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Disparos al cielo [Repetición]

March 31, 2026·42 min·3 clips

Farmers in Puebla hear unexplained explosions that seem to chase away rain clouds, threatening their crops.

San Lorenzo begins with sound. On the rural edge of Puebla, where people grow corn and pumpkin, Nazario hears explosions too loud and too steady to pass as fireworks. They come back every few minutes, sometimes for two or three hours, until the noise stops feeling occasional and starts feeling like part of the day. Then the neighbors get the file. The anti-freeze devices are supposed to run less than two hours a year and use a system that significantly reduces noise. But the numbers do not line up. According to the neighbors, the same file records 11 hours of operation between April and May, far more than what had been authorized. Another condition matters too. Volkswagen needed municipal, state, and federal authorizations, and the community believed those requirements had not been fully met. Consultation was supposed to happen. As original peoples, residents argue they had the right to be consulted before machinery affecting their interests was installed. The paper says one thing. The afternoons in the fields and houses say another. Estela remembers the meetings with bitterness: in her account, the dialogue tables were not much of a dialogue, because officials ignored the petitions and the feeling of the people. What starts as a complaint about noise turns into a fight over permits, power, and whether the state will listen. The story stays calm and lets the documents and neighbors do the pressing.

As heard by us

A grounded Radio Ambulante story about explosions, vanished rain, and a farming town fighting to be heard.

Outside Puebla, farmers in San Lorenzo hear explosions as black rain clouds gather, then watch the rain fail to arrive. Radio Ambulante follows that unsettling pattern through Nazario's fields and the neighbors' growing suspicion that Volkswagen's hail-breaking cannons are…

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