The Other Face
Interoceanic Corridor
Surrounded by bodies of water such as the sea, Laguna Pato, and other artificial wetlands, as well as lush vegetation where you can see and hear calandrias, sparrows, parrots, woodpeckers, herons, and other birds that fill the landscape, the Cuauhtémoc neighborhood is going to disappear. Little by little, the sea has devoured this Ikoots community thanks to the breakwater built in the port of Salina Cruz, which is part of the Interoceanic Corridor of the Isthmus of Tehuantepec (CIIT) megaproject.
Although there had been human settlements in this place, formerly called Laguna Pato, since 1920, its official founding as the Cuauhtémoc settlement was not recognized until 1960, after a community assembly decided to name it in memory of the last Mexica tlatoani. Roberto Pinzón Undaz, 93 years old and considered natantiül cambaj (“the last elder”) of the community, recounts how today the nearly 1,000 residents, including women, men, and children, are resisting displacement by a new breakwater built with the aim of turning Salina Cruz into the most important commercial oil port on the Mexican Pacific coast.
The visual impairment Roberto has lived with for four years does not cloud his memory. He talks about what this place was like before one of its three avenues, Cristóbal Colón, was consumed by the sea. “Right now we are suffering because the sea is getting closer and closer, but it wasn’t like that before,” he says.
The old Ikoots recalls: “Before, everything was peaceful. We could fish for shrimp, sea bass, and catfish in the lagoons, and we even saw lizards in the branches of the mangroves in Laguna Pato. There were also mudubinas, white, fragrant flowers. We saw all of that. The sea was far away, but suddenly everything changed.”
Sitting in the middle of the courtyard of his palm house under a cherry tree, whose branches protect him from the sun, Roberto says that before, La Ventosa hill, now Faro de Cortés, could be reached on foot in just 20 minutes, “and that’s where the sea ended, meaning it didn’t advance toward the community.”
The first change they noticed in their sea, the first time they saw how it advanced and devoured the first houses, was with the construction of the Salinas del Marqués jetties in the 1970s. But the most recent change was four years ago, when construction began on the breakwater located 40 kilometers from this community, as part of the Interoceanic Corridor of the Isthmus of Tehuantepec (CIIT), one of the flagship projects of the government of Andrés Manuel López Obrador that his successor, Claudia Sheinbaum, pledged to complete. This is how the sea has come closer and the devastation has accelerated.
“Everything was peaceful here. I am a farmer, I arrived when I was very young and explored this place with my parents. Now they tell me that people have moved elsewhere because the sea is advancing rapidly,“ says Roberto, who lives with his wife and children. As the ”last elder” of the community, he represents a living encyclopedia for its inhabitants, a way of keeping alive the roots of those who founded the place from which they are now being displaced.
A SEA THAT DEMANDS RESPECT
It is midday and the heat is intense in this place. The temperature is 40 degrees Celsius. Guadalupe Quintanar lives a few steps away from the main church. She is no longer concerned about her future, but rather the present, because the sea has spread more than a kilometer and she fears it will reach her home and devour it, as it has done with some 50 homes, a school, and the lagoons where they used to catch fish, shrimp, and crabs for their survival.
Dressed in her cotton huipil and semicircular petticoat that distinguishes Ikoots women, Doña Lupe, as she is known in the community, has never seen or been close to the breakwater—but she suffers its ravages.
“I feel that the sea is getting closer and closer to us, and of course we are afraid, because we were born here, we grew up here, we have built a community here. They tell us to go somewhere else, but we don’t have the money to buy land; we live from day to day. I make tortillas, I’m a housewife and I raise my children, so it’s not easy to start a new life,” says Doña Lupe. Like her, there are other women who, in addition to working at home, make corn chips, herd their sheep, or collect firewood for most of the morning, while the men go fishing and also work as farmers. For them, the sea is their everything.
“No one consulted us or informed us that we would live in fear that our town would disappear. The authorities don’t talk about that, they only talk about how wonderful their projects are, according to them, but we as a town don’t benefit from anything,” she adds.
Doña Lupe, a woman with cinnamon-colored skin and dark hair, shows the damage caused by strong waves and storm surges. She walks and remembers her time in elementary school, which has also been swallowed up by the sea.
“‘The sea never wants to hurt us,’ my grandfather Fernando used to tell us, and that wisdom is what I keep in mind. The sea provides food and materials to the Ikoots people, but this breakwater project has affected us because the swells are higher, the waves are stronger, and they are taking away part of our history. This affects our community life, the life of a people,” she says.
Officially, the objective of the Tehuantepec Isthmus Development Program contained in the 2019-2024 National Development Plan is “to promote regional economic growth with full respect for the history, culture, and traditions of the Isthmus of Oaxaca and Veracruz. Its focus will be the Interoceanic Multimodal Corridor, which will take advantage of the Isthmus’s position to compete in global freight markets through the combined use of various means of transport.” The modernization of the Tehuantepec Isthmus railway and the ports of Coatzacoalcos and Salina Cruz is only part of the new Interoceanic Corridor. And the breakwater, they claim, could cause an Ikoots community to “disappear.”
ITS NOT WHAT WE DESERVE
With a painting on canvas, like an ancient codex, community police officer Gabriel Pinzón Leyva explains in detail how the sea has swallowed up his community, displacing some 300 people so far. He asked his brother Pinzón, a visual artist in the community, to make a drawing for him to commemorate the year 1970, when he was eight years old, with the sole intention of showing how community life has disappeared with the arrival of the megaproject.
Pinzón explains that recreating the old landscapes “where everything was alive” is a way of denouncing and telling the authorities that projects such as the breakwater—inaugurated in February 2024, with a length of 1,600 meters and a depth of 25 meters—“affects the community life of an entire town in a strip of more than a kilometer, and destroys economic, social, and family life.”
“No one consulted us about the social, environmental, and economic impacts of a breakwater, or of the project called the Interoceanic Corridor. Now the sea wants to swallow us up because this construction has altered the tide and created more waves for the community, creating internal eddies that are eating away at the beach as they pass. That’s what we believe is happening,” he says.
Facing the Pacific Ocean where the waves crash hard, as if they were angry, Gabriel recalls that there used to be white and red mangroves all along the shore, as well as a lagoon where people used to fish. The sea was calm and enjoyable, unlike now, when it is rebellious and wants to devour everything in its path.
He agrees with “the last elder” that the acceleration of the waves began with the construction of the jetties, but, he says, it grew twice as fast with the breakwater, whose maritime infrastructure project benefits the Interoceanic Corridor. The aim is for the port to become a world-class logistics alternative for interoceanic transportation.
The port structures are composed of millions of tons of rock over a length of 1,600 meters and a depth of 25 meters. These are facts that the community does not necessarily know, but whose effects it feels. “When there is a swell, almost the entire town is flooded, and when there are storms, too, because the neighborhoods are flooded. The same thing happens when they release water from the Benito Juárez dam, over in Jalapa del Marqués, because we’re left like ducks in the middle of the water,“ explains Gabriel Pinzón, warning that ”that’s why it’s urgent to leave here, but to do so with a safe place for our families.“ He clarifies, however, that relocation is not the best option, ”because it’s not what we deserve as a community.”
Pinzón explains that the land use study has already been carried out. In 2023, he says, federal government officials made their first visit to assess the advance of the sea toward the community. Two years later, in May 2025, they determined that the relocation would be in polygon 3, near Cerro Paloma, but “the issue is still in process.”
Those who live in the Cuauhtémoc neighborhood do not have medical services at the health center, as it is empty, with no doctors or medicines. In cases of emergency, they have to travel to the port of Salina Cruz, 20 minutes away, and find a private clinic or, if they are beneficiaries, the IMSS (Mexican Social Security Institute) or ISSSTE (Institute for Social Security and Services for State Workers), which means taking a motorcycle taxi and a passenger van, at a cost of approximately 200 pesos per person for transportation, plus medical expenses.
In terms of education, the community only offers basic schooling, which is why most young people move to Salina Cruz to continue their studies or marry at a very young age. There are only two remaining avenues and their streets are unpaved, and the only basic service available is drinking water. Community decisions are made in assembly, which is the highest authority.
MY HOME WAS ON THOSE LITTLE HILLS
So as not to forget his roots, Arturo Navarrete walks along the beach. He left the Cuauhtémoc neighborhood 20 years ago. Overcome with nostalgia, he traces the outline of his former home in the sand with his fingers, before it was swallowed up by the sea.
“The breakwater extension project diverted the sea current and aggravated the tides, extending the beach by three kilometers. Look, my house used to be on those hills, and now everything is covered with water,” he adds.
The houses of Domingo Mora and Genaro Blas no longer exist, nor does the Timiti’u’d water channel, as it is called in their Ikoots language, which runs to the municipal capital of San Mateo and borders the Quirio lagoon. Everything was washed away by the tide.
In his reunion with the sea, Arturo admits that it is impossible not to long for his childhood and youth, and he regrets that his childhood friends also live like him, displaced. Between lamentations and sighs, he admits that, despite everything, he has not lost hope. Today, he says, the sea is accelerating, “it is a wise living being that deserves respect, because it has given us everything.”
Research and reporting by Diana Manzo.
Photos were community produced with support by Tirso Navarrete.
Video direction by Diana Manzo.
Antes de que Anochezca, Desinformémonos, October 2025.
Translation by Schools for Chiapas.