Here come the reforms, AMLO celebrates; he inaugurates an ecological park in Texcoco

Emir Olivares Alonso

Sent

The newspaper La Jornada
Saturday, August 31, 2024, p. 4

Texcoco, Mex., From this ancestral land, President Andrés Manuel López Obrador predicted: Here come the reformsWith that statement, he assumed that since the transformation movement has a qualified majority in Congress, the approval of the package of 20 initiatives, 18 of them constitutional, which he presented last February will be a fact.

Yesterday, the president and his next successor, Claudia Sheinbaum, inaugurated the Texcoco Lake Ecological Park (PELT), A sustainable project that represents not only environmental justice, but is also a bastion of social justice, as it is partly the result of the defense of their territories by residents of the eastern part of the Valley of Mexico.said the president-elect.

With an investment of 5.5 billion pesos, the López Obrador government completed the recovery of this public space, where the neoliberal intention was to build what would be the New Mexico International Airport.

To prevent a similar attempt, these lands were declared a protected natural area on March 22, 2022.

The park represents the rescue of the largest territorial reserve in the Valley of Mexico, with more than 14 thousand hectares, an area 2.8 times larger than the island of Manhattan in the United States. It will directly benefit 12,500 people from neighboring communities, in addition to being able to receive millions of visitors from the megalopolis.

In this context, López Obrador and the future president unveiled a plaque formally inaugurating the PELT, which will open to the public starting this Saturday at 7 a.m.

Members of the People’s Front in Defense of the Land (FPDT) attended the event as special guests. For just over two decades, they have raised their voices in protest against the construction of the airport in this lake area and have undertaken a long struggle for their territories.

This defense even led them to become victims of repression on May 3 and 4, 2006 in San Salvador Atenco, where the State committed serious violations of fundamental guarantees, according to a ruling by the Inter-American Court of Human Rights.

With machetes raised high, a symbol of their struggle, the members of the FPDT occupied the front rows in the space that was set aside to receive the official delegation. On the machetes they painted a demand for another case awaiting justice: Ayotzinapa 43.

Four members of the front were on the podium, including visible leaders: Trinidad Ramírez and Ignacio del Valle – the latter imprisoned for several years in El Altiplano, following the repression of 2006.

When Sheinbaum and López Obrador rose, Nacho He welcomed the president-elect and placed a bandana around her neck, another of their symbols, which they only give to those they consider an ally in their fight.

From here, the president spoke about the reforms, two days before the start of the new federal legislature. He indicated that they are intended to “return to the 1917 Constitution its revolutionary and popular spirit.

And we said: in order to reform the Constitution and for those 20 initiatives to become a reality, our movement needs to have a qualified majority. And what do you think happened? It was achieved! And here come the reforms so that the programs become the right of all the people.

Earlier, Sheinbaum stated that the opening of the PELT is an act of environmental justice because it recovers the land and nature. But at the same time, she stressed, it is an act of social justice. Because we must not forget that they wanted to build an airport here and that is why they repressed it, so that it would not be the people who would prevent its construction..

He announced that during his administration, which begins on October 1, there will be a second stage for Lake Texcoco. We are not going to abandon this park, we are going to continue consolidating it.

The head of the National Water Commission (Conagua), one of the agencies in charge of the project, recalled that in this region The greatness of the hydraulic engineering of King Nezahualcóyotl flourished, a pioneer in the sustainable management of the hydrological environment and who built the embankment that separated the waters of Texcoco from those of Tenochtitlan.. Hence, the park also represents a tribute to the ancient inhabitants of this area.

Ignacio del Valle, leader of the FPDT, said that the movement will not give up in its defense of the land and everything in it: its water, its flowers, its fauna, its trees, its stones, its hills, its songs, its cries, its vestiges and even its dead. The land is not for sale, the land is loved and defended..

On the International Day of the Victims of Enforced Disappearances, commemorated every August 30, the activist launched the call for the presentation of the missing in the country alive and raised his voice to stop the genocide in Palestine.