On a three-hectare plot in the community of Ojitos de Agua, in Tixtla, Guerrero, they want to build a Benito Juárez Welfare University although there is no water service, drainage, internet connection and public transport.
Less than a month ago, the coordinator of the Universities of Welfare, Raquel Sosa, promised the students of the degree in Nursing and Obstetrics that in this community the work would be carried out, but so far only a gap of 400 meters has been built to reach the site.
In the three hectares of land that, according to the mayor of Tixtla, Moisés Antonio González Cabañas, donated by the ejidatarios of Omeapa and its annex Ojitos de Agua, there are two hills with foliage and in the middle a high voltage antenna about 10 meters high, of the Federal Electricity Commission (CFE).
Read: Students demand university headquarters in Tixtla, Guerrero; it will be in Ojitos de Agua, Raquel Sosa tells them
On October 28, the day after Sosa had a tense meeting with the students in the municipal auditorium of Tixtla, he went to Ojitos de Agua to supervise the place that the students rejected.
Workers from the municipality of Tixtla opened a gap so that the official could enter the site called La Lagunita.
“Everything is now legal for the school to be built and there is an act of donation of the land that was approved in an assembly of ejidatarios and is a procedure that after a long time was authorized by the National Agrarian Registry,” said González Cabañas.
RAN sources assured that in the dependency they do not have any certificate of donation of that land, which belongs to the ejidatarios of Omeapa and Ojitos de Agua.
The head of the Agrarian Prosecutor’s Office in Guerrero, Marcos Méndez Lara, confirmed that there is an assembly minutes of the ejido of donation of the land, but that legally that is not enough.
“The representatives of the ejido showed us a donation assembly act but that is not enough for regularization, and let’s say that this act and that assembly is like a promise of the ejido that gives its endorsement for the construction (of the university), but that is not enough,” said the federal official.
Méndez Lara explained that for there to be a formality in this donation of the land there must be a special assembly.
“It is an assembly that has certain specifications where 75% of the ejidatarios have to be in the first call and 51% in the second call,” he explained.
But in addition, in these special assemblies of the ejidatarios must be present a notary public and a representative of the Agrarian Prosecutor’s Office to attest to the act.
Méndez Lara said that another of the formalities that is required is that the Ministry of Environment and Natural Resources (Semarnat) issue an opinion on the change of land use.
In this regard, the state delegate of Semarnat, Armando Sánchez Gómez, said that no request has arrived to issue an opinion on the change of destination of lands of Ojitos de Agua.
“Two months ago I was informed in the forest department that someone from a technical office came to request the requirements to carry out the procedure for that change (of land destination) but only that,” he said.
He also mentioned that, before the Welfare University begins the construction of the school building, Semarnat must issue an opinion on whether or not the change of destination of land is feasible.
“If they do not meet that requirement, then the Federal Attorney for Environmental Protection will have to enter to carry out an inspection of the place and issue a sanction or close the work if it is already being carried out, but as long as there is a complaint in between,” said the delegate.
The commissioner of the community of Ojitos de Agua, Eraclio Bartolo de la Cruz, said that in 2021 the ejidatarios (46 from Ojitos de Agua and three from Omeapa) approved in an assembly the donation of the three hectares of communal land for the work.
“He (Raquel Sosa) was here to talk to the people, whom he thanked for the donation of land, and we hope that the university will be built but we are still not sure about that,” he said.
The commissioner acknowledged that his community lacks water, transportation, internet and even a drainage network.
“That of Ojitos de Agua only remained in the saying, because here there is no water and we have to buy pipes for domestic use and bottles to drink,” he said.
However, he is confident that with the construction of the university all those public services that they lack will be resolved.
Although Ojitos de Agua belongs to Tixtla, to get to the community you take public transport on the Chilpancingo-Chilapa route.
“We are a people of poor people and we support ourselves from the planting of corn, pumpkin and chili., but the majority, especially young people, go to work in the United States,” the commissioner said.
In one of the streets of this town is a Diconsa store of Mexican Food Security (Segalmex), without basic food.
Ojitos de Agua is known in the Central region of Guerrero for its production of mezcal, which is made in an artisanal way.
“There is no water here but there is a lot of mezcal,” said the commissioner.
Bartolo de la Cruz added that the place where the university is planned to be built is called La Lagunita because when it rains it floods.
“We do not know when the school will be built, since so far they have only built the gap, but maybe for next year the work will begin,” he said.
“They are deceiving us”: students
A student of this university said that in the call published a few days ago by the General Coordination of the Welfare Universities for the construction of the school in Ojitos de Agua they are only hiring masons, laborers, carpenters, winemaker, ironmonger and assistant.
“They told us that they had already started with the construction but there is nothing, they are just deceiving us,” said the student of the degree in Nursing and Midwifery.
More than three years ago this school was founded and it is the date on which students receive classes in classrooms of two public schools and one private located in different parts of Tixtla.
Currently, the student population is one thousand 747 students.
Almost three weeks ago, a group of teachers and students set up in a sit-in on the edge of the Tixtla-Chilapa federal highway and intercepted the convoy led by President Andrés Manuel López Obrador, who promised them the construction of his building in Tixtla.
Read: In Guerrero, students from Benito Juárez University protest on AMLO’s tour; He promises building for his campus
Interviewed by telephone, the student said that the mayor and the rector of the university, Abel Gómez, have not let them see the act of donation of the land where the school will be built in Ojitos de Agua.
“We already went to the community and saw that there is no machinery to say ‘they are going to start with the work’, because there is not even a model of the project.”
This text was originally published on the site Poppy Journalism.
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