Paper short abstract:

This study aims to provide insights on the attitudes, values and motivations that fuel opposition and support for renewable energies in Mexico by analysing local communities' reactions and engagement to wind energy in the Isthmus of Tehuantepec.

Paper long abstract:

While there are many global drivers of wind energy, it is often the local politics that make and reshape its prospects and pathways. This holds true for the Isthmus of Tehuantepec in Mexico where the expansion of wind energy has increased social inequality and has revived conflicts related to questions of rights, land and sustainable development. This paper will seek to provide insights on how wind energy articulates forms of access and use of land that affect local communities by analysing the politics of wind energy. Amongst others, the construction of wind as a resource and as a commodity play out in the politics of wind. Because of its materiality and its low energy density, wind energy requires of land to generate the same amount of energy that can be extracted from a ‘hole’ in the case of fossil energies. The production, distribution and use of wind energy, therefore, articulate different mechanisms of discourse creation, control and dispossession that have to do with forms of access, claim and exclusion to land. These mechanisms undermine land-based livelihoods and provoke a diversification of forms of employment in which peasants are obliged to combine farming activities with waged vulnerable to its own forms of oppression interacting class, gender, identity, ethnicity amongst others. By exploring these mechanisms and their effect on land-based livelihoods and labour, this paper will contribute with a nuanced account on renewable energy development and will provide insights on the reasons that fuel support or opposition for wind energy in Mexico.