On February 7, members of the Council of Ejidos and Communities Opposed to La Parota Dam (CECOP) and representatives of other Mexican indigenous groups met with UN High Commissioner for Human Rights Louise Arbor.

A CECOP representative told Arbor about the history of resistance to the government’s plans for La Parota dam. He then asked her to “tell the governor to respect the decisions that were made by our community,” referring to meetings in which locals rejected the government’s attempts to expropriate their land in order to build the dam.

If built, La Parota would flood out 25,000 indigenous subsistence farmers and destroy the water supply for 50,000 more.