On August 2, President Andrés Manuel López Obrador inaugurated the “Puente La Concordia,” a bridge that crosses one of the branches of the La Angostura hydroelectric dam, whose tributary flows through the municipality of La Concordia. This bridge will speed up the flow of people and goods crossing from the highlands/border area to the center of the state of Chiapas.
The municipality of La Concordia has been one of the epicenters of the dispute between the Sinaloa Cartel (CDS), the Jalisco New Generation Cartel (CJNG) and the so-called Chiapas-Guatemala Cartel, because it is the interface between the two regions.
During the Mexican president’s visit to the site, journalists witnessed how the mineral called barite – illegally extracted from the mines located in the ejidos El Naranjo, Nueva Morelia, Santa María, Ricardo Flores Magón, Grecia and Benito Juárez, in the municipality of Chicomuselo located in the highlands – is transported through the arm of La Angostura dam, over which the bridge was built, by means of heavy cargo trucks that are transported on barges, steel and wood platforms called “chaflanes.”
The crossing by these barges, which also transport people and all kinds of merchandise, will be replaced by the recently inaugurated bridge.
The Border of Dispute
On Friday, August 2, around 1 p.m., two Mexican Army helicopters landed on a makeshift heliport set up less than a kilometer from what they called “La Concordia Bridge”, to take President Andrés Manuel López Obrador to inaugurate the completion of the work; a symbolic act because transportation is still not allowed to pass over the site.
The event was attended by no more than 500 inhabitants of the region; the organizers had to remove chairs and arrange the space so that it would not look half-empty; they brought workers who participated in the work and more than a hundred young men and women, military and National Guard (GN), dressed in civilian clothes.
Below the bridge, at the level of the dam, the crossing of the tributary in barges with capacity to carry cargo trucks continued uninterrupted.
Cargo trucks, private cars, people on motorcycles and public transportation vans with the legend “Chicomuselo-Frontera Comalapa” -both municipalities located in the highlands/border zone, on the other side of the dam-, are transported on the barges.
The atmosphere is tense, on one of the barges, now unserviceable, which is on the side of the road, you can see gunshots of high caliber; the bullets that pierced thick blocks of steel, are the reminder that, in this same place, last March 31, two groups of organized crime – those on the other side of the dam against those operating in La Concordia – clashed, and then one of these groups with members of the National Guard.
There, 10 people died, according to the authorities’ version (several dozen according to humanitarian organizations), and 13 people were detained, among them six from Guatemala.
A resident waiting for transport agreed to tell – on condition of anonymity – what it was like that day. “They arrived in cars from the other side of the dam, they were well armed, they forced the operators of the chalán to cross them (…) first they went to a ranch where they killed people; then they returned and here they confronted the Guardia (National Guard)… We had to jump into the water, hide where we could.”
He says that there have been two heavy confrontations in that place between the cartel that operates in the sierra-border zone, and the one that is in La Concordia, on this side of the dam.
There is no official version of who these groups are, but the images left on billboards, the messages left on the bodies of murdered people, and the videos disseminated on social networks by the criminal groups themselves, indicate that in La Concordia it is the CDS, and on the other side of the dam, in Chicomuselo and Frontera Comalapa, since mid-2021 the CJNG has been operating with an arm that calls itself “MAIZ.” In January 2024, a new group – presumably a split from Jalisco – entered the dispute, the self-proclaimed Chiapas-Guatemala Cartel.
Illegally-mined barite
Prior to that date, this route was already being used by human smugglers to take migrants entering Mexico through the area known as La Mesilla, located in the municipality of Frontera Comalapa, bordering Guatemala.
Hydroelectric dams, such as La Angostura, are another migrant smuggling route, but unlike the coastal route, migrants are not visible here because they are almost always guided by smugglers who take them hidden in cargo vehicles.
Drugs and weapons are other goods that organized crime groups move through the region. In November 2021, two people involved in what the federal government presented as the “Chamula Cartel,” which operates in the indigenous zone of Los Altos de Chiapas, were arrested in La Concordia, where they had taken refuge, and were accused of participating in the murder of an indigenous prosecutor.
However, the new cargo now being transported through this pass is barite, a mineral that proliferates in the subsoil of the Chiapas highlands.
“Its high degree of whiteness makes it a highly prized white pigment. Also its high density allows it to be useful in construction and well drilling materials. On the other hand, it is also used in screens and X-ray screens. In addition, some of its main applications are in the paper industry and in the manufacture of rubbers and rubber,” says Minerals & Fillers on its website.
As of May 2024, in the highlands, particularly in the municipality of Chicomuselo, neighboring La Concordia, there were 11 mining concessions covering some 20,000 hectares of land. In this municipality, since 2009, the population organized to prevent mining activity because of the damage it was causing to the environment and health; in that year environmentalist Mariano Abarca was murdered, which prompted the population of the municipality to mobilize and succeed in stopping all mining activity.
It was not until mid-2022, when the drug cartels were already disputing the highlands/border region, that the residents of Chicomuselo denounced that mining was reactivated illegally, and that those who were carrying out this activity were part of these criminal groups.
In a communiqué from that year they say: “On September 26 of this year the movement in Defense of Life and Territory publicly denounced the situation of threats, harassment and intimidation against human rights defenders in the municipality of Chicomuselo, Chiapas due to the presence of companies and individuals interested in restarting mining operations in various localities of this municipality such as: El Naranjo, Nueva Morelia, Santa María, Ricardo Flores Magón, Grecia and Benito Juárez, promoting mining activities without prior and informed consultation, without the consent of the ejidos and communities and without the environmental impact study, we are clear that until now there is no form of ecological and sustainable mining, we will continue to defend our territory.
“On October 16, several trucks entered the municipal capital of Chicomuselo to transport mining material and on October 17, the inhabitants of the Santa María ejido realized that these trucks were already in the place from where they have been extracting barite material; mining material that is used for drilling oil wells and for the illegal mining sector.”
In June 2023, the illegal mining had been completed, so in the march that took place in Chicomuselo, the population read a communiqué in which they denounced “the presence of organized crime that operates with total impunity with the objective of controlling the territory, looting, extraction and mining exploitation and charging for the right of piso and violating human rights. The entry of armed people pressuring and intimidating the ejidos to allow the looting of mining material as in the case of Santa Maria, Grecia and Nueva Morelia.”
From the communities where the barite mines are located -El Naranjo, Nueva Morelia, Santa María, Ricardo Flores Magón, Grecia and Benito Juárez- to the La Angostura dam crossing and thus to the center of the state, it takes between 30 and 120 minutes.
Illegal mining, the new business of organized crime
In La Concordia, the barite illegally extracted from Chicomuselo is transported in cargo trucks, which then cross the La Angostura dam via the barges found at the site where the “La Concordia Bridge” was built.
A worker of the company that built the bridge, showed several reporters who attended the inauguration of the work on August 2, the remains of barite that one of the trucks had to unload on the bank of the dam, because its heavy load prevented it from going up the embankment to join the paved road.
He explained that about a dozen trucks cross daily transporting this mineral. In the three hours we were at the site, we saw two of these vehicles cross the dam.
“We don’t know where they are bringing it from, or where they are taking it to. What we have seen is that the stones weigh a lot, the people of Chicomuselo say that it is called barite (…) we don’t ask anything about the load, nothing about what they are carrying. Here it is best not to ask,” explained one of the barge operators.
The worker shows how, as a result of the weight of the trucks carrying the mineral, the steel platform of one of the two barges used at the site was dented.
Gustavo Castro, director of the environmental organization Otros Mundos, explained that the barite being extracted is illegal, because even though there are concessions for its exploitation, it cannot be done without the approval of the ejidal assembly of the place where the concessions are located, approving the use of the land and the right of way.
“Extraction must be approved with the ejido, the federal government must approve the use of explosives needed to open the mines, there must be environmental studies and permits from the authorities in the area to reduce the impact of this type of activity,” he explained.
The conditions of insecurity in the region make it impossible to carry out this whole process, because there are even ejidos whose population has been displaced.
Castro concluded that, as has happened in other states in the country, everything seems to indicate that organized crime groups are participating in the illegal extraction of minerals, as part of the diversification of the illicit businesses they profit from. The question now, he says, is to see who the buyers of this resource are.
“We pray to God there won’t be a disaster”
During the inauguration of the “La Concordia Bridge”, the Mexican President announced that before the end of his six-year term, in September, the circuit to communicate the regions – highlands/border and central – will be completed when the construction of the Rizo de Oro Bridge, which is only 15 kilometers away, is finished.
According to the president, these two bridges will shorten the distance and time now spent in communicating these regions.
In addition to the bridges, 127 kilometers of highway were also rehabilitated to connect La Concordia with the state capital, Tuxtla Gutiérrez. On this highway there are signs announcing the names of the municipalities, several of which are pierced by shots fired from large caliber weapons, a sign of the violence and confrontations that are taking place in the region.
“On the one hand, it is good that the bridge is there, but we pray to God that there is no disaster,” said one of the inhabitants of the area. “What we ask (the president) is that he does things right, I don’t know if he is going to put up a guardhouse (at the entrances to the bridge). It would be good if he would put up a guardhouse, in a way that would make our town safer. If it is clear (the passage) there will be more insecurity,” he lamented.
Original text and photos by Ángeles Máriscal published on August 6th, 2024.
Translated by Schools for Chiapas.