By: Valentina Valle
May 20, 2014
There are about
100 kilometers that separate the city of Coalcomán from the city of Colima, a
distance that is covered in roughly two hours.
Thirty years ago, moving between these two places was a journey of nine
hours; traveling through villages such as La Cuchilla, Guadalupe del Cobre,
Pantla and El Guayabo.
Following the
completion of Highway 110, the floods in Trojes, and 20 years of war between
the Jalisco Cartel, Los Zetas, La Familia Michoacana, and Los Caballeros
Templarios, what remains of life that liven up these places is a bunch of
abandoned houses, scattered in nature that has gradually regained its
power.
No one visits these ghost towns,
nobody talks about its displaced or murdered people and above all, no one cares
about the new business that is emerging-the uncontrolled and illegal
exploitation of the ones- that transforms the villages still inhabited into
cemeteries of the living.
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| Roads of Michoacán, arriving at Villa Victoria |
These places are
beautiful and rich in history, but when visiting them, the atmosphere we
breathe is ghostly and the feeling of restlessness is constant. Hihuitlán, in the municipality of Chinicuila, is the last village where there are
roadblocks of the autodefensas: from then on, it remains “no man’s land”. A farmer returning from the corn fields with
his bundle of corn on horseback comes over and asks us what we came here for
and where we are going. Shortly ahead,
near the palapa erected by the
autodefensas is the last of the first roadblocks of Michoacán. A massive block is still blocking the road
and a man is still sitting in front of a cabin.
To the right of him are pieces of what was a hacienda, trees have grown
in the adobe walls. The air is still;
time has stopped. Now, like ten years
ago, the community watch the village, they question us, their request is not a
nuisance but a guarantee of safety.
Almost nothing
is known about the history of these people who in the beginning of the 2000’s,
faced the narcos who came down from the mountain of La Morena, a place still
infested with criminals. Once again it
was the women who lead the resistance that has unfortunately been lost in the
memory of others. Back then there were
no AK-47’s or rifles, the only weapons they had were the weapons they used to
protect livestock , and even then they didn’t arms themselves until after the
assassination of Vicente Virgen Cerillos, father of the mayor of Chinicuila and
a brave man who defied the cartels.
Compared to the media noise that erupted in the last 16 months, after
the armed uprising of Tierra Caliente, the struggle of this corner of Michoacán
went completely unnoticed. Maybe it was
because of the lack of heavy weapons or because it was a rebellion on common
land where there were no lemon or avocado orchards, or even ranchers; but there
was not a word devoted to these farmers who with sticks and rocks blocked the
roads and managed to remove the traffickers.
Or maybe it was because it seemed that there was nothing on this land but
oil, and to exploit hydrocarbons it is not only desirable but almost necessary
that the land in which this precious liquid is needs to be as empty as
possible. Whatever the reason, the
inhabitants of the common land of Barranca Seca were left alone and if on one
hand they managed to remove the Milenio Cartel and the Zetas, on the other hand
they couldn’t stop the advancement of the Templarios. The result is where ten years ago there used
to be a movement, resistance, and life, today, there are only ghosts.
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| Hihuitlán: what remains of the hacienda |
Pantla is in the municipality of Coalcomán and appears on
our right after a half hour from Hihuitlán.
47 deserted houses greeted us in a tumbal
silence, just a dog barking behind a rusty fence. Here, there are only two houses that are
inhabited, there are neither women nor children, no noise can be heard; there
are only two men who are unloading a cart of firewood. A father and son answered quickly, looking
elsewhere, they say that they stayed in the village even though everyone else
had all left and they were always “at ease”.
It is unclear what is at ease about living alone in a village abandoned
by government oversight and at the fury of the narcos, what is clear though is
that they don’t want to talk anymore.
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An abandoned house heading towards Pantla
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El
Guayabo, the second ghost town, is another half-hour away, coasting along
burned cornfields and dried fields of grass.
The houses on both sides of the single street look empty, broken
windows, even the ones that have clothes hanging in the yard are lonely and
dark. Two people become aware of our
presence, a man sitting in the plaza, alone, and a lady at the door of her
house, not even passing the doorstep.
The basketball court is abandoned, the school is closed.
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| Basketball court from Guayabo |
At about five
hundred meters away is Ahuijuillito, the third village. We stopped, got out of our car, and took
photos. A lady with a child appears out
of nowhere and disappears out of nowhere; answering the only question we could
ask her: out of the 25 houses in the village, only four are inhabited. The trees have invaded the gardens; one
covers what was a child’s swing long ago.
The door of the church is closed, but it doesn’t have a lock. We don’t force it open out of respect that it
might be the only sacred place in the town that breathes desolation.
Mr. Jesús García
Martínez gets up from his hammock as we arrive.
He greets us happily upon having an unexpected visit and he says that he
has been living alone with his dog for three years; him and three other
families, two old men that live towards the end of the street and the residents
that live two houses down from there. No
one can drive a car, no one can contact the “outside world”; the only link is a
man who every Monday at 9 in the morning passes by to sell tortillas. Ten years ago there were many people, Don Jesús
recalls, but then everyone left, some to other places, some to “another
world”. The Templarios arrived all the
way here, with their indiscriminate massacres, to sow death where there were
only farmers who planted corn.
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| Ahuijuillito |
If the entire
state is considered a strategic territory, these hills extending between Michoacán,
Jalisco, and Colima are even more so: the mineral wealth of the subsoil, the
presence of the beautiful sangualica wood in the forest, the closeness of the
Michoacán coast and the port of Manzanillo, the ability to easily move between
the three neighboring states, make this part of the municipality of Coalcomán
full of captivating payoffs for organized crime. It is also suspected that the killings that
occurred here were not only confrontations between rival drug gangs, but they
also served as a measure to empty the land of its inhabitants.
“When working in
Puerta de la Mina, we removed bags of dead animals from our territory, dead
fishes floated and even a child who lived along the banks of the river died,
after an illness of which the origin was never clarified. I myself, as a child, had stains on my skin
by bathing in these waters that were once pure and clean”, a man native of Tepamillo,
Chinicuila recalls. He adds: “Now, after
almost thirty years, nature is just beginning to recover to its original form,
but we hear that they want to reactivate the work and start again with the
pollution.” As we approached the mine,
and asking about the communities around, it is found that the revival of La
Minita (The Mine) is more than a rumor.
The residents of
Guadalupe del Cobre, in a meeting convened by the Council for the Development
of Coalcomán—an organization recently formed by citizens of the municipality
who, independently from the autodefensas,
are looking to reorganize the coalcomanense
society— they denounced that since a few months ago, they had seen truckloads
of soil and expressed their concern to know who was exploiting their territory.
A Look at Mining in Coalcomán
