Structural and social changes

Following the ethnographic studies in the Isthmus of Tehuantepec (Howe 2019, Boyer 2019, Dunlap 2017a, 2017b, 2018a, 2018c) the alteration of use and ownership of former communal owned land through the implementation of wind parks in the region, has changed social and economic structures. Nonetheless, one should not fall into the trap to think that wind energy is the only economic or social force driving the Isthmus of Tehuantepec. Indeed, the role of Mexico as a petrostate is still notorious in the Isthmus (Rueda 2011) and as shown in chapter 3, the numerous abundances of ejidos and rural communities speak for a still strong presence of this kind of social organization. The theoretical frame of social metabolism combined with a sharpened view on power structure issues, and political ecology problems (Martinez Alier 2002) helps us to contextualize the territorial impact produced by wind energy in the Isthmus.

Before discussing two observed phenomena, the peculiar role of the local caciques and signs of an ongoing westernization, I ask three questions that should help to build a foundation for the discussion.

Has the Isthmus of Tehuantepec become a wind economy?

What are the territorial and environmental impacts of placing wind parks in a rural area?

How can wind energy influence social and political structures?

28 4.1.1 Has the Isthmus of Tehuantepec become a wind economy?

The economy of the Isthmus of Tehuantepec is as every other region’s economy far too complex, to circumscribe all aspects and players in one or two paragraphs. Hence, I will discuss an aspect here that contradicts slightly to the huge focus on renewable energy development in the Isthmus in this thesis. In fact, the Agrarian Reform of 1992 also impacted other parts of the region’s economy and the remained extraction of fossil fuels in the region plays both in the employment of local workforce as in the production of commodities an important role. It would also be overly simplified to just focus on the social conflicts generated through the engagement of transnational wind energy developers. Especially the extractivist economy has caused various conflicts between private companies and members of local communities. The Environmental Justice Atlas, for instance, reports the protests of a local Zoque population against the mining project of the Canadian company Minaurum Gold (EJAtlas 2018).

One should not overestimate the economic power of wind energy for the region. The industry generates relatively few jobs and does not produce a lot of economic activity outside the construction period. Possible negative effects to other economic activities in the region as mentioned before should also be taken into account (Huesca-Pérez, Sheinbaum-Pardo &

Köppel 2016). With its current application in the industrial and commercial sector, wind energy as a tool to fight climate change is at least questionable. Figure 6 demonstrates that Mexico is still a petrostate and, hence, has a long way to go. Experts, therefore, indicate that the gradual displacement of an oil-driven economy by other sectors like manufacturing or tourism would make a greater difference (Boyer 2019, p. 132).

As indicated, we rather observe the contrary. Wind energy is used to nurture an economy that aims to produce more for the export market, that has a major focus on extractivism and tries to ‘greenwash’ ecologically destructive modes of production (Dunlap 2017a, Bessi and Navarro 2016). The role of wind energy in socio metabolic processes, thus, obviously cannot be reduced only to the energy as an end product. With most of the energy used for the private sector, a closer look at the private consumers shows that among them are companies like Cemex, Peñoles and Coca-Cola that are engaged in extractivist activities and/or use a lot of natural resources like water (Avila Calero 2017). Although wind energy is just the supplying energy that these companies use, the high use of water stands in contrast to the relatively low direct water consumption caused by wind energy (Osmani 2013). The question here is not so much if wind energy is cleaner than its alternatives (definitely the case for fossil fuels) but if the production-consumption model - where the produced energy is integrated in - works towards decarbonization and an overall cleaner energy sector.

Bessi and Navarro utter doubts:

A private developer of wind power generates energy production contracts for a wide portfolio of industrial customers (Coca-Cola, CEMEX, Wal-Mart, Bimbo, for example) for a certain period. In this way, companies can obtain energy prices lower than the market for the long-term and they also enjoy the financial benefits of carbon trading, which allows them to continue polluting and, to speculate on the sale of pollution permits to other companies. (Bessi & Navarro 2016)

29 The importance of wind energy in the Isthmus’ economy, though, has not only symbolically increased in the last couple of years. The mass production of cheap (at least for private companies), safe and clean energy could motivate the construction of new factories near the Isthmus and the enhancement of the national/transnational grid to supply even distant costumers with wind energy from the Isthmus (Dunlap 2017a). What these developments would mean for the local population, though, is another story.

Figure 6: Mexico is still a petrostate (GWEC 2020)

Figure 7 Primary energy production (Sener 2020)

30 4.1.2 What are the territorial and environmental impacts of placing wind parks in a rural area?

“Land grabbing in this context is often linked to a shift in the meaning or use of land and associated resources as the new uses are largely determined by the accumulation imperatives of capital that now has the control over a key factor of production, land.”

(Borras 2012, p. 850)

Wind, like nearly every resource, needs land to be extracted. The calculations vary depending on the type of windmills installed but in general, it can be said that wind energy is quite space-consuming for energy production. The PPP-approach and the rejection of community-driven projects (see chapter 3.2) amplified critical voices who claimed that the communal lands in the Southern Isthmus were exposed to land grabbing, more precisely green grabbing (Fairhead 2012). Backhouse and Lehmann for instance opted for the terminology of “new

‘renewable’ frontiers” (Backhouse and Lehmann 2020) to describe how the government and private companies gradually take hold of communal owned land. These assertions take reference to the theoretical approach of Peluso and Lund who describe how land-control is achieved through legalization, violence, and enclosure (Peluso and Lund 2011). The 29 installed wind parks cover an area of 32,000 ha (EJAtlas 2020) and with the ongoing development and the full use of the resources, this number could grow up to 50,000 ha (López 2012, p. 222). Higher numbers spread by resistance groups seem to be the product of speculation. Nevertheless, with 50,000 ha (500 km²) most of the non-mountainous Southern Isthmus would be covered by wind parks as the following figure 8 shows.

Figure 8 Land Tenure Isthmus (Avila Calero 2017)

31 The territorial impact can be understood from two perspectives. First, the rise of wind parks in the region has the simple physical consequence that the occupied territory can hardly be used for other industrial or urban developments (Dunlap 2017a). Second, the impact on environmental factors can alternate the constitution of land to an extent where the execution of prevailing economic activities (especially of agricultural nature) becomes difficult and less profitable (Huesca-Pérez 2016).

The example of La Ventosa I used in chapter 3 illustrates impressively how the mere existence of wind parks and the accompanying infrastructure, leaving out any external effect, can impact the socio-economic structure of an area. Since wind parks completely surround the town of La Ventosa, urban and economic development has become extremely difficult.

Dominic Boyer who studied the case intensively denominates the destiny of the town as

“imprisoned by their own good fortune” (Boyer 2019, p. 92). It is probable that La Ventosa and other towns and villages in the Southern Isthmus will depend more and more on wind energy since the companies, from a sheer territorial point of view, demarcate the borders of development and growth in the region. In this case, control grabs as described by Borras deliver a fitting theoretical frame to view on the development in the Isthmus.

Caution must be exercised to consider the possible, but scientifically unclear, damage that wind energy could cause to livestock and crops. Opponents to wind energy call out the construction of platforms and access ways, the noise of the turbines and the land levelling as causes of malignant effects (Juárez-Hernández and León 2014, p. 155). The preoccupations, though, are understandable since they have not been informed sufficiently through an environmental impact assessment or a thorough information campaign. This counts especially for the Ikoots people who live from the fishery. The Mareña Renovables Project was meant to be built in the sandbar of the lagoonal area. With no prior cases of wind parks built in sandbars and no statements of the company about possible long-term effects, the Ikoots feared the impact that wind energy could have on their territory, which expands to the sea (Barrera, Howe and Boyer 2015, p. 295). The fear of possible negative environmental impacts, thus a negative stigma towards wind energy, worries the private companies according to a series of interviews conducted by the Centro de Colaboración Cívica (CCC). They dread stigmatization of a form of energy that in their eyes has far lesser negative impacts than other projects in the region (Brodziak 2014, p. 5).

32 4.1.3 How can wind energy influence social and political structures?

Framing the development of wind energy in the Isthmus in the theoretical approach of green grabbing has further social and political implications:

“As green grabbing processes act to define new patterns of ownership and control over nature, therefore, they interplay with ongoing social and political dynamics and unfolding patterns of agrarian change, rural differentiation and class formation.” (Fairhead 2012, p.

251)

What at a first glance might sound strange, that wind energy actually impacts the social and political dynamics of society, makes a lot of sense if we recall the discussion on legal foundations in chapter three. Wind energy - better said the land and power requiring conduction of a capital-intensive project - fits absolutely in this margin.

Before I will give the more concrete example of how these changes interplay with the Mexican caciquism and provoke deeper cultural changes, we will take a look at how ‘agrarian change, rural differentiation and class formation’ has taken place in the Isthmus of Tehuantepec since the arrival of wind energy. Here I will argue that most of the changes to the Isthmus society that stand in relation to the wind energy development do not come from environmental damages or the mere physical existence of numerous generators and their socio-territorial effects discussed beforehand, but from the rent payment. After the construction period, jobs for local people are rare and, hence, the payments from the developers to landowners and into infrastructure are the main economical merits, we can count for the local population.

Alonso Serna (2021) contributed this aspect to the discussion on land/green grabs in the development of wind energy in the Isthmus of Tehuantepec (Dunlap 2017a, Avila Calero 2017, Backhouse 2020). Unlike the other scholars she did not stress the role of land enclosure but highlighted the aspect of rents. Seeing the social and political changes through a lens of

‘value grabbing’ indicates the pivotal point in the process. About the concept of green grabbing Alonso Serna says that “it lacks an understanding of the diverse materialities of nature, and thus how these influence the various ways in which capital circulates through it.”

(p. 5). This recalls Toledo’s take on Political Ecology and the emphasis on social processes in the description and analysis of metabolic systems (Toledo 2011). The crucial point that Alonso Serna makes is that land grabbing (or more neutral: the acquisition of land) is not just driven by the government, private companies, or corrupt local authorities (see next section), but also from the local landholders, or more precisely: the dynamics among local landholders in the distribution and negotiation of rents.

These dynamics and their social implications are not new to the body of literature on the subject. Different authors have highlighted the uneven distribution of rents and benefits (see chapter 4.2) and the consequence of this inequality has been described as a social division into landowners and other community members (Flores-Cruz 2015). Alonso Serna, though, shows that even among the landowners does exist inequality due to different rents and ownership rights. This aspect is not new neither. The low rents have been mentioned in several articles (Bessi & Navarro 2016, Juárez-Hernández and León 2014). According to the Tepeyac Human

33 Rights Center remuneration paid by the developers is with 0.025 % - 1.53% of the gross income far below the European standard of 1 % - 5 %. Even the minimal annual payments for the reserve of land only represent a tiny fraction (100-500 pesos per ha) of what is paid in the United States or in Europe (CDPIM 2013). But why then do researchers report a social division between landowners and other community members? Must the landowners due to the low remunerations not be upset as well?

The quick answer would be that, indeed landowners are generally not satisfied (Boyer 2019).

But not all of them did receive a low remuneration or perceived the low remuneration negatively. Both observations illustrate how social structures have been impacted by wind energy. First, as a response to low rents, landowners built committees. In a committee a small group of landowners represents the interests of a larger group in negotiations with the private developers (Alonso Serna 2021). Although the committees reached higher rents for their landholders, the system is embedded in a corporatist tradition where men of influence took control of the committees. This inherited that only some of the landholders benefitted from the re-negotiations. The committees represent the growing focus on land titles that determine the distribution of the rent.

In the other case we observe landowners who might not make a fortune with the rents they get every month on their bank account, but they get more money than they earned before the wind rush with hard work. Dunlap describes how interview partners told him of landowners who are happy about receiving money and spending it on drinking, for instance (Dunlap 2018c, p.

562). Jacobo Ramirez even finds a word for a new class of Isthmus people when he hears the people using the term hamaquero. A hamaquero is a small landowner who is comfortable with the rent he receives monthly from the developers (Ramirez 2021, p. 400). The term is obviously of a mocking nature and if the hamaqueros really spend their whole day in a hammock is at least doubtable. Nonetheless does this term unravel a significant change in the Isthmus society and their relation to land. First, because the hamaqueros move away from a traditional way of life and secondly, the former activities done by the hamaqueros leave a hole in the local economy since they cannot (and do not want to) use their land for agricultural activities like shepherding animals for instance (p. 397). The appearance of the hamaqueros could amplify effects such like westernization and a lose of traditions and ancestral forms of living (see chapter 4.1.5). Food sovereignty is another aspect that comes to one’s mind and reminds of Dunlap’s observations of a changing alimentation in the Isthmus communities (Dunlap 2018c).

34 4.1.4 Power structures in the Isthmus (Caciquismo)

A decisive role in the approval of land access and contracts with private companies played by local authorities and community leaders called caciques. A cacique is a powerful and oftentimes autocratic local boss who is either integrated or closely related to the political and economic elite. They are the representatives of a system that failed due to its hierarchical structures, corruption, and favouritism. This caciquism (caciquismo) motivated various community members to counteract the oftentimes selfish acts of their political and communal leaders (Díaz Carnero 2015, p. 8). Díaz Carnero observes that the caciquism in Oaxaca caused already since the 1960s destabilisation in the ejidos. The example of the ejido de Juchitán demonstrates how certain privileged persons incited social conflicts and usurped important power positions and control rights (p. 8).

The local authorities/caciques then facilitated the access to land, since they seemed to have benefitted more than just through the contractually defined remunerations. In many projects, local authorities are accused of having received bribes from the companies (Barrera, Howe and Boyer 2015, p. 294, Lucio 2018, p. 91). The strategy of the private companies is indeed questionable not only from a moral but also a logical standpoint, considering the constant fluctuation of politicians and authorities and of course the social conflicts generated by this strategy. The local authorities have been the easy and fast way to land access, which otherwise would have required long negotiations with the communities.

The aspect of caciquism is especially interesting in the light of Political Ecology as it shows us how land and power are intertwined and create the foundation for structural changes through an alteration of the environment – the construction of wind parks. This brings us closer to the definition and role of territory for which Emiliano Díaz Carnero found the precise formulation: “Tierra y poder son los elementos del territorio.” (Díaz Carnero 2015, p.

7). In this sense, it is indispensable to see the territory in correlation with the socio-political system that makes it for certain groups possible to transform land to their territory.

According to Borras there exists a special interest to not only take hold of land but to change its economic and social purpose, hence its meaning to the people (Borras 2012). The caciques play the intermediary role in this process. They are important to the companies, since they permit them simple access to the land, they are engaged in oppression of the opposition to wind energy, and they cover according to some reports middle men called ‘Coyotes’ (Dunlap 2017a, Juárez-Hernández and León 2014). These middlemen take part in the negotiation over land in making false promises, taking advantage of educational or language barriers and intimidating or exercising pressure on landowners.

35 4.1.5 Westernization of the environment and the cultural value of territory

The impacts of changes in the use of territory are sometimes only visible under the surface of economic numbers, structural changes and environmental impacts. As Toledo argues there is a social/cultural element underlying our metabolic processes (Toledo 2011). Considering these processes as a foundation but also as a variable in development processes should sensibilize us to a more social and human understanding of renewable energy transformations and a more holistic Political Ecology approach. In the case of wind energy in the Isthmus of Tehuantepec and the socio-economic changes due to the mass installation of wind parks, we must consider therefore two points. On the one side, the value of territory and the “resource”

wind, which are inevitably correlated to a cultural connotation (Pasqualetti 2012) and, on the other side, traditional forms of livelihood and relations to the environment that could be endangered through an ongoing westernization sparked by the private companies that settled in the region.

The cultural and social importance of territory is well described by the concept of ethno-territoriality, which means that history, culture, and identity should be understood as equally or even more important factors in the valuation of indigenous territory (Lucio 2018, p. 86).

Lucio states that the resistance to megaproyectos evoked an explicit awareness of their biocultural heritage in indigenous people (p. 87). The use of this concept related to sustainable development and conservation approaches indicates that the indigenous people in resistance to the wind energy development in the Isthmus do not lack an agenda or trajectory in the use of territory, even though Politicians claim the bad Agrarian conditions in the region. According to Toledo’s theoretical approach to the appropriation of territory, conservationism fits into a socio metabolic frame, since he considers biological and genetic diversity and local, regional or global climate, water harvesting, carbon sequestration, recreation, education, aesthetic contemplation and scientific research as valuable payoffs of this human-nature relation (Toledo 2011, p. 56).

This indigenous trajectory and the underlying values and cultural components are now challenged by an ongoing westernization. Alexander Dunlap who visited the region for research even speaks from a “cultural genocide” (Dunlap 2017b, p. 558). He not only witnessed rising prices of land, rent, food, and electricity (see chapter 4.2) but also noticed cultural changes. Most noticeable is the higher dependency on food imports that could lead to a lower quality of life according to the interviews he conducted with community members (Dunlap 2017b). Dunlap moreover observes that social life in the small towns of the Isthmus got disturbed by new restrictions, criminal gangs and especially the powerful position of foreigners settling in the region (p. 561).

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