Wind Energy Policy, Conflict and Human Rights in Mexico by politicaspublicas

WIND ENERGY POLICY, CONFLICT AND HUMAN RIGHTS IN MEXICO 1

Noé Hernández Cortez , 2Juquila Araceli González Nolasco ,3 Jorge Martín Cordero Torres 1 Professor of Political Science, Department of Public Administration, Universidad del Istmo, Oaxaca, México 2 Professor of Sociology, Department of Public Administration, Universidad del Istmo, Oaxaca, México 3 Professor of Public Administration, Department of Public Administration Universidad del Istmo, Ixtepec Campus, Oaxaca, México Email: noe.unistmo@gmail.com1, juquila@bianni.unistmo.edu.mx2, j_cordero@bianni.unistmo.edu.mx3 ABSTRACT This article examines the relationship of wind-energy policy to conflict and human rights in Mexico. Using documental and journalistic sources, we examine various antagonistic discourses exchanged among the government of the state of Oaxaca, the company Mareña Renovables and dissident indigenous groups in the Isthmus of Tehuantepec, Oaxaca. We posit that public policies for wind-energy projects implemented in Mexico in recent decades have generated conflict among communities in the Isthmus of Tehuantepec, Oaxaca. Our analysis presents the perceptions of the actors involved in the conflict. Keywords: wind energy, policy, conflict, human rights, Mexico. 1.

on the Development of Wind Energy in the Isthmus-Costal Region: the Cases of Ixtaltepec, Oaxaca and Arriaga , Chiapas,” financed by the Program to Strengthen Academic Departments (PRODEP), 2013. By examining documental and journalistic sources, we reconstruct the discourses of political actors engaged in conflict. This paper presents seminal investigative observations on a variety of antagonistic discourses exchanged among the government of the state of Oaxaca, Mareña Renovables and dissident indigenous groups in the Isthmus of Tehuantepec, Oaxaca, Mexico.

Introduction

This article considers the relationship of Mexico’s power elite to the formation of public policy as an expression of a global phenomenon, particularly with regard to public wind-energy policy and its sociopolitical impact on the communities in which wind-farms have been developed. Specifically, our study focuses on the Isthmus of Tehuantepec region of Oaxaca with an emphasis on the conflict that has resulted from public policies implemented in the community of Álvaro Obregón in the municipality of Juchitán, Oaxaca. One of the characteristics of public policies formulated by political elites is that they violate fundamental rights among those whom they affect, such as the rights to public consultation and the transparent disclosure of information pertinent to the economic, social and environmental advantages and disadvantages involved in the installation of wind farms in affected communities. The rest of the paper is arranged as follows: section 2 presents the methodology, section 3 presents the discussion and section 4 conclusion. 2.

Discussion

Formulating a theoretical approach to the power elite’s influence on the political structure of public policy: The Mexican government has fostered the creation of a windenergy market by implementing policies that have engendered social tension and conflict in communities in the Isthmus of Tehuantepec, Oaxaca, Mexico. It is important to bear in mind that this article solely elaborates on what has occurred in the Isthmus of Tehuantepec, Oaxaca in recent years in relationship to conflicts that have arisen in response to the commercial use of wind energy.

Methodology

This article is the product of a research project entitled “Socio-economic and JuridicalInstitutional Study on Comparative Perspectives

that

Historians of energy economy contend the systematic consumption of

nonrenewable energy is one of the distinct traits of modern energy usage. From a historical perspective, the overexploitation of nonrenewable sources of energy began with a surge in coal burning during the Industrial Revolution in England (Ashton, 1996) and has continued into the twentieth (Armentano, 1981) and twenty-first (Click and Werner, 2010) centuries with the nonrenewable resource of petroleum. The burning of fossil fuels threatens the stability of ecosystems across the entire globe. The overexploitation of nonrenewable resources such as petroleum, the principal contributor to carbon dioxide emissions, has also contributed significantly to global warming. According to experts in the field, the Earth’s average temperature will increase by two degrees Celsius by the year 2050 (Watkins, 2007). As a remedy to this international problem, governments and civil societies across the globe have increasing proposed alternative means of generating electricity that rely on tidal, solar, wind and geothermic sources, among others. With this goal in mind, governments and international institutions have approved a corpus of juridical norms in order to establish clear guidelines of environmental responsibility for governments and transnational companies to follow in order that they promote nonrenewable energy as a means of achieving planetary sustainability.

himself tells us that this should not prevent us from formulating questions about the economic and political interests of the elites of a given country. Although it is not easy to access information on elite power structures, it is important to carry out investigations because: Were we to select our field of study according to the ready availability of much unworked material, we should never choose the elite. And yet, if we are trying to understand something of the true nature of the society in which we live, we cannot allow the impossibility of rigorous proof to keep us from studying whatever we believe to be important (Mills, 2000: 382). It is important to investigate Mexican power elites as entrenched vested interests that degrade -in accord with the Royal Academy of Spain, the term degrade, “degradar" means “to deprive someone of the dignity, honor, employment and privileges that he or she has”(RAE, 2014) our incipient democracy (Monsiváis, 2009) and whose actions put at risk the fundamental rights of society’s lower classes. Mills recognizes three overlapping circles of power in US society that rest on large institutions that largely determined many aspects most people’s lives: state hierarchies, economic enterprises and the army, which “constitute the means of power; as such they are now of a consequence not before equaled in human history” (Mills, 2000: 5). Mills placed great emphasis on the forms and practices of elite power structures in the United States (Mills, 1958). In Mexico, the monopolistic business practices of power elites often have adverse affects. For example, the telecommunications market punishes the Mexican middle class with costly service rates. In Mexico the ongoing integration of the State with large national and international energy corporations has resulted in top-down public policies. As Olvera observes:

International organizations provide formal channels by which governments can cooperate with each other in the production and management of clean energy (Gehring, 2007). Nevertheless, increasingly competitive and unstable global markets make cooperation among countries difficult because vast economic enterprises obstruct their efforts, largely because strategic access to nonrenewable resources continues to be the preponderant energy priority among powerful vested interests (Click and Werner, 2010). On the international stage, countries have made efforts to establish international norms intended to facilitate the cooperative and orderly utilization of alternative sources of energy, particularly wind energy. In The Power Elite (2000), Charles Wright Mills warns us of the challenges involved in gaining access to information while investigating power elites. Nevertheless, Mills

The so-called “real power” comprises those social, political and economic actors

that made up the backbone of the old regimen. They have survived political vicissitudes while consolidating their power in key areas of state politics, just as monopolistic participants in the market have done as a means of impeding competition among investors. Their power is so great that they can determine fiscal behavior and the State’s economic policy (Olvera, 2012: 123).

Viejo, Ejido Emiliano Zapata, Ejido Eliodoro Charis Castro, Pescadores de la Séptima Sección de Juchitán, Unión Hidalgo, Santa María Xadani. Elite interests such as Mareña Renovables generally fail to respect human rights in the communities in which they do business. As is indeed the case in the Isthmus of Tehuantepec region of Oaxaca, it is evident that the public policies promoted by government and entrepreneurial elites adversely affect those “below” through the systematic violation of human rights for the sake of furthering private investment in wind-energy farms (Resistencia contra eólicos, 2014).

Thus the Mexican political system has integrated itself with power elites from the ancien régime that have survived. At present, government is actively involved in the energy sector, principally in the installation of wind farms. In this regard, this article analyzes the social tension engendered by Mareña Renovables, a company that has been one of most influential participants in wind-energy conflicts in the community of Álvaro Obregón, located in the municipality of Juchitán de Zaragoza. Communities such as Álvaro Obregón act as local agents of municipal governments. As a municipal agent, Álvaro Obregón performs official administrative functions in representation of the municipality of Juchitán de Zaragoza.

3.1 The logic of conflict in Álvaro Obregón, Juchitán, Oaxaca. Although antagonism is an essential element of the social world, it is not an inevitable one (Laclau and Mouffe, 2004). Rather, it is a historically contingent antagonistic relationship that emerges when political subjects perceive enemies who pursue inimical interests in the same social context. Far from modernity’s ideal understanding of politics in terms of normative order, Laclau tells us that, historically, the social world has been rife with conflict. Politically, conflict manifests itself through the articulation of discursive practices (Laclau and Mouffe, 2004). For the sake of creating their own institutions and political meaning, the disenfranchised speak out with a dissident voice against vested interests. Although they sometimes seek redress though international legal institutions, the political discourse of indigenous communities as dissident subjects has its origin in a long history of struggle. In contrast, Mareña Renovables fabricates its wind-energy discourse based on institutional mechanisms of global financial markets whose raison d’être is profit. Because of their different social origins, these actors’ fields of discourse are irreconcilably antagonistic. (See Table 1).

One of the distinct traits of entrepreneurial elites such as Mareña Renovables is their close relationships to key members of government, whom they influence in order to promote public policies that are particularly favorable to their private investments. This tendency in public windenergy policies in the Isthmus of Tehuantepec has resulted in conflict among Mareña Renovables, the government of the state of Oaxaca and the communities of Álvaro Obregón, Juchitán, San Dionisio del Mar, San Mateo del Mar, San Francisco del Mar, Santa Rosa de Lima, Huamuchil, San Blas Atempa, Tehuantepec, San Dionisio del Mar Pueblo

Table 1. The Conflict over public wind-energy policy in the Isthmus of Tehuantepec region, Oaxaca, 2014. Mariano

Newspaper article López Gómez,

Source Newspaper: La Jornada

spokesperson for the Assembly of Indigenous Peoples of the Isthmus of Tehuantepec in Defense of their Land and Territory informed us that state police officers violently struck Zapotec Native Americans at a meeting in the community of Álvaro Obregón, municipality of Juchitán, where they were discussing new actions to prevent the multinational company Mareña Renovables from constructing the San Dionisio wind farm in la Barra Santa Teresa. Amnesty International (AI) issued an urgent decree in response to threats against communal land owners who actively oppose the erection of windenergy turbines in the villages of Álvaro Obregón and San Dionisio del Mar in the state of Oaxaca. In its communiqué, AI, whose headquarters are in London, indicated this past February 2 that police attempted to break up an encampment of protesters in Álvaro Obregón that was blocking a section of land where a private company intended to erect 132 wind turbines. Even though the state of Oaxaca’s administration does not support activities that cause environmental harm or that threaten the rights of indigenous peoples and communities, neither have they called for the cancellation of the anticipated installation of the San Dionisio wind farm in la Barra Santa Teresa by the multinational company Mareña Renovables, asserted the General Secretary of Government, Jesús Martínez Álvarez.

Title of article: Police Violently Disburse Assembly Opposed to Wind Farms in Oaxaca. Reporter/correspondent: Octavio Vélez y Rosa Rojas. Date of article: February 3, 2013. Source: http://www.jornada.unam.mx/2013/02/03/estados/026n1est Date consulted: May 27, 2014

The voraciousness of transnational companies manifests itself once again with the Bii Nee Stipa II windenergy project, established in Oaxaca by an Italian energy consortium. Not satisfied with the highly profitable business that the installation of the plant promises to be, the consortium requested three million 300 thousand Euros from the European Commission to help finance the project. The wind-energy project Bii

Newspaper: Revista Proceso Title of article: Wind Energy Voracious in Mexico. Reporter/correspondent: Marco Appel Date of article: March 23, 2013 Source: http://www.proceso.com.mx/?p=337063 Date consulted: May 27, 2014

Newspaper: La Jornada Title of article: Amnesty International Demands Safety for WindEnergy Protesters in Oaxaca. Reporter/correspondent: Fernando Camacho Servín. Date of article: February 07, 2013. Source: http://www.jornada.unam.mx/2013/02/07/politica/022n2pol Date consulted: May 26, 2014.

Newspaper: La Jornada Title of article: Oaxaca Government Avoids Speaking Out against Wind Farm. Reporter/correspondent: Octavio Vélez Ascencio Date of article: February 19, 2013 Source: http://www.jornada.unam.mx/2013/02/19/sociedad/043n1soc Date consulted: May 27, 2014

Nee Stipa II, set into motion in the state of Oaxaca by international companies and financial organizations, was denounced on Thursday 21 before the European Parliament for not taking into account local communities and for solely benefitting a group of powerful transnational companies. Demanding that the government of Oaxaca dislodge the anti-windenergy farmers that have blocked access to a fishery since February 25, some 100 fishermen from Playa Vicente, an agency of this municipality, began to block the PanAmerican highway at 8:30 a.m.

Newspaper: El Universal Title of article: Fishermen Block Highways in Oaxaca. Reporter/correspondent: Alberto López Morales Date of article: March 25, 2013 Source: http://www.eluniversal.com.mx/notas/912617.html Date consulted: May 27, 2014

Meanwhile, the General Secretary of Government, Jesús Martínez Álvarez, affirms that no wind-energy investments will be cancelled in the Isthmus region. The legislator Rosa Nidia Villlalobos, president of the Permanent Commission of Renewable Energy, called governor Gabino Cué’s attention to the need to prevent pressure groups from delaying development in the region.

Newspaper: Noticias Title of article: Demands To Stop Pressure Groups in Isthmus. Reporter/correspondent: Reynaldo Bracamontes Ruiz Date of article: April 3, 2013 Source: http://www.noticiasnet.mx/portal/general/organizaciones/144569exigen-que-sea-frenado-chantaje-en-el-istmo Date consulted: May 27, 2014

Yesterday five popular and indigenous community organizations denounced new death threats against three members of the Totopo community’s radio station in Juchitán, Oaxaca as well as harassment by state police of two other members of the Popular Assembly of Juchiteco Peoples (APPJ), which opposes the installation of wind farms in Juchitán and in San Dionisio del Mar.

Newspaper: La Jornada Title of article: Threats by Wind-energy Company Denounced. Reporter/correspondent: Rosa Rojas Date of article: April 29, 2013 Source: http://www.jornada.unam.mx/2013/04/29/politica/016n3pol Date consulted: May 26, 2014

Mareña Renovables’ investment, for a wind farm in Dionisio del Mar is not going to leave Oaxaca. Relocating the project elsewhere in the region to another municipality that is open to progress is just one of various options that that federal and state governments and the company are exploring, pending an official decision. The government of Oaxaca

Newspaper: Noticias Title of article: Mareña Investment not Leaving Oaxaca. Reporter/correspondent: Reynaldo Bracamontes Ruiz Date of article: May 11, 2013 Source: http://www.noticiasnet.mx/portal/general/laboral/150922inversi%C3%B3n-mare%C3%B1-no-se-va-de-oaxaca Date consulted: May 27, 2014

is counting on two fundamental objectives: retaining business investment and maintaining social stability in Oaxaca as a guarantee for productive investment, indicated Sinaí Casillas Cano, director of Energías Renovables of the state of Oaxaca. Approximately, 129 communal land owners from the community of Santa María del Mar, an agent of this municipality, claim that they were deceived by the company Mareña Renovables when the later did not honor its commitment to pay them money owned for renting their property. They said that this concerns 2,062 hectares that were set aside for Mareña Renovables and for which there was an agreement to pay rent equal to one thousand pesos per hectare, a total of 2,062,000 pesos. The company only paid half this amount. In other words, Mareña Renovables owes the community over one million pesos.

Newspaper: El Sol del Istmo Title of article: Communal Land Owners from Santa Maria del Mar Rail against Wind-Energy Companies. Reporter/correspondent: Super User Date of article: October 7, 2013 Source: http://elsoldelistmo.com.mx/site/ Date consulted: May 27, 2014

Small property owners who have provided land for the construction of the Dos Arbolitos wind farm disowned their committee and requested that the company Gamesa not deal with Porfirio Montero on matters related to the wind farm because he does not represent anyone.

Newspaper: El Sol del Istmo Title of article: Land Owners Rail against Gamesa. Reporter/correspondent: Dioscelina Trujillo Martínez Date of article: October 10, 2013 Source: http://elsoldelistmo.com.mx/site/ Date consulted: May 27, 2014

After a group of owners of the El Newspaper: El Sol del Istmo Retiro and the Dos Arbolitos wind Title of article: Blockade of Wind Farm Continues. farm sites in the community of La Reporter/correspondent: José Luis López Ventosa blocked a highway in Date of article: October 17, 2013 protest, the president of the Source: http://elsoldelistmo.com.mx/site/ Federation of Rural Land Owners, Date consulted: May 27, 2014 Porfirio Montero Fuentes, indicated that blocking the project affected the parcel owners more than anyone else. Source: Compiled by the authors through documentary research. Since November of 2011, the The group that was protesting against indigenous village of Ikojts de the Mareña Renovables wind-energy project San Dionisio del Mar has publically stated the following on November 28, been under pressure by 2012: transnational companies and the Inter-American

the company’s investment. This discourse has erected political boundaries between the two factions. Entrepreneurial elites, with their enormous financial resources, seek to legitimize their discourse through juridical institutional channels established by the global community. As indicated above, a communiqué from the Macquarie Group claimed that “minority opposition groups have continued to impede access to project sites”. However, this conflict is just one expression of a broad discursive field that must respect the human rights of prior consultation and the transparent disclosure of information, as indicated by Agreement 169 of the International Labor Organization:

Development Bank, who intend to impose upon the Huave and Zapotec communities the largest windenergy megaproject in Latin America, thereby depriving villagers of their principal food source (fishing) and their means of survival by massively destroying flora and fauna. In so doing, they profane ancestral ceremonial centers as well as visually and auditorily contaminate the land that indigenous communities inhabit (Resistencia contra eólicos, 2014).

Article 6. Upon application of the dispositions of this agreement, governments shall: a) consult interested communities by means of appropriate procedures and, in particular, through their representative institutions, whenever legislative or administrative measures are anticipated to affect them directly; b) establish the means by which interested persons can freely participate at least to the same degree and at all levels as do other sectors of the population in the adoption of decisions in elective institutions and administrative organizations as well as in other entities responsible for policies and programs that concern them; c) establish the means for the full development of these same communities’ institutions and initiatives and, in appropriate cases, provide the required resources for this purpose (Convenio 169, 2014).

Contrastively, at the Mexican Stock Market (BMV), the Macquarie Group presented the following public statement: In addition to the observations made previously in trimester and annual financial statements and reports emitted by the Macquarie Infrastructure Fund (FIMM) and by other related sources (most recently on July 31, 2013), minority opposition groups have continued to impeded access to project sites. This has caused significant delays in project construction and has adversely affected the value of FIMM’s investment. Mareña Renovables continues to work with competent governmental authorities and other parties involved in order to develop a project-construction completion plan (BMV, 2015). Efforts to complete the wind-energy project in la Barra de Santa Teresa, municipality of San Dionisio de Mar in the Isthmus of Tehuantepec region, Oaxaca, has resulted in antagonistic discourse between Mareña Renovables and dissident groups from indigenous communities adversely affected by

Because of the fragility of the rule of law in Mexico, dissident indigenous communities in the Isthmus of Tehuantepec, Oaxaca appeal to international law as a remedy for domestic legal institutions that neglect their rights as citizens to expeditious and transparent

justice. The absence of the rule of law, as Guillermo O’Donnell has well observed, is a long-term phenomenon that makes ostensibly representative democracies unrepresentative (O´Donnell, 1994). As a consequence of legal debility, entrepreneurial and political elites have entrenched themselves in Mexico’s democracy with a discourse that has redefined the political economy of the market in terms of their interests. This has produced divisive public wind-energy policies that foster conflict in the Isthmus of Tehuantepec.

Data has been documented and is available on current activities of wind farms in the Isthmus of Tehuantepec. According to a study on the website of the Commission for Dialogue in the Indigenous Communities of Mexico, one of the principal factors that adversely affects social wellbeing in the Isthmus of Tehuantepec is the low rents that windenergy firms pay to landowners. In comparison to some international rates, rent payments in Mexico are lower. (See Table 2).

Table 2. International rent rates for land for wind farms. Country

Argentina

Spain

Wind farm

Average monthly gross income in foreign currency

Average annual gross income in Mexican pesos

Value of land %

Value of land in millions of pesos

Arauco SAPEM

$11,862,500.00 dollars

$153,696,481.00

1-4%

1.5 - 6

La Noguera

10, 870, 795.00 euros

$186, 639, 592.00

1-4%

1.8 – 7.4

Hamburg

$185, 643, 195.00

1-4%

1.8 – 7.4

$125, 504, 659.00

1-4%

1.2 – 5.0

$128, 320, 359.00

1-4%

1.2 -5.1

$79, 293, 780.00

1-4%

0.8 – 3.1

France

La Chapelle

United Kingdom United States

Highlan (Scotland) Big Blue Wind Farm

10, 812, 760.00 euros 7, 310, 000.00 euros 7, 474, 000.00 euros 6, 120, 000.00 dollars

Mexico

Bii Nee Stipa (Iberdrola)

7, 148, 160.00 dollars

$92, 615, 135.00

.025% 1.53%

23,600 – 1.4

Mexico

La Mata – La Ventosa (Energie Nouvelle)

27, 957, 527.00 euros

$480, 000, 000.00

3.38%

16.3

Germany

Taken from the Commission for Dialogue in the Indigenous Communities of Mexico, 2013, “Wind Energy in Mexico, a Social Perspective on the Value of Land,” Consulted on January 7, 2014 at http://www.cdpim.gob.mx/v4/pdf/eolico.pdf $92,615,135.00 pesos at Mexico’s Bii Nee Stipa wind farm in the Isthmus of Tehuantepec, Oaxaca. Nevertheless, a study of the CDPIM indicates that the average gross annual income in pesos for the development of the La Mata –

In Argentina, a country with an economy similar to Mexico’s, the average gross annual income from rent at the Arauco SAPEM wind farm is equivalent to $153,696,481.00 pesos, while the amount is much lower at

La Ventosa Wind Farm is $480,000,000.00 pesos. This is twice as much as the combined rent paid by the Highland and La Chapelle wind farms in the United Kingdom and France, respectively, which have average gross annual incomes equivalent to $128,320,359.00 and $125,504,659.00 pesos, respectively (CDPIM, 2014).

even become efficient instruments for social action among well established actors in the traditional political system (Stein and Tommasi, 2006: 407). Without doubt, Stein and Tommasi’s diagnostic is appropriate for analyzing conflict in the community of Álvaro Obregón. As previously mentioned, entrepreneurial elites influence public policy decisions. In turn, political elites provide privileged information to high entrepreneurial circles (Sin embargo, 2014). Communities in which wind-energy megaprojects are installed in the Isthmus of Tehuantepec do not have access to the same information. The Assembly of Indigenous Peoples of the Isthmus of Tehuantepec in Defense of their Land and Territory has a history of social activism and political struggle that expresses itself through an alternative discourse that breaks through the boundaries of elite secrecy. By way of political discourse similar to that of organizations such as the Zapatista Army of National Liberation (EZLN), the Assembly has emerged and fortified itself as a new subject that responds articulately to the demands of its political milieu. After its emergence, this new political subject has gotten stronger as a dissident voice that speaks out against wind-energy projects that adversely affect the communities of Álvaro Obregón, Juchitán, San Dionisio del Mar, San Mateo del Mar, San Francisco del Mar, Santa Rosa de Lima, Huamuchil, San Blas Atempa Tehuantepec, San Dionisio del Mar Pueblo Viejo, Ejido Emiliano Zapata, Ejido Eliodoro Charis Castro, Pescadores de la Séptima Sección de Juchitán, Unión Hidalgo, Santa María Xadani. As Laclau (2005) has maintained, discourse is a disruptive contingency that expresses power. In this vein, the Assembly of Indigenous Peoples of the Isthmus of Tehuantepec in Defense of their Land and Territory has established a discourse that challenges hegemonic interests by appealing to a transparent sense of history:

3.2 The appearance of the political subject The political subject emerges in response to political dislocation, which is an extremely important socio-political phenomenon because it transcends the normative limitations of established social institutions. This implies that conflict expresses itself beyond social constraints. Social subjects vary in nature according to the contexts in which they emerge. For example, in Latin America, the Washington Consensus has created a conflictive context since the 1990’s that has inspired the appearance of new social subjects as a challenge to powerful hegemonic interests. Authors such as Ernesto Stein and Mariano Tommasi, who have written for the International Development Bank (IDB), have recognized that the Washington Consensus as public policy had forgotten a fundamental variable: politics. Their conclusion is valid for Latin America in general and for Mexico in particular. Traditionally, social movements have been seen as deviations from the norm and, as such, basically as the products of atomization, alienation and social frustration. However, a fresh perspective allows us to see socially active and rational individuals who are anxious to advance interests vital to their communities via channels of established institutions. Given the generally restrained and peaceful nature of these movements, along with media that help them by informing the public of their plight, social movements have become complex and influential political actors. Social manifestations may

We are Ikoots, Binnizá and Angpong-Chimalapa men and women from the Isthmus, descendants of those who fought on September 5, 1866

in the Battle of Juchitán against the French, whom we defeated. In 2014 we are going to commemorate the 148th anniversary of this heroic deed and reaffirm our determination to fight for the land and territory that we inherited from our forefathers.

peoples of the Isthmus of Tehuantepec have raised their voice against the discourse of dominant institutional, economic and political elites that violate human rights for the sake of private profit. 4.

Conclusion

In Mexico, as in the rest of Latin America, during the last two decades, public policy has largely obeyed the logic of the market, which has ignored social consequences, principally in human rights. A radical democracy, such as the one suggested by Laclau, is constructed initially by the force of the discourse that springs forth from those who are excluded from the benefits of the socio-economic system. Because the rule of law in Mexico is in a state of crisis, it is important that disenfranchised individuals and communities come together and channel their scattered demands into a powerful stream of socio-political discourse. The Assembly of Indigenous Peoples of the Isthmus of Tehuantepec in Defense of their Land and Territory has done this by formulating coherent discourse that appeals to the most heartfelt sense of democracy in defense of human rights before those who hold economic and political power in Mexico.

The shameless imposition of the constitutional energy reforms and the corresponding secondary legislation on the part of bad governments that threaten our land and territory in the Isthmus. Bad governments at the federal, state and local levels, as well as transnational companies in our region of the Isthmus, have continuously and flagrantly violated our rights of autonomy and free determination as indigenous communities and peoples, We cannot delay in communicating and organizing in order to forcefully defend our communal land to prevent it from being seized by transnational companies that seek to impose upon us the megaproject Wind-energy Corridor of the Isthmus (Corredor Eólico del Istmo). (Assembly of Indigenous Peoples of the Isthmus of Tehuantepec in Defense of their Land and Territory). (APIITDTT, 2014).

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