Inhabitants of municipalities that border San José del Progreso, where Compañía Minera Cuzcatlán’s mine is located, denounced that agrarian and municipal authorities are pressuring and intimidating them to sign documents to request that Semarnat deny the environmental permit that the mine requires to continue operating.
Residents of Magdalena Ocotlán, as well as the municipal agency of Los Ocotes, in the Ejutla de Crespo municipality, stated that they fear reprisals if they do not comply with the authorities’ request because they are telling them that if they do not sign, they could stop receiving benefits from social programs or who will have problems with paperwork.
In Los Ocotes, a town located approximately two kilometers from San José del Progreso, the inhabitants denounced that the person in charge of collecting the signatures is the representative of the Vigilance Council, Carlos López Jarquín.
In Magdalena Ocotlán, the president of the Ejidal Commissariat, Roberto Feliciano Aquino Méndez; the president of the Supervisory Council, Francisco Pérez Cosme and the municipal president, Pedro Máximo Aquino Sánchez, are requesting the signatures through a form that they claim was delivered by Semarnat itself.
The municipal president Pedro Máximo Aquino Méndez and the secretary of the city council, Berenice Aquino Méndez, are pressuring the population to give their signature. They, with the support of their brothers Roberto Feliciano and Anselmo Aquino, president and secretary of the ejido commissariat, are putting pressure on the residents, they said.
“We are concerned with what they intend to do with our signatures, because not only are they asking for the voter’s credential, they are also asking for the CURP, we think they are doing something wrong because those documents lend themselves to thinking about other things,” the complainants said.
They commented that for more than 30 days, the representative of the Ocotes Vigilance Council has been visiting people from house to house. “In other communities it is heard that they are only asking for signatures, but this person is asking for these papers to occupy them supposedly so that they no longer give the extension to the mining contract.”
Citizens also made it known that the authorities threaten them that if they do not agree to deliver their documents or signatures, they will be sanctioned and denied the delivery of any procedure they require or support from the federal government that they receive through from local authorities.
Reference-www.eleconomista.com.mx