PBI-Mexico and PBI-Spanish State highlight accompanied defender Margarita López on Voices of the Earth podcast
PBI-Mexico has posted on social media: “Magui from the @Ejido El Bajío spoke about the struggle for her territory in Sonora against mining projects on the #Voices of the Earth, podcast of @Carne Cruda [raw meat] radio. long with her, testimonies of women defenders from Nicaragua, Guatemala and Colombia were also shared.”
PBI-Spanish State has also posted on their Facebook page: “#MEXICO. A TOWN DEFEATS THE BIG MINING COMPANY. Living in the middle of the desert makes you resilient. Margarita López and the ejidatarios of El Bajio have used that ability to fight against the big global #mining company that illegally extracts gold in their territory. And they have succeeded in expelling it twice. Margarita is part of that collective struggle, but she has also had to carve out a niche for herself as a #defender.”
The Ejido El Bajío
Describing themselves on X, the Ejido El Bajío says: “We are a community in the Sonoran Desert, Mexico, resisting the dispossession of the Bailléres family.” And Pie de Página has noted that the company Fresnillo PLC is owned by the Baillères family.
The Ejido El Bajío also says: “For more than 10 years we have been fighting against the Penmont mining company, owned by the fourth richest man in Mexico, Alberto Baillères González. …The Penmont mining company has carried out exploration and mining exploitation in the territories of the ejido, illegally, since the nineties. …In July 1013, former magistrate Manuel Loya Valverde issued 44 rulings in favor of the ejido, in which he ruled that the mining company must vacate the territory, must return the lands to the state prior to the mining exploitation and must compensate the ejidatarios for the payment of land rents.”
In January 2025, Pie de Página reported: “The Unitary Agrarian Tribunal Number 28 accredited that the company Fresnillo PLC, owned by the Baillères family, owes the ejidatarios of the ejido El Bajío, in Sonora, the sum of 13,258,667,000 pesos. The amount corresponds to the illegal extraction of gold that the mining company carried out on ejido lands from 2005 to 2013, a temporality accredited as illegal in the 67 sentences that weigh in favor of the ejido.”
That article adds: “[The mine has] cost the lives of three ejidatarios (Raúl Ibarra de la Paz, José de Jesús Robledo Cruz, María de Jesús Gómez Vega). the disappearance of Noemi Elizabeth Lopez Gutierrez, and the arbitrary detention of 12 other peasants on the orders of the family of the former governor of Sonora, Claudia Pavlovich Arellano.”
Carne Cruda
PBI-Spanish State has explained that Voces de la Tierra (Voices of the Earth) is “PBI’s collaboration with the online radio program Carne Cruda [Raw Meat].” The podcast (from April 28, 2025) can be heard (in Spanish) here and on Spotify here.
Accompaniment
Peace Brigades International has provided security and advocacy support to members of the Ejido El Bajío due to the ongoing threats they face.
For more about the struggle of the Ejido El Bajío, see their website and their Instagram, Facebook and X social media accounts.
Further reading:
PBI-Mexico accompanied Ejido El Bajío stands in solidarity with Ejido Carrizalillo in struggle against Canadian mining company (PBI-Canada, April 20, 2025)
PBI-UK notes win by farmers against LSE listed mining company in Mexico, the environmental defenders killed after denouncing abuses (January 31, 2025)
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