(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.
