The Collegiate Court for Criminal and Administrative Matters of the Fourteenth Circuit ruled in favor of the Chocholá ejidatarios (shareholders of common land), who after more than a decade recovered 612.12 hectares (1,512 acres) of land from the Cenote Ring State Geohydrological Reserve.
The main trial began on July 15, 2019, when a group of farmers joined together to file a lawsuit before the Agrarian Unitary Court to annul the ejido assembly held in 2012, which approved the change of land use for approximately 1,512 acres. This action was granted until 2023, according to a report by El Universal.
These lands were designated for a group of business owners seeking to exploit the land for the extraction of rock material and the construction of a salt factory.
The judge’s ruling indicates that the legal obligation to obtain a technical opinion from the Ministry of Environment and Natural Resources (Semarnat) before proceeding with the land registry qualification was not fulfilled.
In addition to this omission, it seriously affected the validity of the act and exposed the attempted dispossession faced by the community members.
The disputed lands belong to the Cenotes State Geohydrological Reserve and have been the subject of interest by businessmen for those businesses.
This would not only have had a significant environmental impact on an area considered of high ecological importance due to its connection to the cenotes and underground aquifers but also on people’s health due to the pollution the project could have generated.
The courts have ordered the restitution of the lands after discovering multiple irregularities in the registration process of the meeting’s minutes with the National Agrarian Registry (RAN).
TYT Newsroom
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