“Mapping violent conflicts in the Mexican extractive industry”, 28^th October 2019

…Organizations such as Global Witness report the increasing rates of human rights violations against land and environmental defenders around the world. From 2016, Latin America is considered one of the global regions reporting higher number of cases and Mexico is not exempted from this pattern. Since the new president, Andrés Manuel López Obrador, took office in December 2018, 18 murders of this kind have been reported. Community members, journalists, NGO staff and indigenous people are commonly the victims and increasingly women are doubly affected when other types of gender violence intersect their activism…

Through our research project ‘Conversing with Goliath’ we have generated a map of conflicts derived from a 12-year newspaper review of the extractive industry in Mexico: mining, hydrocarbons, hydroelectric-dam and wind-farm sectors. The sources consulted were online outlets with highest circulation across the country, nationally and regionally…

The newspaper review encompasses 964 newspaper articles mentioning 304 extractive projects with 879 conflictive issues reported between January 2006 and January 2019...