A case of Big Wind bullying in Mexico?
(Read article summary)Follow-up on a Monitor cover story: A local activist is arrested days before a planned confrontation with a Mexican wind power company.
Mexico City
• This blog post is a follow-up to the Monitor story: The 'wind rush': Green energy blows trouble into Mexico
On Feb. 22, the Mexican Attorney General’s office arrested a human rights advocate named Bettina Cruz Velázquez in the southern state of Oaxaca. In terms of Mexican arrests, this was hardly front-page news.
Far from the likes of a drug kingpin, Ms. Cruz is a friendly local community organizer in the sleepy Isthmus of Tehuantepec region of Oaxaca.
Although it has a colorful past, Tehuantepec today is a peaceful area, far from the violence of the drug war, peopled by indigenous communities that have lived there for thousands of years.
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I first met Cruz last spring when she invited me to an expansive breakfast of dizzying corn dishes and squeezable mangos in her quaint home near the town of Juchitán. In some ways, Cruz is as traditional as her corn-intensive breakfast that day, adhering to cultural norms and wearing customary clothing for the area. But, with a master’s degree, she is also one of the best-educated people in the community. She told me about a string of Spanish wind power companies that had taken an interest in this region and were acquiring land from the local indigenous communities.
