Herman Bellinghausen
Sent
Newspaper La Jornada
Tuesday, February 1, 2022, p. 13
Cuanalá, Pue., The resistance is breathed when one reaches it. A bottling plant used to operate on this central property in the semi-rural municipality of Juan C. Bonilla, near the city of Puebla. Of those industrial facilities that one sees when driving on the roads and they seem to be part normal
from the landscape. After being one more plant of the transnational Bonafont, it became the Altepelmecalli, a cultural center dedicated to the care and defense of the territories of life
.
Next to the ideogram of the Nahua name of the facilities recovered by the settlers, one can read: Here the people rule
. Challenging as it sounds, it is, for now, true. And the transformation could not be more eloquent.
The daily extraction of the company reached one million 600 thousand liters per day, equivalent to the total consumption in a municipality of 18 thousand inhabitants.
Currently, the illegal well where the company stored the liquid inside the facilities was covered by the women and serves as a chicken coop under a pint: death pit
.
In the same way, what was the relabelling area is now used to raise sheep and the oil warehouse has become a pigsty.
On March 22, 2021, the plant was closed by indigenous people to commemorate International Water Day. The surrounding towns, recounts Campeche, one of the spokesmen of the movement, they were running out of water
. Then we organized 22 communities and gathered 6 thousand signatures against the company
. They became known as United Peoples of the Cholulteca Region and of the Volcanoes.
They attributed hollowness to the extraction of liquid
The movement, part of the resistance of the Peoples’ Front in Defense of Water and Land of Morelos, Tlaxcala and Puebla, gained visibility due to the unfortunate appearance of a large sinkhole in Zacatepec, within the same municipality.
The sinking of land was attributed to the indiscriminate extraction of water. Today, a typical local product is the sinkhole bread
.
On August 8, due to the negligence of the National Water Commission (Conagua), the Ministry of Environment and Natural Resources, the National Institute of Indigenous Peoples and the Puebla government to stop the looting of water, the peoples peacefully occupied the plant and transformed it into town house
and meeting place with similar movements and struggles in the country.
Thus, from January 27 to 30, the International course-workshop for the defense and care of territories of life: community mapping and social cartographies
.
On the 17th, the National Meeting against gas pipelines and projects of death concluded right here, where more than 15 struggles from all over the country denounced that the presidential decree of November 22, 2021 represents a new attack against those who defend life because, despite the fact that megaprojects have been imposed without the consent of our peoples and through force, today dispossession and imposition are legalized, trying to nullify the possibility of organizational action and legal action against those of us who defend life and our territories, by declaring megaprojects of public interest, national security, outside all environmental protection and the right to self-determination of our peoples
.
While the state government has failed to intervene directly, Conagua and other federal agencies have also failed to resolve indigenous demands.
A possible solution route is the expropriation of the property, but the risk is that the municipal government capitalizes on it, headed by the PAN member José Cinto Bernal, with a history of repression in Zacatepec, diversion of resources, creation of a police
illegal and responsible for various forms of violence. This would stop the action of Altepelmecalli and would not resolve the historical injustice.
The bottler arrived in 1992
The bottler arrived in 1992, with the support of Governor Manuel Bartlett Díaz, who imposed, refers Campeche, an illegitimate municipal government to circumvent indigenous opposition. Later, the company was acquired by Bonafont. It does not seem feasible for it to return, the disrepute of his actions in the region does not favor him, although the defenders of the Metlapanapa River, a tributary of the highly polluted Atoyac, have been prosecuted.
To commemorate the first anniversary of the closure, the organizations defending the territory and water in the country that fight against hydroelectric plants, gas pipelines and the extraction of water and minerals, announced a Caravan of the peoples for life and against megaprojects, from 22 March to April 22, which will depart from this Altepelmecalli.
