa Midia that they’d seen people pass through in 2021. “We decided to form brigades to surveil the territory and we found that in certain areas they had been removing land. So, we mobilized because we do not want mining in our territory,” he said.
According to information from the Secretariat of Environment and Natural Resources (SEMARNAT), obtained through the Platform of Transparency, the applications for the permits of Santa Marta had been rejected in the ruling UGA-0687-2021. The company was notified via certified postal mail on June 25, 2021.
A month after the supposed ruling of SEMARNAT, in July, Minaurum, to provide certainty to its shareholders, announced that it saw “more unlocked opportunity in some of the less advanced exploration projects, in particular Santa Marta, a potential volcanogenic massive (cooper and gold) sulfide project.”
The company’s announcement was even trumpeted by one of its most important investors, the asset management company, Crescar Capital, equating Santa Marta with the world class gold and copper deposit Hod Maden in Turkey, a project that holds reserves of 8,696 tons of gold and copper.
Although SEMARNAT maintains that the permits for Santa Marta were rejected in June of 2021, on their official platform the resolutions haven’t been made public. On the contrary, in requests for information, they sustain that it is “reserved and confidential.”
Minaurum solicited an exploration permit for a period of 12 months. If this had taken effect, it would have been from August 2021 until August 2022, right when people were seen passing through the area.
On the company’s website there are photos of their visits to the area, although they don’t mention the dates.
Geologists of Minaurum in the Santa Marta mine
The novelty is that the company sustains in a report from this year 2024, that the rock sampling carried out “has yielded copper values ranging from 1% and 3.7% copper and gold values reaching 3 g/t gold (grams for gross ton of rock),” according to its report called “Perspectives of Exploration 2024.”
Thus, Minaurum has advanced with the Santa Marta project and announced that it has updated its activities of exploration for 2024, including a new application for a permit of 3,000 meters of drilling, which implies a new Environmental Impact Report and a new process that SEMARNAT has to approve. Meanwhile, Minaurum is obligated to provide progress to its investors who have invested $9.2 million Canadian dollars.
Brigades that surveil the territory of San Miguel Chimalapa
The Strategy
The Santa Marta project encompasses two concessions located in the municipalities of San Miguel Chimalapa and Santa Domingo Zanatepec, both of which have legal conflicts in relation to their territorial boundaries. “The boundary problem is related to more than 13,000 hectares of land and it is there where this project is located,” said the commissioner of San Miguel Chimalapa.
The interesting thing is that when Minaurum applied for its permits for exploration in 2021, according the Environmental Impact Report (MIA) carried out by Asesores en Impacto Ambiental y Seguridad, C.S., they presented a copy of the resolution of the legal conflict related to the boundaries between San Miguel Chimalapa and Santo Domingo Zanaptepec. But the commissioner sustains that “the agrarian problem has still not been resolved. We have filed an appeal and it remains in the courts, so the conflict is not resolved.”
In 2019, SEMARNAT had already denied an Environmental Impact Report (MIA) to the company according to the document SEMARNAT-SGPA-UGA-0021-2019, with which it requested authorization for the realization of projects and activities in the two lots of the project.
But when Minaurum again requested the approval of a new MIA and permits for exploration, in 2021, the company’s legal representative, Daniel Jespús Ventura Uribe, presented more documents, this time only to carry out exploration in the Jackita lot. This was accompanied by a document certified by the notary with permission from the community La Cristalina, pertaining to San Miguel Chimalapa.
It is already known that mining companies in Mexico resort to various strategies to advance with the exploration and exploitation of minerals, one of them is dividing the communities and strengthening one side of the division. “It is what happened with the community La Cristalina, who supposedly gave permission to enter our territory to carry out exploration,” laments the commissioner Contreras, who has served the community for two years.
For the commissioner this is totally illegal, as they bypassed the ultimate authority. “Here no community is empowered to give that permission, not even me as commissioner. Because the communal statute establishes that the final word has to be taken up in a general assembly, where all of the community members participate. Thus, La Cristalina is not authorized to give permission. This is illegal”, explained the agrarian representative of the community.
Together the two mining lots, Reducción Mar de Sobre and Jackita, with corresponding updated title numbers 246936 and 225472, total an exorbitant dimension of more than 6,400 hectares, almost the equivalent of nine times that of University City of the UNAM.
Currently this company, through its affiliate Minera Zalamera, S.A. de C.V., has nine active concessions in the state of Oaxaca in the phase of exploration which make up more than 27,000 hectares. It also has a concession in Puebla, one in Morelos, two in Guerrero, and three in Sonora.
Water Dependence
The reserve of Los Chimalapas is internationally recognized. According to the National Commission for the Knowledge and Use of Biodiversity (CONABIO), in this region there are zones considered of “extreme priority for conservation,” because it is a large corridor that, together with other ecosystems, make the state of Oaxaca the most biologically diverse in the country.
The region is crossed by the Sierra Atravesada, the Sierra de Tres Picos, and the Sierra Espinazo del Diablo, along with the basins of the Corte and Alto Uxpanapa rivers. It includes the totality of the municipalities of Santa Maria Chimalapa and San Miguel Chimalapa, as well as parts of the municipalities of Matias Romero and San Pedro Tapanatepec, bordering to the east of the state of Chiapas.
The commissioner of San Miguel Chimalapa emphasizes that the majority of the people in the community dedicate themselves to agriculture and depend on the water. “What are we going to do if the aquifers are contaminated. Chimalapas feeds a great part of the communities, that is why we are concerned, because we are not going to eat gold. We live off the land. We depend on the water,” he warns
Neither the company nor the state has given them any information so far about what the exploration and possible exploitation of these mining lots means. “The only information that we have obtained is through forums that have been organized by youth from the community,” says Contreras, agrarian representative of the community. The commissioner maintains that the communities are adamant in not allowing extraction. “In different assemblies we have agreed not to allow mining exploitation in our territory. We are going to defend our territories,” says the Indigenous Zoque.
Forum carried out by youth from San Miguel Chimalapa
Cover image: Residents of Puente Madera, among them David Hernández Salazar, receive activists and organizations in their community to denounce the negative effects of the Interoceanic Corridor of the Isthmus of Tehuantepec. Photo: El Sur Resiste
The Community Assembly of Puente Madera, an Indigenous Zapotec town located in the municipality of San Blas Atempa in the Isthmus of Tehuantepec, has denounced the prison sentence handed down against David Hernández Salazar. Hernández Salazar is a community organizer involved in communal land defense against the imposition of an industrial park proposed as part of the Interoceanic Corridor megaproject.
On January 30, Hernández, who is a community representative, member of the Assembly of Indigenous Peoples of the Isthmus in Defense of Land and Territory (APIIDTT), along with the National Indigenous Congress (CNI), was declared responsible for damage to public roads and highways caused by arson.
In a hearing on February 7, the district judge ratified the sentence against Hernández Salazar of 46 years and 6 months in prison, a fine of $182,000 pesos, and a payment for damages of more than $1,000,000 pesos.
For the Indigenous organizations of the Isthmus of Tehuantepec who are organizing in solidarity with Hernández Salazar, “these sanctions clearly represent the criminalization and persecution of David for his struggle in defense of land, human rights, and Indigenous peoples.”
APIIDTT, as well as the Community Assembly of Puente Madera, argue that the authorities have ignored and omitted evidence and information “demonstrating David’s innocence, such as reports presented by his defense and the contradictory testimonies of supposed witnesses.”
The organizations accuse both the public prosecutor as well as the judge of incriminating Hernández Salazar with false accusations and inconsistent testimonies. “This case makes clear the corruption and collusion of judicial authorities with political and business groups in the region who are linked to organized crime. Territorial defenders are bothering these powerful figures, so they seek to silence them with prison, disappearances, and assassinations.”
Criminalization
The Indigenous organizations detailed that Hernández Salazar has been persecuted since 2017 as a consequence for his struggle in defense of the common use lands of El Pitayal. At that time, the Mexican Military sought to impose an electric substation on the lands.
In 2021, as community agent of Puente Madera and member of the general coordinator of APIIDTT, he was persecuted and prosecuted by authorities of the three levels of government. This includes those of San Blas Atempa, the State Government of Oaxaca, the Interoceanic Corridor, the Secretary of Communications and Transport, the National Agrarian Registry, the Secretariat of Defense, the Marines, and the National Guard. After the investigation file 269/2021 was opened, it was decided to not press charges.
Protests of the Zapotec community demanding freedom for David Hernández Salazar, illegally detained in January 2023.
However, in early 2022, another case file was opened, 446/2022. On January 16, 2023, he was arrested, but only held for a few hours. The investigation from that case has led to the current 46.5-year sentence.
It is important to highlight that in October 2023, he was notified of a new federal charge. The first hearing for that case will be held on February 21. “In these three legal processes, the figure most responsible for the criminalization against David has at all times been the Municipality of San Blas Atempa, obeying the ex-administrator of the State of Oaxaca, and the current candidate for Senate, Antonino Morales Toledo,” emphasized the Indigenous organizations.
Still, the recent sentence isn’t absolute or immediate. The Indigenous organizations explain that there are different appeals filed against Hernandez Salazar’s arrest warrant, as well as the arrest warrants against the other 17 inhabitants of Puente Madera who are being criminalized in the case file 446/2022.
“We will continue working on the legal defense, filing the necessary appeals, and seeking out the competent authorities who can review and rule on this unjust and absurd sentence,” declared the Community Assembly of Puente Madera and APIIDTT.
Repression Intensifies
At the same time as the repression and criminalization continues against Puente Madera, nine community members of Santa Maria Mixtequilla, Oaxaca, who were detained on January 27, were ordered continued detention. The judge in Tanivet issued the order on February 2 against the members of the Resistencia Civil Mixtequillense.
The Indigenous detainees have participated in protests in the Mixteca community against the imposition of a “development pole,” an industrial complex planned on 502 hectares to house agro, metal, and textile industries as part of the Interoceanic Corridor megaproject.
The Resistencia Civil Mixtequillense pointed out that beyond punishing people who participate in the organization, the actions of the authorities “seek to do away with any opposition to the imposition of the development pole.” In response they have filed an appeal to obtain the freedom of those being processed.
