Indigenous community of Huexca demands cancellation of thermoelectric plant that emits black smoke, deafening noise

On July 30, La Jornada reported: “Residents of the indigenous community of Huexca demanded that President Andrés Manuel López Obrador and the Federal Electricity Commission (CFE) definitively cancel the operation of this thermoelectric plant because, they said, for the past five days the workers have tried to operate fully, without succeeding.”

Teresa Castellanos Ruiz, an Indigenous Nahua woman who lives in the community of Huexca, is a member of the Peoples Front in Defence of the Land and Water (FPDTA).

She says when the workers have tried to operate the plant it has resulted in “very black smoke and makes a deafening noise.” She also says: “It is one of the thermoelectric plants that Europe discarded because of the serious pollution they do to the environment and that these further aggravate the problem of climate change.”

The community is now asking a judge to stop the tests and cancel the project.

Castellanos explains: “It should have already been discarded because all it is doing is polluting, emitting horrible noises, not only pollutes the environment, but it is also polluting the canyons, the rivers and is killing fish, therefore what the judges should do is determine that the thermoelectric is not going.”

The thermoelectric plant is part of the Morelos Integral Project (PIM).

The PIM consists of an aqueduct that would take 50 million litres of water a day from the Cuautla River, a 171-kilometre gas pipeline that crosses three states, and the thermoelectric plant. Construction of the pipeline was completed in December 2015, the plant in September 2017, and the aqueduct in December 2020.

PBI-Mexico began to accompany the FPDTA in early 2020.