Esquire Latinoamerica, August 2011 Text and Photos by Tracy L. Barnett
For the Huicholes, the region known as Wirikuta, in North-Central Mexico, is sacred; for a Canadian company it is the base of its next great mining project. Meanwhile, the inhabitants of the village of Real de Catorce, at the heart of Wirikuta, are divided among those who need jobs and those who see the mine as a threat. The debate grows with every day and has reached as far as Canada and the United Nations.
To see the entire article (in Spanish), download here: PDF Huicholes
Jesus Lara, left, and Cilau Valadez wait to enter the First Majestic Silver Corp. stockholders meeting.
VANCOUVER, British Columbia – Dressed in their colorful traditional clothing and bearing a carved talking stick as a sign of their alliance with the tribes of the North, two Wixarika delegates prepared enter the annual stockholders’ meeting of First Majestic Silver Corp., the company that has laid a claim for a silver mine in their sacred territory, Wirikuta. A team of stony-faced police officers barred their entry even after they handed over documents explaining that they had been named proxies, giving them authority to enter the meeting, where they hoped to deliver a message to the investors.
Jesus Lara Chivarra and Cilau Valadez had traveled thousands of miles from the remote mountains of Jalisco and Nayarit, Mexico, along with Rodolfo Cosio and Juventino Carrillo to send a message to the mining company and to the world: The Wixarika People will not negotiate for the heart of their mother.
The meeting fell at the end of Mining Justice Week, a series of events designed to draw attention to the increasing presence of Canadian mining companies in Latin America and the countless cases of contamination, corruption, illness and violence that tend to follow them. The delegation was optimistic because the day before, at the annual meeting of Goldcorp, a group of ten mining opponents had been allowed to enter and seven of them to speak, despite only having three proxies. At First Majestic, it was another story. The two had hoped to enter with Jennifer Moore of Mining Watch Canada and Ana Paula Hernandez of the Global Fund for Human Rights, but they were told to wait as dozens of others streamed past.
For half an hour they stood facing the great doors of gold and glass of the Terminal Building as a noisy protest arrived to support them. More than a hundred people, including local religious and tribal leaders and elders, marched from Waterfront Station to the Terminal Building, waving placards and chanting. Finally Lara was granted entry but was told none of the others could enter. After much insistence he was allowed to enter with Valadez as a witness to the company-provided interpreter, but neither of them were allowed to speak. At the end of the meeting, Lara was allowed to deliver a letter the Wixarika Regional Council in Defense of Wirikuta had recently given to Mexican President Felipe Calderon, but he was not allowed to speak.
The delegates were disheartened, but still considered the mission a success. The First Majestic meeting came at the end of a week with mining activists from Guatemala, Honduras and El Salvador and with tribal leaders from Kawkawka, Bear Clan and Coast Salish peoples, an opportunity to learn, build alliances and strategize.
“We have realized that we are not alone. The past week a lot of activity has been dedicated all over the world at different points against the mining industry,” said Lara. “We have found here the support of the tribes of the U.S. and Canada and this gives us the confidence that we are many. We will see how the mining company reacts but we will not be silent. On the contrary, we will keep intensifying whta we have already defined: No to the mine, no more genocide, no more ecocide in Wirikuta.”
Valadez was positive, too, about the meeting’s outcome.
“They tried to intimidate us, but we are present here to demonstrate that we can come to their land and they won’t intimidate us even though they confront us with police and other obstacles. We already know what they are trying to do, and we are not going to negotiate.”
The mining company has presented a proposal to donate the Cerro Quemado, the mountain at the heart of Wirikuta, to the Wixarika people as a part of its plan to mine the area, but the delegates say the proposal misses the point of Wirikuta.
“How would you like it if they left your body alone but drilled out your heart? Valadez asked. “This is practically what they want to do with our land, and they don’t explain that in their report.”
Juventino Carrillo, a member of the Wixarika Regional Council in Defense of Wirikuta, pointed to the Canadian mining industry’s record in other countries.
They dress the project up to look so beneficial, but don’t believe the manipulations that Canadian companies have carried out in other countries,” said Carrillo. “Who’s going to believe them, with all the dirt they’ve thrown throughout Latin America?”
Cosio, who serves as a jicarero, one of those chosen by his community to care for the ceremonial center and make pilgrimages to the sacred sites, was indignant that the mining company proposes to give only the surface rights of the Cerro Quemado when Wirikuta goes much beyond the Cerro and in fact beyond the region delineated as a protected nature reserve. Wirikuta also includes all its subsoil, he said – “That’s where the essence of Wirikuta lies.”
He added, “I would say that’s deceptive. How can they give us something that has always belonged to us since time immemorial?”
Here are some images from the delegation’s week in Vancouver.
A delegation of representatives of the Wixarika People travel to Vancouver, Canada, this week, home base of the mining company First Majestic Silver Corp., which plans to open a mine on their most sacred site, Wirikuta.
The delegates plan to make their case to the public, to members of Parliament and to the mining company and to participate in the Mining Justice Week events May 14-19, a week dedicated to demanding justice in the mining industry throughout Latin America and the world.
On Sunday, Jesús Lara Chivarra of San Sebastián Teponahuaxtlán, Jalisco, México, will be one of the speakers at a conference on “Mining, Social Justice and Self Determination for Indigenous Peoples.” The next day, Lara, together with Huichol artist Cilau Valadez, of Santiago Ixcuintla, Nayarit, will present at the Forum on the Declaration of the Rights of Mother Earth and Indigenous Peoples.
Tuesday and Wednesday the delegation will attend meetings with indigenous peoples of Canada and with leaders from Vancouver, and will attend in solidarity a mobilization in front of the headquarters of Goldcorp, one of the biggest and most controversial Canadian mining companies now doing business in Latin America. We hope that by Tuesday we will be joined by delegates Rodolfo Cosio Candelario, jicarero and guardian of the ceremonial center of Las Latas, Santa Catarina, Jalisco, and Juventino Carrillo de la Cruz, a leader from the community of San Sebastián. Their Canadian visas have been postponed and we hope they will be granted on Monday.
Rodolfo Cosio Candelario and Jesus Lara Chivarra in Cancún, December 2010, in an interview with Maricarmen Wister of TV Cable.
The events will culminate on Thursday with the annual stockholders meeting of First Majestic Silver Corp., when a pair of delegates will try to enter and ask for the preservation of Wirikuta and that First Majestic abandon its plan for the mine in the site, which is extremely sacred for the Wixarika People.
During the week, the delegation will be available for interviews with various media and will be organizing meetings with representatives of the government, of First Majestic and with local and regional indigenous leaders.
To the President of the United States of Mexico Felipe Calderón Hinojosa
To the People and Governments of the World
PRESENT
We come personally from the Western Sierra Madre to deliver this urgent letter to demand that you keep your word that you publicly announced when you committed to respect and protect our sacred places in the pact of Hauxa Manaká in 2008 and to do so according to the fundamental laws of our country and the agreements, decrees, pacts and national and international conventions that the Mexican State has subscribed to guarantee the respect of our living and millennial culture.
We are a commission of agrarian and traditional authorities from the Wixárika People, who together form the Regional Wixarika Council in Defense of Wirikuta, and we bring the word that unites the sentiment of the councils of elders, of the wise chanters, of the pilgrimage groups entrusted with sustaining the arduous work of more than 500 community ceremonial centers and family ranches; we bring the word that together is one united decisive expression of the feelings of the families of all the communities in Jalisco, Nayarit, Durango and Zacatecas where the Wixaritari live and we want you to respond respecting our rights according to your commitment.
The Federal Government of our country granted 22 concessions that span more than 6,000 hectares in the Sierra of Catorce to the mining company First Majestic Silver Corp. and Real de Bonanza, S.A. de C.V. But the Sierra of Catorce and the whole of Wirikuta, Mr. President, is one of the altars of major importance where our pilgrims balance fertility and the equilibrium of the world for all its creatures and we have evidence that the mining operation would affect in a deep way the ecology, contaminating the zone and drying out our sacred springs.
In these times of extreme violence in our country, which are destroying our social fabric, with this megaproject you are kidnapping and want to assassinate our mother, The Earth, which you have threatened, and seek the forced disappearance of an entire people, the Wixarika People.
For this reason we demand that you immediately cancel these concessions and any others that have as their goal the extraction of minerals or the destruction of Wirikuta in any other way because if the object of all of this tragedy is money, with conviction we inform you that it will be infinitely cheaper to cancel these concessions than to lament the ecological, spiritual and social tragedy that digging and extracting the entrails of Wirikuta could provoke.
Wirikuta is the heart of our essence. If it ends, we die as a people. We have been making pilgrimages to Wirikuta for thousands of years and we know the Ancestors who live in each hill, each stony glade, each rocky crag, and each flower by their names and we have for that reason, according to international standards, the right of traditional, ancestral possession. We respect nevertheless, the communities and farmers who live in the area and we pray also that they may sow and reap their food, so that they may live well, care for and be protected by this sacred land whose vocation is not mining but the enlightenment and renovation of the heart of the world.
We see with much concern that despite the aforementioned Pact of Hauxa Manaká and despite the public opposition of our people to the mining operation in Wirikuta, you have maintained an inexplicable silence in the face of our demand, while our territorial rights have been violated, similarly our previous, free and informed consent, in addition carrying out this mining project will violate the environmental laws of our country, because the area is a Natural Protected Area by governmental decree with its management plan.
The fundamentals of our claim are in the first terms of Convention 169 of the International Labor Organization, in its articles 2, 6, 7, 14 and 15; likewise, in Article 2 section b subsection IX, article 27 section VII, second paragraph of the Political Constitution of the United States of Mexico and its related laws.
It worries us even more, that some members of the federal government and the mining company itself are trying to convince us to accept the mine in exchange for granting us one of the sacred places from part of the expanse of Wirikuta, the Cerro Quemado o Raunaxi.
We have already explained that the Sierra of Catorce is a whole unit, where the spiritual energy and power of our ancestors, who allow us to live our lives now and in the future, resides between the lowlands and the highest peaks of the mountains and throughout its interior, and it coincides best with the area of more than 144,000 hectares of the natural protected region. We will not accept for any reason that this type of activity be developed in the area as it is too great an affront for our people, for Mexico and for all of humanity, besides the obvious illegalities that these concessions represent.
Mr. President, we are the original people of this country, we are the ancient root and we reiterate, don’t destroy our Wixárika culture, don’t destroy yourselves for the ignorance of not knowing what these valleys of Wirikuta contain, and the mountains which illuminate the world.
For this reason our commission comes all the way here to deliver this written statement to you. We bring you our urgent word in a timely fashion. We are chanting pilgrims, cultivators; we are the legitimate authorities of our people of corn, deer and sun. We are Mexicans and we dress ourselves with flowers because we chant of peace.
Cancel the mine in Wirikuta, raise to the federal level the environmental and cultural protection and all of our descendents will thank you, otherwise the present generations will walk a difficult but firm path in the conviction of detaining this threat, we await your formal answer in your capacity of the Chief Federal Executive and the one principally responsible for the economic, environmental and social policy of our country.
Pampariyutsi.
Attentively,
Regional Wixarika Council for the Defense of Wirikuta
Mexico, D.F., May 9, 2011
(Photos by Gerardo Ruiz Smith) Editor’s note: The declaration of the Wixarika Regional Council in the Defense of Wirikuta is a powerful commentary on the increasing frequency of natural disasters and the lack of understanding in our contemporary cultures. May we heed their call before it’s too late.
Declaration of the Wixárika Regional Council for the Defense of Wirikuta
To the Wirikuta Defense Front of Tamatsima Waha’a
To the Civil Society in General
To the Three Powers of the Mexican State
Will they understand in time? Will the governments and corporations that control the material order of the world be capable of understanding in time that the disasters like earthquakes or tsunamis, which they only manage to define as natural phenomenon, are the furious words of those our people know as kaka+yarixi, deities or fundamental forces of nature that feel, think and have the word that permits us to live?
For us, these disasters have an urgent message, calling on humanity to try another way of relating with nature. We don’t know if government officials will be capable of listening and attending to the call in time, because they don’t show any signs of being good at dialog.
After our sacred site of Wirikuta was ordered by governmental decree and a management plan that protects it, the government granted concessions to a Canadian mining company that threatens the Sierra of Catorce and the desert lowlands that comprise this sacred zone, in the municipalities of Charcas, Villa de la Paz, Villa de Ramos, Zacatón, Catorce, Matehuala and Villa de Guadalupe.
We have been for more than seven months demanding that the government of our country cancel the concessions of the mining company First Majestic or Real Bonanza in the Sierra of Catorce and we have heard no response from any of the municipal, state or federal institutions. So what good, then, are the agreements, the decrees, the management plans and the word of Felipe Calderón dressed as a Wixárika promising the protection of our sacred places at the hour of signing the pact of Hauxamanaka just two years ago?
We have been demanding for more than seven months and once again, we make our demand:
That the federal government cancel the 22 mining concessions to the Canadian company First Majestic Silver Corp. and its Mexican “prestanombres” (one who loans his name in order to conduct business), Real Bonanza S.A. de C.V. Mining, in this sacred place not only destroys a fundamental pillar of the Wixárika culture, it is an attack that brings as a consequence many natural disasters and death.
The mining company asks us to let them extract minerals from the sierra in exchange for giving us the Cerro Quemado. We explained to them that the Sierra of Catorce is a sacred whole and therefore it is impossible to mine the area and to respect the Quemado. From the South to the North, the sierra is a collection of kaka+yarixi or fundamental ancestors and the springs that are essential for the rain and the fertility of our country. Wirikuta free of mining and of projects that destroy her natural fragility is what we are demanding that the government enforce.
We are not alone in this struggle. Every day more support is growing for the defense of Wirikuta. The Tamatsima Waha’a front, of which we are the point of the arrow, is constituted of numerous Mexican civil organizations and from other places in the world who are working intensely to offer solutions and build alliances with other peoples and other movements that also defend the roots of life.
We appreciate the support of the indigenous people of the United States and Canada, organized in the Native American Church and of course our brothers of the National Indigenous Congress.
We have organized conferences, debates, festivals to spread the word of our right to be respected and we plan still more musical festivals and gatherings and creative activities so that this threat of extermination be detained.
This is the path of our struggle. In what other way does the government want us to remind it of its historic and moral constitutional obligation to respect our fundamental patrimony, the patrimony of all Mexicans and all of humanity?
Listen, ladies and gentlemen of the government and who dominate the corporations: Wirikuta is the matrix of life. Matrix of the rain and of fertility. A place to remember our origin and the natural future of humanity. There is no room there for either mines nor industrial tomato growers. There is room for other projects so that the ejidal campesino families who live in Wirikuta, and those of us in the Wirikuta Defense Front have proposals for that.
We salute with respect all of those who have put forward their dignity in the face of so many years of dispossession and discrimination that today Wirikuta has one of the zones with the highest emigration rates in the country. We salute with the same respect the campesinos of Wirikuta who await this criminal exploitation with hopes of an improvement in their living conditions and who await too with the pain of seeing their children go to the United States, Monterrey and other places to never return, and who await the beginning of the mining exploitation with the pain of seeing that the uncontrolled ambition for money wants to do away with the sacred rain that keeps us alive, to throw them off their lands or make them accept with humility the mining alternative, who await First Majestic with the pain of living with the contamination of heavy metals left behind by the mining activities of the past.
To you, our brothers, our proposal is to change from below, from the local organization of so much injustice that you are now living, reconstructing your social fabric. We have made your situation our own and we are working so that between us we may demonstrate that we are capable of constructing dignified alternatives.
We appreciate the initiatives that are being worked on in an organized manner for the realization of cultural festivals, especially the group of artists and intellectuals who have joined this struggle. We exhort them to continue with this historic force and to trust in our organizational structure headed by our assemblies and traditional authorities, projected in the path of the Wirikuta Defense Front of Tamatsima Waha’a.
We send our recognition and congratulations to the companions with whom, together, we are the Wirikuta Defense Front of Tamatsima Waha’a for the nomination of an international award in the category of Human Rights, which is our demonstration that civil society can organize using the tools of communication that we count on, for which we call on the civil society to support this nomination by voting for our website and the other campaigns that have been launched by our movement.
We wish to reiterate the need to maintain an interlocution and coordination of confidence through the Jalisco Association in Support of Indigenous Groups (AJAGI), and to avoid delays in communication in our communities, which is indeed complicated.
This is what we wish to communicate to the people of Mexico and the Mexican State. It is what we reiterate from the Colonia Rivera Aceves, locality of Waut+a, in this tenth reunion of the Regional Wixarika Council for the Defense of Wirikuta conformed by our traditional and agrarian governments, kawiterutsixi and mara’akate and this is what we communicate to all of our friends of the Front, the journalists, intellectuals, groups of artists, politicians and to the society and general.
Attentively
Wirikuta is not for sale. Never again a Mexico without us.
Regional Wixarika Council for the Defense of Wirikuta
Tiway+la – Colonia Rivera Aceves, C.I. San Sebastián Teponahuaxtlán on April 9 of 2011
For Waut+a San Sebastian Teponahuaxtlan and Kuruxi Manuká
Gracias a Gerardo Ruiz Smith por su colaboración fotográfica. Vea su hermosa colección entera aquí.
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.
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.
CANCUN – “Arriving at the ocean is very important; you can’t just walk up to it like it’s a common thing,” Antonio told us as we bumped along through the night on our way to Isla Blanca. “We consider the sea to be sacred; we come from the sea. We have to ask permission to be here.”
That’s how I found myself standing at the edge of the gleaming surf, saying a prayer of gratitude and tossing a chocolate cookie along with a 5-peso coin into the Caribbean along with my prayer. Antonio made an eloquent petition to the great spirits of the ocean and of the five directions sacred to the Wixarika people, asking for special attention during the climate summit proceedings – that everything go well for all of humanity, for those attending the COP-16 events, and for all the Earth.
The candle was offered to the sea as well, and a last gleaming spark scooted downwind along the edge of the surf: earth, wind, fire, water. There couldn’t have been a more perfect way to begin our mission, or the first visit to the Yucatan for all five of us.
Antonio Candelario had been chosen to represent the Huichol or Wixarika community of Santa Catarina at the COP 16 events, along with Rodolfo Cosio, a jicarero or carrier of the ancient pilgrimage tradition of his peoples. Jesus Lara, a leader in the neighboring Wixarika community of San Sebastian, had been chosen as well. The Wixarika delegation was rounded out by Tunari Chavez, a technical advisor with the Guadalajara-based Jalisco Association in Support of Indigenous Peoples, known by its Spanish acronym AJAGI, and me, a journalist who is accompanying the organization.
We were there, primarily, to get the word out about the Canadian silver mining operation that is poised to break ground in Wirikuta, the most sacred site of the Wixarika people, the place where, according to their tradition, the sun was born. This site is in some ways the center of their universe, the destination of an annual pilgrimage conducted for hundreds, perhaps thousands of years, which culminates in a series of ceremonies convoking the ancestral spirits and balancing the energies of the entire planet. First Majestic Silver Corp. of Canada has been granted 22 mining concessions, for a total of 6,326 hectares, much of which lies in a federally protected ecological reserve and the UNESCO-recognized architectural treasure of Real de Catorce.
We arrived in Cancun on the evening of Dec. 3 and were met at the airport by Jack and Belem, a delightful young couple who opened their home and their hearts to us during our week in Cancun. After dinner we piled into the back of their ample van, which was to serve as our transport throughout the event, and headed to Isla Blanca, a natural preserve far removed from the towering hotels and touristic chaos of Cancun.
The next morning began bright and early with an interview at the Via Campesina camp, one of a number of sites with a full schedule of activities presenting a counterpoint to the official COP 16 summit. We began with an interview with Chilean journalist Paulina Acevedo, which quickly turned into a press conference with half a dozen journalists from Notimex to alternative media outlets attracted by the beautiful canvas we carried, designed with traditional Wixarika art, saying “NO a la Mineria en Wirikuta.”
From here we attended the opening ceremonies at the Via Campesina, a beautiful Mayan ceremony involving the lighting of candles in a giant mandala at the front of the stage, and an invocation the four directions.
Our delegation attracted attention wherever they went, and it wasn’t long before Elizabeth Press from Democracy Now stopped Jesus and Antonio for an interview.
“As indigenous people from Sierra, we are protectors of the environment,” Antonio said. “We are appealing to the world on behalf of life for all of humanity. But these people who know so much and have the latest technology don’t realize that they have broken the womb of Mother Earth through exploiting oil, mining, cement making, building highways, deforestation.”
This was followed by a meeting at the Radisson Hotel with the official delegates of the Congress of Indigenous Peoples for the COP 16, where the Wixarika delegation added their thoughts to the discussion of the official statement that this group was preparing to deliver at the official climate summit.
The day ended with two more interviews – first, with Emily Hunter of MTV-Canada, and second, with Maricarmen Wister of TV Cable.
Sunday began with another pair of interviews, this time in the very different hotel district of Cancun.
“We’re not in Mexico anymore – we’re in Miami,” marveled Rodolfo, looking out the back window at the skyscrapers receding into the background.
The first interview was with Isaias Perez from El Universal, followed by Adolfo Cordova Ortiz from Reforma. It was quite late by the time these interviews ended and the program was light so the compañeros accepted an invitation to see a cenote, a beautiful formation of clear water and stone characteristic of the region, before ending the day with a meeting at another site prepared for the climate event, Villa Climatica, where we were able to reserve a space for a presentation on Monday evening.
Meanwhile we learned that a rock concert would be occurring there later in the evening with none other than the famous classic rock group El Tri, and most of the party opted to attend. It was a grand event with thousands cheering their support for the Madre Tierra. Rodolfo and Antonio stood back and observed the spectacle, arms crossed, for the most part impassive – although Rodolfo occasionally picked up the infectious rhythm, the dangling chakiras of his traditional hat keeping time with the beat.
Monday morning we sought out another site, the Espacio Mexicano por Dialogo Climatico, where a series of events on Forests, Food Sovereignty and Indigenous Peoples was to occupy the day. We met with one of the organizers, Carlos Beas of MAIZ, who invited the delegation to have a representative on the panel. Rodolfo represented the group with a 10-minute presentation on the Wixarika people and the situation in Wirikuta, along with leaders such as Roly Escobar Ochoa of Guatemala, Sandy Gauntlett of New Zealand, and Ben Powless of the First Nations of Canada.
Afterwards we organized a meeting with Francisco “Chico” Mateo of the Departmental Assembly of Communities of Huehuetenango, who shared the story of the indigenous Maya communities’ resistance to the mining concessions granted by the Guatemalan government, and the experience of the neighboring department of San Marcos, which is the site of the highly destructive and controversial Marlin Mine owned by the Canadian transnational Goldcorp.
The delegation was interviewed by Robert Free Galvan and Brenda Norrell for an article which appeared in Censored News.
The day ended with an excellent presentation by the Wixarika delegation, in English and Spanish, with audiovisuals and traditional Wixarika music, at the Villa Climatica.
Tuesday was a day of mobilization in Cancun. More than 10,000 marched in different zones of the city for most of the day; we joined Via Campesina, where peasant farmers from Bolivia, Guatemala and Mexico joined their indigenous compatriots, waving flags of all colors and chanting slogans like “Zapata vive! La lucha sigue! (Zapata lives; the struggle continues),” and “Obama! The world is not a plaything!”
Rodolfo and Jesus paused to pose with a stilt-walker and a bus with a mural on the side featuring a mountain closely resembling Wirikuta’s Cerro Quemado.
The compañeros fielded multiple interviews throughout the march, including with Pacifica Radio, Telesur and the Yomiuri Shimbun from Japan.
Wednesday was the final day, with panels on the menace of mining throughout Latin America, at which Tunuari presented a short report of the situation in Wirikuta. Meanwhile, other anti-mining battles in El Salvador, Guatemala, Bolivia and Peru unfolded.
Tunuari next did an interview with Eugenio Bermejillo of the Latin American Network of Community Radio Stations.
The delegation escaped for a brief trip to the beach and a celebration of what may be the Wixarika delegation’s first and only trip to the Yucatan. Jesus and Rodolfo donned the snorkeling gear and went off in search of manta rays and sea urchins, while Antonio contented himself with paddling in the shallower waters.
The evening ended with yet another interview with Matilde Perez of La Jornada and a fandango of traditional jarocho music from Veracruz.
The farewell was bittersweet; our flight was scheduled the same day as Bolivian president Evo Morales’ speech at the Via Campesina, and the compañeros longed for just one more walk along the beach. But duty called, and amid goodbye hugs and photographs, we made our way home.
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.
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.
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.
