Yaqui Tribe Defends Land by Digging Up Gas Pipeline

The Yaquis of Loma de Bacum say they were asked by community authorities in 2015 if they wanted a 9-mile tract of the pipeline running through their farmland — and said no. Construction went ahead anyway.

The Free

  Wednesday, December 20th, 2017

from Bloomberg News and Earth First

A chunk of Sempra Energy’s natural gas pipeline sits in the dirt behind a community center in the village of Loma de Bacum in northwest Mexico. Guadalupe Flores thinks it would make a great barbecue pit.“Cut it here, lift the top,’’ he says, pointing to the 30-inch diameter steel tube. “Perfect for a cook-out.’’Photo: Yael Martinez/Bloomberg

It would be an expensive meal. The pipeline cost $400 million, part of a network that’s supposed to carry gas from Arizona more than 500 miles to Mexico’s Pacific coast. It hasn’t done that since August, when members of the indigenous Yaqui tribe – enraged by what they viewed as an unauthorized trespass their land – used a backhoe truck to puncture and extract a 25-foot segment. They left the main chunk about a mile from the community center, perpendicular to…

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