Juan Carlos Flores
Correspondent
La Jornada Newspaper
Monday, August 17, 2026, p. 25
Colima, Col., Collectives and representatives of various social sectors denounced before federal authorities that the citizen consultation to legitimize the project to expand the port of Manzanillo "was a farce", since in the first stage it will harm almost 340 hectares of the Cuyutlán lagoon, because the opinion of fishermen and salt farmers was not taken into account in the survey.
They stressed that said body of water is a “strategic asset of global value, recognized under the following designations of international and national importance: Ramsar wetland, priority hydrological region, preferential marine site, area of importance for the conservation of birds and priority site for the conservation of biodiversity of high consideration and is an essential refuge for migratory birds.”
In letters addressed to President Claudia Sheinbaum and the head of the Ministry of Environment and Natural Resources, Alicia Bárcena, civil associations such as Defenders of the Environment and Resources of Tomorrow, the Pescadores del Pacífico Cuyutlán Fisheries Production Cooperative Society and the Salineros Cooperative Society of Colima assured that the state authorities and the Administration of the National Port System (Asipona) of Manzanillo made public that they already have the endorsement of the society; However, they pointed out that this is false.
In a statement, the complaining organizations indicated that in recent statements the governor of Colima, the Morenista Indira Vizcaíno, assured that “there has been dialogue with all the groups of affected people and they have reached agreements,” but the letters from the aforementioned groups showed that this has not been the case and that their claims continue to go unheard.
In the letters delivered to the federal government, they indicate that in the construction project of the port expansion projected in basin 2 of the Cuyutlán lagoon, “the developers have systematically opted for the simplest route: sacrificing the lagoon, deliberately ignoring its environmental value and its critical relationship for regional biodiversity.”
They anticipate that there will be a great environmental impact
Asipona in turn presented the corrections made to observations to the environmental impact statement (MIA) in stage 1 of the plan to begin the expansion of the port.
In the first phase, the impact is only expected on about 340 hectares of the Cuyutlán lagoon, as part of work to expand the port area, which in total will cover more than 1,880 hectares in several stages.
Phase 1 of the MIA does not yet specify how many hectares will be allocated for the port's operational area on land reclaimed from the lagoon, where currently 1,733 hectares are water and the rest of the program – about 86 hectares – are on land.
The document presented by the authorities has more than 40 mitigation, compensation, conservation, scientific monitoring and community participation measures incorporated into the MIA, according to what was stated in an information meeting of the public consultation that took place in Manzanillo on June 25.
According to the information presented, the plan incorporates permanent environmental surveillance programs, scientific monitoring of the Cuyutlán lagoon, species protection, creation of a port environmental research center and social participation mechanisms that will accompany all stages of construction and operation, in an effort that its promoters consider unprecedented for a port infrastructure project in Mexico.
The expansion of the port area would be from 350 hectares in the San Pedrito Bay to 1,880 hectares in the Cuyutlán lagoon area, with an investment of more than 13,539 million pesos.
Among the observations corrected at the MIA request is the elimination of planned impacts on an islet identified with archaeological value – Crocodile Island – in addition to other technical adjustments aimed at strengthening environmental protection.
Unlike other developments in which environmental actions usually focus on compensatory measures at the end of the works, the proposal for the Puerto Nuevo Manzanillo, according to Asipona, proposes a permanent scientific monitoring scheme that would begin from the construction and continue during the operation of the berth.
The program includes continuous monitoring of water quality, salinity, dissolved oxygen, monitoring of protected flora and fauna, permanent environmental surveillance and periodic reports to evaluate the behavior of ecosystems and apply corrective measures when necessary.
Another component presented was the creation of the port environmental research center, conceived as an institution specialized in the permanent study of coastal ecosystems, the Cuyutlán lagoon and the environmental effects associated with port activity.
The proposal proposes that this center bring together researchers, universities, specialists and members of communities to generate scientific information that allows for the permanent evaluation of the environmental behavior of the region.
The project also incorporates specific measures for the protection of sea turtles by regulating lighting near nesting beaches, special navigation protocols and operational restrictions aimed at reducing risks for protected species.
There was never any rapprochement with the community
Activists, fishermen and researchers who are members of the collective Save Cuyutlán stated in a statement that the authorities “were untruthful when they claimed that they relied on fishermen and salt farmers to prepare the document, since those present denied that they were never consulted nor did they approach them for the proposal.”
Another concern is transportation logistics with the increase in containers. The federal government is still calculating that volume before defining the definitive infrastructure, but it is already working on the engineering of the railway connection, since currently the main route of movement is the Manzanillo-Colima highway – under remodeling –, along which 7,600 freight vehicles circulate daily, according to the Secretariat of Infrastructure, Communications and Transportation.
The activists pointed out that the researcher Aramís Olivos, the main person in charge of presenting the Asipona proposal, stated that fishing activity would not be disturbed in vessels 3 and 4 – which according to what was proposed are the main ones for this work; However, this does not correspond to reality, since the fishermen warn that their main activity is concentrated precisely in vessel 2.
“In the face of possible spills, accidents of deep-draft ships that would enter vessel 2 and the rest of the port activities, the promoters do not present interference, plan or mitigation and containment measures, since the project provides only for the construction and not the operation of the port,” they warned.
With this, the mitigation of these impacts and the containment of risks by promoting the operation in impunity, as in the current port, is transferred and left in the hands of the companies that settle on the site, they warned.
They recalled that researchers from the Autonomous University of Colima and the National Autonomous University of Mexico, in their capacity as expositors of the plan, insisted that it would be impossible for the contamination or impacts of vessel 2 to also reach vessels 3 and 4, "but they were never able to explain how they would prevent this from happening."
It was also assured, without any basis, that the lagoon would be much better preserved with the port's activity than without it, under the argument that the impact of hurricanes and earthquakes would be more harmful to the ecosystem than the port installation itself, but they omitted "that these processes of natural degradation of the lagoons occur on geological scales as opposed to the immediate devastation that the project represents."
On the other hand, salineros publicly denounced that the Federal Environmental Protection Agency recently carried out a superficial investigation into a complaint they filed regarding the appearance of dead fauna and pollution in their territory that they attribute to premature dredging activities.
Despite this, the agency concluded that the birds found dead were due to advanced age or other factors unrelated to human action.
“In the face of this type of nonsense and lack of respect – by expecting civil society to accept this string of lies and mockery –” the fishermen complained about the pollution that already exists in their fishing areas.
In addition, they denounced that the Secretary of the Navy and public security authorities prohibit them from carrying out their activity at several already designated points.
They complained about the “impunity with which the Navy and Asipona act in the face of frequent spills of hydrocarbons and dangerous chemicals in their port operations, risking the environment but also the health of the people of Colima.”
Ejido authorities claimed to be losing ground and denounced the illegal purchase of farmland by real estate companies seeking to speculate with container yards.
"If they try to impose this project by force, they will be prevented by force. This process is not being accessible, nor democratic, nor horizontal, it is being imposed by a decree of the federal government from a very poor perspective of development," they stated.
