At last month’s International Book Fair in Guadalajara (FIL), amid Expo Guadalajara’s crowded aisles and the buzz of new releases, the story of a small rural town in the Altos de Jalisco reclaimed the spotlight — carried, once again, by the voices of women.
On December 7, the Mexican Institute for Community Development (IMDEC) presented “Tres experiencias de lucha en tiempos de despojo y resistencia,” a book that documents three emblematic struggles against extractive megaprojects in Mexico. But the heart of the presentation was Temacapulínand the women who refused to let their town be erased by the Zapotillo dam.
The book brings together three cases of resistance: the fight against the controversial dam in northeastern Jalisco, the Proyecto Integral Morelos, and the defense of Chontal territory in Oaxaca against open-pit mining. Across all three, a common thread runs deep: women organizing from their communities to defend life, land, dignity, and collective rights.
For Temacapulín, the presentation focused on a chapter tracing a struggle that lasted more than a decade and culminated in a historic victory in 2021, when the dam’s height was limited and the town was spared from flooding.
“This book recovers not only the strategies of resistance,” said María González Valencia, director of IMDEC, “but the voices — especially the voices of women — and the meaning that sustaining these struggles in community had for them.”
Those voices were present in the room.
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