Opposition to the project first came to light last year when members of the local indigenous Huave community forced the mayor to destroy a building permit he had signed with developer Marena. At the same time, a Huave Indian group in the neighbouring town of San Mateo del Mar issued a statement saying it will "take up arms" if the project goes ahead as planned.

Foreign energy firms have flocked to a narrow region of southern Mexico, known as one of the world's windiest places, to build towering wind turbines ...their presence has angered some of the indigenous populations, with some protests turning violent. Last week, more than 20 people were injured when police clashed with a group of protesters.

Twenty-two people were injured yesterday following protests over the construction of a wind farm owned by Spain's Gas Natural Fenosa in Mexico's southern state of Oaxaca, Agence France-Presse reported, citing local prosecutor Manuel de Jesus Lopez.

Saul Celaya, a Huave Indian farmer and San Dionisio resident, said the lagoon project would damage mangrove swamps where fish, shrimp and other sea life breeds, and scare off the fish that locals depend on. "Just when they were doing soil studies, there was a mass die-off of fish," Celaya said, adding that projects opponents "are being intimidated, they're afraid to leave their houses, they're threatened."

Dutch pension fund PGGM is the under fire in Mexico because of its plans for a wind farm in the south of the country. Furious local farmers and fishermen are demanding that the project be abandoned. ...The protestors say they've had death threats from community leaders who are determined to see the project go ahead at all costs.

The Cozumel wind farm project has been criticized for its plans to construct turbines on ecologically sensitive parts of the island, including nature reserves that are protected by local, national and international laws and agreements.

At $106.50 per megawatt hour, Energia Sierra Juarez would charge more than double the price of the most cost-efficient wind farms in the United States. Those are located in the Texas and the Midwest, according to Mark Bolinger, a research scientist at Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory.

The groups recalled that the Oaxaca state ombud's office on Nov. 14 issued a note urging authorities to protect the activist's safety. That after Cruz Velazquez and members of the so-called Committee for the Resistance to the Union Hidalgo Wind Project were attacked on Oct. 28, 2011, by local political bosses and municipal police while protesting against construction of wind turbines on their land.

Wind power is sweeping the globe: It's clean energy, but it does have some dirty business aspects that hit the developing world particularly hard. This is part of the cover story package in the Jan. 30 issue of The Christian Science Monitor magazine.

Wind power is sweeping the globe: It's clean energy, but it does have some dirty business aspects that hit the developing world particularly hard. This is part of the cover story package in the Jan. 30 issue of The Christian Science Monitor magazine.

The killing of a man during a demonstration against wind plant construction in the Mexican state of Oaxaca has brought new weight to allegations of death threats against local protestors from the indigenous Zapaoteca community.

Members of an indigenous community in Oaxaca, southern Mexico have been threatened by security staff from a wind farm construction company. The company has been building on their land. Two human rights defenders have also received death threats. Their lives are a risk.

Iberdrola is alleged to have broken a contract between itself and the ejidatarios who hold rights to the land, according to Bettina Velázquez, who helps lead opposition to wind-power development in the region.

How safe would giant wind turbines, power stations, high voltage lines, and a dump proposed for East County be during a powerful earthquake? Consumer advocates and area residents are raising those questions-and the answers in some cases are unsettling.

A wind power project on the Isthmus of Tehuantepec in southeastern Mexico has stripped massive amounts of land and natural resources from hundreds of indigenous campesinos in Oaxaca. Those affected are mostly from non-Spanish speaking indigenous communities. Members were manipulated into giving up their lands in up to 60-year tenancy contracts through misinformation.

The Mexican government is preparing a big wind energy project, but peasant farmers and bird experts aren’t too happy about it. The government’s aim is for wind-generated electricity — which now accounts for just 0.005 percent of the energy generated in Mexico — to reach six percent by 2030. The project has the blessing of some big corporations and environmentalists. Achieving that goal involves setting up more than 3,000 turbines in Mexico’s windiest zone, the Isthmus of Tehuantepec, in the southern state of Oaxaca, as well as several other wind farms around the country with dozens of turbines each. But erecting the windmills, tall towers with a 27-metre blade span, requires negotiating with landowners, most of whom are farmers. Some have complained that they were taken advantage of when the first wind farm was created in 1994. Meanwhile, ornithologiests experts warn that many bird species are at risk of being killed by the giant blades, which could cause an environmental chain reaction across the continent, because various birds are migratory. “Everything is bent towards facilitating the wind farms, but there is not much interest in the birds, which in the long term could bring much broader problems,” RaGBPl Ortiz-Pulido, spokesman for the Mexican office of BirdLife International, told Tierramerica.