Security meanings and land defence in the context of the Interoceanic Corridor Infrastructure (CIIT) megaproject

This article examines the meanings of security in the context of the upheaval that an infrastructure megaproject can entail. In the centre of this article is the Interoceanic Corridor of the Isthmus of Tehuantepec (CIIT) project, one of the Mexican president’s most ambitious megaprojects. The CIIT is being promoted as a multimodal road and rail transport corridor, linking the Gulf of Mexico with the Pacific Ocean. It is projected as a viable alternative to the Panama Canal that would contribute to speeding up the global circulation of goods, as well as simultaneously stimulate the local economy. Megaprojects, be they for natural resource extraction or infrastructure construction, often change everything: the landscape, the population, the local economy, often with detrimental impacts to the environment, but also to communities’ established ways of living and their sociality. Based on interviews with local residents, the study shows that many of our respondents desired a horizonte seguro, a secure horizon, wishing for a foreseeable future, including certainty of their livelihoods, preservation of their natural world, stability of their social relations, and continuity of their established mode of living and being. The article explores how the production of the commons (lo común), a process that purposefully organises interdependence between humans and the natural world, is considered generative of security for alter-lifeworlds. Harm can therefore not be conceived as accruing to one being or set of beings in isolation. Subsequently, the article proposes an understanding of security as entangled or relational.