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In the mountains of northeastern Mexico, an indigenous community is leading the way towards energy sovereignty and a just transition. Solar power has become the primary source of energy for their daily activities. For years, they have rejected efforts to set up conventional projects in their territory. In this way, they seek to preserve what is most important to them: yeknemilis, or good living.
By Alma Zamora
Author: Alma Zamora is an indigenous woman from Cuetzalan del Progreso. She was a member and coordinator of projects promoting community development.
Nestled among waterfalls, rivers, and mist, Cuetzalan del Progreso was designated a “Magic Town” in 2002 and recognized in 2021 by the UN World Tourism Organization as one of the “Best Tourist Villages”. Its beauty draws thousands of visitors each year as well as companies eager to establish mines, fracking wells, and hydroelectric plants.
Ofelio Julián Hernandez, a member of the Tosepantomin Savings and Loan Cooperative within the Union of Tosepan Cooperatives and a member of the Maseual Altepetl Tajpianij Council, explains that since 2010, they have organized to block the establishment of what they call “death projects”, due to the fact that they threaten their ecosystems and community life. Their efforts include legal actions against open-pit mining and assemblies made up of over 5,000 residents.
The town of Cuetzalan is located in the Sierra Norte de Puebla. According to an article published in the Journal de la Société des Américanistes, the region is home to 600,000 people, the vast majority of whom are indigenous, including 400,000 Nahuas and 100,000 Totonakus.
Julián Hernandez at the central training building of the Union of Tosepan Cooperatives, where nine solar panels have been installed in a stand-alone system. Photo: Alma Xochitl Zamora
For this reason, the community is backed by international treaties such as Convention 169 of the International Labour Organization (ILO), which safeguards, among other things, their rights to land and autonomy. Leveraging this convention and the Mexican Constitution, they developed a Territorial Ecological Ordinance, a tool for community defence and legal support that enables the municipality to manage the area without disrupting their way of life. This includes measures such as restricting or prohibiting mega-projects within their territory. However, public entities such as the Federal Electricity Commission (CFE), which supplies electricity to all of Mexico, have disregarded these measures, sparking opposition from local communities.
The Struggle of Good Living (Yeknemilis)
Mexico’s indigenous peoples have been exploited since European colonization and now face dispossession by extractive companies that, with the Mexican government’s support, seek to establish operations on their lands to generate energy — but for whom?
In 2016, Nahua, Totonaku, and mestizo residents opposed the CFE’s Cuetzalan entronque Teziutlán II-Tajín initiative, which aimed to supply energy through an electrical substation and a high-voltage line to support mining, fracking, and hydroelectric projects already conceded in the area. The project had been proposed earlier and was included in the CFE’s 2010–2014 budget.
According to the Environmental Impact Assessment (MIA), the high-voltage line would have spanned 20 kilometres, crossing lands in the communities of Xaltsinta, Colonia Cuauhtémoc, Alahuacapan, Xiloxochico, Chikueyajko, Acaxiloco, and Nahuiogpan. It would also pass through Cuamono, where the Apulco River flows, which already had four hydroelectric power plant concessions named Ana, Boca, Conde, and Diego.
Additionally, the Ministry of Economy had authorized three mining concessions called “Atexcaco I”, “Atexcaco II”, and “Macuilquila”. In response, a legal injunction was filed against these projects and the Mining Law, which — as Julián Hernandez insists — is unconstitutional.
The community studied the impact of the high-voltage lines, highlighting issues such as radiation and the fact that the lines “would cross entire communities. For example, in Xiloxochico they would pass over a preschool”, Julián Hernandez points out. He recalls that after a 2016 demonstration demanding greater municipal security in the face of rising crime — which they claim coincided with the concessions — they went to the site of the planned substation and symbolically cancelled it, setting up a camp that lasted ten months.
Encampment set up by indigenous collectives from the Sierra Norte de Puebla at the planned site of the electrical substation. Photo: Alma Xochitl Zamora
During those ten months, they took care of the camp, holding workshops, building dreams, planting maize fields as a symbol of resistance, and analyzing current energy production methods. This led to discussions about the feasibility of pursuing energy autonomy and renewable sources.
Although the camp was eventually dismantled and the CFE did not proceed with the project, it did sue eight indigenous leaders for opposing it in 2017. Julián Hernandez recounts that opponents of the substation suffered harassment and smear campaigns until 2018. In 2019, during a general assembly in Cuetzalan’s municipal seat, it was announced that the CFE had dropped the charges against the defenders, and Semarnat confirmed the project’s definitive cancellation that same year. However, residents are not ruling out the possibility that the company might try again in future.
Energy Transition and Environmental Justice in Mexiko
One way to mitigate the effects of the current climate crisis is through an energy transition, aiming to shift from a system based on fossil fuels to renewable sources such as solar, wind, photovoltaics, and others. This is particularly significant in Mexico, which is the world’s twelfth largest emitter.
In fact, hydrocarbons represent 83.93 percent of the country’s primary energy production matrix, with crude oil at 59.83 percent and natural gas at 23.15 percent, according to the National Energy Balance 2019 published in 2021.
However, it is not enough to simply replace sources of energy. It is also essential to take social factors into account. For this reason, initiatives in the Sierra Norte de Puebla aim for a just energy transition that incorporates social and environmental justice, accounting for territorial, socioeconomic, and gender-specific factors, as outlined in a report by the NGOs FIMA, CEUS Chile, and CERES.
While the concept originated in North America and Europe, it has been adapted in different ways across different contexts. For instance, in Cuetzalan’s Masehual and Totonaku communities, it involves creating new sociopolitical conditions to improve residents’ quality of life through climate justice.
Energy Generated By and For Indigenous Communites
Cuetzalan serves as an example of promoting community energy alternatives to advance climate justice and a just transition through energy sovereignty.
According to engineer Sofía García Pacheco, a co-founder of Cooperativa Onergía, there are two energy sovereignty narratives. One, historically promoted by nation states, relates to the nationalization of resources for the country. However, she notes that “even if we speak of sovereignty in those terms, it doesn’t guarantee that energy will be managed based on human rights so people can have a dignified life”.
For this reason, local community assemblies decided to pursue this sovereignty through various projects, including installing photovoltaic systems — interconnected devices that transform solar energy into electricity through panels or cells.
Solar panels installed at Tosepan Kaltaixpetaniloyan, the training centre of the Unión de Cooperativas Tosepan in Cuetzalan, Puebla. Photo: Alma Xochitl Zamora
In Cuetzalan, they have implemented two types of systems: interconnected or hybrid, and stand-alone. The former convert sunlight into electricity and feed it into the public grid (in this case, the CFE’s network). The benefit is reflected in cheaper bills. Stand-alone systems, as the name suggests, are not connected to the public grid. “The advantage of solar photovoltaic is that it is adaptable and flexible to the places where it is to be used, so the energy demand always has to be assessed”, García Pacheco points out.
An engineer by trade, she explains that Mexico has a large-scale national energy system “that runs from south to north and is even interconnected in the south with Central America’s electronic system and in the north with the United States’ electrical system”. The government can prioritize energy distribution to the industrial sector, which “supports the economy”, while allocating a smaller share to domestic users or local economies.
In response to this, García Pacheco asserts that energy sovereignty “is the appropriation of energy flows at the local level, meaning we must take control of the various ways we transform, produce, and consume energy to make it community-based and grounded in local economies”.
This perspective is shared by others, such as Leticia Vázquez Esteban, coordinator of the linguistic revitalization project at the Unión Cooperativas Tosepan. She highlights the community energy research initiative called “Democratization of Energy in the North-Eastern Sierra of Puebla”, aimed at exploring ways to manage energy for good living (yeknemilis in Nahuatl).
Right from the start, they realized that concepts like “renewable energy”, “energy poverty”, and “energy sovereignty” were entirely foreign to them, prompting them to develop a new understanding of what energy means.
Through these reflections, Vázquez Esteban and her colleagues recognized that “energy is often thought of merely as electricity or energies produced by hydroelectric plants or gas from hydrocarbons. But in the communities, the main and essential energy is biomass (through firewood), followed by other types, like solar energy, water, and the energy our bodies need to move. In addition, wep began to talk about spiritual energy”, she explained.
Energy sovereignty is the appropriation of energy flows at the local level, meaning we must take control of the various ways we transform, produce, and consume energy.
From this initial phase, the Cooperativa Tonaltsin emerged via the programme Jóvenes Construyendo el Futuro (Youth Building the Future). They began by installing photovoltaic systems as an initial step toward renewable energy.
The initiatives have multiplied. According to the 2020 documentary La energía de los pueblos, several photovoltaic systems were installed in Cuetzalan with guidance from the Cooperativa Onergía. For example, the Tosepan Kali hotel installed 20 solar panels with a hybrid system, Tosepantomin set up an interconnected system with 30 panels, the Tosepan Kaltaixpetaniloyan training centre built a stand-alone system with nine solar panels, and two stand-alone systems were installed in two households in the Xocoyolo community.
This solar energy is primarily used for daily activities, such as lighting, powering appliances, and charging mobile phone batteries. It also saves money previously spent on electricity bills, and stand-alone systems allow families to use battery banks when there is an outage in the power grid, ensuring they are never without electricity.
Cooperative member Albano Adrián Chávez notes that Cooperativa Onergía engineers recommended cleaning the solar panels every two months to prevent dust, dirt, insects, or other elements from hindering their performance.
Despite the CFE’s frequent claim that solar panels would not work in this rainy, cloudy region, engineer García Pacheco explains that mist acts as a filter: some photons manage to pass through and others do not. The panels function even when the municipality experiences consecutive foggy days, although they produce less energy. Still, the small amount of light that passes helps to charge the batteries.
The Challenges of Moving Towards Energy Sovereignty
When President Andrés Manuel López Obrador began his administration in 2018, he made 100 commitments, of which number 73 states:
We will promote the development of renewable alternative energy sources, such as wind, solar, geothermal, and tidal energy.
This commitment is still “in progress”, according to the official presidential website, however, it is a proposal that does not include the voices of the country’s indigenous peoples.
Vázquez Esteban affirms that indigenous peoples were not taken into account in the proposal for the Energy Reform, which was not approved in Congress. Various organizations proposed granting more autonomy to civil society and energy users, but these groups had no decision-making power with respect to the reform.
Another challenge is the concept of energy transition itself. Although the term is increasingly heard in Mexico, it is not understood in indigenous communities because there are no translations for its criteria, which makes it difficult to include speakers of indigenous languages. In this regard, Vázquez Esteban explains that these terms were created in academia and not within communities, which means “we must create concepts from the Nahuatl and Totonaku languages. These are contributions in themselves, because apart from naming the concept, what matters is the meaning that people give to what they conceive.”
Along with Oaxaca, Chiapas, Yucatán, and Veracruz, the National Institute of Statistics and Geography (INEGI) says that the state of Puebla is one of the five states with the largest indigenous-speaking populations, at 61.09 percent. Nevertheless, government information on these topics is only distributed in Spanish.
Solar panels installed at Tosepantomin, a savings and credit cooperative belonging to the Unión de Cooperativas Tosepan in Cuetzalan, Puebla. Photo: Alma Xochitl Zamora
Energy transition also poses another challenge: the cost of raw materials. “It remains a technology that is not economically accessible to everyone”, García Pacheco notes. She also points out that since the COVID-19 pandemic, there has been a shortage of the micro-components and raw materials the technology relies on because renewable energy depends on the global market and “prices are changing month by month”.
“We always say it’s not about money; our struggle isn’t economic. Ultimately, it’s about social organization”, García Pacheco insists. As she notes, it is not the same for one person to buy a solar panel as for several people to buy it together because a collective purchase provides mutual economic support.
Although the path to energy sovereignty is long and challenges persist, the people driving these initiatives recognize the contributions they are making to the region’s shift towards energy autonomy and, as far as possible, gradually abandoning current forms of electricity generation.
In Julián Hernandez’ words, “the cooperative and the communities have made it necessary to think about and dream up other ways of generating energy”.
This article is part of our climate journalism mentoring programme.
Translated by Diego Otero and Joseph Keady for Gegensatz Translation Collective.
