Heavy ocean swells in recent days have again left a Oaxacan coastal area in crisis — a 20-year-old situation that prompted residents four months ago to vote in favor of relocating one neighborhood to a nearby hill.
Starting on Monday, floodwaters began surging into streets and homes, forcing the cancellation of school and disrupting daily life for nearly 800 families.
Officials in the municipality of San Mateo del Mar have reported that classrooms, the health clinic and the church were all impacted by floodwaters. Families have been forced to pretty much shelter in place, as neighborhood mobility has been rendered nearly impossible.
San Mateo del Mar is in southwestern Oaxaca, a 30-minute drive from Salina Cruz, the western terminus of the Interoceanic Corridor of the Isthmus of Tehuantepec, a major infrastructure project spanning Mexico’s shortest route from the Pacific Ocean to the Gulf of Mexico.
It sits on a narrow sandbar between two huge lagoons and the ocean — an isolated, low-lying position that has made it vulnerable to flooding and environmental changes.
Gabriel Pinzón, a municipal agent representing the most affected neighborhood, Cuauhtémoc, explained this week that the tide has repeatedly risen over the past two decades, eroding beaches and pushing water into residential areas — severely impacting the area’s economy and culture.
Cuauhtémoc is populated largely by Ikoots, an Indigenous people (historically known as the Huave) who have a deep cultural and spiritual connection to the sea, subsisting mainly on fishing and gathering shellfish.
Media reported this week that the Pacific Ocean in recent years has advanced some 700 meters into Cuauhtémoc, where some fishermen and their families live in small houses made of wood and palm leaves. Most of the 800 families affected this week are in that neighborhood.
“Every time the swell or heavy rains hit, children stop studying because the entire neighborhood becomes a lagoon,” Pinzón said.
The most recent flooding struck just as the community was preparing for Independence Day events, which were abruptly canceled.
Mayor Raúl Rangel González reported many families declining refuge in local shelters to stay closer to home.
No lives were lost, but families remain at risk for illness and face possible isolation as standing water lingers.
Residents have adapted over the years by raising furniture and laying sandbags, but many say they have reached their limit. The community’s future becomes more and more uncertain each season.
Flooding overwhelms Oaxaca communities, leaving knee-deep water in streets and homes
In May, San Mateo del Mar’s residents voted in favor of a federal plan to relocate the Cuauhtémoc neighborhood to Cerro Paloma, a hill 3 kilometers inland within the same municipality.
Yet, as families wait for authorities to come through with funding and begin construction, disillusionment has grown.
“What we need is no longer visits or photo ops, but a real solution,” resident María Hernández told La Tinta Oaxaca. “The sea is winning the battle, and families can’t continue living like this.”
A report last year in the Istmo Press, an investigative news agency based in Oaxaca, noted that Cuauhtémoc “is being swept away by the sea due to the construction of the Interoceanic Corridor.”
The report said the increasingly severe tidal disturbances over the past four years have been “caused by the expansion of the breakwater at the neighboring port of Salina Cruz, carried out as part of the Interoceanic Corridor megaproject of the 4T government.”
With reports from El Universal, Milenio, La Tinta Oaxaca, Excélsior and Istmo Press
