Life or Pemex: how the Totonac people are uniting against Mexico’s state oil company

Digital illustration created for Ojalá © Elisa María M.V.

Reportage • Ana Alicia Osorio González • April 4, 2025 • Leer en castellano

“You’ll get used to it; they got used to it in other places,” said a representative from Petróleos Mexicanos (Pemex) as he faced down protesters in Papantla, Veracruz. He was telling them to ignore a month-long pipeline leak the state-owned oil company was refusing to address.

Ever since the leak began in August 2024, the people of Ojital Viejo, which is part of the municipality of Papantla, tried to stop the flow of toxins from reaching the Cazones River and surrounding lands. 

The whole town came out for the next protest. In addition to blocking the highway between Papantla and Poza Rica, they shut down over 2,000 oil wells in the municipality, published press releases and posted to social media. They filed lawsuits against various government institutions. After three months of continuous leakage, their pressure campaign led to state action. The hard-won mandated cleanup of contaminated sites was a first for the region.

Ojital Viejo, which is home to around 500 people, inspired other Indigenous Totonac communities in Papantla to organize in the fight against Pemex.

Since then, 12 communities have published demands and filed lawsuits over spills ignored by Mexico’s Security, Energy, and Environment Agency (ASEA by its Spanish initials), the federal organization in charge of regulating and monitoring the fossil fuel sector. 

Their fight is unprecedented in the region. They are calling for aging pipelines to be replaced to avoid spills and demanding scientific study on the impacts of the chemical spills.

Protecting life against Pemex

Romualdo García de Luna is a member of the Council of Elders, a leading community organization among the people of Ojital Viejo. He told Ojalá that for Totonac communities—who arrived in the region over 1,500 years ago—well-being is an environmental balance between animals, plants, microorganisms, earth, and water. That integrity is what they are protecting from Pemex.

The Totonac people in Papantla are known for the Papantla Flyers Dance, where four men ‘dance’ ritually from a high pole, hanging upside down from four ropes and spinning slowly to the earth in a ritual for fertility. They’re also known for the vanilla bean, and for sacred and archaeological sites such as Tajín.

Nearly half the population of Papantla is Totonac, and nearly all of its economic wealth is underground. Last year, oil fields there produced over 11,000 barrels of crude oil per day and almost 13 billion cubic feet of natural gas, representing three percent of Mexico's mainland oil production. Pemex's revenues represent 8.4 percent of Mexico's GDP, according to the Center for Economic and Budget Research.

But the economic boom has brought spills and pollution. Today, communities are organizing in an increasingly united front, but some have already been fighting for years. Fermina Pérez, an environmental activist, has long worked in El Remolino, Papantla, to organize her community against Pemex. But, she says, it’s been difficult to make the case to the community assembly.

“Most of them are men and they see it as unimportant,” Pérez told Ojalá.

For Pérez and other women activists, spearheading land defense carries extra barriers as primary caregivers to their families, often without title to their land, and facing a dearth of women in positions of leadership.

Widespread contamination has burdened women with even more work, especially when it comes to collecting and managing drinking water. Drinking water is delivered just once a month. Local wells, contaminated by Pemex, are rendered unusable.

Sacrifice zone

Medicinal plants used to grow along the banks of the now-contaminated creek that runs through Ojital Viejo. Pemex pipelines crisscross the hamlet: three cut across individual farms and one is buried under people’s homes.

According to the Mexican Center for Environmental Rights, in 2022 there were over 2,055 oil wells in Papantla. Over half have been fracked, an extractive technique that fractures the earth with thousands of liters of water at a high environmental cost.

The oil wells form a network of pipelines destined to Pemex’s refineries in neighboring Poza Rica, home to an intersecting grid of pipelines from around the country. Pemez doesn’t disclose how many there are, citing “security reasons.”

The pipelines were built in the 1960s and 1970s, and without proper maintenance have begun to leak.

Pemex's response has been to offer public works to avoid costly cleanups. Following the three-months leak begun in August 2024, Ojital Viejo became the first place a real cleanup has taken place. Due primarily to a great deal of community pressure, ASEA ordered a third party—with no ties to Pemex—to carry it out.

“They wanted to sign an agreement stating that they promised to give us a teaching hall or a health center,” said Fabiola Cabrera Hernández, a traditional community authority in Ojital Viejo. This, she said, was to avoid the cleanup.

A 12-minute drive from Ojital, another spill contaminated a stream and wells in El Tajín, which gets its name from the nearby archeological site. The community organized a surface-level cleanup. Pemex’s response was to promise to pave the road into the community, which it never did, according to community representative Ariadna Jarumi Pérez.

In El Remolino, 40 minutes from Ojital Viejo, yet another spill killed fish and domestic animals, contaminating a stream and the drinking water system the community had built, according to Fermina Pérez. In El Remolino, a promised project of a community hall was, in fact, delivered.

Lawyer Luis Antonio Pérez Pérez pointed out Pemex quiets complaints by offering public works and money from the Community and Environmental Support Program (PACMA), a fund to pay out some of the wealth from fossil fuel extraction to local communities. Several journalistic investigations have accused PACMA of mismanagement of funds and embezzlement.

Damage, riches and violence

In Mexico, different government agencies post diverging statistics on oil spills and leaks. But all agree that Veracruz is the most affected among Mexico’s 31 states.

The Ministry of Environment and Natural Resources (Semarnat) reported 38 sites were contaminated in the state of Veracruz—of which five are in the Papantla municipality—between 2015 and 2024. Of those 38, twelve continue to have no approved remediation plan.

ASEA—another public institution charged with permits and cleanups—reported 237 sites contaminated by fossil fuels in Veracruz but none in Papantla over the same period. The government-run website Open Data differs again, tallying 42 contaminated sites in Veracruz, four of which are in Papantla.

These differences make it impossible to be completely certain of the extent of the contamination. Ojital Viejo elder Garcia de Luna pointed out that there are also leaks that are not officially reported. Doing so requires communities to be familiar with their environmental rights and to overcome attempts by Pemex to silence them with promises.

Pemex arrived in Totonac territory over 60 years ago, promising riches. Yet underground wealth has not been reflected in its inhabitants. In Papantla, almost half of the population lives in poverty, and one in five live in extreme poverty.

Wealth for a select few has also bought with it organized crime. Alejandra Jiménez, a member of the Regional Coordinator of Solidarity Action in Defense of Huasteca-Totonacapan Territory (Corason in Spanish), told Ojalá that heightened levels of violence are a byproduct of economic resources flowing from oil extraction.

In the early 2000s, Los Zetas, a criminal organization that was characterized by a high level of violence, settled in the region composed of Papantla, Poza Rica, and neighboring municipalities in which there is a great deal of economic activity. Although Los Zetas no longer exist, the government says other criminal groups are now fighting for control of the region.

In every community there are secrets, whispers fearing a new kidnapping, forced disappearance or shooting. From 2000 to April 2025, Poza Rica recorded 247 disappeared persons. Another 55 have disappeared from Papantla, along with 48 from nearby Tihuatlán, according to the Ministry of the Interior.

Search groups have discovered mass graves and clandestine cremation sites in the area, such as La Gallera in Tihuatlán, just 30 minutes outside of Ojital Viejo. The María Herrera Search Collective has found charred human remains at La Gallera on five separate occasions.

Members of the armed forces—army, navy, and state police—deployed repeatedly to address the violence, have also been accused of carrying out enforced disappearances and torture.

Many who take action against Pemex would rather not talk about it. They whisper about the incidents and take security precautions, including keeping their family from getting involved in activism.

In addition to the risk of violence, there’s another threat from Pemex: suing protesters. Ten years ago, a demonstrator was arrested for demanding the company build public works. She was jailed until being released on bail.

The damage left behind

Oil spills are only part of the problem faced by Totonac communities living in areas now considered oil regions.

Decommissioned oil wells, buildings, and inoperative installations were abandoned without remediation, regardless of the potential for long term impacts. In the town of Emiliano Zapata, Pemex abandoned a complex where contaminated water stood in uncovered pools alongside sacks full of chemicals. 

Gas flaring releases strong smells, generates harmful airborne emissions, and generates potentially noxious fumes similar to oil wells, according to the Mexican Alliance Against Fracking. These odors cause headaches, and residents suspect contamination has led to an increase in diseases such as cancer. The community is calling for scientific studies into the effects of the chemicals released by flares, wells, abandoned facilities, and spills.

According to García de Luna, the community is working to bring together a multidisciplinary group with medical, scientific and legal experts who can study the health and environmental impacts and maintain litigious pressure. 

Despite the violence, militarization and the power of the oil company, Totonac communities continue to resist for a dignified life. They have refused to get used to pillage, oil spills or contamination. And today, their organizing is motivating other communities to act in defense of their territory.

“We are treading a new path where we have never ventured before,” said García de Luna.

This is the first in a series of articles made possible with support of the Resilience Fund.