In the Land of Zapata, a Mexican Community Fights Natural Gas Development Martha Pskowski and Octavio Morales - CIP Americas
go to original December 2, 2014

General Emiliano Zapata would roll over in his grave. The Morelos Integral Project, or PIM for its initials in Spanish, is a 160-kilometer natural gas pipeline and two thermo-electric plants in the heart of Mexico’s fertile central valleys, and in the shadow of an active volcano, Popocatépetl. The PIM, a partnership between the federal electricity agency, CFE, and Spanish and Italian energy companies, has been pushed through without community consent on the lands of 60 campesino and indigenous communities in the states of Morelos, Puebla and Tlaxcala.

Zapata, Mexico’s iconic revolutionary hero, is buried in Cuautla, Morelos just eight miles from the 620 Mw thermal-electric plant, already constructed in the small town of Huexca. In the same towns where Zapata fought for the rights of Mexico’s rural majority, mega-development projects are setting off fierce protests.

In Huexca, local residents began to protest the project in May 2012, when they first saw mysterious signs going up on their agricultural fields. This resistance is bearing fruit, and towns opposed to the PIM in the state of Puebla have succeeded in halting construction.

As Mexico embarks on an ambitious energy reform, lauded in international media yet highly controversial within the country, industrialization will have its winners and losers. In a state dedicated to agriculture for centuries, Marcos Ramirez, Huexca’s mayor, observes that with a growing younger generation, “If they all want to work the land, where will they be able to?”

Read the rest at CIP Americas

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