https://orcid.org/0000-0002-8852-9309
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ABSTRACT
This article examines the struggle against the new Électricité de France (EDF) wind park, Gunaa Sicarú, in Unión Hidalgo (UH), Mexico. Foregrounding Indigenous land defense, the article refers to wind energy as ‘wind factories’ to discuss agrarian change in the region. Revealing the counterinsurgency colonial model as a foundational approach to extractive development, the article argues that the distribution of money, Sicarios (hitmen) and non-governmental organizations (NGOs) are instrumental to engineering ‘social acceptance’. Moreover, the liberalism underlining NGOs, if not careful, advances processes of infrastructural colonization and, consequently, wider trajectories of (neo)colonialism.
Acknowledgements
This project would not have been possible without all the people who actively participated, and worked to make this investigation a reality. We thank the friends and families who supported us, and appreciate the time research participants shared with us. Gratitude is also extended to the Centre for Development and the Environment (SUM) at the University of Oslo, and the Rural Transformations Group led by Mariel Aguilar-Støen, for their general support. We also thank Olfee Kitty for their detailed editorial comments and, finally, the anonymous reviewers who provided challenging and constructive feedback.
Disclosure statement
No potential conflict of interest was reported by the authors.
Notes
1 Interviews: 1, 12-12-2018; 2, 8-12-2019; 26, 1-18-2020.
2 This entails related irrigation land disputes (1960s).
3 The Coalition of Workers, Peasants, and Students of the Isthmus (COCEI) is a Mexican socialist political organization in the Isthmus.
4 Interview 13, 1-1-2020. Note that land defenders and costal ecologists speculated it may be 70 meters deep (see Dunlap Citation2019a).
5 Interview 4, 14-12-2019.
6 Interview 17, 3-1-2020.
7 We imagine this figure is much higher now with the rise in wind turbine construction.
8 Interview 20, 16-1-2020.
9 Interview 15, 1-1-2020.
10 Interview 1, 12-12-2018.
11 The parenthetical ‘neo’ pays homage to organizational development and computational shifts since the nineteenth century.
12 The recent ‘rural aspirations’ focus is important (Bennike, Rasmussen, and Nielsen Citation2020, 2, 10), yet this approach appears oddly apolitical in its neglect of social engineering or myriad of influences that shape ‘aspiration,’ rural or otherwise.
13 See Baedan 1: Journal of Queer Nihilism. Seattle: Contagion Press.
14 This is the original or continuous dispossession of public and private lands; the redistribution of state resources; the manipulation of crises to advance economic privatization objectives; and the general advancement of financial mechanisms.
15 The text also provides insights into NGO ‘ally’ personalities: ‘Parachuters’ and ‘Navigators’, which includes insightful hostility toward academics.
16 Interview 5, 14-12-2019.
17 ‘Self-supply’ (autoabastecimiento) electricity is private, generated and reserved for the investors or co-owners of the wind factory.
18 Interview 4, 14-12-2019.
19 Interview 8, 15.12-2020.
20 Interview 10, 15-12-2020.
21 Interview 7, 15-12-2020.
22 Interview 8, 15-12-2019.
23 Interview 22, 16-1-2020.
24 Interview 9, 15-12-2019.
25 Interview 8, 15-12-2019.
26 Interview 6, 14-12-2019.
27 Interview 23, 17-01-2020.
28 Interview 22, 16-1-2020.
29 Interview 22.
30 Personal communications, 10-08-2020.
31 Interview 3. 13-12-2020.
32 Interview 5, 14-12-2019.
33 Interview 5, 14-12-2019.
34 Interview 10 15-12-2019.
35 Interview 1, 12-12-2020.
36 Interview 22, 16-01-2020.
37 Interview 1, 12-12-2020.
38 Interview 1, 12-12-2020.
39 Interview 1.
40 Interview 20, 16-1-2020.
41 Interview 10, 15-12-2019.
42 Interview 10.
43 Interview 1, 12-12-2018.
45 Interview 24, 17-01-2020.
46 Interview 26, 18-01-2020.
47 Interview 20, 16-1-2020.
48 AMLO's regime claims to be the Fourth Transformation in Mexico's historical development, the campaign of which claims to lower administrative salaries and tax (extreme) luxury products.
49 Interview 28, 7-02-2020.
50 Interview 10, 15-12-2019.
51 Interview 10, 15-12-2019.
52 Interview 34, 04-03-2020.
53 Interview 28, 7-07-2020.
54 Field notes.
55 Field notes. A woman next to him offered to go get the file he was supposed to bring, and he declined her offer.
56 Interview 28, 7-02-2020.
57 Interview 34, 04-03-2020.
58 Interview 34, 04-03-2020.
59 Interview 34, 04-03-2020.
60 Interview 34, 04-03-2020.
61 Interview 5.2, 8-02-2020.
62 Interview 5.2.
63 Interview 5.2. See also https://twitter.com/ProDESC/status/1229435340198334465. Some employees also resign. On 25 February 2020, an ex-ProDESC member working in Unión sent notice of their voluntary resignation to the Comuneros, noting how their activity with ProDESC was compromising their ethics. This reportedly has happened before.
64 Interview 2, 8-12-2019.
65 Interview 1, 12-12-2018.
66 Interview 28, 7-02-2020.
Additional information
Funding
Notes on contributors
Alexander Dunlap
Alexander Dunlap is a postdoctoral research fellow at the Centre for Development and the Environment, University of Oslo. His work has critically examined police–military transformations, market-based conservation, wind energy development and extractive projects more generally in Latin America and Europe. He authored the book Renewing Destruction: Wind Energy Development, Conflict and Resistance in a Latin American Context (2019) and co-authored the book The Violent Technologies of Extraction (2020).
Martín Correa Arce
Martín Correa Arce is an independent scholar with long-term participation in societies, in movements and in revitalizing Comunalidad. Martín has published in Sociedad y Ambiente.