Guerrero inches toward the brink

With political and social conditions ripe for upheaval, a student movement could push the state over the edge

David Agren
The News

Once again, trouble is brewing in Guerrero.

Since November, striking students from a teachers' college in the state of Guerrero have raided the state legislature, barricaded the doors to the governor's residence and fought with state and federal police officers in an effort to extract more funding for rural education and reverse plans for closing down their college.

After unsuccessfully pressing their case to the state governor last week, the students, known as "normalistas," blockaded the Mexico City-Acapulco highway, one of the nation's busiest roads, and occupied radio stations in the state capital Chilpancingo.

The normalistas' protests have made national headlines, especially after they took over a highway tollbooth in order to raise money for their struggle.

Although observers say the protests are not without precedent, the strife comes at a time when political conditions are. One-party rule reigned in the state until the Institutional Revolutionary Party, or PRI, was unseated in 2005. And as a counterpoint to the official political powers-that-be, Caciques, or local strongmen, have long laid down the law.

Democratic Revolution Party, or PRD, candidate Zeferino Torreblanca finally ousted the PRI in 2005 after campaigning on an agenda casting aside decades of repression and dirty tricks. But his failure to meet expectations of change and achieving social calm has left many voters disenchanted, said Mario Patrón, a lawyer with Centro Derechos Humanos de la Montaña Tlachinollan, a human rights group based in Tlapa de Comonfort, Guerrero.

Patrón explained that the 2005 political transition is now viewed as simply one of "alternating power," rather than change. "There have been the same practices, same methods, basically the same vices."

CLIMATE FOR CONFLICT

The current tensions have provided just the right conditions for upheaval, according to analysts.

"Conflicts between the state and the normalistas have always occurred. It's not anything new," said Aldo Muñoz, political science professor at Universidad Iberoamericana. "The difference is [that before], there had been a period of stability and calm."

That relative calm may about to end in the state, which ranks among Mexico's poorest and most underdeveloped. The state's illiteracy rate is more than than 40 percent in many rural areas and the human development index scores of its most marginalized municipalities are on par with Sub-Saharan Africa, according to the United Nations.

Guerrero's rugged hills have also spawned social uprisings and guerrilla movements since the time of the Revolution and been the scene of massacres and intense military activity as soldiers hunt down rebels and marijuana growers.

"Guerrero is a state that has been marginalized for decades," Muñoz said. "Because of this marginalization there have been guerrilla groups, groups that are extremely radical in their political postures."

Discontent has been simmering throughout 2007. The EPR, a guerrilla group originating in the state, bombed Pemex pipelines on two occasions over the summer. Campesinos near the coastal city of Acapulco are currently taking legal action against a massive hydroelectric project that threatens to submerge their humble plots of land. They suffered a major setback last month, and the EPR announced it would take up their cause. Narcotics-connected gang violence and recent crime-related beheadings in Acapulco have led to an increasingly tense climate in the state.

EDUCATIONAL UNREST

The Escuela Normal Rural Raúl Isidro Burgos de Ayotzinapa opened its doors in 1926 with the aim of training teachers to work in the state's rural schools. The school, located in the community of Ayotzinapa, 14 kilometers from state capital of Chilpancingo, enrolls students from small towns and farms. The pupils live at the college during their four years of studying and receive scholarships to attend.

"We're children of campesinos. We're children of the villages where poverty exists," said Alejandro González, a normalista from El Portero Oriental, a town of 544 people, where 46 percent of the population lacks an elementary school education, 18 percent of its residents are illiterate and 31 percent of homes have dirt floors, according to the government.

"All of us studying here understand that our communities need public education," he added.

The striking normalistas left their classrooms in early November, demanding that the state government not close their college (it cited budget concerns as the reason for wanting closure), guarantee teaching positions each year for graduating students and scrap plans for ending a degree program that trains elementary school teachers. They also wanted the education system in Guerrero improved.

González said the state lacks 1,000 teachers in rural areas. Schools in some remote towns have been closed for up to five years, he added.

José Luis Rosas Acevedo, director of regional development institute at Universidad Autónoma de Guerrero in Acapulco, said the level of public education in the state was "very low."

The Escuela Normal has a long reputation for grooming politically minded teachers, and has also gained fame for producing rebels. (A large mural of Chiapas rebel subcomandante Marcos gracesthe Ayotzinapa campus.)

"The normal has historically graduated teachers known for their social combativeness," said Patrón."

"It's also known for imparting a social and left-wing ideology withits students."

Lucio Cabañas, perhaps the school's best-known graduate, founded the Partido de los Pobres, or the Party of the Poor, in the late 1960s. The armed group kidnapped then PRI Sen. Rubén Figueroa Figueroa, holding him three months in 1974. Figueroa, who later became state governor, was rescued during a police raid. Cabañas was assassinated before the end of the year.

WHEN EDUCATION AND POLITICS COLLIDE

According to Rosas Acevedo, Guerrero's teachers – despite being poorly paid – are often held in high esteem in the communities where they work.

"Teachers, priests and doctors are very important people in these communities," he explained.

"The teachers have a lot influence."

Their influence extends to the political arena, where teachers are especially active. The Guerrero section of the national teachers' union, or SNTE, has a reputation for radicalism and has had frequent feuds with the national leadership.

"The [current] conflict could [have] many repercussions because the teachers and normalistas in Guerrero manage the political parties on the regional level," Muñoz said.

Patrón, whose organization operates in several of the state's poorest regions, expressed pessimism about the ongoing conflicts in the state being resolved peacefully, given the attitude of the state government.

"The present administration … is closing practically all the places for dialogue with social movements and organizations," Patrón said.

"It's generating a tremendous social polarization and social movements are becoming more radical."

Across Mexico, water bills go unpaid

By David Agren
The News

For six months of the year, water flows only intermittently from the taps in Guadalupe Nava’s apartment in the capital’s Colonia San Rafael neighborhood, often forcing her to haul buckets down to a local well for filling.

Nava grumbles about the price she pays for the unpredictable utility, which is subsidized by the city and costs just over three pesos per 1,000 liters. The elderly homemaker would prefer not to pay at all, though not necessarily because of the inconsistent service.

“For households, it should be free,” she said while washing clothes at a laundry in another neighborhood due to a lack of water at her apartment.

Even so, Nava says she always manages to pay her water bill, though it’s often a late settlement on an overdue account, and one that’s made largely made due to pressure from the other tenants in her cooperative apartment complex.

Nava’s story illustrates a Catch-22 of water service in Mexico, where many users, citing poor quality and a belief in the constitutional right to free water, pay infrequently or not at all. For their part, providers say the lack of reliable customer payment prevents them from making much-needed infrastructure and service improvements.

A DEEPLY ROOTED PROBLEM

According to the National Water Commission, or Conagua, 60 percent of water bills go unpaid nationwide. In some municipalities in the Valle de Mexico, the agency says, the delinquency rate reaches 90 percent, causing some water providers to give up on pursuing deadbeat customers.

In September, Conagua director José Luis Luege Tamargo called the present water billing problem “extremely critical” and blamed payment delinquency for leaving the country's water infrastructure in a sub-standard state. He went on to warn that the lack of revenue from payments could jeopardize the long-term supply of water in northern and central Mexico, where more than 70 percent of the population resides and one of every six aquifers is “overexploited.”

In an effort to address the problem, the Environment Secretariat, or Semarnat, launched an ad campaign over the summer, warning consumers of the long-term consequences of not paying their water bills – like continued inconsistent service, a lack of new pipes and persistent drainage problems.

The effort to rally citizens to pay their water bills may be largely in vain, said Sylvia Gutiérrez y Vera, a sociology professor at Universidad Iberoamericana, who added that the idea of free water is ingrained in the psyche of many Mexicans.

“In Mexico, it used to be said very clearly that water should not be denied to anyone,” she said.

The concept originated in a social pact between the long-ruling Institutional Revolutionary Party, or PRI, and the citizenry, Gutiérrez y Vera said. It resulted in local laws that barred utility companies from cutting service to delinquent customers – no matter how much they owed or how long they had owed it.

And the culture of nonpayment extends beyond cash-strapped pueblos. Some of the country's best-known institutions – and even the federal government – have accumulated enormous water debts.

Popular soccer franchise Chivas left an unpaid 5-million-peso water bill upon closing its Guadalajara sports club last fall. In September, Ramón Aguirre Díaz, water systems director for Mexico City, criticized the federal government for running up a debt of 4.6 billion pesos with his municipal utility.

Aguirre Díaz also accused Conagua of owing 2.8 million pesos, a charge hotly denied by the agency. Federal officials maintain that a constitutional amendment exempts them from paying for water services.

ONE CITY TAKES A STAND

In the central city of Aguascalientes, capital of a small, semi-arid state 500 kilometers northwest of Mexico City, a private waterworks concessionary demands timely payment and cuts service to delinquent customers after just two months.

According to the waterworks, Concesionaria de Aguas de Aguascalientes, or CAASA, 90 percent of its customers remit payment before the deadline. By comparison, in Mexico City, where service is seldom – if ever – suspended for nonpayment, one-third of bills go unpaid after two months.

Water customers in the city of 633,000 pay some of the highest rates in the country: 8.80 pesos per cubic meter, or 1,000 liters. The fee covers the full cost of the liquid flowing from users’ taps, something rare in a country awash in government subsidies.

“In the (country’s) 100 biggest cities, only four or five will charge the real price for water,” said former Aguascalientes governor Otto Granados Roldán of the PRI, who presided over the water privatization.

CAASA, a French, Spanish and Mexican partnership that assumed control of the Aguascalientes waterworks in 1993, says its network serve 99 percent of the municipality’s residences, up from 70 percent at the time the concession was granted. In addition, some 80 percent of city neighborhoods receive 24-hour service, a jump from 51 percent in 1996, according to CAASA. The firm also boasts that nearly all its wastewater is treated, while nationwide, Conagua put the number at around 30 percent.

Per-capita water consumption also dropped by 20 percent after privatization, added Granados Roldán, now a professor at Tecnológico de Monterrey in Aguascalientes.

“What we wanted, in effect, was a measure – like the concession was – to change people’s habits,” he said.

Still, some Aguascalientes residents complain about the relatively high price of their water. And CAASA recently landed on the consumer protection agency Profeco’s list of most complained about companies.

Enriqueta Medellín, legal representative for the (NON-GOVERNMENTAL?) environmental group Conciencia Ecológica de Aguascalientes, agreed with the idea of making delinquent customers pay their water bills. But she said that CAASA’s service is too expensive for poor residents and the quality fell short of what was mandated in the original concession.

“It’s been a bonanza for the water company, but from a social point of view, no,” she said, pointing out that in her own neighborhood, service is often intermittent.

“It’s the same or even worse service.”

Water issues surfaced in summer municipal election as the Democratic Revolution Party, or PRD, and Convergence Party promised to revoke CAASA’s concession. Both parties, however, finished well behind the PRI and the incumbent National Action Party, or PAN, which have shown a more favorable attitude toward the concession. In 2006, the PAN and PRI voted down a measure that would have revoked CAASA’s right to suspend service.

BUT WOULD IT WORK IN THE CAPITAL

Water tariffs in Aguascalientes, a relatively prosperous industrial city, increase regularly to keep pace with inflation. But in Mexico City, PRD Mayor Marcelo Ebrard opted this fall to keep prices low and not to impose a retroactive rate hike for the remainder of 2007. Instead, the mayor said the capital would improve on its collection rate before raising tariffs.

David Barkin, a water expert at the capital’s Universidad Autónoma Metropolitana, said charging higher rates or bringing in a concessionaire wouldn’t necessarily solve Mexico City’s problems. As evidence, he cited mixed results after four private companies were hired in 1994 to handle commercial affairs for the municipal waterworks, including billing.

Barkin also questioned the fairness and viability of charging poor residents high rates for a service so essential for life.

“How can you charge a private rate of return to people whom the system doesn’t pay a living wage?” he asked.

Nava, the San Rafael resident with intermittent service, said “the poor shouldn’t pay for water,” but citing the example of a neighbor that never remits payment, she acknowledged, “Some people would abuse it.”

12 de diciembre

Sandcastle in Puerto Vallarta
Originally uploaded by David Agren

An estimated eight million Mexicans will descend on the Basílica de Guadalupe in the capital this week and fete Our Lady of Guadalupe, the country's most revered religious icon. This gentleman in Puerto Vallarta honored the Guadalupe with a sandcastle by the Malecón

I spent the wee hours of Wednesday morning at the basilica. Here's what ran the following day in The News.

Pilgrims descend on the capital to celebrate the Virgin of Guadalupe

David Agren
The News

Esteban Cruz tumbled into the deep end of a swimming pool six years ago while horsing around with a cousin. Unable to swim, he quickly sunk to the bottom. Desperate and "drowning" he begged the Virgin of Guadalupe for intervention. A lifeguard pulled him from the pool moments later, sparing him a watery death.

Cruz has made a pilgrimage every December since to the Basílica de Guadalupe, where he gives thanks for what he considers a miracle. This year, he pedaled his red mountain bike from Valle de Chalco Solidaridad, a sprawling municipality on the southeastern outskirts of the capital, to the basilica in the northern part of Mexico City, leaving at 9 p.m. and arriving just in time for Midnight mañanitas.

"I thought I was going to die," Cruz recalled while sitting on the curb in front of the basilica during the wee hours of Wednesday morning.

"Thankfully, the virgin intervened."

Cruz was just one of an estimated eight million Mexicans flocking to the basilica over the past week as the country feted its patron saint, a dark-skinned virgin that they believe appeared in front of an indigenous farmer named Juan Diego on Dec. 12, 1531. And 476 years later, the cult of the Virgin of Guadalupe still captivates tens of millions of devotees in the world's second most populous Catholic country.

The virgin also draws adherents from immigrant communities in the United States and Latin America. The Basílica de Guadalupe attracts 20 million visitors a year, ranging from gaggles of clowns decked out in face paint and baggy pants to world leaders – Nicaraguan President Daniel Ortega paid a visit over the summer, fulfilling a campaign promise to visit the shrine if he retook power in the Central American
country.

Her influence on Mexican society is still strong. Author and social commentator Carlos Fuentes even called President Felipe Calderón's win in last year's election, "A triumph of the Virgin of Guadalupe."

STRONG IN SPITE OF CATHOLIC WEAKNESS
In spite of a long-term decline in the percentage of the population that identifies itself as Catholic, the virgin's popularity shows few signs of waning.

"In reality, it never has diminished, but actually grown," said Conrado Ulloa Cárdenas, a philosophy professor at the University of Guadalajara.

"The devotion [is still] growing against all our predictions to the contrary."

Devotion to the virgin persists most strongly in Mexico City and the states surrounding the capital, especially among the working classes and the poor, according to Ulloa Cárdenas.

He added that wealthier Mexicans still believe in the virgin but are less inclined to publicly show their devotion.

MASSES FOR THE MASSES
Many of those arriving at the basilica arrived on foot, walking for days in many cases. Others rode bicycles or took the Metro. Entire families toting backpacks, blankets and bagged lunches spilled out of the Metro stops surrounding the basilica in the hours leading up to Midnight on Tuesday.

As the clock struck 12 a.m., fireworks exploded, trumpets from the assembled mariachi bands blared and the assembled masses began singing traditional mañanitas, or birthday songs to the virgin.

Many of the out-out-state pilgrims would later camp out on the streets and sidewalks surrounding the basilica – and even between the pumps at a Pemex station.

Midnight also ushered in a day of 15 masses. The lineup included a solemn mass featuring mariachi groups, a 2 a.m. service for construction workers and concheros, or traditional Aztec dancers, and a mass for cyclists coming in from two municipalities in Puebla.

Some visiting the Basilica started repaying mandas, or fulfilling promises made to the virgin in exchange for intervention.

María Luisa Guerrero and four family members poured 100 cups of coffee for pilgrims caught in the crushing line to enter the basilica, starting at midnight.

"It's something small, but it's the act that counts," she said.

"It's what I could afford to do."

MASS MARKETING
Guerrero prayed to the virgin after her daughter was hospitalized with severe intestinal problems during the spring. She promised that she would serve coffee to the pilgrims streaming past her home every Dec. 12 if her daughter was cured.

"I always had a lot of faith," Guerrero said, adding that her daughter made a full recovery.

Guerrero, who lives mere blocks from the basilica, has always believed in the virgin, but never participated in the Dec. 12 festivities until recently. She said the numbers were as large as ever, but the local government and church officials had created a more controlled atmosphere.

A force of more than 2,200 police officials – some in riot gear – patrolled the area along with support workers from the local borough and inspectors from the federal consumer protection agency Profeco on the lookout for price gouging.

The numbers could grow even larger said borough of Gustavo A. Madero spokesman Ruben Chavarría as the Archdiocese of Mexico City builds a new plaza near the basilica containing shops, a museum and crypts.

Vendors in the area viewed the new project with suspicion, however.

"The government and the church is kicking us out of here," said Jazmín Hernández, a vendor whose family has been selling religious items at the basilica for four generations.

"The church sees a business opportunity and wants to capture all of it," she added.

Her family is devoted to the virgin, but Hernández's merchandise selection now features statues of the Santa Muerte, or Saint Death, a skeletal figure popular with the downtrodden and kidnapping gangs. She expressed misgivings about the church, but not the virgin.

Others were less questioning, including Cruz, the Chalco resident, who planned on leaving the Basilica at 4:30 a.m.. That would provide him with enough time to pedal home and still arrive at work on time. Although he acknowledged his fatigue and carried a heavy portrait of the virgin on his back, he was undaunted by his journey and the full day of manual labor at a marble cutting business awaiting him back in Chalco.

"If you don't have faith, the [pilgrimage] can be pretty uncomfortable," he said.

The Real Deal (My account of the Lucha Libre)

I penned a rather large account of the Lucha Libre, Mexico's campy, but increasingly popular, version of professional wrestling: http://www.theglobeandmail.com/servlet/story/RTGAM.20071130.lucha01/BNStory/specialTravel/home

The Lucha libre is good fun and worth taking in during a trip to Mexico. Shows are staged regularly around the country, although the epicenter is the Arena Mexico in Mexico City's Colonia Doctores.

Viva The News

The News, Mexico's English-language daily, on sale at the Jardin in San Miguel de Allende, Guanajuato.

'Bridge between politics, culture' faces uncertain future

David Agren
The News

The National Autonomous University of Mexico, or UNAM, selected a new rector last Tuesday. But given the media coverage of the secretive selection process, one could be forgiven for thinking the country had elected a new president.

Or as some observers perhaps more aptly put it, named a new Pope.

José Narro Robles, former dean of the UNAM medical school, officially takes over as the university’s rector on Nov. 20.

Unofficially, he assumes a much larger role in Mexico’s cultural and political life as the leader of the country’s pre-eminent institution of higher education, which has been described by outgoing rector Juan Ramón de la Fuente as the “grand social project of the Mexican nation.”

“Rectors have always had an important role, like that of a [cabinet] minister without legal recognition, someone [whose position] had enormous weight,” said UNAM professor Imanol Ordorika, who studies higher education institutions and co-authored a book on UNAM’s internal politics.

“The rector has an enormous influence in the national political scene.”

That influence stems from the stature and size of UNAM, which educates nearly 300,000 students per year, carries out roughly half of the nation’s scientific research and has produced graduates who went on to become presidents to Nobel Prize winners to billionaire businessmen – former president Carlos Salinas de Gortari, writer Octavio Paz and impresario Carlos Slim Helú, to name three.

Its sprawling Ciudad Universitaria campus in southern Mexico City recently attained status as a UNESCO World Heritage Site. And the school’s professional soccer team, Pumas, has a long history of success and a large and loyal following.

UNAM also defines and dominates much of the nation’s intellectual scene and is affiliated with La Jornada, a left-leaning daily newspaper. As UNAM sociology professor Roger Bartra Muria put it, “[UNAM] is the principle bridge between politics and culture.”

Outsiders agree about UNAM's role. The university is a “very important, very influential institution,” said Carlos Briseno Torres, rector of the University of Guadalajara, the nation's second largest public university.

The school has always held a proud place as a public institution providing generations of Mexicans from all social classes with a secular and free education.

But UNAM’s sway has diminished somewhat with the advent of private universities. Private schools now educate approximately 40 percent of the nation’s university students, a 400 percent jump over the past three decades, according to Ordorika, who added that the federal government hasn’t invested in expanding access to public higher education over that time.

Although widely regarded for its profession programs, some UNAM humanities and social sciences graduates entering the job market report having their credentials belittled by private sector employers.

Thus, one of Narro’s biggest challenges will be maintaining the national university’s stature as Mexico’s educational and political landscape continues to shift. And already, the new rector has pledged during his candidacy to uphold the tenets of secularism and free access, which perhaps give the national university its greatest fame.

“The big challenge is to put [UNAM] in tune with the needs of Mexico and the challenges of the future,” the new rector said on Thursday.

Many UNAM professors have already expressed approval for Narro’s approach.

“For the population that doesn’t have easy access to education, the university resolves that problem,” said Rafael López González, an UNAM professor and coauthor of a book on the university’s political history.

“It’s a fundamental institution for higher education in Mexico.”

UNAM students only make a voluntary payment of 20 cents towards the cost of their studies. According to political science student Lucía Alvarado, “When you pay, you get a stamped receipt that costs more than the actual fee.”

Alvarado opted for studying at UNAM instead of an expensive private university costing 7,000 pesos per month, explaining, “UNAM is a better school in terms of research, freedom of thinking and the humanities.”

She also liked UNAM’s approach of admitting students from diverse socio-economic backgrounds.

"There are all types of people ... including the children of important political figures studying here," she said.

"We're all equal friends here ... in the [private schools], there are so many cliques."

Many of Alvarado’s classmates lacked her educational options, though.

Adrián Paredes, also a political science student, said he enrolled in UNAM for “the quality of its programs,” but more importantly, “It’s accessible.”

He noted, however, that the lack of resources generated by a tuition fee creates challenges for UNAM. The school only accepts about one-third of all applicants on an annual basis. It also urgently needs to upgrade aging classrooms and fading athletic facilities, Paredes added.

University administrators proposed a tuition fee in 1999 as a means of funding infrastructure improvements, but the plan sparked a backlash that shut down the school for nine months.

Outgoing rector De la Fuente assumed UNAM’s top job in the midst of the student strike. But during his eight-year tenure the school regained some of the stature it lost during the shutdown. It climbed into the ranks of the top 100 universities in the world on a prestigious survey of higher education institutions and undertook ambitious research projects, including developing the most powerful supercomputer in Latin America.

In spite of the fact he's inheriting a top university, Narro will face challenges as the new rector. Already, he has faced criticism, albeit indirectly.

Some faculty members, observers and protesting students – who burned down the doors to the rectory building on Thursday night – objected to the perpetuation of a management style they described as secretive and not fitting with the country becoming more open and democratic. They also took exception with the 15-member UNAM Board of Regents’ less-than-transparent method of choosing De la Fuente’s successor.

Ordorika compared the selection process to that of the Vatican.

“It’s like a conclave of cardinals, where the cardinals – in this case, 15 cardinals – meet behind closed doors and decide who is going to be rector,” he said.

Narro’s ascent into the rector’s office was greeted on Wednesday with newspaper headlines and commentaries inferring that De la Fuente was instrumental in naming his successor – a charge the outgoing rector and board members deny. But Ordorika noted that 13 of the 15 current board members were appointed during De la Fuente’s tenure by the UNAM University Council.

Additionally, “The proposals made by the rector are always approved,” Ordorika explained.

The list of eight aspirants vying for the rector’s position also drew scorn from some UNAM faculty members, who were hoping for candidates who would usher in a new era of leadership, untainted by previous political connections.

Bartra, the UNAM sociologist, said, “Many of the candidates are actually old PRIistas.”

He noted that all but one of the candidates either had deep roots in the Institutional Revolutionary Party, or PRI, or have recently switched to the governing National Action Party, or PAN.
Only candidate Rosaura Ruiz Gutiérrez, who rose through the ranks of the faculty unions and student movements, lacked such a background. (Narro previously headed the IMSS during the administration of former president Ernesto Zedillo.)

Still, with a PAN president in Los Pinos, Bartra sees opportunity for UNAM and Narro.

Previous PRI presidents would often meddle in the rector selection process and by proxy, the UNAM agenda, according to Bartra.

But with the PAN – a party whose senior officials mostly attended private universities – now occupying presidency, he ironically saw an opportunity for UNAM to part with the remnants of the old PRI system.

“I believe this is a good thing,” he said.

“It implies more autonomy. A real autonomy.”

And with increased autonomy for the university – which President Felipe Calderón has promised to respect – Bartra expressed cautious optimism about the future of UNAM.

“It seems that now UNAM is in a new stage that hasn’t ever been explored,” he said.

“It’s something fascinating to witness.”

Small farmers use courts, not machetes, to block dam project

By David Agren
The News

It’s a public works project of the grandest scale.

La Parota, a massive hydroelectric development 28 kilometers northeast of Acapulco, is projected to produce at least 765 megawatts of power, enough to light up the entire state of Guerrero for an entire year.

Its curtain is to tower 162 meters over the Papagayo River and its reservoir will flood more than 17,000 hectares, an area 10 times the size of the Bay of Acapulco.

The dam is also supposed to create 10,000 construction jobs, ensure a steady supply of drinking water for rapidly growing Acapulco and increase economic development in a marginalized region populated by subsistence farmers.

For the Federal Electricity Commission (CFE), La Parota is a crown jewel in a string of high-profile projects meant to produce clean energy and help power the ambitious economic growth plans envisaged by the federal government.

There’s just one problem: The dam is expected to displace hundreds of small farms, many of which are organized as ejidos, the communal properties distributed to landless campesinos following the Mexican Revolution. And the farmers, or ejiditarios, don’t want to leave.

In the past dozen years, machete-wielding ejiditarios have derailed several high-profile development projects, including a $300-million golf course development in Tepotzlán, Morelos and a new airport for Mexico City in Atenco, State of Mexico.

But in the case of La Parota, a group of residents from the village of Cacahuatepec have opted for law books rather than machetes.

And in a story evoking the tale of David versus Goliath, the farmers took CFE to court and won an injunction in September against the dam, successfully arguing that the Environment Secretariat (Semarnat) and the National Water Commission (CNA) improperly granted permits for the project.

On Nov. 7, however, federal Judge Livia Lizbeth Larumbe Radilla reversed her decision, ruling that the laws permitting the dam’s construction would not directly deprive the complainants’ access to their land and water.

The villagers and their lawyers plan to appeal.

“We’re now in the second round of the game,” said Xavier Martínez, an environment lawyer with the civil rights firm that argued the landholders’ case.

Still, he called the judge’s original decision to halt construction “unprecedented,” and said the dam was not being impeded by the courts, “but a social movement.”

The CFE is not likely to walk away from the $800-million dam project - despite the legal roadblocks. Its crews have not yet returned to the La Parota site, according to Martínez.

Even so, say experts, the precedent set by the villagers of Cacahuatepec could complicate future large-scale infrastructure projects that require relocating established communities.

“Previously, the state would throw all of its weight behind the construction of these types of projects and nothing could be done about it,” said Arturo Pueblita Fernández, a law professor at Universidad Iberoamericana in Mexico City.

“Now there’s more openness and an attempt to avoid social conflicts. Therefore, it could be the case that construction on this project might never happen.”

The ongoing legal complications surrounding La Parota – and conceivably at other locations in the future – could complicate the economic growth objectives of President Felipe Calderón, who in September won congressional approval for a fiscal reform overhaul that was designed, in large part, to help overhaul the country’s sagging infrastructure.

Three decades in the works

The CFE first proposed building La Parota in 1976 on the Papagayo River, which empties into the Pacific Ocean southeast of Acapulco on the Costa Chica, a thinly populated and underdeveloped region known for its Afro-Mexican inhabitants.

The rugged hills of Guerrero, home to some of the nation’s poorest communities, have spawned numerous armed uprisings against the federal government. Its populace includes the People’s Revolutionary Army, or EPR, a long-standing Marxist guerilla group that has made recent headlines with a series of attacks on Pemex gas pipelines. According to lawyers working in the region, it is instinctive for Guerrero’s marginalized populations to fight back when encroached upon by outsiders.

The La Parota project, however, received little attention until CFE construction crews arrived unannounced in 2003. Then, a local movement to fight the dam was formed almost immediately.

Mario Patrón, a lawyer with the Guerrero-based Centro Derechos Humanos de la Montaña Tlachinollan, worked with some of the residents fighting the dam. He said the locals’ determination to stay put grew even stronger as they learned of the impact of previous public works projects, including hydroelectric developments in Nayarit and the Mexico City-Acapulco highway, which displaced thousands after opening in 1989.

“At La Parota, an opposition movement was generated because … they’ve known that hydroelectric projects don’t bring development for those that get relocated,” Patrón explained.

“The campesinos said that they didn’t want to be kicked off their land and leave for [Acapulco] where they would be working in some bad-paying menial job.”

Despite a clause in the Constitution requiring compensation for land expropriations, the CFE has never made “a firm offer” to any of the impacted landholders, he added.

CFE spokesman Gerardo Cubos declined to comment on La Parota, citing the ongoing legal actions.

However, in comments published by the Mexico City daily El Universal shortly after construction was halted in September, CFE manager Gerardo Cruz Velázquez acknowledged to a business audience in Acapulco that the CFE fell short in pitching La Parota-area residents on the virtues of relocating.

He also accused international rights groups protesting against La Parota of being naïve to the situation in Guerrero and the dam’s potential benefits.

“It doesn’t interest them that people [here] eat nothing more than a tortilla with chilies once a day and they have to carry water jugs on their heads from the river to their homes,” Cruz Velázquez said.

International attention

Two United Nations representatives visited the impacted area in early September and expressed dissatisfaction with the CFE’s attention to transparency and human rights.

A recent Amnesty International study also expressed concerns. According to its August 2007 report, intimidation has been rife in the area and three people have been killed. In one of the killings, an opponent of the dam, Eduardo Maya Manrique, was dragged from his home by three unidentified men and stoned to death in January 2006, according to the report. No one has been charged in the matter.

The report also questioned the true number of people the dam would impact.

According to the CFE, approximately 3,000 people would have to be relocated, but Patrón put the figure at closer to 75,000, explaining that the CFE failed to account for residents indirectly impacted by the dam and its reservoir.

Even properties not submerged could be negatively impacted, he added. Two settlements, for example, would become islands. In other places, ground water would become scarce. The Papagayo River would also be permanently impacted.

The CFE’s website provides little information about the dam, its potential impact and prospects for future completion, although it boasted of other large ongoing and recently completed projects on the Santiago River in the western state of Nayarit.

Regardless of whether La Parota is ever completed, the ongoing judicial action in Guerrero is likely to have a significant impact on future public works projects undertaken by the federal government, said Martínez, the environmental lawyer involved in the farmers’ case.

“They just can't keep on building projects like the way they were,” he said.


SIDEBAR: When machetes beat back development
The News

Atenco, 2002:

In July 2002, local farmers in San Salvador Atenco, backed by left-wing, anarchist and anti-globalization groups, fought with police for three days over a government plan to build a $2.3-billion airport in their town.

The airport would have taken over approximately 10,000 acres of land in 13 villages in the municipality outside Mexico City. In exchange, the farmers were to be paid $3,000 per acre as compensation, but the locals rejected the offer and took to the streets with machetes in hand.

Dozens of people were injured in the ensuing clashes. Nineteen public officials were taken hostage and later exchanged for imprisoned farmers in an act that critics said rewarded violence.

The government later raised its compensation offer to an amount reportedly seven-times the initial bid, but the farmers rejected it.

Finally, two weeks into the showdown, Transportation Secretary Pedro Cerisola announced the government was abandoning plans to build the airport in Atenco.

Tepoztlán, Morelos, 1995:

Golf Course Inflames Mexico Town
The News, with files from The New York Times News Service

A coalition of campesinos, small-business owners and environmentalists in this town south of Mexico City reacted violently in August 1995 after the municipal government approved a golf course development and industrial park in an ecologically sensitive area.

After 12 days of unrest – during which time the protesters beat back riot police with rocks and barbed wire, seized hostages and occupied city hall – the mayor backed down and promptly resigned.

Some Tepoztlán residents had accused Mayor Alejandro Morales Barragan of rubber-stamping the development project behind their backs.

Opposition to the projects drew together an unusual alliance of affluent people, who wanted to preserve the town's character, and villagers suspicious of the promises of foreign corporations.

Tepoztlán has become a favorite weekend retreat of Mexico City's wealthy elite. But many of its 13,000 residents still cling to the village's peasant traditions.

Development backers balked at suggestions their plans would have ruined the town, explaining that the project would have created more than 9,000 construction-related jobs and nearly 3,000 permanent service jobs. The land, they added, was indeed located inside of a national park, but was privately-owned. Environmental impact studies had also been completed.