Environmental defenders in Mexico

Abstract

Latin America, one of the regions with the greatest abundance of natural resources, is one of the main destinations for privatisation and commercialisation. In Mexico’s process of development, private interests and the survival of diverse Indigenous cultures that live settled in areas close to places of interest for extractive activities are faced. The cases of defence of environmental rights are linked to disputes over territory, mining, forestry, hydraulic, tourism, real estate, road infrastructure and energy projects. The main aggressors are national and transnational companies and groups; State agents; inhabitants who support the projects; those who suppose will obtain a benefit; and organised crime that intimidates the population. The construction of a social protest movement is a complex process that is not only related to environmental harm, but also to historical situations of poverty, marginalisation and social inequality. Environmental movements synthesise some of these concerns, and although they do not resolve long-standing conflicts, they can generate new organisations or discourses that help find new ways to cope with them. However, they face criminalisation, an effective strategy that weakens demonstrations favouring the environment; gives an illegitimate treatment to the defence of rights; manipulates the punitive power of the State and its organs of justice; and it focuses, selectively, towards the most active and visible people in social movements. In the last decade, in Mexico, at least 125 environmental defenders have been assassinated, the majority of Indigenous peoples, but also from mestizo, peasant and Afro-descendant communities. In 2017 alone, it is estimated that more than 100 defenders were killed. Extractivism has been revealed as a human rights problem due to the withdrawal of the state from its social responsibilities and, above all, because it leaves the affected population defenceless.