We learned from the so-called Non-Governmental Organizations CEMDA (Mexican Center for Environmental Law), Center for Biological Diversity, CERCA (Center for Renewable Energy and Environmental Quality), Cómo Vamos La Paz (Citizen Observatory) and BCSicletos (Territory Mobility Sustainability), that they have initiated the legal process to prevent the environmental authorities from approving the Environmental Impact Statement (EIS) of the KUNI project, promoted by the company Maravía S.A. de C.V. in a polygon of 1,655 hectares, near the Natural Protected Area of Flora and Fauna of Balandra and the beaches of El Tecolote, El Pulguero, Puerto Mejía and El Coyote.
They have called to participate in the PUBLIC CONSULTATION that closes on September 23 and have proposed to the environmental authorities a PUBLIC INFORMATION MEETING; Meanwhile, the Collective of South Californian Academics (CAS) and the Citizen Front in Defense of Water and Life (Freciudav) have confirmed their participation in this legal and social struggle to overthrow the MIA of the KUNI macro-project.
For our part, as the Ricardo Flores Magón Brigade, at the recent monthly meeting we had the opportunity to analyze the content of the project “in brief” and we agreed that the first step to stop high-impact capitalist development like KUNI is to overthrow the MIA by whatever means, betting on social mobilization, which in the end is the only guarantee of temporarily stopping the advance of capital and money, as was proven in the anti-mining social struggle led by Freciudav, among several other social and civil organizations that were involved.
A bit of recent history, regarding the KUNI Macroproject:
Before, in Baja California Sur, when capital and money appropriated some land adjacent to the beaches, it did so through the well-known “front men,” but after the reforms to constitutional article 27 in 1992 and the announcement of the start of the Free Trade Agreement (TLC) on January 1, 1994, two things happened in Mexico, Baja California Sur and La Paz, among others:
The territory adjacent to the maritime-terrestrial zone, that is, the beaches, which in their vast majority were communal lands or property of some families of the old political class or of possessing South Californian families, became merchandise that was put up for sale for a speculative market, while global capital and money set their sights on that territory and began to invest by buying large tracts of land or dispossessing possessing families, as was the case of the front capitalist company known in the first decade of the 1990s. 21st century as El Coyote Baja Resort S.A de C.V. represented by a certain Ray Novelli, even many national plots were put on the real estate market. This is the case of a fraction of El Mogote, which the newly inaugurated PRD-PT government headed by Leonel Cota Montaño sold almost for free (at the price of “a fish taco” per square meter, 12 pesos, as the population mocked) to be used for a macro project called Paraíso del Mar represented by Luis Cano Hernández, who by the way, donated a few months ago a macro painting to the government of the Fourth Transformation headed by Professor Víctor Manuel Castro Cosío and which is now on display in a permanent room of the Museum of Art.
Reviewing the news articles from 2007 I found this: “Co-owners of land on El Coyote beach, located in the north of the city, denounced the Coyote Baja Resorts group (owned by the American Raymond Novelli) for invading land that is not their property to build a residential tourist complex with the approval of the state and municipal authorities… On May 18, Governor Narciso Agúndez Montaño and the mayor of La Paz, Víctor Castro Cosío, gave the green light to the construction of the Maravía project, which includes the construction of 2,065 residential lots, two golf courses, recreation areas, a shopping mall and a five-star hotel, whose global investment will be 100 million dollars…” and that “… The American investor has deeds for 1,750 hectares registered in Ensenada, he cannot be the legitimate owner, because the Cota Rochín family has previous deeds, in addition to the <> of those lands…” (Raymundo León, La Jornada, May 26, 2007).
Don’t you know the Coyote beach, the 1,750 hectares, the 2,065 residential lots, the two golf courses?… I suppose you do.
But that’s not all, years later in another news article it is subtitled like this: “The Coyote Baja Resort SA de CV has at its disposal 4,730,400 cubic meters of the 5,235,240 that are extracted from the 0325 aquifer in La Paz, an amount that was granted to it by the National Water Commission”, accompanied by evidence in an image from the official Conagua page where this saying appears; and it is noted that “…Coyote Baja Resort promoted the “Maravia Residential Tourist Subdivision”, which received a conditional authorization for the first phase, and then requested permission for a desalination plant, a golf course and a second phase of construction; in the Environmental Impact Statement submitted to Semarnat in August 2007, it reads that <>…” (BCSNoticias, May 25, 2016).
Does the Maravia Residential Zone, the desalination plant, the golf course not sound familiar to you?… I suppose so.
What I want to say with this reminder, appealing to recent history, is that capital and money, influence peddling, corruption and impunity are not going to take their finger off the line, with or without an MIA, with or without a public consultation, with or without a public information meeting, because over the years, they return and with more vigor; that is capitalism, which by the way is stronger than ever.
Although this legal and social struggle to overthrow the MIA of the KUNI macroproject is not superfluous, because if it is won, as may happen, it will allow the population of La Paz to gain time to defend water and life, and above all, to stop the dozens of projects of this type that have fallen by the wayside (Paraiso del Mar and EntreMares in El Mogote, Península de los Sueños in Ensenada de Muertos and Punta Arena, among others) and many more that are to come in the next decades that already have land in speculation, marine surface for their marinas and tourist docks for cruise ships in Pichilingue and a merchant dock in San Juan de la Costa; and the condominium towers that are already underway in the city of La Paz (Cerro de Colina del Sol and Palmira, Barrios El Esterito, El Centro and El Manglito).
Source: diariohumano
