The distance between Lázaro Cárdenas and Manzanillo, both on the Pacific Ocean, is 541 kilometers. These are the two most important Mexican ports. Both play a key role in the transit of goods in the region (and the world). Imports from Asia arrive there. Exports destined for the west coast of the United States leave from there. From Manzanillo, for example, beer, sugar, copper, steel pipes, coal and resin are exported.
The port of Lázaro Cárdenas can receive ships of large dimensions, draft and all types of cargo, including vessels of up to 170,000 tons capacity. It is 18 meters deep. It is also the end point of the Salamanca-Lázaro Cárdenas oil pipeline, with a diameter of 36 inches.
In 2023, the Canadian Pacific and Kansas City Southern railroads merged into a single company: CPKC. They thus founded the only railroad that connects Canada, the United States and Mexico. A key rail freight corridor was established connecting Lazaro Cardenas and the Gulf of Mexico, and a privileged trade point with China. This multimodal rail corridor has 15 intermodal terminals.
It is not difficult to imagine the interests that seek to appropriate the tracks that connect the two ports. The aim, of course, is to control the rich natural resources along those 541 kilometers, the paradisiacal beaches and ecosystems nestled along this route and the routes for drug trafficking. But it is also about controlling a space that serves as a natural backwater and growth area for these two major development poles.
Organized crime, mining companies, real estate companies and tourism developers (often mixed together) are trying to take over these lands at any cost. The cartels have in the two ports their supply point for the precursors that come from the east and are needed to manufacture chemical drugs, which are then transported to the United States.
The massive container traffic that leaves from there and crosses the border is one of the ways they use to move their merchandise. It is also the way to move other products in which the criminal and formal economies are mixed (from smuggling tires and selling iron to China, to “brand-name” clothing labeled in maquiladoras in the Bajío).
On the road between these two ports, in Aquila, Michoacán, sits the Nahua indigenous community of Santa María Ostula. Together with the other three Nahua communities in the municipality (Pómaro, El Coire and San Miguel Aquila), they own more than 200,000 hectares under the communal system. They border the Pacific Ocean for 100 kilometers.
The beautiful beaches located on its lands are very well preserved.
The communal lands of Ostula, protected by original titles, are coveted by drug traffickers, mining companies, politicians and real estate companies. By all means, legal and illegal, they have tried to deprive the community members of their possession. To defend them, the peasants have paid a high cost. Since July 26, 2008, 40 community members have been murdered and six have disappeared, including several of their most important leaders.
The first victim was Professor Diego Ramírez, coordinator of the Commission for the Defense of Communal Lands. His dismembered body was dumped on the beach of Xayakalan. The murderers were never arrested.
Another of those killed was Pedro Leyva Martínez. In September 2011, in the third edition of the Andean-Mesoamerican Conference, he spoke.
He explained: “How our blood boils when we look at so much plunder, and how necessary it is to say ‘enough! to the trembling that is in one’s heart. For us the war is not yet over. We are still fighting those who have trampled us underfoot. We have not let go of the rifle, we still carry it in our hands. We are still fighting, we are still defending ourselves.” On October 6, shortly after explaining the history of his struggle in Mexico City, he was assassinated in the vicinity of the recovered territory of Xayakalan.
For the time being, a strip of more than a thousand hectares of communal lands located next to the Pacific that Santa María Ostula recovered in 2009 is in dispute. It is a struggle that began when in 1964, after their ancestral lands were recognized by a presidential resolution, technical flaws in the plans allowed the small landowners of La Placita to invade the communal territory and divide it. These invaders became members or allies of organized crime in the region: the Familia Michoacana y Los Caballeros Templarios (the Michoacan family and the Knights Templar).
The community continues to be harassed, both with weapons and through legal means. Just on July 3, the Jalisco Cartel – New Generation (CJNG) attacked the town of La Cofradía de Ostula, with drones, explosives and high caliber weapons (https://shorturl.at/GPJyK).
With rigged courts, the supposed small landowners of La Placita, linked to the bad guys, managed to get the Unitary Agrarian Court District 38, within trial 78/2004, to rule in their favor, granting them land which has been in the immemorial possession of the community. This procedure was plagued with irregularities. Some time later, the Superior Agrarian Court confirmed the ruling.
This August, the Second Collegiate Tribunal in Administrative and Labor Matters of the Eleventh Circuit (Morelia, Michoacán), will resolve the direct amparo lawsuit 463/2023, through which the indigenous community of Santa María Ostula, municipality of Aquila, Michoacán, is challenging this resolution.
Zero Hour is approaching for the indigenous community of Santa María Ostula. A terrible injustice may be committed against them. It must be prevented.
Original article by Luis Hernández Navarro published in La Jornada on August 6th, 2024.
Translation by Schools for Chiapas.