AJAGI Archive

Saving a sacred tradition in Wirikuta: How you can help

By
Tracy Barnett
Published: December 31, 2010Posted in: AJAGI, Featured, Huichol lands, Indigenous rights, Mexico, WhyTags: , , , , , ,
Saving a sacred tradition in Wirikuta: How you can help

REAL DE CATORCE, San Luis Potosí, México – Rodolfo Cosio prays he’s not the last generation of a dying tradition.

As a jicarero, he is one of the keepers of the ancient pilgrimage of the Wixaritari or Huichol people of western Mexico. Each year he travels to the sacred sites of his ancestors in the five directions, offering up prayers and ceremonies that his people believe are essential to balancing the energies of an increasingly endangered planet.

Each year he explains to his children the importance of living a simple life, of maintaining the traditions, of fasting and pushing oneself far beyond the limits of comfort to keep the ceremonial fires burning as his ancestors have done for more than 1,000 years. He prays this won’t be the last year his people will receive the teachings of their sacred plant, hikuri, or peyote.

Just a few months ago, Cosio and other members of his community received the news that Wirikuta, the most important of their five pilgrimage sites in the state of San Luis Potosí, near the UNESCO-recognized site of Real de Catorce, has been concessioned to a Canadian mining company for a silver mine – despite the fact that the mining concessions lie within a federally protected cultural and natural preserve. The news was met at first with shock and disbelief.

“What they are talking about means the annihilation of our culture,” Cosio said. “It’s like a spiritual death for us.”

At the heart of Wirikuta is Leunar, or Cerro Quemado, the site where the sun rose for the first time, according to Huichol tradition. The region is home to several sacred springs, where their ancestors are buried and important ceremonies must be conducted each year. Here is the desert where they collect the sacred hikuri that they use for their prayers and ceremonies. And here will be the site of Mexico’s next resource battle, as the Wixaritari are not likely to let their ancient ceremonial site be mined without a struggle.

Santos Carillo de la Cruz, a Wixaritari leader, at Real de Catorce, Wirikuta.

The Wixarika communities published a call for support from the international community in September. Since that time, they appointed AJAGI, the Jalisco Association in Support of Indigenous People, to lead their legal defense, and AJAGI has joined with several organizations throughout Mexico to create a coalition called the Frente en Defensa de Wirikuta, or the Wirikuta Defense Front. AJAGI has supported the Wixarika communities for two decades in reclaiming their lands from illegal invasions and in a wide range of development projects.

Those organizations are now working together on the legal challenge and are organizing to raise awareness about this threat and to build an international campaign to support the Huicholes in their efforts to protect their sacred sites.

“In the face of these enormous challenges that humanity is confronting right now with environmental destruction, climate change and industrial contamination, we cannot let economic ambition carry us to the extreme of destroying sacred places of such great spiritual, cultural and environmental value, even disregarding laws and the most elemental of human rights,” said Carlos Chávez, founder of AJAGI. “We must support this cause, which is the cause of all humanity, because to do otherwise would bring us one step closer to the cancelation of our future.”

In this excellent video interview, recorded at the recent Call of the Eagle – Vision Council gathering by Leticia Rigatti and Ryan Luckey of the Común Tierra project, Huichol marakame (medicine man) Julio Parra shares his thoughts about the proposed mine in Wirikuta. For a version with English subtitles and blog entry, and to learn more about Común Tierra, check out their website here.

How you can help

There are several ways you can support the Huichol people in their struggle to protect their culture and their traditional pilgrimage site.

First, you can join the Wirikuta Defense Front by dropping a line to AJAGI1@prodigy.net.mx and asking to be added to the mailing list. If you want to receive information in English only, please specify. Also, please indicate if you have particular skills that you can share: translation, background in environmental sciences or other relevant skills, connections with organizations that might be able to write a letter in support or help in other ways. The group is in the process of translating Spanish-language materials into English; please let us know if you’d like to help. Meanwhile, the Spanish-language blog is SALVEMOS WIRIKUTA (Let’s Save Wirikuta) and there’s also a SALVEMOS WIRIKUTAFacebook page. Also, the Wixarika Resource Center has a Wirikuta page with frequent updates here.

Second, you can organize a letter-writing campaign among your friends and contacts to Mexican officials; personal letters sent through the mail are the most effective, but if you prefer, there is a website where you can just fill out a form and press “send.” Cultural Survival, an international organization dedicated to raising awareness about indigenous rights, has launched an international letter-writing campaign with a sample letter and addresses here, as well as an alert that lays out the issues in detail. Rainforest Rescue has another that goes to even more public officials. Please do both.

* Sign the petition.

Meanwhile, the Wirikuta Defense Front is working to bring international pressure on the Mexican government to shut down the mine before it starts. The group is working to raise the money to send a delegation of Huicholes to Canada to lobby against the proposed mine at the company’s Canadian headquarters, through its stockholders and through the Canadian government.

If you are interested in contributing to the Wirikuta Defense Front to help with this and other expenses related to stopping the mining operations in Wirikuta, please make a tax-deductible contribution to The Esperanza Project via the Paypal link on its website, with WIRIKUTA in the special instructions space, or through the AJAGI bank account in Mexico, c/o CARLOS CHÀVEZ REYES, at HSBC, Branch # 00701, Account #02132 00403 92525 721.

Most importantly, help spread the word – and join Rodolfo and his people in their prayers for a healthier, happier and more balanced planet for us all.

Mining Real de Catorce: To destroy the sacred is the strategy

By
Tracy Barnett
Published: August 6, 2010Posted in: Featured, Huichol lands, Indigenous rights, Mexico, Mining, Spiritual, WhyTags: , , , , , , , ,
Mining Real de Catorce: To destroy the sacred is the strategy

By Tunuary and Cristian Chávez
Translated by Ken Hoyt

Editor’s note: I met Tunuary and Cristian Chávez and their father, Carlos Chávez, in February and March, when I accompanied Cristian and Carlos to Huichol territory and worked on a documentary about their work. Their organization, AJAGI (Jalisco Association in Support of Indigenous Peoples) has been at the forefront of the struggle to defend indigenous and environmental rights in Mexico and beyond. Here I republish with permission a translation of this article, which originally appeared in La Jornada of Jalisco.

A series of events in recent months has attracted international concern from civil rights organizations, the National Human Rights Commission, academics and members of the National Indigenous Congress, regarding harassment and destruction that has been directed toward indigenous peoples over their ancestral traditions and their sacred sites. Such things are happening throughout Mexico and in an especially alarming way towards the Wixárika (Huichol) people, who have denounced a series of attacks against their “other” fundamental territory—that which is spiritual and gives meaning to the framework of their internal politics and the fabric of their social organization, and defines their relation to the environment and other peoples.

It is a large territory, stretching from the sea to the desert in San Luis Potosi, where a group of jicareros* from the Wixárika community of Tuapurie-Santa Catarina Cuexcomatitlán were harassed by state police and municipal police from Station Fourteen while performing ancient rituals at the communal land of Las Margaritas. This harassment was described by the Indigenous National Congress as “an aggression against all peoples,” because it was an assault against something very fundamental—the collective spirit of a people.

However, this harassment is nothing new. Six years ago the intentions of the government of San Luis Potosi were made clear to the public, with their development plans to create corridors for mining production, agribusiness and sweatshops, megaprojects entirely upsetting the pilgrimage to sacred sites in the desert of San Luis Potosi. In parallel the government launched a campaign of criminalization and regulation of the ancient practice of collecting Hikuri (peyote).

The disintegration of collective land ownership through the Certification Program of Ejido Rights (PROCEDE) played a key role in this plunder, handing over huge areas of this great plain to multinational companies for use in agro-industrial production. The unaccommodating climate and soil will necessitate excessive use of agrochemicals and the overexploitation of aquifers.

Recently a new threat to Wirikuta ancestral territory arose in the form of a document presented by the transnational Micon International Limited, who published the results of mineral exploration carried out since July 2007 by Norvec, a Canadian mining transnational that has 22 mining concessions adjacent to each other and joined 6,326.58 hectares (translation from Diana Negrin of the Micon International Report) The geographical center of the concessions is the Cerro del Quemado or Leuna, the place where, according to Wixárika worldview, the Sun was born in the first times, where the ancestors walked creating the world and where today, Wixárika communities continue to make their pilgrimage recreating this ancient walk year after year.

On Sept. 14, 2009, the rights of the 22 concessions belonging to Norvec were purchased by an even larger transnational, First Majestic Silver Corp., who is seeking a monopoly on the production of silver in Mexico. First Majestic currently owns three operating silver mines in Mexico, La Encantada, La Parrilla, la mina de San Martin Silver Mines, and a project known as the Toro Silver Mine, and is now ready to exploit more than 13 million ounces of silver from Real de Catorce mining district.

Totally irresponsibly, and with disregard to the official designations as a Protected Natural Area as well as a UNESCO designated Historic and Cultural Heritage Site, along with those who call the area sacred, the Federal Attorney for Environmental Protection, the National Institute of Anthropology and History and the National Water Commission have all granted permits to the mining company to make their operation possible and have promised to pay $7,500 a year to communities as compensation for access their collective territories.

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This is a major threat to the environment and cultural practices of indigenous people of Mexico. Among other issues, the projected operating method of “open pit” — distinct from drilled shafts for the use of dynamite on surface, destroying entire hills while the crater is washed of minerals.

While this happens, the state continues to restrict and repress the Wixárika pilgrimage citing “harvest cuotas”, while peyote dealers operate with impunity as they process large quantities of the drug known as mescaline with the active complicity or disregard of government authorities, who in the media maintain an alleged war against organized crime, which in reality is a war against the people and militarizes and paramilitarizes the entire country.

The government’s supposed “concern” about crime has led to many instances of oppression such as that denounced by autonomous Wixárika community Bancos de San Hipólito, Durango. Recently during their ceremonial practice of the deer hunt, which is of tremendous religious importance, the Mexican Army cited their concerns about small arms to interrupt the ceremonial practice and confiscate the low caliber weapons that have always been used for this purpose.

What about the destruction of the sacred site known as Paso del Oso due to the illegal imposition of the highway project-Huejuquilla Amatitán-Bolaños in Jalisco, which today continues to be halted by legal processes and strong community mobilization by the Wixárika of Tuapurie.

The plunder dresses in very aggressive colors, on one hand unprecedented pressure was exerted for the implementation of multinational megaprojects by way of development plans and land ordinances. The violent aggression of paramilitary and narcoparamilitary groups and (with protection from State bodies) only grows in intensity. This is an attack on those that have maintained their indigenous identity for thousands of years, that which is tradition, the sacred sites and traditional practices.

Maybe it’s because global capitalist power knows that if the indigenous peoples have 80 percent of the natural resources necessary for global industrialization it is because they are one with nature, with the universe. And so that unity must be destroyed — and that is the official strategy.

* Jicarero is the name for those who are chosen to perform the sacred ritual each year of the pilgrimage to Wirikuta and the other sacred sites, and the collection of the Hikuri, or peyote.

tunuaryycristian@yahoo.com.mx

Huicholes shot, wounded by municipal police

By
Tracy Barnett
Published: March 23, 2010Posted in: AJAGI, Featured, Huichol lands, Indigenous peoples, Indigenous rights, Mexico, WhyTags: , , , , , , , , ,
Huicholes shot, wounded by municipal police

(Above: Encampment of Santa Catarina Huichol community at site of Bolaños-Huejuquilla highway construction, 2008)

HUEJUQUILLA, Jalisco, Mexico – Tensions between the Huichol community and local government are high after police officers fired at a vehicle full of Huichol community members, injuring two, members of the Jalisco Association in Support of Indigenous Groups (AJAGI) reported today.

The vehicle was headed down the Mezquitic toward Huejuquilla near the town of San Antonio de Padua with seven members of San Andrés Cohamiata community aboard, including a child. According to the Huicholes’ testimony, they began to be followed y a vehicle that flashed its lights at them. Fearing an assault, the driver sped up; the police responded by shooting at the vehicle and wounding Rosendo Parra López, who was in critical condition, and Matea Tizano de la Cruz, whose legs were grazed by the bullets.

The neighboring Santa Catarina community, which was in the midst of a general assembly at the time, decided together with the authorities of San Andrés and another nearby Huichol community, San Sebastián, to make an appearance at the municipal building in protest of what they see as a wave of repression against the Huichol community.

The attack occurs in the context of increased trafficking by organized crime groups in the area, who disguise themselves as police officers, making it increasingly more dangerous to stop when a vehicle signals with its lights, AJAGI reported in a press release.

Additionally complicating the matter is the upcoming meeting of the 27th National Indigenous Congress, scheduled to be held in a few days in the Huichol community of Bancos de San Hipólito, a community that is part of a territory that was taken from them in 1968 and which is gaining ground in a landmark legal battle that could set an important precedent in the indigenous land rights movement worldwide.

Tensions have already been heightened since late last month, when a group of Huicholes from Santa Catarina on their traditional pilgrimage to Real de Catorce were accosted by another group of police during their annual peyote ceremony, a situation that provoked an immediate outcry from concerned citizens, and state police responded by providing the Huicholes with an armed escort to the next province on their pilgrimage trail.

Santa Catarina community members say they have been the victims of frequent harassment since they began their protest and legal battle of the Bolaños-Huejuquilla highway, part of an important trade route facilitating the Free Trade Area of the Americas. Community members say the highway construction has proceeded without their consent in their territory and through their sacred sites, and has resulted in environmental and cultural degradation. They point to a pattern of human rights violations throughout the country, including assassinations, forced disappearances, persecution and imprisonment against indigenous people involved in land rights issues.

AJAGI cites recent acts against the Nahua communities of coastal Michoacan and from the mountains of Manantlán, and the group requests that concerned citizens write to the authorities to urge an immediate stop to the police repression of Huichol and other indigenous communities throughout the country.

Letters can be sent to:

Lic. Fredy Medina Sánchez, Municipal President of Huejuquilla, fredymedina@huejuquilla.gob.mx
And to the Office of the United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights in Mexico, oacnudh@ohchr.org,
And to the Jalisco State Commission on Human Rights at cedhj@infosel.net.mx.

Police harass Huicholes during annual pilgrimage

By
Tracy Barnett
Published: February 25, 2010Posted in: AJAGI, Featured, Forest protection, Huichol lands, Indigenous peoples, Indigenous rights, Mexico, WhyTags: , , , , , ,
Police harass Huicholes during annual pilgrimage

Monday evening, a group of Huicholes gathered around a fire in the desert near Real de Catorce, San Luis Potosí, the sacred place they call Wirikuta, and conducted the millennial ritual that for them, ensures the well being of not only their community, but the entire planet.

Suddenly, they were interrupted by a squadron of four state police cars, who pulled up and began harassing them, according to a bulletin released by AJAGI, the Asociación Jaliscense en Apoyo de Grupos Indígenas. Police began taunting the maraakame, the spiritual leader, breaking up the sacred circle, handling sacred objects and destroying “Grandfather fire.” They accused the Huicholes, or Wixarika as they call themselves, of breaking the law concerning the gathering of peyote, which they have done for thousands of years as a part of their annual pilgrimage to Wirikuta.

The harassment went on for three hours, when they finally left the pilgrimage participants in peace. But they returned to the encampment at 2 a.m. to continue the harassment, this time recording the proceedings with videocameras and interrupting the song of the marakaame and the words of the ancestors, according to AJAGI.

The news hit me like a rock in the stomach. Only a week ago I was in Santa Catarina, making the two-hour hike down a mountain to the ceremonial site of Las Lajas to interview the maraakame, Don Dionisio. He evoked the ancestors and the importance of the Huichol tradition in an eloquent plea for understanding of their predicament that brought tears to my eyes. On that very day, the community was in the midst of its ritual surrounding the departure of the peregrinos, who had been chosen by the entire community to represent them in this fundamental spiritual practice.

Marakaame Uxayuka+ye/Dionisio de la Rosa Cosio

I was there to learn about the community of Santa Catarina’s resistance to a major highway project that the federal government had begun to build through their land, without the community’s consent. After seeing the size of the project, the mass destruction of forest and the location of the highway, which passed through several sacred sites and cut through the millennial pilgrimage route, the community rebelled.

In February 2008, a group of 800 residents picked up their belongings and hiked – in some cases, for several days – to the peak of the highway construction project and set up an encampment, where they remained for six months. Since then, they have filed suit against the government, saying the highway project violates environmental laws as well as their land and spiritual rights.

Scene from Wixarika highway encampment, February 2008 (Xaureme Cosio photo)

The highway department responded with copies of a petition signed by 400 residents at a meeting the community says never occurred; they claim the petition was falsified, and just last week, demanded that the agency produce the originals.

AJAGI representatives say the timing of the harassment was no coincidence, and that in fact, this type of harassment has been occurring during the pilgrimage since the group began protesting the highway construction.

“It seems ironic that despite the fact that PROFEPA (the Federal Agency for Environmental Protection) harassed the people of Tuapurie (Santa Catarina Cuexcomatitlan) with environmental pretexts and norms whose enforcement is not in the jurisdiction of the state police. This is taking place at the same time that the plunder of peyote in the hands of narcotraffickers is on a sharp rise, and important zones of biodiversity are being destroyed by the multinational agricultural industy.”

Currently, transnational agribusiness companies are buying up and denuding hundreds of hectares of important peyote habitat and destroying it. One transnational tomato company recently purchased 400 hectares of biodiverse desert habitat, including an important peyote site, and set about stripping it of vegetation and constructing deep wells that depleted local water supplies for miles around, the group said.

Other planned developments that have been approved by the government cut across the ancient pilgrimage route in dozens of places with high-power lines, highways and subdivisions.

Additionally, the federal government has drawn up a “Management Plan” for the peyote that regulates the indigenous group’s ritual gathering of the plant, a plan that did not involve the community’s participation and that the group believes violates their rights under Convention 169 of the United Nations International Labor Organization, a key ruling in favor of indigenous land rights.

“Is this the environmental protection that PROFEPA and the state police require?” AJAGI asks. “The situation is delicate and the Wixarika people need for civil society in general and for human rights organizations to be aware of what’s happening with the traditional pilgrimage, as well as the government harassment that has been happening systematically since February 2008,” the group wrote.

I am currently finishing a documentary about Santa Catarina’s fight against the highway project and its efforts to preserve its land and way of life. Details will be forthcoming. Meanwhile, here is a slide show from last week’s visit to Santa Catarina Cuexcomatitlan, the Wixarika community of Tuapurie.


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Hope prevails through a bitter winter in Bancos de San Hipólito

By
Tracy Barnett
Published: February 11, 2010Posted in: AJAGI, Climate Change, Featured, Forest protection, Huichol lands, Indigenous peoples, Indigenous rights, Mexico, Reforestation, Spiritual, WhyTags: , , , , , , , ,
Hope prevails through a bitter winter in Bancos de San Hipólito

We arrived in the fog-draped settlement of Buenos Aires, Durango, just after 9 a.m. It had been a hard night’s drive through a pouring rain, enlivened only by the stories of my tireless travel companion, human rights lawyer Carlos Chávez of the Jalisco Association in Support of Indigenous People (AJAGI, by its Spanish acronym).

We still had nearly three hours to go before we reached Bancos, but meanwhile, a group of comuneros from Buenos Aires awaited a ride in the back of his pickup truck. Chávez jumped out from behind the wheel he’d manned since 10 p.m. the night before, greeting a shivering cluster of men with good cheer and a round of hearty handshakes. A breakfast invitation followed, and Nora, Cristian and Yaser, three other AJAGI members, joined us as we were led through what looked like a refugee camp. Nora and Cristian had passed the night in the back of the truck; Yaser was less fortunate, having passed the stormy night in Buenos Aires.

A bitter windstorm had ripped through the village, stripping the tin roofs from many of the mud-brick homes in the middle of the night as the residents slept. The unrelenting rains and near-freezing temperatures compounded the misery as residents tried to piece their lives back together.

Nonetheless, a visit from Carlos Chávez and the folks from AJAGI was more than reason enough for a gathering. One family with a sheltered outdoor kitchen still in good working order invited us to huddle together underneath as the rains began again, and steaming freshly ground tortillas came off the grill one by one to envelop home-grown scrambled eggs and savory pork-seasoned beans and potatoes. Family members clustered around to beam at us and urge us to eat more as we wolfed down what was likely their sole daily portion. But to decline would have been an insult, so we obliged.

The strange winds, the unseasonable rains, and the unthinkable snowstorm of two weeks prior were recurring themes in our visit. The summer rains didn’t come in time to water the harvest, and much of the corn crop dried on the stalk. Of what survived, much succumbed to fungus when the rains arrived late. And then, month upon month of winter rains – and now the tornado-like windstorm that has just descended upon them, the likes of which they’ve never seen.

Climate change is not a theory for the Wixaritari, the tribal people named Huichol by the Spaniards for easier pronunciation. They are convinced that they are living it every day, and they are seeing it in shorter growing seasons and strange weather patterns. They don’t know the reasons, but it worries them.

There’s no time to dwell on it, however. There’s firewood to be gathered, roofs to fix, children to feed – and, for some, a regional assembly to attend down in the valley in Bancos.

Attorney Santos De La Cruz Carillo, community members Nazario Navarrete Lara and Fabian Carillo Aguilar, technical advisors Yaser Ventura and Cristian Chávez, and community members Don Jesús Ramírez and Prudencio Ramírez Navarrete, left to right - and still enough room for me.

Spirits were high as we clambered into the back of Chávez’ well-worn and mud-caked Toyota pickup truck. Bancos is in a sheltered valley, and considerably warmer than Buenos Aires, up in the mountaintops some 7,000 feet above sea level. Also, most of these families originally lived in Bancos. The residents of Buenos Aires are modern-day pioneers engaged in the act of resettling and at the same time reforesting the land ravaged by timber poachers from the neighboring mestizo communities.

The resettlement is all a part of a larger strategy, devised by Huichol community leaders hand-in-hand with Carlos and the rest of the AJAGI team, which has provided legal and technical assistance for nearly two decades, helping the community reclaim 55,000 hectares of land that had been annexed away from their territory and encroached upon over the years. An estimated 140,000 hectares are at stake, including a 10,720-hectare swath separating Bancos from its core community of San Andres Cohamiata in the neighboring state of Jalisco. In a groundbreaking decision in 1998, the International Labor Organization ruled that the Huichol people had a right to the land based on ancestral ownership, even though they don’t hold legal titles – a ruling the Mexican government has thus far failed to acknowledge. Repeated pronouncements from the international agency received no response until last year, when the Mexican government finally ruled in Bancos’ favor – but with a catch. It failed to recognize the ancestral rights outlined in a key document called Convention 169, and so the case remains in litigation.

“The case of Bancos at one point was once described by the Special Rapporteur on Indigenous Issues for the United Nations as probably the most important case in the world” with respect to indigenous land rights, said Chávez. “If the case is resolved in the community’s favor, it will be of benefit to all indigenous people in the world.”

In fact, if AJAGI and the Huicholes of Bancos win their case, it will be the first time that an ILO ruling has superseded a federal law, and will set an international precedent for all indigenous peoples.

But this is only one of many strategies, one layer of the many layers of stories to be told about the Wixaritari people. I was fortunate to hear many of them in the past week, and I will be sharing them as time permits. Meanwhile, here are some images from the enormously resilient little community of Bancos.


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