Less than 10 meters from Punta Colorada beach, black water covered in mold reaches the open sea. It is a contaminated arm of mangrove that seems to be drying up. Amphibians, mosquitoes, garbage, all kinds of waste float on the water. It is a lagoon between the dunes with abundant life, where crocodiles swim. Dozens of herons dive into the dirty water, land on lilies, green snakes move in the mouth of fresh water facing the Pacific Ocean. Before the dark lake, there are small clean streams that border marine swamps and stones with petrified algae.
From the dunes of the beach you can see the debris of the Wastewater Treatment Plant shared by Santa María Mixtepec and Santa María Colotepec, the municipalities to which Puerto Escondido belongs.
It is an abandoned structure located 100 meters from the coastal area, a building that never served and cost millions of pesos to the treasury and is part of the 158 treatment plants for industrial water and polluting substances that have not been working in Oaxaca for at least 20 years, according to the National Water Commission (Conagua).
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The Punta Colorada reserve consists of 11 hectares in dispute. A long stretch of beach, sea and low jungle that, since before the founding of Puerto Escondido as a land of surfers, was the largest wild area of the bays, rich in natural biodiversity, animals and plants adapted to the coast.
Governors’ business
Punta Colorada has been a prize that governors have coveted for years, from Diódoro Carrasco (1992-1998) to Salomón Jara Cruz, according to the residents organized during the tour that EL UNIVERSAL made in the area.
It is a project where the state and private investment is 716 million pesos for the first stage and which includes the construction of four five-star hotels, in addition to two residential subdivisions and the possibility that in the surrounding bays, such as Playa Bacocho, other real estate developers can divide them into lots. All this, although the community members grouped in the coalition Save Colorada and the Fund for the Conservation of Nature in Oaxaca obtained on May 24 of this year the definitive suspension of the work that the state government announced in 2023.
A suspension that, according to the community members, has not stopped the project, on the contrary, has intensified the operation of destruction of the area. They claim that the state government has not heeded the resolution of the Seventh District Court of Salina Cruz, which in file 374/2024 in the possession of this newspaper, warns that this work would cause an ecological disaster and affect a healthy environment. The document states: “The government must refrain from granting any type of license, permit and authorization, approval or similar for the purpose of authorizing the burning of garbage or anything else that causes contamination, in case of having granted the permits, suspend them immediately,” which has not happened.
A reserve contaminated on purpose
Manuel Martínez Carreño, a community member and environmental activist, emphasizes that since November 2023, and during the last eight months, the state and municipal governments have implemented a strategy to make Punta Colorada look like a lifeless wasteland, contaminating it themselves, in order to launch their tourism project.
“First we won an injunction in January, where the suspension was provisional. In that injunction there were 300 signatures of rejection from community members and environmentalists. The judge ruled in favor because there are studies issued by Semarnat that indicate that the beach and its coast have species protected by NOM 59, which is the Mexican standard that identifies species or populations of wild flora and fauna at risk and that need protection, not the destruction of their habitat,” explains Martínez Carreño, who is also part of the organization SOS Puerto.
He explains that the government does “the dirty work” by polluting the coast and the beach, systematizing rubble dumps in the dry forest, in the jungle on the beach to kill species and to make it seem to public opinion that Punta Colorada has no environmental value or importance.
“They waited until the election to begin the intimidation, now they unload pipes with dirty water from hotels, they dump water in areas without drainage, and they let private individuals come to dump waste from their private works, the municipalities dump their garbage slyly to say that Punta Colorada is not a special reserve and to be able to do business at the cost of the lives of the community members,” denounces the territorial defender.
Community members and environmentalists point out that there is a convenient ignorance on the part of the state authorities. As an example, they point out that the Secretary General of Government, Jesús Romero, announced that they are going to implement a rainwater system to make the tourist and residential project sustainable, which is not viable here.
“Maybe in other types of land where there are more permanent aquifers, this could be done, not in a tropical deciduous forest, here they make ditches, the water is not absorbed, they plan to make wells and take water, they want to deceive those who want to build or buy houses on the seashore,” he emphasized.
They will destroy everything
During the six hours that EL UNIVERSAL toured the Punta Colorada reserve, it counted at least 15 heavy vehicles, including pipes and dump trucks dumping rubble and waste on the dunes at the foot of the protected area. An ant system on which the inhabitants base their accusations of deliberate contamination to deny the environmental reserve.
The Punta Colorada tourism project is the big business that follows the Oaxaca-Puerto Escondido superhighway, which has triggered the purchase of land by government officials and is part of the collapse of a beach area that does not have garbage dumps, but rather rubbish dumps and many of its colonies do not have drainage, where the only big beneficiary is the tourist.
“The subdivision of Punta Colorada would destroy everything, it would affect the marine, coastal and terrestrial ecosystem. They only go for our resources, they would increase the residual waters that enter the port. That whole area, without the mangroves and the jungle, would be left without the lagoon that filters the sea and protects it a little from the drainage waters. They want to make residential areas for foreigners, when the majority of the people of the municipalities of Mixtepec and Colotepec do not have the capacity to avoid leaks of sewage in the entire coastal area,” denounced Humberto Olivera López, community defender of the last virgin beach of the local bays.
He said that Punta Colorada suffers from non-functioning sumps and the same thing happens in the communities of Emiliano Zapata, Bajada las Brisas, Bahía Principal, Puerto Angelito, Manzanito, Carrizalillo and Playa Coral, where during the rainy season sewage is dumped and there are fractured pumping structures and contaminated water 24 hours a day reaching the sea.
The strategy of criminalization
On June 6, the governor of Oaxaca, Salomón Jara, said that Punta Colorada was invaded by “parachutists” and that alleged environmentalists wanted to control the place. He stated that the work was to improve the infrastructure of that destination, given the increase in tourism.
The community members pointed out that this criminalization was the reaction of the state government to the judge’s resolution to prohibit the development of the project.
Source: eluniversal
