“The mind is bewildered with the difficulty of embracing in one comprehensive view the astonishing consequences that would result from a communication between the two oceans, by means of which ships sailing from Europe will save two thousand leagues, and those from North America three thousand one hundred leagues 

, in their voyage to the coasts on China. What an economy of time and money!”

, by José de Garay & Cayetano Moro, 1843

So enchanted by the possibility of bridging the Atlantic and Pacific oceans was José de Garay that he wrote a letter to President Santa Anna proposing to self-finance a survey of the route across the Isthmus of Tehuantepec plus construction of a railroad in exchange for 75 percent of profits over the next 30 years. He envisioned a free trade zone spanning the isthmus, where industrial development would flourish and mining concessions would be open to foreign investors. Where goods originating from England, Brazil, the Philippines and China could be transported across the continent in a single day.

“A great revolution will take place in the commercial and even in the political affairs of all nations the instant America shall open the passage through any of her isthmuses,” writes Garay, noting the enormous economic advantages the project could yield for the newly independent Mexican Republic. But he is also careful to play to the vanity of his audience. “The epoch which shall see this effected will be more memorable than that of the discovery of this continent, and the name of him to whom the world shall owe this event will be at least as glorious as that of Columbus.”

Although Garay’s proposal was signed and ratified by agents of the Mexican and U.S. governments, lingering tensions from the annexation of Texas boiled over and led to the Mexican-American War, dooming the Garay route to failure. A series of subsequent attempts were undertaken over the next forty years, but they managed only to complete segments of the railway. Little more than a decade after the last railroad tie was driven into the ground, the Tehuantepec railway was rendered obsolete by the completion of the Panama Canal, which transformed global shipping and international commerce, as Garay had envisioned.

On a calm evening ruptured by a symphony of cicadas, the candle-lit silhouette of Hernán Cortés hunched over his desk comes into view. The year is 1524 and the conquering marquis is drafting his fourth letter to 24-year-old Charles V, Holy Roman Emperor and King of Spain. Cortés writes in panegyrical prose, befitting his station as a subject of the Crown. But despite his deference, it is clear that he too considers himself a living god.

Several years have passed since he led six hundred Spaniards and a legion of indigenous allies to Tenochtitlán and subjugated the Triple Alliance. His obsession for glory, though, remains unquenched. Cortés' letter to Charles V lays bare the conquistador's fanatical desire to continue surveying the coasts of the American continent in search of a strait that will link the Atlantic and Pacific oceans and facilitate commerce between Spain and the East Indies.

"If the strait is found,” he writes, “I shall hold it to be the greatest service I have yet rendered. It would make the King of Spain master of so many lands that he might call himself the lord of the whole world.”

Like Garay more than three hundred years later, Cortés offers to personally finance the expedition in the name of Charles V. He informs the Emperor that he has already ordered the construction of four ships and instructed their captains to “continue their exploration of the [South American] coast as far as the land discovered by Magellan, whilst those to the North will pursue their route as far as the (phantom island of) Bacallaos.”

In the end, Cortés’ incurable fever dream to discover the mythical Strait of Anián, believed by some to connect the Sea of Cortez with the Gulf of Saint Lawrence, evaporates when news arrives that Francisco de Ulloa’s ship has been lost, likely thrashed against the Pacific coast off Baja California.

Not a century passes without renewed efforts to locate a transoceanic passage or an effective overland route. In the late 17th century, Willam Dampier, an English pirate and the only person to circumnavigate the globe three times, proposes a route from the Coatzacoalcos River on the Gulf of Mexico to the Tehuantepec River on the Pacific coast via a low-lying mountain pass on the border of Veracruz and Oaxaca. His proposal is noteworthy in that it is almost identical to the route of the 21st century 

In 1774, military engineer and brigadier general Don Agustín Crame offers a revised plan in which he recommends damming the Almoloya and Citune rivers and joining the reservoirs via canal near a highland pass in the Sierra Madre. After crossing the mountains, he writes, the route will encounter “no further difficulties, because it is one perfect plain as far as Tehuantepec.”

By the mid-19th century, industrialization has produced advancements in technology and engineering that were previously unimaginable. José de Garay is a man of these times, and his interest in the Isthmus of Tehuantepec is shared by industrialists and empire-builders across Europe and the United States. Garay's plan is ultimately undermined by a failure of diplomacy. Those who chase his dream succumb to staggering costs, limitations in engineering and the rugged terrain. When the railway is finally completed in 1894, the achievement is celebrated with a headline in 

The Tehuantepec Railroad: An Important Mexican Enterprise Completed. A Line 130 Miles Long Connecting the Atlantic and Pacific Oceans -- Of Advantage to This Country."

In September 2018, Mexican President López Obrador visited Juchitán, Oaxaca to announce a plan to modernize the crumbling Tehuantepec Railroad, pledging to allocate 1.1 billion pesos (US$58.5 million) from the 2019 budget to fund the project. The railway, which will link Coatzacoalcos on the Gulf of Mexico with Salina Cruz on the Pacific coast, is intended to be operational by 2021. Despite the commercial benefits that have been touted by López Obrador’s government, his announcement has been widely received with skepticism and condemnation.

Community resistance and violent reprisals have done little to convince the government of López Obrador that the 

 project should be reimagined or that local interests should be taken into account. Gustavo Esteva, the founder of Unitierra, and a collective of community organizers are responding by publishing a document entitled 

 ("The Isthmus We Want") that they intend to send to the President's office in the Spring of 2021. The result of years-long surveys, 

 will offer the most comprehensive account of the objections and alternatives expressed by communities that will be directly impacted by the various

Repairs are already being made to the Tehuantepec Railroad and it seems likely that the dream shared by Cortés and de Garay will be realized in the years to come. What remains to be seen is how communities on the Isthmus of Tehuantepec will decide to negotiate their demands and what influence they will ultimately have in transforming the 21st century 

Oaxaca

A Brief History of the Transistmico

Seldom has an interview felt more insensitive than the afternoon we arrived at Lukas Avendaño’s family home. Lukas chose not to mention that he had postponed our interview the day before because he was returning home from Oaxaca City with his youngest brother Bruno’s remains, nor that our rescheduled meeting would overlap with his funeral.

When we arrived, Lukas was leaning against an old stone doorway that leads to the courtyard of his house in the village of Santa Teresa, Tehuantepec, Oaxaca. He was dressed immaculately in dark jeans and a pressed white, button-down shirt, his long jet-black hair wrapped up in a simple bun on top of his head. Flanked by two friends who stood motionless and protectively on either side of him, he waved listlessly in our direction and hesitated briefly before descending the stairs to embrace Damián and Roberto and usher us into a sun-blanched courtyard garden.

A few days before our first interview, Lukas had received a call confirming that Bruno’s remains had been discovered in a mass grave within the limits of Salina Cruz and Tehuantepec municipalities and verified through DNA testing. The confirmation of Lukas’ worst fears provided some degree of closure, but it did little to quell the thirty months of unrelenting terror that his family endured. How do you tell your mother that her baby boy has vanished? Is it any easier to tell her that he is gone forever? How do you mourn and accept the finality when so many questions have been left unanswered?

Bruno was last seen alive on the roadside near Villa de San Blas Atempa, just a few minutes’ drive from his mother’s home. A 34-year-old Naval policeman, Bruno was back home on vacation helping a man named Don Goyo load construction materials on the afternoon of May 10, 2018 when he vanished in an area called El Manguita. On a dusty roadside on the 

 highway, the trail of evidence began and ended like a snake that had swallowed its tail to silence the rattle.

Lukas spent nearly two and a half years of his life looking for his brother. His quest brought him to Tijuana, the epicentre of 

 (the disappeared) in Mexico, where at last count 

79,000 people have gone missing in recent years

. He partnered with international human rights organizations and publicly challenged the indolence and incompetence of federal investigators. He staged live street performances in Mexico City to raise awareness about Bruno’s disappearance and to amplify the voices of tens of thousands of families still searching for their loved ones. He leveraged his celebrity and mobility when performing abroad by inviting ambassadors and staff attached to Mexican diplomatic missions in an effort to enlist those in positions of power to support his cause.

Lukas is a trained anthropologist and an acclaimed performance artist whose work deconstructs conventional perceptions of gender, ethnicity, homosexuality, and migration. He is also 

, a term that is often distilled and overly-simplified to mean the “third gender” in Zapotec society. Lukas has explained that long before Bruno’s disappearance, his creative impulses drew from an ancient well of rejection, cultural ethnocide, and identitarian warfare: “The [social] disappearance is the prelude to the physical one; because, before you even disappear physically, you are already a missing person, a cultural missing person, an economic missing person, a disappeared worker.”

But no amount of wisdom, resolve, or grace could prepare Lukas for the loss of Bruno. His performances, which had been steeped in themes of 

 and self-realization, suddenly became an extension of Mexico’s national nightmare of 

. “After my brother disappeared, I no longer knew how to describe what I do,” he confesses. “I couldn’t talk about [gender, ethnicity, homosexuality, or migration] without discussing 

Sepulchral music reverberates from the inner chamber of the house where Lukas’ family has gathered for the funeral when three musicians Lukas has been expecting walk past the courtyard carrying their instruments. He greets them from the courtyard and directs them toward the living room that has been transformed into a funeral hall. Lukas is almost impossibly composed  and dignified given the circumstances. The only hints of his agony are the way he massages his temples to stop his hands from shaking…the word that briefly escapes him…the profound weariness in his eyes…

There are precious memories long-dried tears that you have interrupted. Much of Lukas' life the last two and half years has been interrupted. But he makes it clear that Bruno’s funeral is not where his crusade ends. “The next step is to discover 

 this happened to my brother,” he says, “and to search for justice.” 

Every year thousands of families across Mexico are initiated into an inglorious fellowship

Like Lukas, they have been stripped of their loved ones, stripped of their fear. They walk through the hell of hope and memory in search of their parents, their siblings and their children, all too aware that in Mexico 

Butterfly with Broken Wings


By Víctor Terán
(Translation by David Shook)


There is something in the afternoon’s finger,

that it is sometimes necessary to close their doors….

Nostalgic, intimate, confessional...the poems of Victor Terán lower the reader into a well of naked longing and contemplation, where scenes of gods and dogs, famine and lust, play out in something like a fevered dream. He allows his spiritual fire to burn on the page. And yet, Terán has the eyes of a teacher--authoritative, attentive and accessible--characteristics which he exhibits with ease. He has been called “the preeminent living poet of the Isthmus of Tehuantepec” and he wears gravitas well.

Terán briefly breaks from our conversation to read a poem from his 

 (Zapotec), but he hasn’t invited us to his home to discuss poetry. Settled in his wooden chair under the shade of an almond tree, he angles our discussion toward the wind farms and the fate of Juchitán. “My fear,” he says, “is that it will become another Tijuana.”

Terán shares widely-held concerns that the completion of the trans-isthmus railway corridor (

) and Juchitán’s impending designation as a Special Economic Zone will incentivize foreign-owned, tax-exempt 

 (factories) away from the US border and attract poor migrant laborers to his beloved city. His concerns aren’t without foundation or precedent. After initiating a program of industrialization, Tijuana’s population more than doubled between 1980 and 1985, transforming the coastal city into a major cross-border drug trafficking corridor and a flashpoint for cartel violence.

that you haven’t arrived at your appointment.

On this slow, sun-bleached afternoon, the predominantly 

(Zapotec) city seems a little rougher for wear perhaps, but not discernibly different than other towns on the isthmus. It’s a quiet, gridded city surrounded by communal farms and pastureland. An elderly gentleman comes to Terán’s gate to deliver eggs during our conversation, and they rattle on for a moment in 

But the truth is everyone in Juchitán is on edge, and the curtain drops at nightfall. Damián Lopez, a local musician and filmmaker, explains that methamphetamines—crystal, specifically—flooded the city six years ago. “Before long it wasn’t uncommon to see school-age kids smoking meth in the parks in broad daylight,” as street gangs began to lay claim to specific neighborhoods. (It bears noting that MS-13 and 18th Street tags are a recurring feature on the city walls of Juchitán, Salina Cruz and many of the smaller towns across the Isthmus.) “No one goes walking around at night anymore,” says Lopez. “You’re going to get robbed.”

It’s a particularly tragic fate for a city that was admired as one of Mexico’s cradles of contemporary arts not long ago. 

, the world-renowned painter Francisco Toledo, was born here and spent his later life building 

 and contributing to the city’s reputation as a cultural fountainhead. It was in the markets and plazas of Juchitán that Frida Kahlo became inspired by the “

” clothing, upon which she modeled her iconic style. Internationally-acclaimed photographer Graciela Iturbide spent much of the 1980s here at the invitation of Toledo, while working on 

an ethnographic photo essay that triggered a wave of feminism across Mexico. Victor Terán has credited his “

” to Macario Matus, the poet and local luminary who groomed a generation of Zapotec artists, writers, and musicians at 

As a nexus of revolutionary artists, it is perhaps unsurprising then that 

 have a notorious rebellious streak. Since expanding to the Isthmus of Tehuantepec from the Valley of Oaxaca around 1380, the Zapotec of Juchitán have resisted Aztec hegemony, repelled Spanish invaders, defeated French insurgents, and famously filled the ranks of Porforio Diaz’ army during the Mexican Revolution. Now five hundred years after the arrival of Hernán Cortés, Terán laments that 

 find themselves with little power to resist unwanted globalization on the isthmus. He worries that “

 culture may be extinct in fifty years.”

And yes, they arrived on huge ships, riding horses,

In the Zapotec kingdom there were wise men who dreamed.

They saw, clear as day, what soon would happen.

The dreams, they foretold, are waking realities.

And so they surrendered, handing over gold, land, and kingdom.

Dreams are real. The white men’s lie was real.

Now that we have awakened, we dream that truth is real.

Some years ago, while Terán was in the U.K. recording a selection of poems at the BBC studios, he spent a day touring the moors of Lancashire and came upon a grove of towering wind turbines rotating above the rolling countryside. He was awestruck by the bucolic scene, the subtle synergy between nature and industry. That day not only did he realize that wind farms and pastoralism 

 coexist, he had proof that the three thousand turbines encircling Juchitán in a dystopian future-scape were a tragic anomaly.

“The difference [between Lancashire and Oaxaca],” explains Teran, “is that the landowners on the Isthmus of Tehuantepec are not partners.” In the UK, for example, landowners can expect a 

—or around US$50,000 for a three megawatt turbine—on the annual turnover from wind farms. In the US, a single wind turbine lease can pay 

. In Oaxaca, mutually beneficial cooperation is virtually non-existent. Government oversight of land tenure is notoriously lax and prone to corruption, leaving rural farmers with little recourse to negotiate fair compensation for land leases. The situation is complicated by the fact that more than 

80 percent of Oaxaca belongs to communally-owned 

 are deceased. Although several hundred property disputes are still pending in courts, bloody conflicts between private landowners and 

 led to nearly 80 deaths and dozens of disappearances between 2017 and 2019.

compulsively licks her vulva, then wanders southward…

Seldom are property disputes decided in favor of collective landowners in the courts. However, in 2018, the 

 decided unanimously to grant an injunction (

 that halted the $1.2 billion Mitsubishi-backed 

 wind farm near Juchitán, citing that Zapotec community members have the “right to prior, free and informed consultation.” While the decision substantiated community claims of widespread misinformation and government coercion, it did little to alter the dynamics or the outcome.

The project was ultimately approved the following year. Covering more than 50 square kilometers, it will be 

 with a capacity to prevent 567,000 tons of carbon dioxide from being release into the atmosphere annually. The 

 though hailed as a significant step in Mexico’s plan to wean off fossil fuels, has been met with scorn in Juchitán, where 132 fifty-meter-tall wind turbines will soon flank the city to the east and west. Despite the scale and import of the project, Terán estimates that 

 who lease their land will only earn around “80,000 pesos (US$4,000) over twenty years.”

It is often argued that whether a landowner makes a poorly-informed decision to lease their property is immaterial—it was their right to decide, after all, irrespective of the consequences. In Juchitán, however, that logic constitutes a 

 in thatit fails to account for the practice of intimidation. Several sources we interviewed for these dispatches requested that we omit their names. Two have been threatened with violent retribution.

Conflicts over wind energy development on the Isthmus of Tehuantepec illustrate an increasingly common phenomenon known as “

”—the appropriation of land and resources for environmental ends. More worrying for 

” in which private (or state) security forces use counter-insurgency tactics (often against local residents) to protect lands designated for environmental conservation or sustainable development. European energy giants like Siemens Gamesa, Accione and Naturgy have long been accused of authorizing violence against community activists and “

” in their efforts to develop a clean, renewable energy source on the isthmus.

Mexico is still far behind countries like Germany and Denmark that have attempted to mitigate potential conflicts between communities and corporate interests by implementing “

” programs. Alternative solutions in the form of 

, which seek to establish mutually-beneficial frameworks for communities and investors, are also conspicuously absent from Mexico’s development model. On the Isthmus of Tehuantepec, asymmetrical power dynamics reveal one of capitalism’s coldest axioms: Everything is for sale, even if you don’t want to sell it.

Terán’s principal concern is that the wanton imposition of large-scale development projects on local communities will result in land dispossession, urban poverty, and the inexorable degeneration of Zapotec culture. He explains that when Zapotec farmers lease their land, they have few alternatives aside from joining the surge of rural-to-urban migration to cities that are already too strained to meet the needs of new arrivals. Lacking the training or experience required to compete in the modern economy, they scrape by as manual laborers, gardeners, or security guards, often living in cheap apartments on the bleak outskirts of a city.

“It has already begun,” says Terán. “Twenty years ago maybe 80 percent of people in Juchitán spoke 

Now I’d say it’s more like 50 percent. Parents see no value in teaching it to their children any more. What’s the use? If you want to get a job you need to speak Spanish.”

Although Terán has said that he doesn’t consciously think about language preservation when he writes in 

, he is keenly aware of its power. “Today, to write in an indigenous language, more than being a political statement, is a heroic act of survival. Survival because writing strengthens and extends the future of a language. Heroic because it means pain and suffering before the indolence of many of its own speakers, who forget their responsibility to their mother tongue, owing to their desperate struggle to find the day’s food.”

The cathedral of light that you left me is immense,

You scented my existence for a long time.

when I remember the sweet taste of your nipples.

With these memories, how can I feel hurt?

You left me with an ocean of dazzling fish,

Terán likens the poet to a great trickster, an exaggerated narrator. “Remember that literature is an artistic composition, an art of language, a recreation of reality. Not a reflection of that reality, but the making conscious of it, be it written in Spanish, Portuguese, English, Maya, or Zapotec.”

Before departing the serene confines of Terán’s courtyard, I’m compelled to ask him: 

What would you tell President Lopez Obrador if he were sitting here right now?

 on people’s lives. Don’t impose the project on people. 

 was born in Juchitán de Zaragoza. His books of poetry include 

 (Like a New Sun; Editorial Diana, 1994) and 

 (The Spines of Love; Editorial Praxis, 2003). Terán teaches media education at a secondary school in Juchitán.

Confessions of a Looted Soul

We’re sitting in a neighborhood restaurant hidden at the far end of a long, nondescript alleyway. Huddled around a table near the doorway, everyone glances toward the entrance any time someone passes through it. Our source, who for their safety will remain anonymous, has decided that it’s safer to meet here than at their nearby office. And although the interview lasts close to two and half hours, they never remove their mask. Their work educating and organizing indigenous resistance to land dispossession on the Isthmus of Tehuantepec has resulted in multiple death threats.

Although Oaxaca does not rank among Mexico’s most dangerous states, we have been repeatedly warned that Juchitán is the exception. Aside from the few buildings left crumbling and in disrepair nearly three years after a magnitude 8.2 earthquake struck the region, during the day nothing seems off. But as darkness envelopes the city, meth heads predate the streets robbing people at gunpoint to pay for their habit and cartel-affiliated groups and 

 (assassins) instill widespread fear in an otherwise quiet, traditional town.

Juchitán, a once prosperous regional crossroads, is the linchpin in a “green” land grab engineered and orchestrated by transnational energy producers, private security forces, cartels, corrupt government officials, and coerced local land owners. The story of Juchitán’s transformation from a Zapotec pueblo into a global player in the wind energy market and an important terminus on the first trans-American shipping corridor since the Panama Canal is as complex as it is insidious.

Much of this story begins with the 1994 NAFTA agreement, which triggered a currency crisis in Mexico and set in motion a wave of capital flight that reduced the value of the peso to a fraction of its previous worth. Fearing insolvency and a global economic ripple, the International Monetary Fund (IMF) and the U.S. provided debt relief which stipulated that Mexico must develop a clean energy sector to help reduce its carbon footprint. Having defaulted on its prior loans, financiers prohibited Mexico from developing its own industry and provided the government with a list of preferred European energy providers.

That same year, seven aero-generators were set up in the areas surrounding Juchitán to test the power and direction of the “Tehuano wind” tunnel. Geologists and engineers brought in to survey the land, mapped out the potential dimensions of the project. Representatives from various European utilities began arriving on the isthmus to assess any obstacles and meet with municipal assemblies to discuss the project and field questions about its potential impacts. Everything was done under the pretense of progress, but it was all just an elaborate façade.

The government had hired anthropologists from left-leaning universities, who had studied local governance systems, to provide detailed reports on the social and cultural elements that might hinder development. Later on it was discovered that the researchers were unwitting actors sent on a reconnaissance mission to provide data that could be used to weaken and undermine the unity and authority of indigenous community assemblies. “If you want to break this society of warriors,” we are told, “you need to break the economic system and deprive people of jobs.”

In the wake of the NAFTA agreement, the term “

became synonymous with a neoliberal corporate agenda that revealed haunting similarities to Spanish colonialism. The Isthmus of Tehuantepec, teeming with wind energy potential, found itself in the crosshairs of powerful stakeholders including the International Monetary Fund, corrupt governors, European utilities providers and drug cartels waging a shadow campaign under the banner of a “green revolution.” Criminal elements from Spain and Venezuela with no connection to the land were recruited to protect the wind farms and moonlight as paramilitaries who could coerce vulnerable landowners into leasing their property.

By the mid-2000s, indigenous groups from the mountains, cities and coast had banded together to resist 

 But tensions heightened in 2006 when private security firms began enlisting local allies, who wouldn’t be seen as outsiders or invaders, to help persuade public opinion. Juvenile criminals were recruited from local prisons with the help of lawyers and judges, who expedited their release, in order to essentially form a new cartel with a front line of 

who acted as “guardians of the wind farms.” Drugs started funneling into the city to simultaneously satiate the appetite of criminal elements who were taking over the city and to slowly break the bonds of the Zapotec community. The staggering rates of meth addiction and incessant violence that plague Juchitán today are testament to the underground economies that formed under the far-reaching influence of organized crime.

Security forces employ a mixture of hard and soft power. Agents of energy conglomerates invested in the wind farms, predominantly from Spain, infiltrate communities by developing relationships with local women to sway public opinion while diluting ethnic ancestry and cultural connectivity. The theory holds that Zapotec, Mixe or Ikoots women who are in relationships with outsiders are more likely to reject their communities or indigenous resistance movements and become willing (if unintended) agent provocateurs of corporate interests. The arrangement raises the social status of these young women and secures their employment in the same companies as their foreign partners.

In other cases, seemingly altruistic interlopers offer low-interest loans, often to women, in order to build relationships based first on trust and later on dependency. Those able to repay their loans naturally tend to promote the merits of micro-finance. The majority, however, end up defaulting on their installment payments and find themselves poor and powerless, unable to speak up against the lenders who are financed by corporate entities.

Although the notion of a cabal of transnational corporations, cartels, and government counterparts working in concert to diversify and legitimize criminal dealings into respectable public-facing businesses may seem like too much conspiracy for one theory, the disturbing, gravely unfortunate truth is that it is very real. And they are successfully unraveling the bonds of civil society through the fear and pressure generated by street gangs and paramilitary groups.

It is widely acknowledged that the cabal of power extends to the top, and that the Governor of Oaxaca has a direct connection to the leader of the Jalisco New Generation Cartel, a proxy owner of a well-known construction company that receives a significant share of contracts to build the wind parks. One of the more egregious examples of money laundering occurred several years ago when the a construction company linked to the cartels gained permission to build all the OXXO convenience stores in Juchitán, even though there was a moratorium on new petrol stations at the time.

The recruitment of juvenile delinquents and violent prisoners in the years after 2014 led to the formation of street gangs tasked with carrying out low level violence for cartels and corporate interests in Juchitán. This marked the beginning of a particular violence directed at women. Local gangs, who sensed an opportunity for profit in the handmade 

(dresses which cost 15,000-35,000 pesos), filigreed gold necklaces, and earrings worn by Zapotec women during traditional “

 (celebrations), began raiding the elaborate parties. The plunder is then sold to pawn shops, financed by the cartels, and transported elsewhere to disguise the origins of the gold or costumes. The loss of these precious gowns and jewelry creates tremendous financial burdens local on families, who are “obligated” for cultural reasons to replace the stolen goods.

Wind energy producers use a similar technique to appropriate land on the isthmus. Farmers who rent their farmland to wind energy providers soon discover they are no longer able to earn a living wage in Juchitán. Nearly 80 percent of Oaxaca is collective land and propriety ownership is still passed down through the 

 system, which awarded communal ownership rights with government oversight to peasant farmers after the Mexican Revolution. Although the 

 laws were amended in 1994 to facilitate individual land sales, corporate entities find it easier to lease parcels from landowners than to purchase outright due to byzantine legal codes and pride of ownership. Despite the obvious disadvantages, Juchiteco landowners often find themselves outmaneuvered and capitulate—agreeing to predatory land leases that pay meager dividends and over time strip them of their rights to use the land for commercial farming.

 to succeed it must continually seek opportunities to capitalize on the vulnerabilities of traditional governance systems so as to weaken and destroy the democratic safeguards of 

and replicate a neoliberal agenda. The model has been quite effective in selling the promise of unprecedented access to the modern world to communities on the Isthmus of Tehuantepec. Seeing the potential benefits, municipal assemblies representing previously isolated mountain pueblos negotiated with the government to build a series of commuter railway stations along the 

, which holds a particular appeal to younger generations whose desires extend beyond an agrarian future.

As the plans to complete the Transistmico economic corridor by 2022 are pushed forward, convoluted power structures driven by unquenchable 

are polluting the relationships within and between indigenous communities. Ultimately, the most grievous loss will be the obliteration of ancient languages, cultural practices, and historical sites which hold unquantifiable value in our collective understanding of civilization itself.

Our source wears a t-shirt emblazoned with EZLN (

Ejército Zapatista de Liberación Nacional

), an homage to the civil resistance and anti-globalist struggle of the indigenous movement in Chiapas and its leader Subcommandante Marcos (now Galeano). Their work organizing grassroots resistance has made them a target in a systematic campaign to shift responsibility for any violence that may occur on the isthmus away from corporate interests, cartels, and corrupt officials and place the blame on activists, academics, and NGOs. Those engineering the shadow campaign have gone so far as to send doctored reports of malfeasance to our source’s associates in Mexico City and to silence opponents in Juchitán—a dark-hearted modus operandi that has thus far proven effective.

The threat of violence in the region has done little deter to community leaders and activists from their relentless pursuit of equitable, sustainable development of the Isthmus and the preservation of culture and autonomy. Unfortunately, they face a shapeshifting cabal of profiteers and “extractivists” with a limitless capacity for violence. Neither is likely to go down without a fight.

Guardians of the Wind

"I remember the city before the refinery,” says Rafael Mayoral, a middle-aged professor and self-described activist in defense of the land. He is tall, broad-chested with a shock of salt-and-pepper hair that blows wildly in the violent Tehuano winds. “It was a different city back then,” he says with some nostalgia. “A marvelous place. I used to help carry the nets to the shrimp boats. When the shrimpers came back to port they’d give us the fish they caught in their nets because they only sold the shrimp. It was 

 city. It felt like a big swimming pool.”

We’re sitting in an empty beachside restaurant with a floor of perfectly combed sand just over the western hills from Salina Cruz as Mayoral chronicles the decades of decay. It’s not a sob story. But on the few occasions when his self-assured, baritone voice succumbs to sentimentality or the idylls of youth you can sense a hint of the stalking sorrow he carries for what has become of his beloved city.

Mayoral raises three fingers to emphasize that Salina Cruz’s decline can be distilled into three acts: “The Presa Benito Juárez (dam), the PEMEX oil refinery and the eolic (wind) parks.” Each was promoted by the government and sold to the public as a once-in-a generation infrastructural development that would help stabilize the economy and elevate the quality of life for everyone on the isthmus. The projects promised to bring progress, prosperity, green energy, global relevance to the city. Naturally, the each stoked intrigue, debate, polemics.

When the Benito Juaréz dam was built in the foothills of the Sierra Madre del Sur in 1962, the rising El Marques reservoir submerged the town of Jalapa Viejo and its 16th century Dominican temple and a new town was reconstructed on its shores. The reservoir was intended to divert water from the Tehuantepec River and feed a warren of canals that had been recently-dug across the savannah-like delta. “It was a big mistake,” says Mayoral. “They thought it would turn the isthmus into Mexico City’s granary. They tried to grow sugarcane, rice, corn–nothing worked.” The dearth of silt flowing downriver depleted the soil of essential nutrients and left the land too infertile for large-scale agriculture. Whether through arrogance or ineptitude, the engineers had preordained their own project to failure.

What remained of the Tehuantepec River delta nearly dried up when the refinery was built, recalls Mayoral. Water that was initially diverted for construction was permanently rerouted for the cooling systems once the refinery was operational. “People from town had to walk upriver to collect water with buckets and haul it home on foot or pack it on donkeys. Communities constructed and installed their own water tanks in the hills above town. You can still see them,” says Mayoral, pointing toward the ridgeline where you can just make out metal cisterns and blue barrels that serve as catchments. “It was the first time I saw community resistance.”

The shortage of water was exacerbated when 3,000 (primarily) rural farmers from towns all across the isthmus flocked to Salina Cruz seeking construction jobs at the oil refinery. The pay was good and the work steady. Many believed they could find another job when the project wrapped up after three years, only to discover that operations would be run by a small team of skilled technicians and engineers employed by PEMEX (Mexico’s national petroleum corporation), while the facility would be maintained by private security guards and a handful of gardeners. There were no jobs for them at the oil refinery and very few to be had in the city.

The wind farms were the nail in the Tehuantepec River’s coffin. Despite exhaustive environmental impact assessments, the foundations for the turbines reached depths that penetrated the shallow water table beneath the isthmus and blocked the flow of groundwater. Precise positioning of turbines is cited as crucial to maximizing wind energy efficiency, which suggests that the region’s paucity water is the result of a necessary, if regrettable, compromise in a larger plan to reduce carbon emissions in accordance with the Kyoto protocols. To Cruzeros like Mayoral, it sounds suspiciously similar to being sold out by your own government. Today, little more than a thin brook of knee-deep water trickles between the 20-foot-deep concrete embankments that once formed its banks.

The enormous potential of wind energy on the isthmus is not in dispute, nor is its capacity to help Mexico wean off its dependence on fossil fuels. The seasonal Tehuano winds that tear southwest from Chivela pass and shriek through the Isthmus of Tehuantepec are strong enough to churn up algae blooms far out in the Pacific. Wind energy here is an easy sell, and Acciona, Iberdrola, Union Fenosa, Preneal and other leading European utilities corporations have succeeded in developing the isthmus into one of the world’s most productive onshore wind parks. It is Brobdingnagian in scope. No less than 3,000 turbines fan out across hundreds of thousands of hectares of scrubby pastureland. When the dust picks up and blankets the slow, lifelessly churning 120-foot-long blades of the turbines in a smoggy orange horizon, the scene looks like a backdrop straight out of 

Rafael makes it clear that he is neither a zealot nor Luddite. Quite the contrary. “I’m a civil engineer,” he says emphatically. “I’m not against development or technology.” Nor does he consider the wind farms to be the problem 

. The problem is that “investors are only interested in the resources that are important for their investment.” Mayoral, like many others, sees a solution: information needs to be shared transparently and the input of communities who will be directly involved need to be solicited.

“They need to halt the projects and conduct a series of reviews,” he says. “Examine what functions well, why plans failed in the past, and start to think comprehensively about how to make a project that works for everyone. It doesn’t have to start on Wall Street or in Hong Kong. It has to start here. If they don’t fix this, there will be an explosion–social or environmental.”

His sentiment was echoed in a scientific paper published this past November in 

: “Mexico needs to improve its legal framework to regulate wind energy development, and establish programs to assure that citizens are involved in the decision-making processes before installing wind farms, and during their entire lifetime.”

Mayoral has a silver tongue and a talent for cutting through the bullshit of seraphic aspirationalism or the transformative power of the Transistmico. He asks rhetorically: “What positive impact does it have on my life if I see goods being transported from Ireland to Hong Kong? They can build 10 factories here, but they’ll have no water.”

Harbor Blues, Salina Cruz

The mystery of the Iko’ots people that no one knows when, why or how they came to southern Oaxaca, but everyone seems to agree they arrived from somewhere else. Some anthropologists have speculated that they sailed from 

a vague allusion to Central America, Nicaragua’s Miskito Coast, or as far south as coastal Ecuador or Peru. Alejandro Castaneira, an anthropologist who has worked with the Iko’ots for decades, explains that oral histories hold that the earliest voyagers “arrived by sea, looking to the earth.” He is deferential when discussing his opinion and his investigations into the origins of the Iko’ots because “anthropologists research and write encyclopedias about things that Indigenous people already know.”

 sailboat carved from Guanacaste wood sits on the shores of Mar Tiempe near San Mateo del Mar, Oaxaca. Photograph courtesy of 

Questions around the origins of the Iko’ots persist, in part, because they speak a unique language isolate, which means it represents its own language family; but also due to scant evidence that would indicate theIko’ots were in fact a seafaring people. They do not use sails or build deep hulled boats. Nor do they fish the deep waters of the Pacific, preferring to harvest their sustenance near the shores of Laguna Superior, the shallow inland sea that comprises their homeland, and cast their lines and nets off the sandspit that protects the lagoon from the ocean. Castaneira offers no definitive answer; he speculates with reason that they could have migrated overland or hitched a ride with others on boats.

Many centuries ago, the Iko’otswere labeled 

(“People of the Mud”) by their Zapotec neighbours, who arrived at Laguna Superior sometime after them. There is some debate as to the accuracy of this story as well, but the exonym seems appropriate given that the Iko’ots inhabit four isolated fishing villages on the edge of a muddy lagoon that stretches 80 kilometres from the southern coast of Oaxaca into Chiapas.

Castaneira stresses that what is critical to understand about the Iko’otsis the fierceness with which they defend their lands. The Iko’otshave a long history of guarding their territory against violent internal invasions from the Aztec and Zapotec—even prior to the arrival of Spanish conquistadors in the early 1500s, when foreign incursion began to more closely resemble ethnocide. For the past five centuries, colonizers have sought to extract profit from Laguna Superior, but only recently have railroads, wind farms, and oil pipelines encroached directly on their lands. Resistance to these intrusions has remained consistent, despite the relentless onslaught.

Herein lies the fundamental problem facing the Iko’ots and the broader Indigenous populations of the Isthmus of Tehuantepec: how do you resist an invading force that sees no value in your basic existence without employing reciprocal violence?

Oaxaca is the only state in Mexico that recognizes the assembly-based “cargo system” of local governance, in which communally-elected, Indigenous representatives without major party affiliations serve in official capacities. At its inception the 

was a structure of proxy governance implemented by Spanish colonizers to maintain order over new territorial acquisitions that they did not yet understand how to subjugate. Over generations, the cargo system was integrated into the more horizontal Indigenous practices of collective decision-making and evolved into a merit-based system in which political capital was attained throughout a lifetime of incremental, concentrated periods of social service. The traditions ensure that elders are forged into respected community leaders, not granted power through birth right.

Although communally-based governance structures have enabled the Iko’ots to mobilize resistance to the dispossession of their territory, disruptive and divisive factions within Indigenous assemblies have enabled an amalgamation of transnational corporations, cartels, paramilitaries, corrupt officials and workers’ unions to obfuscate business deals and negotiate tenuous social relations in the isthmus. Amidst the confusion and differences of opinion, developers stoke internal tensions and manipulate socioeconomic vulnerabilities, employing confidence schemes, intimidation tactics, or sheer force to acquire land and ensure contracts are signed.

In July 2020, the bodies of 15 IndigenousIko’ots were found beaten, shot in the head, and burned in what bore the markings of an all-too-familiar cartel execution. While the grisly murders remain unsolved and the motive unclear, the circumstances have raised questions regarding the involvement of the organized crime syndicates who guard the wind farms in the region.

It has been reported that a faction of Iko’ots serving in the municipal government attempted to override the authority of the presiding Indigenous assembly, which had voiced opposition to all wind farm development on the strip of high ground that shields the lagoon from the open ocean. Large-scale construction, the assembly determined, would irrevocably decimate local fishing grounds and negatively impact the livelihoods of trading communities.

The July massacre seems to foreshadow that mounting tensions with the potential to erupt into violent flash points should President Lopez Obrador’s administration expedite the construction of the 

 and local communities be denied meaningful consultation. Thousands of national guard troops have been positioned in hot zones ostensibly to respond to the migrant caravans coming from Central America. Soldiers, however, have also been conspicuously employed to quell community backlash against the project across the state of Oaxaca.

In the months after the discovery of the mass grave, concerns circulated widely among activists and assembly members that the land and future of the Iko’ots is under threat from entities that have demonstrated a complete lack of respect and an unbridled capacity for violence. The only guiding principle of the cabal is 

at any and all ecological and human cost.

Isthmus at the Crossroads

Rosario Martinez and Roberto Vega were fresh out of design school in May of 2006 when the annual teachers union strike took on sinister turn as an explosive initiative organized by the Popular Assembly of the Peoples of Oaxaca set in motion a seven-month war between the citizenry and the state. Oaxacan Governor Ruiz Ortiz rejected calls for his resignation and instead ordered police to remove protestors at all costs and authorized the use of deadly force, at which point violence erupted in the streets. The teacher’s union called on the rest of civil society to act and the people of Oaxaca responded in kind.

‍By June 14th, protestors had occupied Oaxaca City’s historic 

 and the movement to remove Governor Ruiz Ortiz had gained momentum. Between June and November the government responded by sending in “death squads” comprised of police, military – mercenaries paid to gun down citizens. Protestors organized themselves into 

(neighborhood watches) and built barricades around 

 to stop the transit of police and stem the encroaching violence. The more the repression intensified the more organized the protestors became.

Both Rosario and Roberto come from teachers’ families, so the protests hit close to home. It was at this time that they started making socially conscious art, forming an autonomous collective Lapiztola, a portmanteau of the Spanish words 

 (pistol). Their resistance began with small posters in support of the protest movement, particularly the public university’s radio station which served as an important communication platform during the protests.

Throughout the summer, Rosario and Roberto began to notice that their simple but iconic graphics were disappearing amidst the eruption of graffiti and public art that took over the city walls during the protests. They decided to go bigger, but unlike many of the murals they were seeing which depicted state violence directed at citizens, they wanted to focus on pride and not victimization. Among their most widely recognizable works was a stenciled, life-size image of balaclava clad protestors throwing Molotov cocktails, the message being: “We are winning, not the police.” Around this time, Rosario and Roberto began to receive threats of retribution if they continued their work. They were followed and required protective escorts home.

By the end of October, more than 6,000 state and federal police had been deployed around Oaxaca city and 5,000 army troops were positioned just outside the city. A month later, on November 25th, several thousand federal police officers stormed the city and the city-wide demonstrations came to a violent end. The movement has shifted and Rosario and Roberto had to ask themselves: “What do we want to keep doing?” It was then that Lapiztola began to concentrate its attention on working with other collectives and NGOs to secure the release of protestors from jail.

Lapizotla’s work is a combination of art and anarchy, studio practice and protest. When the movement started they were still young activists and relatively fearless. However, as word spread that activists were routinely being kidnapped, tortured, and jailed, Rosario and Roberto decided to change their mode of operation, go underground, and become anonymous and invisible artist-provocateurs.

Rosario and Roberto began working in communities outside the city and developing a less aggressive approach toward conceptualizing, producing, and communicating with their audience. They wanted to be more respectful and inclusive dialogue of the public, and their work transformed from the literal to more symbolic and metaphorical pieces of art.

After several of their murals were painted over, including a commissioned piece, they decided to collaborate with partner organizations and other collectives rather than run the risk of their work, and their messages, being destroyed. By this point they were recognized among Oaxaca’s new generation of artists and despite being courted by the municipality, but they opted instead to commute their work to alternative spaces outside the city center.

Rosario and Roberto’s decision reveals a hard truth for many Oaxacan artists, particularly those working in the streets: self-preservation and self-censorship are inextricably linked in Mexico. Corrupt governments, gang rule, and violent repression against civil society actors have effectively made speaking truth, or even pointing in its direction, a deadly proposition.

‍Two hundred-fifty kilometers southeast of Oaxaca city in Juchitán, Gotha has a full schedule between his tattoo shop and a contract with the municipality to paint 100 murals, half of which have been completed. Gotha says that he makes work that is critical of the system, yet that is hard to register in the seemingly ambivalent way he talks about the current situation in the Isthmus or the paintings and photos of past work that adorn the walls of his studio.

Gotha and his mural collective, Chiquitraca, which translates to “fireworks for children” in Juchitán slang, “try to capture local culture, to let people know and be aware of Zapotec culture.” But being in the employ of the state, their work, while aesthetically sound, is resoundingly in line with the impotent “neo-indigenismo” of the Lopez Obrador administration. Vicente is not opposed to the Transistmico in the way that some of his peers are, but chooses to see both sides – the possible benefits and the potential for unwanted changes.

Gotha is not naïve about the violent and contradictory politics of Juchitán, a rapidly growing urban hub that has become the epicenter of state and corporate sponsored violence in the Isthmus. It is a town of dirty politicians, cartel operators, paramilitaries, and meth heads – all employed in the service of extractive capitalism.

"The strategy to create confusion through disinformation” has been effective in silencing artists, journalists and activists, including him and his peers. And as President Lopez Obrador ushers in the completion of the 

 by the end of 2021, the current environment of fear and paranoia does not bode well for those who are intent on resisting the ravaging impacts the project will have on the land and the livelihood of indigenous people in the Isthmus.

Extractivismo: Oaxaca