TOPOLOBAMPO, Mexico — When federal officials finally unveiled a plan last week to address the 12-year conflict over a nearly completed ammonia plant beside Ohuira Bay, Indigenous Yoreme activist, rural sociologist and law student Melina Maldonado did not feel relieved.

She felt crushed.

After six days of roundtable discussions, she had begun to feel hopeful; it seemed they were really taking in new information and seeing a different side to the debate. The proposal led her to believe otherwise.

“They didn’t listen to our reasons for saying no,” Maldonado said. “They listened for a way to make it a yes.”

The federal proposal promises environmental safeguards, community monitoring and public investment around the German-backed GPO-Proman plant in northern Sinaloa state. But it leaves the project’s operation largely intact — and that has exposed the fundamental divide at the heart of the conflict: The government is offering ways to make the plant safer, while the communities closest to the bay are still adamant that it should not operate at all.

Those communities must now take the proposal into their own assemblies and, using their traditional Indigenous consensus-based governance model, decide whether to accept it. Until then, the blockade outside the gate to the plant — now in its 72nd day — remains in place.

A proposal, not an agreement

The plan emerged after six days of talks involving federal and state officials, representatives of GPO-Proman and members of the ¡Aquí No! (Not Here!) collective, which is led by Yoreme-Mayo communities surrounding Ohuira Bay and has become the principal force opposing the plant.

Federal officials presented the proposal as a path toward resolving a conflict that has become one of Mexico’s longest-running and most contentious environmental battles. But movement leaders emphasized that no agreement has been reached and that they do not have the authority to accept the plan on behalf of their communities.

The proposal must first be explained and discussed in assemblies in Ohuira, Paredones, Lázaro Cárdenas and Topolobampo. These communities surround the Santa María-Topolobampo-Ohuira lagoon system, a Ramsar wetland of international importance, and would bear the plant’s most direct impacts.

Community response to the proposal

“We have to hold our own internal assemblies,” said Claudia Susana Quintero, a Yoreme educator, resident of the village of Ohuira and one of the leaders of ¡Aquí No! “We have to explain it to the community, analyze it and decide how we are going to reach consensus.”

The representatives’ role is to take the proposal home and return with a decision reached collectively — not to accept it on their communities’ behalf.

The US $1.6 billion plant, designed to produce 2,200 metric tons (2,425 tons) of ammonia a day, is reportedly about 88% complete. Opposition began soon after the project was approved in 2014 and has centered on threats to fishing, the lagoon ecosystem, industrial safety and what Yoreme communities describe as a deeply flawed Indigenous consultation.

The current protest began in late May, when residents tried to block the movement of massive absorption towers from the port. Protesters later shifted their encampment to the plant entrance, where they have remained through extreme heat and intense storms.

A project the government considers strategic

President Claudia Sheinbaum has defended the plant as important to Mexico’s goal of achieving greater food sovereignty. Ammonia is a principal raw material in nitrogen fertilizers, and Sheinbaum has said Mexico currently imports nearly all the fertilizer it uses, apart from production by state-owned company Fertinal.

She has also emphasized that the plant is nearly finished, and that it underwent an environmental review and received majority support in the government-led Indigenous consultation — a process the four communities closest to Ohuira Bay continue to dispute.

The Economy Ministry says the GPO plant could reduce Mexico’s fertilizer imports by as much as 70% and keep approximately US $500 million now spent on imports within the Mexican economy.

For the federal government, the plant is part of a broader strategy to reduce dependence on imported agricultural inputs. Opponents say that national goal does not justify concentrating the risks in their communities.

What the government put on the table

The proposal leaves the ammonia plant in place, but would significantly alter how it operates. Among its most significant provisions, the plan calls for GPO-Proman to stop drawing water directly from Ohuira Bay and instead use water discharged through a nearby Federal Electricity Commission canal.

Opponents have long warned that the plant’s authorized system would pull large volumes of seawater from the lagoon and return warmer, saltier water, potentially disrupting fish and shrimp nurseries. Under the new plan, wastewater would instead be carried offshore rather than released back into the lagoon system.

The plan also proposes a new environmental baseline study, continuous water-quality monitoring and an oversight body made up of community members, scientists, government officials and company representatives. Additional measures would address sewage and agricultural runoff already entering the bay, as well as emergency preparedness and civil protection.

Other commitments focus on longstanding community needs, including housing, education, fishing infrastructure and assistance in certifying local shrimp and crab products so they can command higher prices.

Economic development plans in Topolobampo

Federal commissioner Mauricio Rodríguez Alonso, who has led the talks, stressed at a Tuesday news conference that the plan grew out of dialogue among the communities, GPO-Proman and government agencies. He said the company had agreed in principle to its commitments.

Ulises Pinzón, Topolobampo’s municipal representative, said the package could bring meaningful benefits. He was particularly encouraged by provisions giving communities a voice over future petrochemical development.

That is especially significant in Topolobampo, which the federal government has designated as an economic development hub where chemical and petrochemical industries are among the priority sectors. The plan would also keep proposed methanol and urea plants and a port terminal on hold unless the communities agree to them.

But Pinzón noted that many of the promises involve responsibilities the government should already be fulfilling, rather than concessions from GPO-Proman itself.

“On paper, honestly, I see an attractive proposal,” he said. “The question is how we can ensure that these commitments are actually fulfilled.”

That distinction — between a promising announcement and a binding, enforceable agreement — is now one of the central questions confronting the communities.

The risk that remains

For opponents of the plant, the most troubling unresolved issue is the danger of a catastrophic ammonia release. The government proposal does include new safeguards: an emergency-response center, joint industrial-risk monitoring, water curtains around pipelines and storage tanks, and a regional civil-protection plan — something Rodríguez acknowledged does not currently exist.

But movement leaders say emergency planning and mitigation cannot eliminate the underlying danger documented in the company’s own risk assessment.

According to that assessment, a five-minute leak could create a high-impact zone extending roughly 15 kilometers (9 miles) from the plant, encompassing Topolobampo and nearby Yoreme communities. A broader impact zone could extend as far as 45 kilometers (28 miles), reaching toward Los Mochis and other surrounding communities.

“That risk is still there, and it is still not clear to us,” Pinzón said. “The first people affected would be those of us who live in Topolobampo.”

Loss of life is not remediable

Company project documents show the plant is designed to store up to 75,000 metric tons (82,670 tons) of anhydrous ammonia near populated communities. Quintero said the proposal may reduce certain environmental impacts, but it cannot eliminate the consequences of a major industrial accident.

“You can remediate many things,” she said. “What you cannot remediate is the loss of life.”

For Maldonado, this is where the government’s proposal misses the point. Her own community, the Yoreme fishing village of Lázaro Cárdenas, looks across the bay at the plant every day.

The communities’ opposition has never been limited to the plant’s effects on water quality or fisheries, she said. It is rooted in the belief that a facility carrying such risks should not operate near people’s homes. She pointed to the company’s brightly colored risk map.

“This is the risk zone the company itself identified,” she said. “And now they are minimizing it or pushing it into the background.”

A decision made under threat

The communities will not consider the proposal in a political vacuum. Several of the movement’s most visible leaders have received threats related to their opposition to the plant and now live under government protection measures.

Four of ¡Aquí No!’s most visible leaders, including Maldonado, Quintero and Ohuira traditional governor Felipe Montaño, have been enrolled in Mexico’s federal protection mechanism for human rights defenders and journalists. Protection measures can include bulletproof vests and government-issued panic buttons intended to summon help in an emergency.

But Quintero said such equipment offers little comfort as the communities prepare to deliver an answer that government officials and project supporters may not want to hear.

“I know my community is going to say no,” she said. “But now the government is putting us in the line of fire against the rest of society that says yes.”

She worries that the plan could recast defenders as obstacles to jobs and economic development, increasing the pressure on people who have already spent years facing intimidation for speaking publicly.

“A bulletproof vest and a panic button are not going to help me much if someone decides to act tomorrow,” Quintero said.

The experience, she added, has gradually consumed the rest of their identities.

“We are no longer mothers, daughters or sisters,” she said. “We are nothing more than defenders.”

From shock to strategy

By Thursday evening, the mood inside the movement had begun to shift.

Enrique Ayala, a longtime activist staying at the blockade, said movement leaders spent six hours Thursday with scientists and lawyers analyzing the proposal and plotting their next steps.

“The government proposal is one-sided,” Ayala said. “They are pushing ahead with their project.”

But after years of being ignored, Ayala sees the government’s willingness to sit down with them as progress.

“We have to get up, keep going and make proposals of our own,” he said. “After 12 years when they paid us no attention, now we have them sitting at the table.”

And despite the government’s apparent intention to move the plant toward operation, Ayala said the movement has not abandoned its original goal.

“We still believe we can get the company to leave,” he said. “Sometimes you have to dream.”

Tracy L. Barnett is a Guadalajara-based freelance writer and the founder of The Esperanza Project.