text: Indigenous Me'phaa set precedent in victory over mining project | Chiapas Support Committee
  ME'PHAA VICTORY OVER HEART OF DARKNESS MINING PROJECT
  Armando Campos, of Tlachinollan, points out: "There have been five years of legal achievements and declarations about territories free of mining. The legal pincers are closed so that no mining company has a margin of entry." These peoples had previously refused to pay for environmental services. In 2014, they file their first legal action requesting a protective order, and they win it. The SE appeals the decision to the SCJN in 2015. The companies granted the concession to the Heart of Darkness desisted. In November of that year the SE publishes in the Official Journal of the Federation the declaration of freedom of the land.
  "Thus, they stopped a protective order that would set a precedent for declaring the Mining Law unconstitutional," explains Maribel González. "The SE and the Mining Chamber coordinate with each other to throw out the amparo and avoid an analysis of the Mining Law." In December, the communities ask for protection against the declaration of freedom of lands, which opens the possibility of granting concessions to other mining companies. "The SE argues that Júba Wajiín 'is not an indigenous community' and therefore the right to prior consultation does not apply to it, which offends the Me'phaa." The judge in Chilpancingo receives the amparo and orders an anthropology expert that favors the indigenous. Although the Mining Law does not recognize such a right, the Constitution and international treaties do.