VDGSEGUR · Gender Violence and Security in the Interoceanic Industrial Corridor of the Isthmus of Tehuantepec: A Critical Examination of Policies and Practices

Gender Violence and Security in the Interoceanic Industrial Corridor of the Isthmus of Tehuantepec: A Critical Examination of Policies and Practices

The Corredor Interoceánico del Istmo de Tehuantepec (CIIT) project is a multimodal road and rail transport corridor that will link the Gulf of Mexico with the Pacific Ocean. It is projected as a viable alternative to the Panama Canal, intended to speed up global trade, and simultaneously stimulate the local economy. The CIIT includes the modernisation and expansion of the ports; improvement of the railway and highway connections; construction of a new gas pipeline and the installation of 10 industrial parks, designed to attract the automotive, agribusiness, manufacturing, transportation and logistics industries. It is expected that overall the CIIT infrastructure project will entail secondary and tertiary impacts on an area encompassing 79 municipalities in the states of Oaxaca and Veracruz. The Isthmus of Tehuantepec is an area, which is home to more than half a million Indigenous people from 12 different nations, plus Afro-descendants. Some communities are ruled through Indigenous governance systems, and some of the land considered for the construction of the industrial parks is common land – managed and maintained collectively – and in some cases used to sustain the livelihood of local community members. Over the past decade, an incremented presence of organised crime groups has been perceived in the Isthmus of Tehuantepec, a geopolitically strategic region in the context of drug smuggling and migrant crossing. Both, opposition by social movements and cartel activity in the region were stated as reasons for handing over the CIIT infrastructure project to the Secretariat of the Navy for administration, and increase the presence of the National Guard in the area. Indigenous and civil society groups oppose what they see as a militarisation of infrastructure and of their region. This research project examines how security dynamics change in the context of the implementation of the CIIT infrastructure project, with a particular focus on the impacts of emerging socio-territorial conflicts on local women. Women in the region experience a series of systemic vulnerabilities, such as economic precarity, gender violence, racism, limited access to education and exclusion from many decision-making positions in both state and traditional institutions. It is therefore important to assess to what extent a large-scale infrastructure project such as the CIIT, which is part of a government programme intended to increase the wellbeing of local communities de facto impacts on women’s lives and their safety in particular, which is the basis for personal development and flourishing.

Текст от CORDIS, на английски · Данни: CORDIS, © Европейски съюз