Photo: Aeropuertos Modernos

By THE PULSE NEWS MEXICO STAFF

The administration of Mexican President Andrés Manuel López Obrador (AMLO) this week expropriated 109 hectares of private property in the State of Mexico (Edoméx) to be used in the ongoing construction of the new General Felipe Ángeles International Airport.

The new airport — which is a pet project of the president and which he ordered to be built when he took office in December 2018, after cancelling a $7 billion, state-of-the-art airport in Texcoco that was more than 70 percent completed — is being constructed on the framework of a former military airbase in Santa Lucía, Edoméx.

According to the government’s Official Gazette, published on Monday, June 28, “a total area of ​​109 hectares, 66 areas, 87 centi-areas and 671 milli-areas of privately owned land has been expropriated for reasons of public utility,” to be used by the Secretariat of National Defense (Sedena) for the airport’s construction.

The government’s eminent domain decree established that Sedena “would immediately proceed to take definitive possession of the property subject to the expropriation, whose surface includes the buildings and facilities that are on the land itself and that form part of it.”

It further stipulated that Sedena will provide compensatory payments to land owners “in accordance with the appraisals issued by the Institute of Administration and Appraisals of National Assets,” the sums of which will be disclosed within a maximum period of 15 business days.

The expropriation act affected at least six private properties, including real estate in the Ejido de Santiago Atocán, a shared farming lot in Nextlalpan.

It is expected that the government’s expropriation of the land will be challenged in federal courts.