Nahua land defender Miryam Vargas Teutle at COP26 to resist colonialism and carbon offsetting

Photo by CNN.

On November 9, CNN reported on Nahua land defender Miryam Vargas Teutle at the UN COP26 climate summit in Glasgow, Scotland.

Miryam is a member of the Peoples Front in Defence of Land and Water in Morelos, Puebla, Tlaxcala (FPDTA), which has been accompanied by PBI-Mexico since 2020.

Miryam says: “We’re here to show that Indigenous peoples still exist and are still resisting colonialism.”

She adds: “They’ve never taken us into account, they’ve never listened to us and this is particularly ironic because these negotiations are all about taking over our land and our territories for [carbon offsetting] and we’re not even at the table. We’re not listened to. We don’t even exist for these negotiators.”

The Peoples Front is opposed to the Morelos Integral Project (PIM).

A member of the Peoples Front, Nahua land defender Samir Flores Soberanes, was killed on February 20, 2019 for his opposition to the 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 a thermoelectric plant located in Huexca, Morelos.

Teresa Castellanos Ruiz, another member of the Peoples Front, said that when workers tried to operate the plant this past July it emitted “very black smoke”.

She adds: “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.”

You can find the Peoples Front on Twitter and Facebook.