Mexico shows how not to conduct a land resettlement

Protests erupted initially last October, when the Fox government first announced airport construction plans that would affect 4,600 small landowners in 13 Texcoco communities.

The federal expropriation decree didn't specify much in the way of compensation, saying mainly that farmers would be paid as little as 70 cents per square yard for their land. For small landowners, many with only a couple hectares of land, "that buys nothing more than a one-way ticket to life on the street in Mexico City," says Mr. Abreu.

Only after the communities had launched legal efforts to block the airport did government negotiators begin visiting Texcoco villages in February 2002 to sweeten the deal.

An official in Mexico's Federal Electricity Commission, which created an internal resettlement division after the 1992 dam project failed, said they were surprised that airport planners never called them for advice. "It's pretty clear they never anticipated any of this," says the official, who would not be named.

"These consultations should have come before the airport was announced and not after," says José Antonio Reyes, a village representative in Santa Cruz de Abajo.

In an interview, lead government negotiator Francisco Curi said offers of new land, scholarships, and vocational training were made, and that many in Texcoco looked forward to one day working at the new airport.

"Radicals with machetes," he says, have failed to realize that "their lives will be better with the airport there than without it."

Analysts agree that political groups trying to trip up Mr. Fox's already struggling government have clouded government channels of communication in Texcoco, creating confusion that fueled fear and led to violence.

But many locals remain skeptical about the government's ever-changing offers. "Sure we'll get [vocational] training," says farmer Sergio Jimenez Sanchez. "They'll teach us how to wash the terminal floors and carry the luggage."

Such a high level of distrust bodes ill for the Fox administration, which wants to launch other major projects, like his comprehensive Plan Puebla-Panama to develop Mexico's south.

"The airport project could create a serious problem for the Fox government," says Mr. Cernea. "Farmers across Mexico are probably thinking, 'Today it happens to them, tomorrow it happens to my land.' "

Few observers think the airport project is entirely dead. Negotiators will need to develop a resettlement package that makes the farmers feel like winners to make it work again, they say.

"The issue here is even bigger than this big case," he says. "Behind the airport, for Mexico looms the problem of the absence of a fair, humane, national policy for resettlement processes."

For farmers in Texcoco, the matter is simpler.

"They say the airport is for the public good, but when are any of us going to get on a plane to Paris?" says Mr. Jimenez. "We don't want their money.... We just want to live in peace here."

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