An Introduction to Social Environmental Conflicts and Alternatives in Mexico

Human Rights and Socio-Environmental Conflicts of Mining in Mexico: A Systematic Review

“…SECs and their omission of HR are corporative phenomena with a high capacity to subordinate regional and national governmental organisms and omit any moral, cultural, or humanitarian consideration during entry into vulnerable communities and deprive them of their resources [13,28]. Moreover, economic growth with imperial purposes does not consider any respect for human life and its relationship with the environment; it pursues the appropriation of natural resources with an extractivist end [30].…”

“…The expansion of extractive activities is recognized as a strategy to stimulate economic growth and support Latin American public finances [13]. Currently, this region is going through more intense mining extraction, with a high presence of transnational enterprises.…”

“…In 2011, Mexico made a constitutional reform to extend the HR hierarchy to international treaties. As a result, Mexico experimented with increased conflict during the first 15 years of the new millennium [13][14][15]. Furthermore, due to incompatibilities between the Mexican Constitution and the Mexican Mining Law, Mexican mining's legal regulations are considered unsustainable [16].…”

The State, Accumulation, and Oaxaca’s Earthquake Survivors: Three Mechanisms of Inequality

“…Along with Latin American nations in general, Mexico has been ensnared in what some call “the politics of dispossession and neoliberal enclosures of communal goods” (Navarro, 2015: 22). Relatedly, the legacy of former President Enrique Peña Nieto (2012–2018) includes “energy reform” (del Castillo-Mussot et al, 2018: 109–110; Cypher, 2014), oil privatization (Cypher, 2018), and corrupt impunity under the cover of an ongoing “war on drugs” (Rosen and Zepeda, 2016: 61–80). The region of Oaxaca where I performed this fieldwork, the Tehuantepec Isthmus, has been a cradle of socialist and nationalist political activity, particularly by the Zapotecs in and around the city of Juchitán, at least since the early 1970s (Campbell 1993; Rubin, 1997).…”

“…More recently, campesino-indigenous organizations and rights networks have been agitating for the suspension of mineral exploration contracts in several municipalities that were awarded by Mexico’s federal government to mining companies (mostly Canadian) without the prior informed consent of the affected residents (Morosin, 2020). While gradually privatizing communal property for export-oriented transnational capital, such megaprojects in this geostrategic corner of Mexico all prioritize short-term capital accumulation while degrading the environment, endangering human rights, reviving internal colonialism, and uprooting traditional forms of social reproduction (López, 2019: 142). This article aims to connect this macro political economy to the state’s having exposed vulnerable campesino-indigenous communities to further indignities after a large-scale disaster.…”