The remaking of social property and wind energy trajectories in the Isthmus of Tehuantepec, Mexico

Abstract

This paper asks how social property and wind energy trajectories have remade each other in the Isthmus of Tehuantepec, Mexico, since 1994. To this end, the paper identifies two social property regimes in the region: the ejido system, with well-defined property rights, in the northern section of the region and the agrarian community of Juchitán Agrarian Nucleus, where a set of competing claims over land championed by different social groups co-exist. Drawing on 83 interviews with local stakeholders and continuous fieldwork since 2017, the paper argues that wind energy and social property have remade each other through two central dynamics. In the ejido system, first, wind power expansion treated the land as private property because of processes of certification and parcellation resulting from the 1992 agrarian reform. In this regime, contestations against wind power expansion have revolved around contractual terms rather than about the installation of wind farms. In the agrarian community, on the other hand, wind power has facilitated efforts to regularise private property through a unique agrarian figure of possession of the land of communal origin. At the same time, it has collided with the resurgence of collective land authorities in the town of Unión Hidalgo. This galvanised contestations against wind energy to revolve around the defence collective land. Therefore, this paper contributes to the scholarship analysing the agrarian consequences of climate mitigation technologies in Mexico and Latin America.