Building a logistics corridor from Atlantic to Pacific has been a pipe dream since the Spanish first arrived to the lands now known as Mexico. Under presidency of Andrés Manuel López Obador (2018-2024), the federal government saw the Secretary of the Marines build and renew railway and highway infrastructure in the region.

The Trans-Isthmus Corridor cuts across lands belonging to over ten Indigenous nations, and includes more than 10 new industrial parks, some of which are proposed to be built on Indigenous-communal land. The first major investment in the industrial parks is a hydrogen plant that also foresees the production of wind and solar energy, the construction of an ammonia plant, and a desalinization plant on the Pacific Ocean.

Details of this project, which is being proposed by Helax-Istmo, a subsidiary of Copenhagen Infrastructure Partners, are scarce. But through freedom of information requests, the GeoComunes collective managed to secure key information about the size and scope of this project, much of which is to be built on tens of thousands of hectares of communally owned land in Santiago Ixtaltepec, Chivela, and Ixtepec, Oaxaca.

This report was translated to English by the CRCR.

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