Indigenous Communities in Mexico Demand to be Consulted on Wind Farms Emilio Godoy - Inter Press Service | |
go to original June 11, 2015 |
A wind park in the southern Mexican state of Oaxaca, where local communities and indigenous people are fighting the installation of wind turbines in their territory. (International Service for Peace - SIPAZ)
“It hurts us that our land is affected, and the environmental impacts are not even measured. Wind farm projects affect streams and hurt the flora,” said Zapotec Indian Isabel Jiménez, who is taking part in the struggle against the installation of a wind park in southern Mexico.
The 42-year-old healer says the turbines endanger medicinal plants, which are essential for her traditional healing work in the city of Juchitán in the state of Oaxaca, 720 km south of the capital.
“We are right, we know the truth,” Jiménez told IPS. “That’s why we are resisting this, and exercising our rights.”
The Zapotec indigenous woman is one of the leaders of the opposition to the Energía Eólica del Sur (Wind Energy of the South) company’s plans to build a wind park in the area to generate 396 MW that would feed into regional power grids.
Jiménez belongs to the Asamblea Popular del Pueblo Juchiteco – the Juchiteco People’s Assembly – founded in February 2013 to protect the rights of native communities in the face of the introduction of wind farms in their territories.
In addition, they are complaining about incompliance with International Labour Organisation (ILO) Convention 169 Concerning Indigenous and Tribal Peoples, which requires prior, free and informed consent, and the U.N. Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples, both of which have been ratified by Mexico.
Read the rest at Inter Press Service
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