The Dark Side of Clean Energy in Mexico A palm hat worn down by time covers the face of Celestino Bortolo Teran, a sixty-year-old indigenous Zapotec man. He walks behind his ox team as they open furrows in the earth, a seventeen-year-old youth trails behind sowing white, red, and black corn, a ritual of ancient knowledge shared between local people and the earth. Neither of the two notices the sound of our car as we arrive “because of the wind turbines,” says Teran. Just fifty meters away, a wind farm has been installed by the Spanish company Natural Gas Fenosa. It will generate, at least for the next three decades, what governments and energy companies have declared clean energy.
Along with this farm, twenty others have been set up forming what has come to be known as the Wind Corridor of the Isthmus of Tehuantepec, located in the southern Mexican state of Oaxaca. The Corridor occupies a surface area of 17,867.8 hectares across which 1,608 wind turbines have been installed: The Secretary of Tourism and Economic Development of Oaxaca (STDEO) claims that they will collectively generate 2,267.43 megawatts of energy per year.
The Tehuantepec Isthmus stretches just two hundred kilometers from the Pacific to the Atlantic Ocean, making it the third narrowest strip of land connecting the Americas after isthmuses in Nicaragua and Panama. In this area, mountains converge to create a geological tunnel which funnels extremely high speed winds between the two oceans. Energy investors have put their eyes to the region after the government of Oaxaca claimed that the region is capable of producing 10,000 megawatts of wind energy per year in an area of 100,000 hectares.
“Before, I could hear all the animals living in the areas. Through their songs and sounds, I knew when it was going to rain or when it was the best time to plant. Now though, it seems the animals have left due to the wind turbines,” Teran shared with sadness and rage in his voice.
What Teran does not know is whether the turbines, built in accordance with the Clean Development Mechanism (MDL in its Spanish acronym), as defined in the Kyoto Protocol, are generating alternative energy which will actually help to reduce the greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions of large corporations and industrialized countries. The main objective of these polluters is to prevent global temperatures from rising 2°C before 2100, according to the 21st Session of the Conference of the Parties to the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change(UNFCCC), better known as the COP 21, which took place in Paris, France from November 30th to December 11th, 2015. “I don’t know what climate change is or about the COP. I only know that our ancestral lands are being covered by these turbines,” said Teran.
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