Who wants La Parota?

August 11^th 2008

Tomorrow, Tuesday 12th August will be the first assembly carried out in accordance with customs and traditions in Agua Caliente, Acapulco municipality. For the comuneros of Cachuatepec this represents the conclusion of an exemplary consultation process carried out between the opponents and sympathisers of La Parota.

This historical event refers us to the illegitimate assembly held on 23rd August 2005 in San Marcos municipality. During this assembly the new government showed their true repressive side; it sent police to prevent the entry of the campesinos opposed to the project, organised in the Council of Ejidos and Communities Against the La Parota Dam (Consejo de Ejidos y Comunidades Opositoras a la Presa La Parota, Cecop). This was a significant event because it was aimed at ensuring that the Federal Electricity Commission (Comisión Federal de Electricidad, CFE) could obtain permission for the expropriation of the lands and sign preliminary and temporary occupation contracts. In this assembly it was the police, state government employees and various public officials from Guerrero government who repressed those in opposition to the dam and imposed their decision with power and weapons. This condemnable event was sanctioned by the Unitary Agrarian Tribunal: it issued a verdict on 27th March 2007 which annulled the assembly under agrarian case 0047/2005.

Following the defeat of the CFE at the hands of CECOP, the president of the Communal Goods of Cachuatepec, obeying orders from political actors in the state government, restarted the process and called a first assembly for 6th May 2007 in the village of San Juan el Grande. When the legal quorum was not obtained, on that same day the local civil authority issued a second notification for 20th May 2007. The legal quorum was not obtained in this meeting either and it was at this point that CECOP mobilised and went to the place where the assembly was being held.

Despite the fact that its members were prevented from entering the premises, they insisted and finally entered in order to negotiate with the local civil authority of the communal goods. The CECOP demonstrated its ability to hold talks and they proved to the government and public opinion that their image as a belligerent opposition movement is unfounded. On the other hand, they took advantage of the situation in order to call the opposing party to the meeting and establish a dialogue campesino to campesino. They demanded their right as peoples to make decisions regarding issues that concern them alone, such as the fate of their lands. This reunion of both parties involved in the conflict was viewed positively by the authorities, to the extent that they celebrated and supported their initiative and made declarations in favour of the campesinos determining the future of the hydroelectric dam project.

In retrospect, we understand that the state government calculated that it would be able to overwhelm the CECOP and therefore it allowed the president of the local civil authority to permit an assembly based upon customs and traditions in a strategic place where they could round up people from other ejidos.

None of this worked out for the political agents. On 12th August 2007, large scale participation was registered on the part of comunero landowners and neighbours of Cacahuatepec. Campesinos opposed to the dam participated, supposedly along with campesinos in favour of the project, who had been rounded up by political agents, paid by the CFE and the state government. On this historical day the campesinos listened to the state company’s proposals, explained by the CFE’s manager of investment projects, Eugenio Laris Alanís, aimed at explaining the positive effects of the project. They were also presented with the experts’ opinion, accompanied by hard facts, which revealed the false arguments of the federal official. In this assembly the campesinos took the floor and they decided to vote ‘no’ to La Parota!

The CECOP, guided by the ILO convention 169, carried out this consultation by means of adequate procedures, and with their own representative institutions, such as the general assembly, with the aim of giving information and making decisions on matters that are within their competence. On the other hand, it was based upon article 95 of the agrarian law which grants assemblies the power to approve or disapprove the preliminary occupation of their lands with a view to expropriation. In this way, for the comuneros of Cacahuatepec, the assembly on 12th August represents a consultation based upon international law and supported by the agrarian law. It is an order that the authorities at all three levels of government are obliged to respect. In this assembly both the comuneros in opposition to the project along with the local civil authority of the communal goods, who supports the CFE, signed an agreement rejecting the preliminary occupation of the lands with a view to expropriation.

At this stage of the conflict there are various legal verdicts issued in seven agrarian trials that the CECOP won in the courts as well as the community verdict reached in the assembly on 12th August. This is the legality and legitimacy earned by the CECOP and the authorities cannot ignore it or throw it out of the window.

This work has been carried out responsibly by the CECOP; it has been recognised on a global level by the International Water Tribunal and the UN, through the Special Rapporteurs on Housing and Indigenous Peoples as well as by prestigious non-governmental organisations such as Amnesty International. Ignoring all this, the federal government, through the Interior Minister sends negative signals to the landowners. The federal minister, abused his authority and ignored all the antecedents in this legal and pacific fight. Without so much as a by-your-leave he took advantage of his visit to Guerrero and acted beyond the call of duty to “push for the project.”

This new onslaught from the federal government is the premonition of another political strategy that aims to ignore the resolutions and the recommendations of national and international authorities and wipe the CECOP off the map of social actors. The subterfuge of consultation is a mere pretext for taking back political control of the La Parota case and drawing the state and municipal governments into their strategy. They want to cheapen the social costs of the conflict, by trying to incorporate other sectors and actors who are not involved in the conflict. The aim is to displace, corner and neutralise the CECOP. They want to ignore the movement as a legitimate interlocutor, disqualify it and create a fictitious setting in which other, docile, interlocutors appear, who can play a decisive role in the new path they want to create for La Parota. The issue of the hydroelectric dam moves onto a second phase in which the central focus is water. This comes as a godsend for those who want to expand the consultation to the population of Acapulco which lacks this vital liquid. Therefore, water becomes the central concern of all three levels of government and in this way they make the construction of the hydroelectric dam more acceptable.

Who actually wants La Parota?

The campesinos from Cachuatepec, Dos Arroyos, Los Huajes and La Palma who own 63 percent of the lands that they want to expropriate for the construction of the dam?

Or the politicians and businessmen who have no right or authority to decide the fate of these lands and who furthermore have no commitment to the people to ensure that justice is served in the countryside?

Who has more authority to decide what will happen to the communal and ejidal lands, the campesinos who live there and who are the legal owners of the territory, or the state and federal authorities who answer to economic interests related to the privatisation of lands and social property?

With regards to the authorities who have appeared in the media such as Guillermo Ramírez, Ernesto Payán and Armando Ríos Piter, what humanitarian concern inspires them to talk now about a wider consultation regarding La Parota? Where were they when the conflict began? Why have they only responded to Mouriño’s appeal when they completely ignore all the legitimate, legal work of the opponents to La Parota in demanding their collective rights? Why don’t they read up on the studies carried out by Amnesty International and the official report from the UN Special Rapporteurs regarding the La Parota case, which was presented to the UN General Assembly on 4th March 2008, in order to have a more complete vision of the conflict and express legally founded opinions?

During these five years of conflict there has still been no sign of the supposed campesinos in favour of the La Parota hydroelectric project. Despite the millions of pesos invested in buying their consciences, approving illegitimate assemblies and showing on paper the acceptance of thousands of campesinos authorising the construction of the hydroelectric dam, today everything vanished; all that is left are promises and deceit. All that remains are the divides in the community, the arrest warrants, the lawsuits, the irreparable deaths of campesinos, the widows, the orphans, government abandonment and the threat that La Parota will go ahead.

Once again the campesinos in opposition to the project have to struggle against the governing class’s malicious plans. Once again they will have to mobilise to defend their lands. The solidarity network that the CECOP has woven on the national and international level will be attentive and alert and will not allow the rights of the real owners of rural Acapulco to be tramped.

Tlachinollan Human Rights Centre.

El Sur, 11th August 2008
http://www.suracapulco.com.mx/opinion02.php?id_nota=3415