The black history of Pemex

National

The peasants and affected natives should wait decades to receive the payments

The black history of Pemex, CFE and SCT

By: Carlos Damian                                           September 14, 2014

The energy reformation will cause wave of abuses against proprietors of properties

Mexico. -   Evacuates, threats, detentions and deceits are confronted by hundred of peasants and indigenous of multiple public land and communities of the country that take between two and four decades with a legal fight against Mexican Petroleum (Pemex), the Federal Commission of Electricity (CFE), and the Secretary of Communications and Transports (SCT) to demand the payment for the expropriations carried out by those instances for the construction of airports –Hidalgo State and Toluca -, highways, oil wells, towers of high tension, camps and barracks for elements of the armed forces, among other qualified works as of public utility. Some as the ejido’s men of the Peñón de los Baños, in Mexico City -in where the international airport Benito Juarez was built - they maintained its payment demand during 80 years until in recent dates it surrendered the last payment to a descendant of one of the ejido’s men.    Not for sale of the public land to Conagua  Some other people plaintiffs of justice, as 200 peasants of Atasta, municipality of the Carmen, Campeche, they take three decades fighting with Pemex, some of them were even left practically without their houses when arriving Marina Secretary to settle in the area to protect the activities of the State’s company property. In 1980 Pemex it installed a plant of gas inside the public land. In that year the State’s company property requested to the Secretary of the Agrarian Reformation the expropriation of 350 hectares, for those that offered 233 thousand dollars, that is to say, a six cents for square meter. The peasants didn't accept, but the State’s company property continued with their activities and up to 1985 it signed an agreement of temporary occupation. In 2008 it enlarged their expropriation petition to 526 hectares for the construction of a process center and transport of gas, as well as their area of security, reduction and conservation of the ecological environment; the ordinance was published in 2012 and the Institute of Administration and Evaluations of National Goods (Indaabin, for their initials in Spanish) it fixed the compensation in 3.5 million dollars for this surface, the payment decreased to 10 cents of Mexican peso for square meter.   Pemex deposited less than half of the one mentioned figuret in the Fideicommissum National Fund of Fomento Ejidal and it continue with its activities, for it without previous warning to the peasants, Marina Ministry took possession of a part of the surface without caring that in them there were houses of little more than a hundred of them, as well as its animals. Most of the cases that here they are presented and of which one had knowledge for conduit of the Rural Power station Cardenista (CCC), Coalition of Urban Democratic organizations and Peasants (Coduc), National Union of Agricultural Workers (Unta), Independent Federation of Agricultural Workers and Peasants (Fioac)  have an antiquity of 20 to more than 40 years. The institutions of the agrarian sector, including the Agrarian Superior Tribunal (TSA), they assured not to have statistic of the cases in litigation of the condemned surface that it has not been paid, of the figures that are owed neither of the number of having affected, it is spoken to sotto voce since the transnational ones they will arrive and they will behave equally and it will follow all this without statistical and without payments to those affected, and the SCJN will continue sleeping the dream of the fair ones.    Properties punished by the interest of matters   They are the peasants who with their files under the arm and the back of diverse agrarian groupings look for that they are made justice.  The Coduc informed that it has a wallet of 20 cases with Pemex and seven with the CFE, most is related with properties located in Guerrero, Tabasco, Chiapas, Baja California and Morelos, in this state it participates with other groupings that have united to the peasants against the Integral Project of Morelos that includes two thermoelectric power stations and a gas-duct 160 kilometers of longitude and 30 inches wide that it will affect 24 municipalities at least in this entity, Puebla and Tlaxcala. The group of the cases, Marco A. Ortiz, leader of the Coduc, said he has a problem: the evaluations make them Indaabin and the highest payments that he/she has made they are of 60 cents of Mexican peso for square meter, he doesn't take into account if the earth is of watering or of storm. "In function of the quality they pay them in 20 or 30 cents of Mexican peso, for what they fix him a price of 133 dollars to 200 dollars to the hectare. The State’s companies property argues that they cannot pay an evaluation different to that of Indaabin", (La Jornada, Matilde Perez).   However the rural non conforms appeals to the agrarian and civil tribunals, and their cases even arrive to the Supreme Court of Justice of the Nation and this orders Pemex -this in Campeche and Tabasco - to pay, the State’s company property interposes dissents and the trials lengthen per years, it delimited. The public land 16 of September ejido, municipality Center, in Tabasco, is 20 years old demanding Pemex the payment for the areas that it has occupied in passing for servitude and the area where it has the well. The peasants have taken to end protests and denounced that the Mexican Company of explorations that works for Pemex, entered to their lands without permission and it dynamited fields in search of locations, damaging walls and floors of the houses and to the wells of water, it also destroyed cultivations and rural roads. The case is in the TSA but it has not achieved that the State’s company property is presented in trial, Alvaro Lopez Ríos explained, of UNTA.     The ejido’s men against the change of public land régime to full domain  In the case of the construction of the freeway North Arch, with a longitude of 227 kilometers it affected to public land of Puebla, Tlaxcala, Hidalgo and Mexico State. The peasants of the Cardenista Central (Peasants Union) and the Fioac checked that the SCT didn't request the expropriation of the lands to carry out the work. Carlos Moreno, secretary of Agrarian action of the CCC, commented that the institution didn't carry out the established procedure legally, for what there is not an evaluation of Indaabin.  It specified that in the case of the public land located in the municipalities of Españita, Lazaro Cárdenas, Calpulalpan, Ixtacuixtla and Nanancamilpa, of Tlaxcala, the CCC requested the intervention of the Agrarian Attorney's office (PA) as witness to check the damages in the public land such as: Pipiyola, San Francisco Mitepec; Magdalena; Alponzonga de Lira y Ortega; Santorum; Nanacamilpa; Calpulalpan, San Gabriel Popocapla and Francisco I. Madero. The construction of the freeway began in 2002, the investors, among them Carlos Slim, they signed contracts of previous occupation and they gave an economic advance to ejido’s men, but the manufacturer caused damages to the housings for the weight of the trucks and the use of dynamite; they abandoned construction material in the freeway, that which caused reservoir where they become moist in the parcels and losses of crops, and that was not considered in the compensation.     The trial battle takes 12 years and the SCT it doesn't still enter to the Secretary of Agrarian, Territorial and Urban Development the expropriation application neither there is an established file. The case of the manufacturer takes it a former delegate of the PA. Francisco Chew, from Fioac, pointed that in the public land of Tula, Hidalgo, the peasants have not been able to charge the compensation, since the money surrendered to the president of the public land delegate (ejido) who defrauded to the community. In the case of the amplification of the airport of Toluca, 200 hectares of the public land were affected San Pedro Totoltepec, but there is not registration of the expropriation application, even in the surface there was an irregular establishment, including a primary one without mediating order evicted to the families and they placed metallic meshes. All these facts of robbery of lands, “in juridical terms that calls you spoil, if that happens at the moment we wonder what it will pass with the energy reformation and the immediate answer is social fracture of the community", and it legalizes the spoils by reason of “particular utility” and the president of the republic guides to be left them without pay, if the applicants are the transnational ones oil (La Jornada, politica, p. 12, September 9, 2014).