Statement against the violence that resulted in the massacre of 14 people in San Mateo del Mar, in the Isthmus of Tehuantepec, Oaxaca, Mexico

The coordinators of Working Group “Borders, Regionalization and Globalization” of the Latin American Council of Social SciencesBased on the principles and objectives of this Working Group, we express our opposition to the violence perpetrated by an armed group linked to the Municipal President, who came to power through electoral fraud imposed by state electoral authorities in 2019 (similar to what occurred in 2017); and which resulted in the massacre of 14 people on June 21, 2020. The Municipal President blames the citizens who support the People's Assembly and its Authorities, elected according to the internal normative system of San Mateo del Mar, which includes the Municipal Agencies and the Municipal Seat in the Isthmus of Tehuantepec, state of Oaxaca, Mexico, for these regrettable events. These citizens were scheduled to hold a community assembly that day.

This massacre adds to the violent mechanisms that have been carried out in the last decade, since 2012, against the People's Assembly, which at that time decided not to accept the wind megaproject of the company PRENEAL and, subsequently, together with the General Assembly of San Dionisio del Mar, and the Assembly of the Álvaro Obregón Colony, managed the expulsion of the company Mareña Renovables, SAPI that intended to install 104 wind turbines in the Barra Santa Teresa, which is a very fragile ecosystem and a sacred, ancestral place, of the Ikoots People.

San Mateo del Mar, along with other communities like San Dionisio del Mar, is located in a strategic area of ​​lagoons and coastal sandbars, coveted by transnational capital. This is because it is a region where powerful winds blow across the continent through the Isthmus of Tehuantepec toward the Pacific coast. Twenty-six wind farms have been installed in this area over the last 20 years, causing widespread ecological, social, and cultural impacts, including widespread violence. However, the inhabitants of these communities, organized in People's Assemblies and allied with other communities and organizations, have managed to halt their expansion into the lagoon area because these projects would affect their territory, their lake-based fishing economy, and their ancestral way of life and culture. However, the interest in promoting the installation of megaprojects in the aforementioned area is gaining momentum again, since the government of President Andrés Manuel López Obrador issued its National Development Plan 2019-2024, which states that a new energy policy is necessary, as well as the establishment of three regional projects as priorities to boost the country's economic development again, one of which is located precisely in the Isthmus of Tehuantepec, which has caused conflicts and violence to intensify in this region.

This project is the “Program for the Development of the Isthmus of Tehuantepec”, whose objective is:

to boost the growth of the regional economy (…) Its focus will be the Corridor
The Interoceanic Multimodal Corridor will leverage the Isthmus's strategic location to compete in global freight markets through the combined use of various modes of transport. Within this framework, the Tehuantepec Isthmus Railway and the ports of Coatzacoalcos, Veracruz, and Salina Cruz, Oaxaca, will be modernized to offer cargo, transport, warehousing, packaging, and other logistics services. The highway and rural road infrastructure, as well as the airport network, will be strengthened, and a gas pipeline will be constructed to supply businesses and domestic consumers. Free trade zones will be established along the route between the two oceans to attract private sector investment. These zones will be equipped with infrastructure, and the supply of energy, water, digital connectivity, and other basic inputs will be guaranteed to meet the needs of businesses and the working population (pp. 53-54).

According to the federal government, the project aims to provide educational services, housing, transportation, and infrastructure for research and technological development, as well as reduce Value Added Tax (VAT) and Income Tax (ISR) throughout the region, lower fuel prices, and build infrastructure. Allegedly, according to the same source, a consultation was held at the end of March 2019.
free and informed through regional assemblies, “where the authorization of the project was obtained by the peoples of the region – Binnizá or Zapotec, Ayuuk or Mixe, Zoque, Ikoots or Huave, Chontal, Chinanteco, Mazateco, Mixteco, Popoluca, Nahuatl and Afro-Mexican” (p. 54), but this consultation process did not comply with international legal standards (1).

On June 13, 2019, President López Obrador issued a DECREE creating a decentralized, non-sectoral public entity with its own legal personality and assets, called the Interoceanic Corridor of the Isthmus of Tehuantepec. Its purpose is to implement a logistics platform that integrates “the provision of port administration services in the Ports of Coatzacoalcos, Veracruz de Ignacio de la Llave, and Salina Cruz, Oaxaca, and their interconnection via rail transport, as well as any other action that contributes to the development of the Isthmus of Tehuantepec region, with a comprehensive, sustainable, and inclusive vision, fostering economic, productive, and cultural growth.” To this end, it must carry out, among other actions, the following:

I. To seek, through public and private investment, the construction of the
physical, social and productive infrastructure necessary to strengthen the base
economic region of the Isthmus of Tehuantepec;

II. To promote, through the performance of the necessary legal acts, the
modernization of the physical infrastructure and productive capacity of the
region of the Isthmus of Tehuantepec;

III. Improve, through the coordination of public and private entities, the
infrastructure, security and productive activity to overcome the backwardness of the Isthmus of Tehuantepec region;

With a nationalist discourse arguing that economic growth is necessary to achieve development that benefits the majority, President López Obrador seeks to promote transnational capital investment by increasing Foreign Direct Investment (FDI). To this end, he claims it is necessary to create or renew energy and transportation infrastructure through public investment, raising financial resources by implementing a supposed republican austerity and combating corruption. However, upon analyzing his development plans and projects, we find a continuation of the neoliberal policies implemented by previous administrations, despite his declaration of the death of neoliberalism. In reality, these plans and projects aim to establish the conditions for the expansion of transnational capital in Mexican territory, primarily in the South and Southeast.

The investment plans for the Interoceanic Corridor of the Isthmus of Tehuantepec include the integration of six Innovation Development Zones (IDZs), which will attract investment for the economic and social development of the region. An Innovation Development Zone is an area created for industrial, commercial, or service-sector development and innovation. In other words, they are areas where industrialization processes are promoted.
marketing and business services.

These are the Development and Innovation Zones:

PDI-1. Acayucan (Acayucan).
PDI-2. Minatitlán (Minatitlán and Cosoleacaque).
PDI-3. Matías Romero (Matías Romero and the Neighborhood of Solitude).
PDI-4. Ciudad Ixtepec (Ciudad Ixtepec, El Espinal and Asunción Ixtepec).
PDI-5. Coatzacoalcos (Coatzacoalcos).
PDI-6. Salina Cruz (Salina Cruz).

It includes 79 municipalities: 33 from Veracruz and 46 from Oaxaca

However, on June 7, during his tour of the region to oversee the progress of the Trans-Isthmus Train project, President López Obrador declared in Sayula de Alemán, Veracruz, that this Trans-Isthmus Corridor will be accompanied by 10 zones for industrial complexes with tax incentives, and that it will serve as an anti-migration barrier.

This region of the Interoceanic Corridor of the Isthmus of Tehuantepec is not an isolated area. Above all, according to the Ministry of Finance and Public Credit, the corridor is the access point to the South-Southeast region of Mexico, which comprises a quarter of the federal entities.

But this access is not limited to the south-southeast of Mexico, but extends to Central America, for this reason this region is within the Mesoamerica Development and Integration Project (Mesoamerica Project), which covers 9 states of the south-southeast of Mexico, all the countries of Central America and even Colombia (and includes the Dominican Republic in the Caribbean).

We can see, for example, how the energy project extends from this region to Central America, under various assumptions. Thus, to address the migration of Central Americans crossing in caravans through Mexican territory toward the United States, the Mexican government requested in early 2019 that the Economic Commission for Latin America and the Caribbean (ECLAC) conduct a diagnostic study on the situation in El Salvador, Guatemala, and Honduras, establishing a Comprehensive Development Plan. This plan would create the conditions to prevent people from these nations from continuing to migrate north from their countries of origin. According to this Development Plan, the aim is to promote the creation of a dynamic space with shared benefits between the southern part of
Mexico and the northern Central American countries through investment, trade, and energy and digital integration. For energy, logistics, and digital integration, the following is sought:

• Consolidate the Electrical Interconnection System of the Countries of Central America (SIEPAC) and promote its interconnection with Mexico.
• Promote regional natural gas infrastructure projects and logistics integration.
• Deepen cooperation on energy efficiency programs and standards.
• Diversify the energy matrix through strategic regional investments that use renewable and indigenous energy sources.
• Universalize and lower energy prices.
• Establish the regional digital marketplace associated with SIEPAC.

To advance the first point, the Central American Electrical Interconnection (SIEPAC) and promote its interconnection with Mexico, the wind farms of Chiapas and Oaxaca play a crucial role. It is also important to mention that the electricity generated by these wind farms is vital for the central and northern regions of the country. This electricity would be transmitted via an ultra-high-voltage direct current (HVDC) line, a circuit spanning 1200 km from Ixtepec in the Isthmus of Tehuantepec, to the Morelos Integral Plan area in Yautepec. This project, which was left unfinished during the previous administration, remains on hold due to the reorganization of the electricity sector under the current administration. Transnational corporations involved are exerting legal pressure to ensure the completion of their expansion plans in the southern part of the Isthmus of Tehuantepec.

In this context, one can understand why conflicts are deepening and becoming more violent against the towns and communities that have opposed the advancement of these megaprojects in their territory, because with the advancement of the Trans-Isthmian Train works and the Development and Innovation Poles, which will entail the location of industries, the energy requirements are significant, and there is a push to advance on these territories at all costs for the installation of more wind farms.

For all the above reasons, we reiterate our condemnation of the massacre and the constant violence that is expressed in various forms against the Ikoots people of the region who are fighting for the defense of their territory and against the interests of transnational capital.

We demand that the Mexican federal and state authorities:

1. Respect and recognition of the People's Assembly of the municipality of San Mateo del Mar, which is the normative body that has traditionally recognized the Ikoots People.

2. Guarantee free and autonomous elections in accordance with the traditional indigenous form of government of San Mateo del Mar, in accordance with the decisions made by its Assembly in a sovereign manner regarding the electoral procedure, inclusive of all its municipal agencies, its colonies and its municipal seat.

3. That they do not consider the emergence of this violence in this municipality as an isolated case, and that it is observed that it has a structural character, since it occurs recurrently, in the electoral processes and decision-making on megaprojects, in the other Ikoots municipalities, of San Dionisio del Mar and San Francisco del Mar.

We reiterate our condemnation and repudiation of this massacre and the violence perpetrated in various forms against the Ikoots People, and we reaffirm our unwavering support and commitment to the popular and workers' movements of this country, the Continent, and the world.

July 1th,2020
Coordinators of the CLACSO Working Group
Borders, regionalization and globalization
Juan Manuel Sandoval Palacios (Mexico)
Luis Manuel Martínez Estrada (Honduras)
Alejandro Fabián Schweitzer (Argentina)

This statement expresses the position of the coordinators of the Working Group on Borders, Regionalization and Globalization and not necessarily that of the centers and institutions that make up the CLACSO international network, its Steering Committee or its Executive Secretariat.