Mexican Communities Sue for Environmental Justice Emilio Godoy - Inter Press Service
go to original May 18, 2013

MEXICO CITY - Fed up with oil spills from facilities belonging to Mexico’s state oil company Pemex, residents of two communities in the southeastern state of Tabasco are taking the country’s largest company to court in a bid for compensation for damage to the environment and agriculture.

The people of Cunduacán and Huimanguillo, which have a combined population of 300,000, will present a class action lawsuit against Pemex in June.

“There have been several harmful effects; we have carried out tests on soils, sediments and water and we are about to receive the results,” Marisa Jacott, the head of Fronteras Comunes (Common Borders), an environmental NGO, told IPS.

Fronteras Comunes and the Asociación Ecológica Santo Tomás (Santo Tomás Ecological Association) are providing legal advice to the local population, mainly small farmers and fisherfolk, who have incurred great losses due to oil spills and gas explosions.

Mexico’s 2011 Class Action Law allows individuals and the federal consumer protection agency to sue state and private companies. However, the law does not provide for reparations.

The oil industry has been active in Tabasco since the early 1950s, and expanded there from the 1970s onwards with the construction of petrochemical plants, pipeline networks and storage facilities, sparking an economic boom.

But the boom did not result in benefits for the local communities. Instead, the oil industry displaced traditional activities like banana farming and cattle ranching.

Read the rest at Inter Press Service

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