Raquel Jáuregui is only 20 years old and she has a promising future. She is planning to have children with her partner, the town’s doctor, and says that her grandchildren will know their ancestral lands.

María del Jesús has left the town 5 decades ago to go to Guadalajara. “I left because I had to, but my heart is still here, in my town”, she says as she is sitting in her garden. She has an orchard where she grows maize to make tortilla to feed her grand children, nieces and nephews who come to visit her.

Raquel and María del Jesús have been involved in the struggle of this community against the dam project for five years. They teach their love for the mother earth to their children: “what is worth fighting for, always takes some effort”.

These two sisters resist the corporate power, which has the complicity of the politicians and certain church authorities.

Raquel is horrified by the news from outside Temaca: domestic and sexual violence against women, rape, crime, negligence. “Here in Temacapulin we don’t know about this”, she says. She remembers that when she was in high school, when she was 15 years old, she heard about the dam for the first time.

María del Jesús thinks the case of Temacapulin and other similar cases in the states of Oaxaca and Chiapas render the celebrations for the Bicentennial of the Independence pointless. It has been 200 years since then and a hundred since Emiliano Zapata raised the slogan “no plunder”, which is still standing in Temacapulin.

“If we were born in this land, this is our Mother...I don’t think anybody would like to have their mother replaced”, says Maria. She is surprised by the many Australians, Cambodians, Europeans and Latin Americans who flooded Temaca to participate in this international meeting.

She later explained how the show of solidarity in the past 5 years in their fight against El Zapotillo dam, has exceeded her expectations. The 3rd International Meeting of People Affected by Dams and its Allies is an example of this.

Photo: Radio Mundo Real