What Tecozautla and Las Dunas say about social license in Mexico

On July 30, 2026, Hidalgo’s economic development secretary, Carlos Henkel Escorza, said the developer of a planned solar park in Tecozautla had filed a letter with Mexico’s Energy Ministry withdrawing the project. A majority had voted against it in the Indigenous consultation. Local press put the investment at about 150 million dollars, on 588 hectares (about 1,450 acres), with more than 204,000 panels.

Three days later, on August 2, Profepa, Mexico’s federal environmental enforcement agency, ordered a full temporary shutdown of construction at the Las Dunas complex in Chuburná Puerto, in the municipality of Progreso, Yucatán. The project, 14 towers and 138 apartments, had an environmental impact statement approved by the environment ministry (Semarnat) in 2025 and municipal licenses. A citizen group had spent weeks documenting the clearing of the coastal dune.

In inspections from July 28 to 30, Profepa found two protected plant species that the impact statement did not report. On October 6, local media reported that a federal judge in Yucatán had granted residents a definitive suspension of the construction, land-use and development licenses while their amparo, a constitutional challenge, is decided.

Two roads to the same stopped site

In Tecozautla, the project never got all its permits: the Indigenous consultation was one of the requirements, and that is where it stopped. Being clean energy did not exempt it from consultation, just as it would not exempt a mine or a highway on Indigenous land. For an investor, the question is whether the financial model had budgeted the time and work of building that agreement.

At Las Dunas, the permits were there. What called them into question was what the citizen group documented, what Profepa found on site and what residents took to court.

Both cases share something investment committees tend to see late. A permit says an authority accepted the project on a given date. Social license is the acceptance of the people who live around it, and it shifts with what they see every day.

What to check before breaking ground

• If the project touches Indigenous land, do the schedule and the financial model include the time for a consultation, and the possibility that the answer is no?
• Does the environmental impact statement match what the site looks like today? A walk-through with someone who knows the area will tell you before an inspector does.
• Who is documenting the work from outside (photos, videos, posts), and who are they sending it to?
• Does anyone at the company read local media and the municipality’s social media pages every week?
• If construction stops for a month, who talks to the community, and with what information?

Riskop’s Intelligence service measures a project’s social license with household surveys and field interviews.