about the organized communities resisting the construction of the superhighway.
The resistance has been going on for two decades, but it is under the current Chiapas government that the authorities are finally carrying out a project that previous administrations under different parties were unable to implement. A preliminary conclusion is that all political bodies agree on the construction of the San Cristóbal de Las Casas (SCLC)–Palenque highway along the route they have chosen. And to achieve this, they alike dismiss, criminalize, or co-opt the communities.
Independent civil society organizations operating in the state continue to document the highway’s devastating advance. In February, they issued a statement, confirmed on June 16: “From the outset, the communities have denounced that the project is being pushed forward without complying with legal requirements and that they lack sufficient environmental, social, and cultural information, adequate technical information, and that no free, prior, and informed consultation has been conducted.” Legal actions were filed to protect the rights to information, self-determination, and prior consultation, “highlighting the failure to disclose the environmental impact statement and the impossibility of participating in an informed manner in the decision-making process.” However, “the courts have denied the requested injunctions, citing the public interest and public order.”
This is not the first time this has happened. Rather, it is a historical trend within the majority, non-indigenous national society. It is the slow-motion annihilation of the true indigenous nation—the one that lives on and cultivates ancestral lands—and which, beyond the folkloric pampering in the capital cities, is a constant victim of dispossession, imposition, and the weakening of its community structures through the media manipulation or falsification of assemblies and consultation processes. The law, so to speak, is imposed through illegalities.
The document highlights “the strategy of fragmentation to destroy the community fabric and limit the organization and resistance of the peoples who, years ago, halted this very same project.” Initially called the Puebla-Panama Plan, then the Mesoamerica Plan, it is now being rolled out in the southeastern part of the country to “promote global trade rather than the quality of life of Indigenous peoples.”
This is the crux of the matter that the authorities overlook and that non-indigenous urban society categorically dismisses. For officials and users (notably tourists and transport operators), comfort and mobility are the top priorities—which will reduce the trip to Palenque to two hours from the five or six it currently takes, assuming there are no roadblocks or robberies. Thus, limitations in management, security, and services are resolved through dispossession. It is the same logic behind mining, urbanization, gentrification, and landscape restructuring; extractivism destroys everything in its path.
Those who do not submit “face threats, harassment, intimidation, and coercion from local, municipal, and state authorities,” as well as from the contracted companies. Communities are threatened with the Pakal Immediate Reaction Forces or the Army, “which would carry out the work on the plots or sections where people resist.”
The highway will cut right through one of Mexico’s oldest, most vibrant, and richest indigenous strongholds. The toll highway will benefit tourism (that new god, Baal), ranchers, politicians, and city dwellers, literally running over the Tseltal and Chol peoples, who have lived there for hundreds of years with their cornfields and pastures, sacred sites, archaeological remains, streams, and springs that supply the communities, as well as the mighty Agua Azul and Tulijá rivers.
The caravans report that in the municipalities of Palenque, Salto de Agua, and Chilón, the environmental impact is significant. Deforestation “affects areas with scarce forests, such as the mountain mesophilic forest, and areas where various endangered species live.” The project “undermines the means of production and reproduction of rural life by cutting off trails and roads. The extraction of stone material for the highway is destroying the hills; in recent months, landslides and flooding in villages caused by the construction work have been documented.
Add to this the fact that social programs are used “for purposes other than combating poverty and environmental degradation; through deception, communities are repeatedly told that their land has already been paid for because they have received these programs.” The same applies to fertilizers and tools: “by signing blank documents or handing over agricultural certificates and documents proving land ownership in order to gain access to social programs.”
Indigenous people and community organizations also participate in the caravans, welcomed warmly by residents who uphold the lekil kuxlejal, “a way of being-in-the-world that prioritizes harmonious and respectful relationships with Mother Earth (nantic lumquinal), as well as community integration, placing the common good at the center in opposition to the culture of individual enrichment.” None of this stops the authorities, for whom—with capitalism as their guiding principle—the business of “progress” knows no bounds. As always, the colonizer’s logic prevails.
Original text by Hermann Bellinghausen published in La Jornada on June 25th, 2026.
Translation by Schools for Chiapas.