Blockade shut down coastal highway to Puerto Escondido and Huatulco Oaxaca

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Road blockades on the Isthmus and the Coast

One is the one installed by residents of Santa María Colotepec on federal highway 200, under the jurisdiction of the Puerto Escondido

A decades-old territorial dispute has flared up in the city of Puerto Escondido, halting traffic on the coastal highway, the main arterial route on the state’s coast.

As with most of the state’s disputes over land — and there are hundreds, the protagonists are two neighboring municipalities fighting over land, in this case the jewel in the crown that is Puerto Escondido, a popular tourism and surfing destination.

On Friday, the mayor of Santa María Colotepec issued a declaration of war and installed a protest camp on Highway 200 at the city’s chief intersection.

“We are not going to give up even a centimeter of our land [and] we’re not going to allow the continuing harassment on the part of [San Pedro] Mixtepec … from here we say to the state government and the agrarian court that we don’t want rulings that have been paid for that put at risk the stability of the port,” declared Carmelo Cruz Mendoza according to a report by the newspaper El Imparcial.

The mayor warned that the blockade would remain until Governor Alejandro Murat Hinojosa and agrarian officials hear their concerns.

According to other officials in Colotepec, their counterparts in Mixtepec have “cunningly” engaged in attempting to influence agrarian officials in favor of the latter municipality, a process that began when lawyers for Mixtepec presented a constitutional argument before the agrarian court in 2018.

Colotepec officials accused both agrarian and state officials of colluding with “the criminal” Fredy Gil, mayor of San Pedro Mixtepec.

Another is at two points on federal highway 190 Oaxaca-Istmo, at the junction known as El Caracol, at the access to Santo Domingo Tehuantepec.

Blockade in Puerto Escondido prevents firefighters from attending fire

The roadblock in Puerto Escondido prevented this Saturday from Firefighters from going to put out a fire in Tonameca, in the Costa region.

A group of residents of Santa María Colotepec closed the passage on the Costera highway since this Friday, which has caused effects on the mobility of people but even the Firefighters did not allow them to pass to attend an emergency call in the community of Agua White.

Due to an agrarian conflict with their neighbors in San Pedro Mixtepec, these people cause severe damage to the economy with blockades.

Drinking water valves close to Puerto Escondido

Cierran válvulas de agua potable | El Imparcial de Oaxaca


Citizens and tourism service providers are seriously affected

Due to the blockade that Santa María Colotepec maintains in the main cruise of Puerto Escondido and other entrances and exits that lead towards Bahías de Huatulco, yesterday around 12:00 hours, the municipal president Carmelo Cruz Mendoza and his group of Followers closed the water intakes that supply the vital liquid to the main tourist destination on the Oaxacan coast, which are located in the territory of Colotepec.

Cierran válvulas de agua potable | El Imparcial de Oaxaca

Faced with this series of protests, Puerto Escondido is impassable and without potable water. Since last Friday, several neighborhoods such as Lázaro Cárdenas, El Marinero, Zapata, Brisas de Zicatela, Fraccionamiento Lomas del Puerto, among others, have shown total discontent and rejection of the actions undertaken by Carmelo. Due to the above, it transpired that some settlers threatened to organize and set re to one of the vehicles that are crossed in the blockades.

Source: oaxaca.quadratin.com.mx, nssoaxaca.com, imparcialoaxaca.mx

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