One of the most emblematic projects of the current Federal Government in Mexico is the so-called “Mayan Train”, designed in service of the tourism industry, as an intercity railway line stretching 950 miles around the Yucatan Peninsula that will pass through five states of the country.
Some people from Mayan communities alongside with the Mexican Center of Environmental Law (CEMDA) have filed lawsuits against the Mayan Train, because of the environmental impacts it has already caused, as well as the violations against the previous, informed and free consultation right of the indigenous people.
So far, the Federal Government has not made public the project as a whole but in fragments, which prevents people from taking well-informed decisions and from making a general analysis of the project’s cumulative damages.
The train’s route has been modified already several times with huge swathes of the Mayan forest cleared to accommodate the railway. More than 3 million trees have been already knocked down and it is expected than 2,500 hectares of tropical forest will be destroyed after the railway is concluded.
The route is now planning to pass above the cenotes. These fragile caves with underground rivers are in risk of collapsing. The train will also pass through many Natural Protected Areas such as Calakmul, the second largest tropical forest in the world after the Amazon, also considered a World Natural and Cultural Heritage by the United Nations. The region is also a critical habitat of multiple species, some of them in danger such as the howler monkey and the jaguar. It is also home to one of the largest colonies of bats that live in a cave named the Volcán de los Murciélagos in the Balam ku State Reserve.
The Mayan communities require real and complete information and must be allowed to express their consent in the decisions that will significantly affect their lives. The Mexican government must comply with environmental laws and to stop the destruction of one of the most valuable ecosystems on the planet.
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Last March, an event of great relevance occurred. After a lengthy legal process, the Masewal people won a lawsuit against mining concessions that were threatening their territory located in the northern highlands of the state of Puebla. This constitutes a step forward in the recognition of indigenous peoples’ rights in Mexico.
The judge's decision recognizes that, by issuing the mining concessions without having guaranteed the rights to prior consultation and free and informed consent, the Mexican government affected the Masewal people’s territory and natural heritage. Therefore, he ordered the annulment of such concessions.
This process began in the spring of 2015. When faced with the threat of mining activity on their territory, the communities of the Masewal people, alongside the Mexican Center for Environmental Law (CEMDA), decided to file a lawsuit. The arguments pointed out that the current federal Mining Law violated the indigenous people’s fundamental rights to territory, access to traditionally managed natural resources, as well as their right to water.
For the Masewal people, the land is sacred space because of the Talokan, which can be defined as the place where the lords of life dwell and where seeds, plants, animals, water, and fire are protected. There is also the Tlaltipak, which encompasses everything that lives on the ground.
Historically, Indigenous people in Mexico have been unjustly stripped of their land and natural heritage to the benefit of massive megaprojects. This legal victory sets an important legal base in the defense of the indigenous peoples’ rights in Mexico.
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The first months of 2021 saw news of environment defenders murdered in Mexico, raising alarms on a growing tendency of violence exercised against individuals and communities.
Last March 2022, CEMDA presented its ninth Report on the Situation of Defenders of Environment, Land, and Territory, Individuals and Communities, in Mexico, in the face of violence perpetrated against them by reason of their work.
In 2021 there was a 160% increase in the number of aggressions of different kind over the year 2020. Lethal aggressions also increased from 18 defenders reported murdered in 2020 to 25 in 2021. The most common aggressions were intimidation, harassment, threats, and lethal aggressions, in that order.
The sectors associated with the highest numbers of events of aggression were mining, water, and electricity, whereas the majority of lethal attacks are related to the electricity sector. Regarding responsibility for aggressions, in approximately 4 of every 10 aggressions, the government is named as responsible, whether at the municipal, state, or federal level, and acting jointly with other actors such as private companies or organized crime.
The alarming situation described in this report has a multifactorial origin. Factors include a model of development which gives extractive activities precedence over the ways of life of individuals, peoples, and communities, but also issues related to the exercise of structural violence, environmental racism, and historic discrimination toward indigenous communities.
Thank you for helping us to keep monitoring and reporting the violence against environmental defenders. It is urgent that the Mexican authorities immediately cease stigmatization towards them and provide security conditions so that they can continue protecting the environment on which we all depend to live.
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Thanks to your help, we continue working with indigenous and rural communities in different regions of Mexico, helping them exercise their human rights, such as the right to a healthy environment, the right to drinkable water and the right to take care of nature in the territories they inhabit.
One of the regions we work is the Gulf of Mexico, and one of our challenges there is to collaborate with indigenous groups and organized peasant communities in the management of water.
The intense pressure of unplanned urbanization, population growth and mismanagement degrades the biological diversity of watersheds and water basins located in these regions. Most of the water consumed in urban areas comes from overexploited and highly contaminated aquifers, threatening the human right to water of the local communities. On top of that, the extraction of clean drinking water from indigenous and peasant communities occurs more frequently and with more intensity than ever before; and extractive projects, such as mining, dams and hydroelectric projects, impact directly on their human rights.
In order to change this situation it is necessary to articulate collective and intercultural dialogues based on the recognition of diversity and different forms of knowledge to adequate the legal and public policy framework and enable a community based management of watersheds and water basins in México. This will allow us to comprehend the issues surrounding the degradation of watersheds and the community practices that contributed to their conservation, as well as increase the possibilities to construct sustainable solutions to revert the process of deterioration.
Our project has focused on generating awareness among the communities, through workshops and accompaniment of defense processes against megaprojects such as mining activities and dams, which affect their access to water sources.
We also work on capacity building to exercise environmental human rights, such as access to information, public participation and access to justice. This implies to help the communities to get a broad understanding of the current regulatory framework and the ways in which it facilitates or hinders a community based management of water resources.
We are convinced that the best way to help communities and protect our environment is to bring them tools so that they know how to defend their rights through the legal framework. We invite you to keep supporting our effort!
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Climate change and the destruction of the environment due to the advancement of megaprojects does not rest; neither do people in grass roots communities who are working hard every day to preserve their territory and natural heritage.
Thanks to your contribution, at the Mexican Center for Environmental Law (CEMDA) we continue working to make their efforts visible and strengthening their capacities as environmental defenders.
Last summer we gave a series of workshops in the state of Veracruz to indigenous and rural communities with whom we shared legal tools so that they can present lawsuits and make requests for information to the authority in the cases of projects that violate their human rights and their way of living.
In these workshops, we talked about human rights that are protected by the Mexican Constitution, such as the right to a healthy environment, the right to clean and sufficient water and the right to receive proper information and to be consulted, seeking to obtain their consent in regards to projects that are planned to be developed in their territories.
We shared with the workshops´ participants guides and training materials so that they can self-prepare and present complaints against acts of pollution or destruction against their biocultural heritage.
Now that the world’s Climate Change Summit (COP26) is over, in which not big accomplishments were made, it is more important than ever to act locally in order to achieve global benefits.
Every person on the planet must be a defender of the environment and be aware of what is happening around them in order to stop the destruction of ecosystems. Empowering people in local communities is the best way to stop violations of the law and the destruction of our natural heritage.
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