After 16 years of a fight led mainly by women activists, Mexican communities halted the Zapotillo Dam System, stopping the project of flooding their ancestral lands. For the past 16 years, three small Mexican communities – Temacapulin, Palmarejo and Acasico in Jalisco State- have been struggling against construction of the Zapotillo Dam System, a megaproject…
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By: By Monti Aguirre, Latin American Program Director On Saturday, March 13, 1982, a young Maya Achi man named Carlos Chen’s life was forever altered. That day, he painfully learned that his wife Paulina Iboy, children Enriqueta and Antonio, and sisters Marta Julia and Bernarda, had been viciously massacred. They – along with many others –…
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By: Monti Aquirre, Latin America Program Director In 1998, I traveled to Honduras at the request of representatives from the Tawhaka indigenous people, who live by the Patuca River. The planned Patuca II Dam, located near their lands, was threatening their livelihoods and lives. Villages would be flooded, and people would lose their fruit trees…
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By: Monti Aquirre, Latin America Program Director A ceremony to honor Mother Earth was the first thing the Maya Achí did when they learned their first reparations checks were going to be delivered. As I’ve seen in other ceremonies, they burned chocolate, bread, cinnamon, water, sugar, tobacco, flowers and beer in honor of those massacred…
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By: Peter Bosshard, former Policy Director The World Bank is eager to re-engage in large dam projects around the world, and other financiers are following in its wake. The US Congress has now poured cold water on these plans. In a landmark decision it has instructed the US government to oppose the construction of large dams…
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By: Berklee Lowrey-Evans On August 16, 2012, after nearly 10 years of campaigning, La Parota Dam was officially cancelled. This is an amazing victory for the communities in Mexico – especially the Council of Communal Land Owners and Communities Against Construction of La Parota Dam (CECOP) – who have been fighting the project from the beginning, and…
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