“Puente Madera Burns”, Photo@Educa Oaxaca

On April 24th, three communities started a road blockade on the Tehuantepec-Juchitan stretch in the Ithmus, due to the non-compliance with the commitments acquired by the authorities on April 12th. The communities of Puente Madera, Rancho Llano and Loma Bonita, in the municipality of San Blas Atempa, oppose the imposition of a wind farm by the Secretariat of National Defense (SEDENA) on communal lands, extraction of stone material in the Cerro Iguu’, one of their ancestral ceremonial centers, as well as the sanitary landfill in the Pitayal.

Due to this, they demanded negotiations to resolve the question the compliance by the state government, with the minutes of agreementsof April 12th, 2017. In a statement, the General Assembly of the Binniza People denounced that the exploitation of their resources is happening without their consent. It pointed out that “the only culprits of the political-social situation currently being experienced in the Zapotec municipality of San Blas Atempa are the municipal government, the state government and the federal government, for wanting to impose above the will of the indigenous peoples, their plots of pillage and plunder, both neoliberal and militaristic.”

For its part, the Tepeyac Human Rights Center issued an alert to warn that “Puente Madera Burns” in which it denounced that “municipal agent David Hernandez Salazar and the comunero Jorge Rasgado Lopez, were threatened with death by the hitmen and attackers Cesar Morales Toledo and Victor Ramirez (mercenaries at the service of the city council), characters who have also burned grasslands of the community in the vicinity of the blockade to intimidate the people in struggle.”

As regards context, the Articulation of Indigenous Peoples of the Oaxacan Isthmus in Defense of the Territory to which San Blas Atempa belongs has denounced that the second phase of wind farm expansion in the Isthmus aims to almost triple the current wind energy production in the region, with some 1,900 wind turbines on 22 wind farms. It pointed out that, for several years, it has seen how wind farms have been imposed in their communities which have seriously affected their life, culture and natural assets, violating the social fabric of communities.

For more information in Spanish:

Se profundiza conflicto en San Blas Atempa, Oaxaca (Contralínea, 26 de abril de 2017)

Pronunciamiento de comunidades de Puente Madera, Rancho Llano y Loma Bonita, San Blas Atempa (Radio Pozol, 24 de abril de 2017)

Arden terrenos comunales de Puente Madera para exigir suspensión de parque eólico de la SEDENA (Página 3, 24 de abril de 2017)

Se agudiza en el Istmo de Tehuantepec inconformidad por proyectos eólicos (Despertar de Oaxaca, 3 de abril de 2017)

For more information from SIPAZ

Oaxaca: Se amparan pueblos del Istmo contra Zona Económica Especial (ZEE) (23 de marzo de 2017)

Oaxaca: comunidades del Istmo presentan amparo ante la ZEE (17 de noviembre de 2016)