Photo: @Mexican Commission for the Defense and Protection of Human Rights (Comisión Mexicana de Defensa y Promoción de los Derechos Humanos – CMPDH)

After a decade of struggle for conservation of the natural wealth of their territory, the community of San Francisco, Xochicuautla, Mexico State, obtained the definitive suspension of the construction of the Toluca-Naucalpan highway that threatened their forest. Following ten years of various strategies, political and legal, the suspension opposed the presidential decree of 2015 for the expropriation of 37 hectares of the ejido for the construction of the highway.

The infrastructure project was promoted by the then-governor of the State of Mexico, Enrique Peña Nieto. The company in charge of the construction of the highway, Autopistas de Vanguardia S.A., is part of the Grupo Higa, which sold the so-called “White House” to the wife of the current President of the Republic for seven million pesos, causing a…