“The misnamed Highway of Cultures is an extractive project built on the interests of the most powerful. The poor will become poorer and the rich richer,” stated Pascuala Vázquez Aguilar, of the Movement in Defense of Life and Territory (MODEVITE), during the discussion “Yes to Life, No to the Dispossession of Our Territory! The Case of the San Cristóbal de Las Casas-Palenque Superhighway,” held on February 28th in San Cristóbal de Las Casas.
“We know that behind the facade of tourism lies the dispossession of our territory, which is not only our plot of land, but also the way we live,” added the Tseltal activist in response to the claims of Governor Eduardo Ramírez Aguilar, who asserts that the communities will be partners in the highway project and will manage gas stations, restaurants, and shops, in addition to benefiting from the arrival of tourists.
The project to build a highway between San Cristóbal de Las Casas and Palenque was first launched in 2009, but despite the insistence of government officials, it was never implemented due to community opposition. What the “neoliberal governments” could not achieve, Morena accomplished: in December 2019, the Chiapas Congress approved the project with an even longer extension, from Palenque to Pijijiapan, on the Chiapas coast, and with an eighteen-kilometer branch connecting to the city of Ocosingo.
Construction on the first section, which runs from Palenque to the municipality of Chilón, began illegally, as the groundbreaking ceremony was held in June 2025, but the Environmental Impact Statement (EIS) was not approved until October.
MODEVITE denounces that the government is imposing this infrastructure project through harassment, conditioning the delivery of social programs like Sembrando Vida (Sowing Life), threatening to deploy the elite State Police unit known as the Pakal Immediate Reaction Force (FRIP), and various other forms of manipulation. The organization, which has a presence in thirteen municipalities in Chiapas, cites as an example the case of an ejido (communal land) where the ejido commissioner requested signatures on blank sheets of paper, which subsequently turned out to be documents authorizing the construction of the highway.
According to the Fray Bartolomé de Las Casas Human Rights Center (Frayba), also present at the discussion, these same imposition strategies are being used with the Maya Train and the Interoceanic Corridor of the Isthmus of Tehuantepec. The Economic and Social Development of Indigenous Mexicans (DESMI) has also pointed out other similarities with these megaprojects: the long-term land speculation that the project will bring, the environmental impacts, and an Environmental Impact Assessment (EIA) done piecemeal, which fails to understand the cumulative impacts of the new highway.
“There are flaws in the EIA that cast doubt on its validity,” stated a researcher from the Center for Mexican and Central American Studies (CEMCA) during the discussion. He denounced that the highway will act as a barrier for species, causing habitat fragmentation. Furthermore, its route passes near or even over some springs and alters water drainage, potentially causing floods or droughts.
The speakers, who participated in a documentation caravan in the territories affected by the project in northern Chiapas, also denounced that the information the government shared with the communities has been biased, that the consultation did not involve them, that engineers are working on their plots without permission, and that the megaproject is causing community division and an increase in the military presence in the region.
Original text and photo by Orsetta Bellani, Desinformémonos, March 2nd, 2026.
Translated by Schools for Chiapas.