Vulgar deceiver, Cuitláhuac has no way to confront the social upheaval in Nanchital, the rejection of Andrés Manuel’s landfill, the thousands of women and men in the streets, the repudiation, the insults, and the votes that Morena won’t have in the next election.
Himself gives stick of blind, trying to piece together the alibi, constructing the script that explains why such a noble, ecological, and progressive project, disposing of only 900 tons of garbage daily from three municipalities, has driven thousands of Nanchital residents to the brink.
According to Cuitláhuac García, the blame is not on Esmeralda Mora, the mayor who didn’t politically operate or achieve agreements.
The blame, according to the governor, is not on Semarnat or Sedema, which never explained the project.
The blame, according to the braggart, falls on the PRI councilwoman Virginia Bartolo Lagunes because she has a conflict with the municipal president.
Stated this way, Cuitláhuac’s thesis is a self-inflicted wound. If Virginia Bartolo, all by herself, has the ability to mobilize 10,000 people, mostly young and adults, she has secured the victory of the Broad Front for Mexico in 2024.
If Virginia Bartolo disrupts the Independence Day ceremony, riles up the people, and the community leaders chant their anthem — “No to the landfill” — and they carry banners and crash the mayor’s party, then Morena has already ensured its defeat in 2024.
If Virginia Bartolo was able to ignite the revolt in the streets of Nanchital, first in Benito Juárez Park on Independence Day, and then in Coatzacoalcos, at the gates of Ferromex railway, where they waited for Andrés Manuel and besieged him, heckling, cornering, fighting against his Praetorian guard disguised as the Presidential Guard, then the power lies with the PRI member, not the mayor, not Morena, not the oil leaders, because none of them have that mobilization capacity.
A woman, Virginia Bartolo Lagunes, according to the governor’s alibi, moved an entire town and put López Obrador in a tight spot. Therefore, Morena, Cuitláhuac, Rocío Nahle, Eric Cisneros, and the entire power apparatus will be wiped out in Nanchital in 2024.
This is how the governor’s mind works. He thinks in the short term. He reasons in the short term. He processes in the short term. Everything is diminutive. Everything is microscopic. Everything is so elementary.
Cuitláhuac is a mimic, on a small scale, of Andrés Manuel. He copies the stories and the accounts, the fallacies, the lies, the exoneration; he blames the past, boasts of an empty present with no results; he claims to exorcise corruption even though corruption persists, overwhelms him, and buries him, and even though the messiah and his pawn live in the muck and reek of mud, they claim they are not the same, even though they are infinitely worse.
Cuitláhuac is also forgetful. One day he accuses in one direction, and the next day he contradicts himself. Well, in that regard, he’s just as messed up as López Obrador.
His animosity toward Councilwoman Virginia Bartolo became obsessive. He thought he had found the culprit of the Nanchital uprising, but what he found was a mess.
He accused, for example, that Virginia Bartolo didn’t mention that Nanchital had an open-air landfill, and in a second video, the governor pointed out that the PRI member had mentioned it while placing the banner of opposition to the landfill on the central balcony of the municipal palace.
There’s another video where Cuitláhuac, seething with anger, argues that Councilwoman Virginia Bartolo lacked arguments, that her reasons were invalid. The councilwoman was clear: the Ministry of Environment and Natural Resources of the federal government tried to deceive the Nanchital residents, holding fairs and environmental forums to pretend that they had informed the population about the landfill installation.
Cuitláhuac García’s anger is laughable. Out of control, he watches as Virginia Bartolo, speaking among the protesters, asks Mayor Esmeralda Mora, a political comrade of Energy Secretary Rocío Nahle García, to step down from her position and engage in a dialogue with the people.
And then the governor puts his foot in it. By attributing the Nanchital revolt to Virginia Bartolo Lagunes, he categorizes her as the woman with the most mobilization capacity in Nanchital.
The uprising has leaders. René Valdés is one of them. He is an opposition leader, a dissident oil worker, an activist with strong community ties. He is the true leader of the revolt against the landfill.
Elda Luz Palma is another figure. Leaning to the left, “Lulú” Palma, as she is known, was part of a group that confronted the oil leader Francisco Javier “Chico” Balderas Gutiérrez over 30 years ago.
They once met at the airport in Canticas. They were waiting for the arrival of the then-governor, Fernando Gutiérrez Barrios. They saw each other. They spoke their minds. There was a fight. A brawl. Lulú Palma confronting the leader and the leader backed by dozens of oil workers.
Marcela Cruz Montalvo, a 75-year-old woman, fuels the protests against the landfill. She expresses her rejection, her repulsion. She holds a frying pan and a wooden spatula in her hands. She clangs them together. She walks among the people; she stands in front of those displaying banners with the “No to the landfill” anthem and caused a commotion a few meters from the window of the car where Andrés Manuel López Obrador was on Sunday the 17th.
But the challenge to Nanchital continues. The landfill is not up for debate, according to the governor. It’s happening, no matter what. It’s an imposition. And it’s a social rejection, a social revolt that will persist.
On Wednesday the 20th, in Coatzacoalcos, not in Nanchital, Semarnat presented the Casa Caracol project, the landfill, and the sports and ecological preservation projects planned for Rancho 34, owned by former councilor Fermín Ávalos Chao and his siblings, who are beneficiaries of the project.
It’s a 31-hectare property, 26 of which will be used to deposit the 900 tons of garbage daily from Coatzacoalcos, Minatitlán, and Cosoleacaque.
Semarnat revealed that Mayor Esmeralda Mora Zamudio knew about the project a year ago. She knew that the federal government was going to implement it. So, the mayor lied.
On Sunday the 17th, shortly after the confrontation with López Obrador, Esmeralda Mora claimed that she didn’t know about the project, that she had heard about it when the president announced it during his morning press conference, but that neither Semarnat nor Sedema had approached her with details.
Esmeralda Mora lied. On September 14th, in an extraordinary council session, the topic of waste separation was discussed. The landfill project was addressed. Esmeralda Mora and councilors Elvis Ventura and Rosa Alemán approved it. The votes against came from Morena’s syndic Félix Olarte Ferral and PRI councilwoman Virginia Bartolo Lagunes.
The project is more talk than reality. There is evidence that the land has not yet been acquired by the federal government. And if the deal isn’t closed within two months, the project will be canceled.
It’s a challenge, a provocation to the people of Nanchital. Everyone wants a municipal landfill to solve their garbage problem, not a regional landfill. If Coatzacoalcos, Minatitlán, and Cosoleacaque have more territorial space, why should they dispose of their waste in a municipality with less geography, without consulting the community, as the law requires.
The challenge continues, and so does the revolt.