Today, the governor of Chiapas, Eduardo Ramírez Aguilar, inaugurated the start of construction on the Palenque-San Cristóbal highway, a project that has been criticized for more than three presidential terms.
Indigenous residents, especially in municipalities where communities live under communal regimes, believe that this is part of the network of highways and communication routes in the southeast of the country designed to benefit the extractive industry, such as the Trans-Isthmus corridor, the Mayan Train, and Line K, which connects Ixtepec, Oaxaca, and Ciudad Hidalgo, Chiapas, to the border with Guatemala.
There are two injunctions against the project, alleging a lack of proper consultation with the indigenous population and environmental impacts.
Now, this project has been presented as a “priority” by President Claudia Sheinbaum and Governor Eduardo Ramírez Aguilar. Therefore, specialists hired by the government restructured the route of the project to avoid passing through areas where there was greater opposition from the population, such as the municipality of Oxchuc.
In other areas, the governor said today, “we began dialogue with the communities in a secret and discreet manner so that outside interests wouldn’t intervene.”
In reality, explained one of the specialists, who requested anonymity to avoid retaliation, “what we did was speak with each individual landowner or with the ejido (common land) and obtain their permission to pay for the lands along the route.” He said that this was achieved without them telling their neighbors what they were doing, because they were hired to participate in the work required for the topographic surveys. “We hired people from the communities, especially the most vocal ones.”
Also because there is a promise that they will be partners in the company created to manage the highway. Their shares in the company will be based on the cost of their land, and the representation of the indigenous people will be the responsibility of the state government,” she explained.
One of the arguments a group of indigenous people filed against the project is that this “discreet” way of operating meant there was not enough information to give them the means to vote on the day of the consultation, which the government is required by law to hold so that the population of the five municipalities involved could vote on whether or not they wanted the project. The consultation itself, explained one of the lawyers handling the injunctions, Fernanda Santos, of the Minerva Calderón Legal Clinic, is fraught with irregularities in its origin and operation.
The second injunction they filed, the lawyer indicated, is for the lack of an environmental permit, since the highway passes through seven environmental management units with abundant flora and fauna that are subject to regulation and over which the highway project passes. 80 million per kilometer. Until the beginning of last March, there were no funds available for the project, explained the specialist who participated in the project design. He said that up to that point, the government of Chiapas hadn’t invested a single peso.
When the current route was started and completed, with the release of right-of-way rights and social consultations—convincing landowners to sell their land—the construction cost per kilometer, including three tunnels, was estimated at between 80 and 100 million pesos.
The state budget didn’t allow for this, and President Sheinbaum had established that the Palenque-Ocosingo section would be covered by the state government, which caused the start of the project to be postponed for six months. That day, the governor explained: “In one of my conversations with Mexico’s greatest president, Dr. Claudia Sheinbaum, Eduardo told me, ‘This year we’re bringing some priorities from the major projects initiated by former President López Obrador. If you start construction, and I see that the people of Chiapas support you with that decision, I will also support you.'”
That day, the starting signal was given for the first 5 kilometers of the 110 kilometers planned for the project. Superhighway. The budgeted cost is 80 million pesos per kilometer, so if current prices for construction materials, including steel, are maintained, 400 million pesos will be needed for this initial project alone. The source of the funding was not disclosed.
Source: chiapasparalelo
