Megaprojects and Ecoterritorial Conflicts. The Case of the Mayan Train

Abstract

Capitalism has imposed a dynamic of multiple forms of violence in the Global South, particularly since the last decades of the 20^th century, with the onset of neoliberalism and as the Washington Consensus settled. This package of measures promoted mainly by the Bretton Woods institutions, the International Monetary Fund and the World Bank, was a turning point in economic policies and led the way to the consolidation of the current context of neoliberal globalisation. This article takes this macroeconomic panorama as a starting point to analyse the current violence that keeps the Latin American peoples subordinated in what Johan Galtung identifies as “the conjunction between the cultural violence of the mainstream economic theory and the structural violence of the mainstream economic practice” (2003, p. 211).

Among these many forms of violence, perpetrated from an extractivist, Eurocentric, colonial and patriarchal point of view, this analysis will focus on the ones generated when accumulation by dispossession (Harvey, 2005) practices are involved and how these transform indigenous territories in Latin America. It is in this context where the transnational corporations’ practices of accumulation by dispossession, reflected in megaprojects, and the indigenous world-views clash. Adopting Rocío Silva’s concept, these are “ecoterritorial” conflicts: conflicts that arise from the use and management of territories, understanding territory as a holistic concept that covers the social, cultural, economic and spiritual relations that compose them (2017).

In this sense, we aim to extract from the opposition of these two antagonistic world visions: on the one hand, the modernity paradigm, with an extractivist modus operandi based on the neoliberal discourse; and, on the other hand, the indigenous world-views, which fight on a daily basis to build different realities and forms of organisation. This approach takes into account perspectives like ecofeminism, which will shed light on the interdependence between territories and bodies as vulnerable spaces, and Jason W. Moore’s world-ecology paradigm, which will allow reading megaprojects as yet another product of capitalism that systematically exploits human beings and nature at the service of accumulation.

The historical debate on the concept of development also adheres itself to this clash of world views. The objective is to present alternatives to the current mainstream model of development, which is based on a Western approach and works as a new form of colonialism. In opposition to “the ghost of development” (Quijano, 2000), alternative notions to the conventional discourse pose different realities to build, like the Buen Vivir and Vivir Bien proposals. These epistemologies of the South assert that developmentalism has reached its limits and alert of the devastating consequences of driving indigenous territories into the market economy as exploited subjects: exactly what megaprojects usually intend to do in these lands.

Against this background, ecoterritorial conflicts have become one of the main challenges for Latin America in the 21^st century and, in them, it is possible to see the asymmetry between the actors engaged in struggle. This asymmetry is reflected, on the one hand, on transnational corporations’ impunity and, on the other, in the criminalisation of the indigenous peoples’ resistance. As Boaventura de Sousa Santos says, in the current neoliberal system, “the only option that doesn’t exist is a way out of this market” (2014, p. 17).

In front of what looks like a non-option, this article will approach those resistances woven from the social movements, from below, and it will do so by taking as an example the case of the Mayan Train: the flagship megaproject of the president of Mexico, Andrés Manuel López Obrador, for the southeast of the country. The aim is to highlight the promised false development that supposedly comes with this project within the framework of the so-called Fourth Transformation, which, in spite of the aura of its socially beneficial character, is perpetuating the neoliberal approach of former Mexican governments. The ecoterritorial conflict generated by the Mayan Train, which has aroused opposition from social and indigenous movements, will reflect the above-mentioned clash of visions and will demonstrate the advance of extractivist borders.  This is due to, among other aspects, the violation of human rights like the right to consultation of the ILO Convention 169, which has constitutional status in Mexico. Opacity has characterised the Mayan Train’s project from the beginning and it has sown the seeds of uncertainty before the indigenous communities. Mexico is obliged to consult them in accordance with international standards, although conditions have clearly have not brought this about.

Lastly, the text will try to expand the focus to see the Mayan Train together with other larger projects. From this viewpoint, this train would only be a part of the ambitious plan of the Mexican Government for the territorial reorganisation of the southeast of the country, which has not been industrialised like other areas of Mexico. This perspective will be implemented with the help of critical cartographies, which will interrelate the Mayan Train with projects like the Trans-Isthmian corridor, the Sembrando Vida programme, or the Special Economic Zones, among others.  These megaprojects, which in addition to the profits that are generated for transnational corporations who are awarded them, and to the dispossession processes that communities will suffer, are going to define human mobility in the South border of Mexico as a buffer in-between for migrations directed to the United States. What is more, they will show Mexico as a laboratory country of the international trade agreements ratified by the Government of Mexico that have enabled the expansion of megaprojects in the country. Indeed, transnational corporations have found Mexico to be a paradise for expansion since 1980, when the State’s role in economic activity started to diminish -especially since the beginning of the millennium when the presence of transnational companies started to increase-. An increase that reflects the need of capitalism for the relentless appropriation of borders “in order for the wheel of accumulation to keep spinning” (Molinero and Avallone, 2016, p. 33).