Shadows and Lights
Morelos Integral Project
A smoking metal giant rises above the sorghum and corn fields of Huexca, Morelos. From the top of a hill, land rights activist Teresa Castellanos watches it in the distance. It is the thermoelectric power plant, the flagship project of the Morelos Integral Project (PIM), which she and her community rose up against in 2012.
Teresa, a member of the People’s Front in Defense of Land and Water in Morelos, Puebla, and Tlaxcala (FPDTA-MPT), explains that the white clouds emanating from the chimneys of the Centro Combined Cycle Power Plant are not seen every day. The residents of Huexca also do not hear the deafening noise—capable of exceeding 107 decibels—produced by the turbines on a daily basis, which leads them to believe that, contrary to the official version of the Federal Electricity Commission (CFE), the thermoelectric plant is not yet operational.
“The project they had promoted to be operational in 2013 has not been able to function. It has been more than ten years of resistance against this project, and we see that the thermoelectric plant is still undergoing testing,“ says Castellanos, who was tortured during the repression in Huexca, has been threatened, and was awarded the 2019 ”Don Sergio Méndez Arceo“ National Human Rights Prize for ”defending the rights of her community.”
For the defender, the existence of only one thermoelectric power plant “that works at half capacity,” rather than two, as was the original plan, is one of the victories in this struggle that cost her compañero Samir Flores his life. His murder, perpetrated on February 20, 2019, and which remains unpunished, marked a turning point among the communities defending these territories.
Seven years after the government of Andrés Manuel López Obrador decided to go back on its campaign promise that the PIM would not be implemented and announced that it would go ahead despite opposition from the people, the defenders of the territory warn that during this period violence in Morelos has increased more than they had imagined. Nevertheless, the struggle to defend water has also grown stronger, and new organizations have been created to protect the land and natural resources in the region.
IN THE STRUGGLE FOR LIFE, THERE IS NO WINNING OR LOSING, YOU JUST KEEP FIGHTING.
The opposition that indigenous peoples’ organizations have mounted for more than a decade to the construction of the thermoelectric plant, aqueduct, and gas pipeline contemplated in the Morelos Integral Project (which began during the six-year term of Felipe Calderón Hinojosa of the National Action Party, was built during that of Enrique Peña Nieto of the Institutional Revolutionary Party, was launched in stages during the Morena administration of Andrés Manuel López Obrador, and continues under the current administration of Claudia Sheinbaum) has been met with “violence from political and economic powers,” warn advocates. The PIM is, in the words of Juan Carlos Flores, legal representative of the FPDTA-MPT, “a megaproject that was imposed by force by the army, the federal police, the state police, and the municipal police who accompanied the companies that installed it, violating suspensions obtained through injunctions.” They acted, the lawyer continues, “with large military and public forces, with arrest warrants, prosecution, torture, and the murder of Samir.”
The “bloody consultation,” as Flores calls the exercise promoted by López Obrador to decide on the continuation of the PIM, “was followed by repression.” While the communities maintained an open challenge against the consultation—which continues today—and despite the fact that the project was suspended due to injunctions won by the communities, on November 23, 2020, the National Guard evicted the Zapatista Camp in Defense of Water from the Cuautla River. By standing on both sides of the river in San Pedro Apatlaco, the communities delayed the final stage of construction of the aqueduct that would feed the thermoelectric plant’s cooling system for more than four years, preventing it from taking 560 liters of water per second.
The then Secretary of the Interior, Olga Sánchez Cordero, stated at the time that the project would not affect the water supply of the ejidos and that the CFE had authorization from the National Water Commission (Conagua) to complete it, while former President López Obrador stated: “We consider that everything has been resolved, that there is no longer a legal problem, all the appeals have been resolved.”
“A vile lie,” says Juan Carlos Flores, who explains that the works of the Morelos Integral Project were completed, even though the litigation has not been concluded. As of September 2025, twelve appeals filed by the communities against the PIM remained active: three are under review and nine continue with the process open. However, for the FPDTA-MPT lawyer, rejection is the likely outcome of these lawsuits, as Sánchez Cordero promoted that all appeals be concentrated in a single court and resolved in a single tribunal, which Flores called “a sentencing.”
Days after the eviction of the PIM aqueduct encampment, the missing 100 meters of piping were completed and the start of operations at the Huexca thermoelectric plant was announced. In response, the People’s Front brought the case before the Inter-American Commission on Human Rights, which, in November 2020, requested information from the Mexican government on the legal proceedings and protective measures taken to safeguard the lives of activists opposed to the PIM. In February 2025, the IACHR processed this complaint and the Mexican government must issue a response by the end of this year.
WITHOUT WATER AND WITH VIOLENCE
After the encampment was broken up, the communal land owners moved to the offices of the General Eufemio Zapata Salazar Cuautla River Users Association (Asurco), an organization that brings together more than 5,000 people who depend on the Cuautla River for their livelihood and from where, at least one sector, has fought to defend it.
Interviewed at the springs that feed the Cuautla River, from which they obtain water for the production of the vegetables they sell, farmers in Ayala point out that “consciences were bought” so that some would abandon the defense. In September 2020, Asurco signed an agreement with the CFE authorizing the transfer of water from the Cuautla River treatment plant to the Huexca thermoelectric plant. This agreement, in addition to not being consulted upon with the users of the river, violated statute number 20 of the association, as Rogelio Plascencia Barreto, then president of Asurco, also served as councilor of the municipality of Ayala for the Party of the Democratic Revolution (PRD).
“Only the leadership and delegates signed, when we, the users, are the legitimate owners of the water,” denounce peasant defenders of the territory, who asked Desinformémonos to protect their identity due to the climate of insecurity and repression in the state. They assert that another key element in the imposition of the Morelos Integral Project was the advancement of organized crime groups into their territories. “We are going through critical times of insecurity,” they lament.
The fear of insecurity felt by ejido members is shared by 90.1 percent of the population of Morelos, as indicated by the Mexico Peace Index 2025, compiled by the Institute for Economics and Peace (IEP), whose report ranks the state as the worst in terms of perceived security levels.
IEP data ranks Cuautla as the municipality with the sixth highest homicide rate nationwide, with 167 cases recorded in 2024, and Cuernavaca ranks thirteenth. In addition, the National Search Commission has recorded more than 6,000 missing persons in the state since 2010, with these two metropolitan municipalities accounting for the highest number of reports, according to the head of the Morelos Missing Persons Search Commission, Óscar Valdepeña. These data, among others, corroborate the statements of Jaime Domínguez, a defender of the territory and also a member of the FPDTA in Jantetelco, Morelos, who warns that “on the one hand, there is an increase in crime, but on the other hand, there is an increase in patrols by the armed forces.” For Domínguez, the increase in criminal violence has been exacerbated “by the growing presence of armed forces, which for years have been patrolling the urban avenues and rural roads of Morelos, instilling fear in communities in the face of constant clashes and executions that are reported daily in the local press.”
Now, he says, “the attack is not only against those of us who are defending the territory, human rights, water, and land, but it is widespread. Throughout the state of Morelos, especially in Cuautla, people are afraid because there are attacks at two or three in the afternoon, there are executions everywhere, and at night there are shootings. This war being waged by criminal groups, with the support of the authorities, is not just against us,” insists Domínguez, a defender who was persecuted and tortured in the context of his struggle against the PIM.
The arms of this widespread violence also reached the members of Asurco in February 2022. Francisco Vázquez, a member of the Association’s Oversight Committee, was working in the fields in the municipality of Ayala when he was killed by a group of armed men.
In 2024, another armed group opened fire on the home of Antonio Domínguez Aragón, president of Asurco, who resigned from his position after the attack. Carolina Plascencia took over as interim president of the association until she was ambushed and killed on September 12 of this year on a road in Cuautla.
“She was recovering part of what had been taken from us, and we don’t know why they had to do this to her. Who did she affect? Who did she harm to have her family’s lives and her future plans taken away from her?” her fellow activists ask, speaking anonymously.
This violence is what prevents those interviewed on the riverbank from giving their names and showing their faces. The day before he was murdered, Francisco Vázquez blamed Rogelio Plascencia for anything that might happen to him. For her part, Carolina Plascencia had fallen out with Rogelio after refusing to include him on her ticket to run in the upcoming elections for the presidency of Asurco, according to a statement issued by the FPDTA-MPT after Carolina’s death, in which the organization denounced that her murder “is part of the dispute over water.”
The Front warns that it is due to the violence of organized crime and the state that the Morelos Integral Project has moved forward, as “a narco-state has been consolidated in the state, which, in fact, has served as an instrument of terror that allows for the imposition of the thermoelectric plant, the gas pipeline, and the aqueduct.”
THE CHOLUTECA RESISTANCE
Dry tejocote trees reflected in a mirror of toxic water. This is the landscape resulting from the “uncontrolled urbanization” that Alejandro Torres Chocolatl, a member of the FPDTA-MPT, warned Desinformémonos about seven years ago. And today it has been confirmed.
“As a result of the Morelos Integral Project, after the construction of the gas pipeline, more industrial parks came to settle here,” says Alejandro as he observes the poisonous puddle left by the discharge of liquids from the Ciudad Textil Industrial Park, whose 90 hectares, located in front of the customs office at the Puebla International Airport, are home to companies dedicated to the manufacture of clothing and automotive parts.
The companies, which benefit from the natural gas that travels through pipes under the crops of the inhabitants of Zacatepec and other localities in the area, have polluted these fields since their arrival in 2019, when the state government allowed them to operate despite not having a wastewater treatment plan. Faced with this situation, the assemblies of the communities of the municipality of Juan C. Bonilla demanded that the authorities stop the contamination of their territories.
The response of the Puebla government was the Integrated Project for the Construction of the Sanitary and Stormwater Sewer System for the Industrial Zone of Huejotzingo and Cholula, which sought to discharge the companies’ liquid waste into the Metlapanapa River. Far from seeing their problem solved, the communities, which had previously fought against the PIM gas pipeline, were once again forced to take up a new struggle, this time in defense of their river water. The people stopped the work despite repression by the state police and the National Guard on October 30, 2019. This was followed by the advance of industrialization, which was imposed through the criminalization of defenders of the territory.
In early 2020, the arrest of Miguel López Vega, a member of the Frente de Pueblos, escalated tensions surrounding the conflict nationwide during the six days he spent in prison. One day after Miguel’s release, the facility through which the toxins were being discharged into the river was shut down, and the legal proceedings that halted its operation are currently ongoing.
Prevented from discharging waste into the river, the companies opted to dump it on land adjacent to their industrial facilities, causing great concern among local community residents not only because of the loss of crops due to soil contamination, but also because of the possible infiltration of heavy metals into the aquifers that supply the wells from which they traditionally obtain their drinking water.
These wells also faced a threat from the Bonafont bottling plant, which for almost 30 years extracted more than 1.6 million liters of water every day, until the 20 United Peoples of the Cholulteca and Volcanoes Region shut it down in March 2021.
Shortly thereafter, on May 29 of that year, the earth proved them right: a sinkhole more than 100 meters in diameter opened up and swallowed a house in Santa María Zacatepec, very close to the gas pipeline route implemented by the Morelos Integral Project, reigniting concerns about the danger posed by this “time bomb.” The Cholulteca peoples, who had organized against large-scale water extraction in their region, obtained irrefutable proof of what they had denounced, as the overexploitation of the water table is now the possible cause, certified by the scientific community, of the enormous sinkhole.
On March 22, 2021, World Water Day, the Cholulteca community chose not only to keep the plant closed and prevent access to it, but also to occupy it. They shut off the water supply and the site was transformed into the Casa de los Pueblos Altepelmecalli, a space dedicated to community life until the early hours of February 15, 2022, when it was evicted by riot police and members of the National Guard.
For the communities, the victory was clear: the bottling plant never reopened. Although the site was used by Bonafont for a time as a distribution center, it is currently closed and in a state of neglect. Defenders of Zacatepec claim that it is in the process of being dismantled and that their traditional wells have returned to their previous levels. Bonafont left, and they got their water back.
“We continue to fight, we continue to resist, not only against the Morelos Integral Project, but against all attacks that occur in our states, in our communities, and against our territory,” affirms Juan Carlos Flores, from the encampment outside the municipal landfill in San Pedro Cholula, which was closed by the same communities on August 21, 2024.
Flores explains that, “despite persecution and repression,” the people’s struggle against megaprojects has grown stronger, and this encampment is proof of that: “Many people who fought against the Morelos Integral Project are now fighting against this landfill, and there are also many new people.”
With the closure of the “mountain of death,” as those who oppose the operation of this open-air mega-landfill have named it, the new generation of defenders of the territory is promoting the creation of a forest that can counteract the enormous environmental deterioration in the land surrounding the landfill. And although the devastation seems irreparable, the actions of the defenders echo the words of lawyer and activist Juan Carlos Flores: “In the struggle for life, there are no winners or losers, you just keep fighting.”
Now, Miguel López Vega concludes, “if there is a well that is harming us, we plug it. If there is a garbage dump that is affecting us, we close it. If there is an industrial corridor that is affecting us, we tell them that they cannot dump their toxic waste into our river, we go and block it.” In the courtyard of his house, a portrait of Emiliano Zapata is painted on one of the walls. Standing in front of it, this well digger asserts, “The only hope we have is from below and to the left. The only hope there is, is what we are doing.”
Investigation and Reporting by Axel Hernández
Photos by Axel Hernández
Antes de que Anochezca, Desinformémonos, October 2025.
Translation by Schools for Chiapas.