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In the summer of 2020, representatives from Indigenous Maya communities on Mexico\u2019s Yucat\u00e1n Peninsula filed an amparo<\/em> with Mexico\u2019s Supreme Court. An amparo is a legal tool that exists in some Spanish-speaking countries; literally meaning \u201cprotection,\u201d it allows citizens to suspend or halt a state-initiated law or project if a judge finds it unconstitutional. Similar to an injunction or habeas corpus, amparos are a way for citizens to stop the government from breaking its own rules.<\/p>\n The Maya groups argued that the construction of the Tren Maya, a state-funded tourist train, had violated key constitutional rights\u2014Article 4<\/a>\u2019s \u201cright to a healthy environment\u201d and Article 2<\/a>\u2019s protection of \u201cindigenous peoples\u2019 right to self-determination\u201d\u2014because it destroyed forests, lakes, and aquifers<\/a>. They also claimed that the consultation process, meant to take local Indigenous communities\u2019 concerns into account before construction began, had been a sham<\/a>. In 2020 and 2023, judges sided with their argument and granted the amparo, calling for the government to suspend multiple sections of the train line.<\/p>\n The Tren Maya was one of former Mexican President Andr\u00e9s Manuel L\u00f3pez Obrador\u2019s hallmark initiatives. After he left office last fall, many international onlookers wondered whether his successor, Claudia Sheinbaum<\/a>, would continue or disrupt his mixed environmental legacy. Although both are members of the Morena party, which L\u00f3pez Obrador founded a decade ago, Sheinbaum previously worked as a climate engineer.<\/p>\n Mexico\u2019s Supreme Court defines<\/a> the amparo as \u201ca medium of defense that the people have to protect \u2026 the rights that our Constitution recognizes when we consider that an authority is violating them.\u201d Until 2013, the amparo applied primarily to personal injury, used in cases of censorship or wrongful conviction. That year, a reform<\/a> allowed it to also apply to cases of \u201clegitimate collective interest.\u201d<\/p>\n Since then, it has become one of the most commonly used legal tools in the country, with a trajectory of case law built by environmental and human rights activists.<\/p>\n \u201cThe heart of Mexico\u2019s judicial system is the amparo,\u201d said Juan Jes\u00fas Garza Onofre of the Institute for Juridical\u00a0Research at the National Autonomous University of Mexico. Amparos have brought about a long list of legal achievements, including the country\u2019s 2021 decriminalization of abortion<\/a>.<\/p>\n Observers did not expect that Sheinbaum would suddenly and substantially compromise Mexicans\u2019 ability to bring about change\u2014and to fight for their environmental rights. But in October, on the heels of sweeping judicial reforms last year, the Mexican government passed legislation aimed at the amparo. The move was a blow to activists\u2019 hopes for climate progress under Sheinbaum. And it stands to further consolidate power in Morena\u2019s hands.<\/p>\n When Sheinbaum<\/span> handily won Mexico\u2019s presidency in June 2024, onlookers in the United States approved of her environmental bona fides. Time<\/em> magazine included the leader, who holds a doctorate in energy engineering<\/a> and contributed to the 2007 and 2014<\/a> Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change reports, among the \u201ctitans<\/a>\u201d of its Time100 Climate list. The Washington Post<\/em> wrote<\/a> that her election had \u201cgiven hope to environmentalists and diplomats.\u201d<\/p>\n In Mexico, however, environmentalists\u2019 responses to Sheinbaum\u2019s election were more restrained. Both on the campaign trail and in the first year of her presidency, Sheinbaum committed to continuing L\u00f3pez Obrador\u2019s signature infrastructure projects. In addition to the Tren Maya, these include the construction of the country\u2019s largest oil refinery<\/a> and the Interoceanic Corridor of the Isthmus of Tehuantepec (CIIT), a logistics complex intended to compete with the Panama Canal<\/a>.<\/p>\n L\u00f3pez Obrador framed<\/a> these projects as state-led economic development necessary for \u201cguaranteeing national sovereignty.\u201d Yet they carried an environmental cost\u2014and were roundly opposed by local communities, which had hoped to see change under Sheinbaum.<\/p>\n The Tren Maya \u201cis an excessive development that keeps accelerating, affecting communities and exacerbating problems like lack of access to water,\u201d said Alberto Vel\u00e1zquez of Maya community organization Utsil Kuxtal. He noted that some local communities\u2019 water sources had become saline due to the construction\u2019s impact on the aquifer. \u201cThey keep promoting the peninsula [for tourism development], and meanwhile, we\u2019re at an environmental limit.\u201d<\/p>\n Under Sheinbaum, Vel\u00e1zquez said, he has not seen a change in approach to the environment but rather \u201ca continuation of Morena\u2019s politics.\u201d<\/p>\n <\/p>\n In the far southern tail of the country, Indigenous communities affected by the CIIT construction feel similarly. Carlos Beas Torres, the head of the Union of Indigenous Communities of the Northern Section of the Isthmus, which has opposed the project since its start, said that the port expansion had destroyed mountains in order to mine rock, and that the human-made jetties had affected fishers\u2019 livelihoods. In February, three members of the union \u00a0were killed<\/a> after receiving threats related to their opposition to the project.<\/p>\n Like the Yucat\u00e1n land defenders, Beas Torres said that he hoped for a change under Sheinbaum but hasn\u2019t seen one. \u201cWe\u2019d like the new secretary [of the environment] to have greater openness to our cause. But we haven\u2019t perceived a change. The environment isn\u2019t the priority for these governments,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n Sergio Madrid, who works in the Yucat\u00e1n programs of the Mexican Civil Advisory on Silviculture, a community forestry nongovernmental organization, said that he had initially been glad to see that many of the bureaucrats whom Sheinbaum tapped to lead environmental agencies had experience with environmental protection. \u201cThere\u2019s a long list of people who have good experience, which wasn\u2019t true\u201d under L\u00f3pez Obrador, he said.<\/p>\n But Madrid\u2019s hopes were quickly dashed by the significant budget cuts to the Secretariat of Natural Resources and the Environment as well as the National Commission of Natural Protected Areas\u2014a drop of 36 percent between 2024 and 2025. For 2026, the latter organization\u2019s budget dropped even further, representing a 60 percent decrease since 2016<\/a>, the first year of L\u00f3pez Obrador\u2019s presidency. (Sheinbaum has sought to balance Mexico\u2019s budget after high spending<\/a> at the end of L\u00f3pez Obrador\u2019s administration.)<\/p>\n \u201cThe presence of those institutions in these regions is important because there\u2019s tourism that wants to take over everything, and someone needs to put the brakes on it,\u201d Madrid said.<\/p>\n In an interview with Foreign Policy<\/em>, Mexican Secretary of Natural Resources and the Environment Alicia B\u00e1rcena said that the country\u2019s budget deficit put her agency in a complicated position, especially given the need for adequate staffing of protected areas. She added that the government was working to make up the difference with funds from international organizations and the creation of an \u201cenvironmental fund\u201d using the revenue from fines and fees.<\/p>\n Of the Tren Maya, B\u00e1rcena said, \u201cThe train is already there; we\u2019re not going to get rid of it. So what we need to do is to see how we can undertake compensatory and restoration actions across its seven sections.\u201d With regard to the CIIT, she said that her agency was working closely with the Marines, who oversee the complex, but added that the area was \u201calready quite impacted\u201d before the project.<\/p>\n When Sheinbaum<\/span> pledged to finish both the Tren Maya and the Corredor Interoce\u00e1nico, local communities and environmental organizations put their hope into amparos to stop the projects. Since construction began in 2019, more than 50 amparos<\/a> have been filed against the Tren Maya. Both there and at the CIIT, judges called for the definitive suspension of elements of the projects due to their violations of Mexicans\u2019 constitutional right to a healthy environment.<\/p>\n But this fall, Mexico\u2019s Morena-dominated legislature approved an amparo reform that went into effect on Oct. 17<\/a>. Nominally intended to bring the tool in line with the judicial overhaul, it also turns back the clock on the application of amparos developed since 2013. Now, the amparo can only be applied in cases of direct and immediate personal injury\u2014not to eventual impacts to broad constitutional rights, such as the right to a healthy environment. Additionally, when suspensions are granted, they cannot not be applied generally but\u00a0only apply to the individual who filed the complaint.<\/p>\n Now, \u201cthe judge will say, \u2018you\u2019re right, but I can\u2019t give you an amparo for general effects,\u2019\u201d said \u00darsula Garz\u00f3n Arag\u00f3n, an attorney with the Mexican Center for Environmental Law, which routinely uses amparos<\/a> to prevent destructive projects and to prevent government agencies from shirking established ecosystem protections. \u201cThe reforms in the bill are serious,\u201d she continued. \u201cThey are looking to close doors and put up hurdles.\u201d<\/p>\n The impacts of these changes will quickly begin to play out. For example, since the reform, the Supreme Court awarded an amparo<\/a> to an environmental organization that argued that the air quality laws in their state were not strict enough<\/a>. Following the Supreme Court decision, the case was remanded to a district court for implementation, as is customary. In the past, that judge would have ordered the state to rewrite the laws. But with the new reform, the amparo can only apply to the organization making the complaint\u2014essentially, the judge can only order the complainants to not\u00a0drive their own cars on certain days.<\/p>\n Legal scholars see the amparo reform as another way that Sheinbaum is continuing to consolidate power in the hands of Morena. Some observers have called the party \u201cauthoritarian<\/a>\u201d and argued that it is attempting to recreate the sustained one-party rule<\/a> that Mexico experienced for most of the 20th century. The amparo reform followed a suite of judicial reforms<\/a> approved in the last weeks of L\u00f3pez Obrador\u2019s presidency that weakened judges\u2019 abilities to act as a check on the executive and legislative branches.<\/p>\n \u201cIt\u2019s a pro-government reform, not a pro-citizenry one, and one very much in line with the judicial reforms\u2014the control and consolidation of one of the powers of government and its tools,\u201d Garza Onofre said of the amparo reform.<\/p>\n In a press release<\/a>, Arturo Zald\u00edvar\u2014a former Supreme Court justice and the Sheinbaum cabinet\u2019s general coordinator of politics and governance\u2014rebuffed claims that the reform was a step back, stating that it offered \u201ca more modern, intimate, and accessible justice.\u201d He added, \u201cthe amparo must protect the human rights of all people, but not be an instrument for damaging society in the hands of delinquents.\u201d<\/p>\n Although Garza Onofre referred to the reform as \u201cretrograde and serious,\u201d he also tempered his concerns. He described himself as a \u201cskeptic\u201d of the tool because of the history of lack of oversight for its enforcement. Even when judges have granted suspensions, he said, the government has often neglected to apply them.<\/p>\n That\u2019s exactly what has happened both in the Tren Maya\u00a0region<\/a> and in the isthmus<\/a>. By the time that the 2023 decision came down, \u201cthe trees had already been cut,\u201d as one activist put it<\/a>. Without the\u00a0amparo available\u00a0as a citizens\u2019 check on the government, however, the party behind those actions is only more empowered.<\/p>\n<\/p><\/div>\n
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