Cover Image: Fidencio Aldama (at the far right) together with musicians in the prison of Ciudad Obregon, Sonora.
After a legal process plagued by irregularities, October 27 will mark six years in prison for Indigenous Yaqui, Fidencio Aldama. His ongoing imprisonment was denounced by the Fidencio Aldama Support Group and Los Otros Abo398gadoz who through a communique accused the “anti-Indigenous racism inherent to the Mexican State” for the imprisonment of the political prisoner.
In April of 2018, Aldama was sentenced to fifteen years and six months, accused of the death of Cruz Buitimea Piña in Loma de Bácum, Sonora. Now, after a long appeal process, the courts have confirmed Fidencio Aldama’s conviction, but reduced his sentence to fourteen years.
“We remember that Fidencio’s arrest and continued imprisonment is the result of a coordinated effort between the Mexican State and SEMPRA Energy (via its affiliate in Mexico, IEnova) to impose a natural gas pipeline through Yaqui territory,” detailed the Fidencio Aldama Support Group through the communique released on Thursday October 20.
In 2016, the Yaqui community of Loma de Bácum rejected the imposition of the “Gasoducto Sonora” pipeline project. The response from the state and SEMPRA Energy was violent repression. On October 21, 2016, an attack was carried out against the Yaqui community. A week later Fidencio Aldama was arrested, “unjustly accused,” as the organizations explain.
Los Otros Abogadoz, who are providing legal defense for Fidencio Aldama, announced that on June 17, 2022, a year and nine months after having filed the appeal, the Third Collegiate Court in the State of Sonora resolved the appeal, upholding Fidencio’s conviction.
Afterwards, on August 24, 2022, a ruling was released reducing his sentence to fourteen years in prison. “Faced with this new situation, we cannot remain immobile waiting for Fidencio to serve out his unjust fourteen-year sentence. We must continue insisting and resisting until we can snatch back his freedom,” announced his legal team.
Los Otros Abogadoz explained that they plan to file a new appeal in the hopes that the Supreme Court of the Nation will be the one to resolve the case: “This case is important because it involves an Indigenous person belonging to the Yaqui Tribe who is being criminalized and punished, sentenced to prison for defending his territory by opposing the construction of a natural gas pipeline by an international company. This pipeline project puts at risk the lives of the inhabitants of Loma de Bácum, the pueblo where Fidencio lived with his family when he was detained.”
Mutual Benefits Between the State and Organized Crime
For their part, the Fidencio Aldama Support Group contextualized the situation in Loma de Bácum, explaining that since Aldama’s imprisonment it has only worsened.
On July 14, 2021, ten people were disappeared in the Yaqui community while organizing for their traditional festivities in the pueblo. After months of search efforts led by Yaqui women and families of the disappeared, seven of their remains were found and identified. “These disappearances exemplify how organized crime, the state, and corporations mutually benefit from one another, planting terror in Indigenous communities to disarticulate community organization and consolidate projects of capital accumulation and state control,” denounced the group.
At the end of 2021, the Federal Government presented a policy package denominated the “Justice Plan” for the Yaqui Tribe, which the group argues reinforces “the colonial mission of making the Yaqui people and Yaqui territory productive for global capitalism.”
According to the group, this is evident in actions like that of the current Governor of Sonora, Alfonso Durazo, who recently proposed the designation of a special economic zone in Yaqui territory, destined to facilitate manufacturing industries with cheap Indigenous labor.
In light of the new sentence, the group points to the following people as responsible for the imprisonment of Fidencio Aldama, along with the repression and cooptation that continues in Yaqui Territory: the CEO of Sempra Energy, Jeffrey M. Martin; the CEO of IEnova, Tania Mena Ortiz; the General Director of the CFE, Manuel Bartlett Diaz; the Governor of Sonora, Alfonso Durazo; and the President of the Republic, Andrés Manuel López Obrador.
In the communique they also hold responsible the different judges, magistrates, secretaries, judicial officials, etc. “who have maintained this legal charade against Fidencio Aldama.” Lastly, they indicate that in Fidencio’s legal process, they will likely continue facing “the discrimination of the judicial authorities, who have up until this moment punished the struggle and resistance of a land defender. We will not rest until Fidencio is free, to hug his children and mother who impatiently wait for him.”
In the morning of Monday October 24, a group of thirty people identifying themselves as private security of the Interoceanic Corridor of the Isthmus of Tehuantepec (CIIT) accompanied by state police hung a sign at the entrance to the area known as El Pitayal in the Isthmus of Tehuantepec, Oaxaca. The sign read, “Property of the CIIT (Interoceanic Corridor of the Isthmus of Tehuantepec).”
In a communique from the Community Assembly of Puente Madera and the Assembly of Indigenous Peoples of the Isthmus in Defense of Land and Territory (APIIDTT), they explained that community members spoke with the delegation demanding that they take down the sign “because these are common use lands” of the Binnizá community of Puente Madera.
However, there was no response. Members of the community removed the sign and set it ablaze. Meanwhile, the government functionaries retreated from the area.
To show their disapproval of the latest encroachments on their common use lands, members of the community installed a highway blockade. “There is the threat of the arrival of the national guard, but as of now we have only seen state police,” members of the community shared with Avispa Midia.
There is a lawsuit in the Local Agrarian Court of Tuxtepec to nullify an act of the assembly on March 14, 2021, where the installation of the industrial park in the common use lands of El Pitayal was approved. The protestors explained: “We have presented evidence to different state and federal institutions of the falsification of signatures, even signatures being used of dead people” in that act.
The assemblies denounce: “Because of our stance of respect for and defense of our territory and common use lands… [we have been] subjected to political violence as an Indigenous community being denied the [economic] resources that we require for the most basic maintenance of our public services.”
In addition, they explain: “[We have been] subjected to harassment, intimidation, and physical aggressions…as well as an ongoing campaign of defamation and criminalization against our representatives, community and regional organization.”
The assemblies demand an end to the criminalization against representatives and inhabitants of the community of Puente Madera, a resolution to the nullity trial in the Local Tribunal Court, and the cancelation of the industrial park in the common use lands of El Pitayal.
Security
The sign that government functionaries sought to hang at the entrance to the common use lands of El Pitayal bore the logo of the CIIT and of the private security company, Duxon. In addition to providing security services, Duxon also provides construction services in infrastructure, energy, development, and technological projects. The majority of their contracts are linked with the federal government.
Cover image: Fires in the Brazilian Amazon make way for the expansion of agroindustry and mining.
After twenty years of back and forth negotiations regarding the specifics of a free trade agreement between the European Union and the Southern Common Market (Mercosur)—made up of Brazil, Paraguay, Argentina and Uruguay—European countries have recently intensified efforts to ratify the agreement, especially during the Covid-19 pandemic and the war in Ukraine.
The agreement, signed in June of 2019, was not fully ratified by the countries. At that time, the text was submitted to a legal review and translation, which was to be followed with parliamentary approval by the countries involved.
Different Latin American and European organizations have warned that the terms of the agreement continue the colonial and unequal logic of the international division of labor. That is to say, it stimulates industrial production in Europe while promoting the plunder of natural resources in South America.
Agriculture and mining are the principal sectors to be expanded in South American countries. A study carried out by the organization GRAIN indicates that, with the agreement, there will be growth of at least 540% in the exportation of ethanol, 55% in the exportation of poultry, 60% in coffee, and 50% in beef. All of these products will have zero export tariffs. Minerals like iron will also have tariffs reduced to zero within ten years.
Deforestation in the Amazon
“It reinforces a model of social exclusion and environmental impact, since it involves occupying more and more area and intensifying the use of the areas already occupied,” says Adhemar Mineiro, of the Red Brasileña por la Integración de los Pueblos (REBRIP).
Agriculture and mining are already the two economic activities which “most promote environmental destruction in Brazil, with profound impacts on the human and territorial rights of Indigenous peoples and traditional communities,” says the researcher, Maureen Santos, member of the Grupo Carta de Belém.
In the settlement of Lago Grande—an area of rivers in Santarém in the Amazonian state of Para, Brazil—155 communities live from family farming, fishing, and the recollection of forest fruits. Around 55% of their territory, which was granted to them through the redistribution of lands to small farmers, is now threatened by mining exploitation.
Rosenilce dos Santos, who lives in this territory, says that they are now also suffering pressure from the expansion of soya cultivation. “We are all conscious that the land cannot be sold because it is collective territory. However, grilagem (the illegal sale of land) continues. This has generated conflicts inside families and communities. They arrive to our territory offering hospitals, schools, and roads,” she says.
With the increase in European demand, the plunder of these territories will intensify, “increasing socioenvironmental conflicts,” adds Santos, who is also part of the Federación de Organizaciones de Asistencia Social y Educativa (FASE) of Brazil.
For the Few
In December of 2019, a few months after the agreement was signed by the two blocs, the European Union announced its Green Deal. As the European Union explains on its website, the Green Deal is “a packet of political initiatives meant to place the EU on a path toward ecological transition, with the ultimate objective of reaching climate neutrality by 2050,” and thus fulfilling its commitments under the Paris Accord.
The acceleration of the “energy transition” proposed by the Green Deal, was also seen as a strategy to expand an economy in crisis, which has been made worse by the pandemic. “The transformation of European societies and the economy will be necessary, which must be profitable, equitable, and socially balanced,” says the EU in its documents.
For Mónica Bruckman, a social scientist and coordinator of the working group on geopolitics and regional integration of the Latin American Council of Social Sciences (CLACSO), there is a clear relationship between the strategies of the European Green Deal and the provisions in the agreement that the “European Union is proposing to Mercosur.”
In the documents of the Green Deal, access to resources is fundamental, as a question of “strategic security.” One of the requirements to make the transition a reality is to guarantee the supply of raw materials, in particular those raw materials critical for clean technologies, digital, space, and defense uses.
María Leusa Munduruku (center) during the Caravan for Water in Tapajós. She suffered an assassination attempt in 2021 for opposing illegal mining in Indigenous territories. Photo by Ana Mendes/ Amazônia Real
“None of these critical resources are in European territory. They are principally in Africa, and above all, in South America. Thus, access to these resources is an indispensable requirement to fulfill the objectives of the European Green Deal, and that means access to our territories,” analyzes the researcher.
The agreement between the EU and Mercosur opens the doors of the South American countries to European extraction.
While taking into consideration the decarbonization of industry and consumption in the northern countries, “this same process will violently and brutally expand extractive industries in [our] territories.”
A study carried out by GRAIN reinforces the researcher’s findings. “While it is very likely that with this agreement European “green” transportation fuel targets will be met with increased European importations of ethanol and soya, this same process may further drive deforestation and land grabbing in countries like Brazil. It could result in the governments of the EU causing further climate destruction in order to meet their climate targets,” the study says.
According to its documents, the Green Deal seeks the protection of European natural capital, which includes its biodiversity and water resources. Bruckman stresses the outdatedness of this vision from an environmental point of view. “In the 21st century, we already know that the planet operates as a large bloc with its complex but integrated biomes. There is no point in protecting European natural capital if for example the Amazon is not protected because the Amazon is the biome with the greatest capacity to capture carbon on the planet. Protecting European natural capital means protecting the natural reserves and biomes worldwide,” she said.
In Brazil, 87% of the mining area is in the Amazon. The mining sector “is already having a colossal impact on this territory, and it will have an even greater impact in the next 20 years (…). We have a future characterized by global dispute for strategic natural resources, for strategic goods,” says Bruckman.
The researcher warns that the agreement between the EU and Mercosur is not only a commercial agreement, “it has to do with a new world order that they themselves are proposing.”
More Emissions
Unlike the European Green Deal, the agreement does not force Mercosur countries to fulfill the goals of the Paris Agreement. In spite of citing it, “there isn’t any mechanism or arbitration foreseen in the agreement that forces the countries to fulfill these goals,” Santos explains.
Today Brazil, Argentina, and Paraguay are already in flames for growing soya and sugar cane for the European market. The emissions from forest fires or loss of wetlands do not appear in the European climate calculation.
According to the document from the Observatory of Multinationals in Latin America, “El comercio entre los bloques aumenta la violencia, las desigualdades, la crisis de los derechos humanos y la emergencia ambienta,” the European Union is the second largest importer of tropical deforestation and associated emissions in the world.
Organizations maintain resistance against the advancement of the mining industry in the Brazilian Amazon. Photo by Lanna Ramos.
In addition, it is responsible for 16% of deforestation associated with international trade, and 25% of greenhouse gas emissions from the EU’s food supply derive from imports from Latin America.
With the agreement, GRAIN estimates that greenhouse gas emissions in the countries of Mercosur will increase by one third from trade in just eight agricultural products. More than 80% of these emissions will come from a single product: beef.
Nature-Based Solutions?
Critiques of the agreement not only come from organizations on both sides of the Atlantic. Countries such as France have also expressed the necessity for the agreement to obligate the Mercosur countries to fulfill environmental commitments.
The ambassador of the European Union to Brazil, Ignacio Ybañez, said to the media that the European Commission already has the draft of an additional document regarding environmental issues that will be presented to the countries.
However, the document is not public, and its contents are still unknown.
“We do not have access to the documentation being negotiated. Most of the information that we have in relation to the proposals comes from organizations in the European Union who have gained access and informed us. That is an absurdity,” sustained a member of Grupo Carta de Belem.
Santos suggests that one of the subjects that might be included in additional declarations to the agreement is “nature-based solutions” as “a way out of the climate crisis” where the carbon market is the central axis. “I think that this topic is going to become very important, since it is a key idea that the European Union has been defending in global agreements,” she explains.
These solutions were agreed upon between the countries in the climate conferences of the United Nations, the so-called COPs, and are considered by diverse organizations and peoples throughout the world as “false market-based solutions.”
“For us, they are false (nature-based solutions); they put this name on mechanisms that have already existed for 20 years, and which do not provide concrete results to the climate problem,” said Santos.
Beyond Trade
The agreement between the European Union and Mercosur began to be negotiated in 1995, the same year in which the World Trade Organization (WTO) was founded. In this context, the agreement adhered to the agenda of the WTO, an agenda directed toward trade liberalization.
“It includes, among other things, the liberalization of basic services like water and energy; the privatization of public services and the facilitation of European businesses in their management; labor deregulation; deregulation of the financial system; privatization of public banks,” explains Adhemar Mineiro.
Another issue are the purchases made by governments—federal, state and municipal—in the countries of Mercosur. “All of the purchases, for example of food, must be carried out through international bids, giving access to European companies,” which would interfere with, for example, the Brazilian government purchasing products produced by family farming.
Chemical Pesticides: “Double Standard”
The agreement facilitates the sale of pesticides produced by European companies. The taxes imposed on chemical products will be reduced or eliminated by 90%. The European Commission’s forecast is that it will increase exportations by 47.6% of these products toward Mercosur.
At the same time, the European Union reinforced their internal restrictions on pesticides. According to a report in 2019 by the Asociación Brasileña para la Reforma Agraria, 44% of the substances registered in Brazil are prohibited in the European Union. Of the 113 products of the German based company, BASF, 71 of them are approved in Brazil. These are highly dangerous pesticides with 57 of them not being registered for use in the EU.
The Congress of Brazil has greenlighted the use of pesticides prohibited in the European Union.
“The agreement is a double standard, in which citizens of Mercosur are treated as secondary,” Santos said.
The study carried out by Gabriel Cassoti of Amigos de la Tierra Europa, “Comercio Tóxico: a ofensiva do lobby dos agrotoxicos da UE no Brasil,” revealed the extensive lobbying carried out by this sector in Europe and Brazil. It also revealed that the businesses were consulted by the EU so that their demands were included in the agreement.
Today there exists 5000 pesticides being used in Brazil, 1500 of them have been permitted during the government of Jair Bolsonaro.
Substitution
Cars, principally of German origin, will have their sale facilitated in Mercosur countries. “The automobile sector was also consulted so that their demands were included in the agreement,” explains Lúcia Ortiz, of the organization Amigos de la Tierra Brasil.
As part of its strategies to reduce carbon emissions, the European Union established the objective to have at least 30 million zero emission cars in 2030. In addition, it plans to prohibit the sale of vehicles with combustion motors by 2035.
“The European Union, with its renewable energy guidelines, will substitute its gas-powered cars for electric or hydrogen powered cars, and they want to sell us the cars that they don’t use. Meanwhile we export to Europe the minerals necessary for the technology for their energy transition,” said Ortiz.
Uncontrollable E-Commerce
Gabriel Cassoti alerts to a point hardly discussed in relation to the agreement. That is, e-commerce of major digital corporations. The agreement prohibits the taxation of profits from these companies. “There exists a major lobby of the five major companies—Google, Amazon, Apple, Facebook, Alibaba—who are amongst the seven largest companies in the world.”
Furthermore, the agreement prohibits the state from regulating the flow of users’ personal data from the platforms; data “that generates very high profits for these companies.”
Expectation
There are certain expectations about the direction of the agreement in relation to the outcomes of the presidential elections in Brazil, which will take place on October 30 between Bolsonaro and Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva. The topic was present during the electoral campaigns.
Lula has sustained that if he is elected, he will seek to “improve” the agreement to guarantee that the Mercosur countries can promote industry. However, the European diplomat, Cañas, declared to European media that a possible renegotiation of the agreement “will not occur.”
Confidential files of the Secretary of National Defense (Sedena) leaked by the Guacamaya hackers group reveal a permanent monitoring by the military of the Zapatista Army of National Liberation (EZLN) and organizations with affinity to the Zapatista movement.
One of the current concerns of Sedena, evident in its reports, is the action of the EZLN in relation to the Maya Train and other megaprojects in the south-southeast of Mexico.
The document Position of the EZLN for the construction of the Maya Train, classified as confidential, from January 2020, mentions the conditions of the Zapatistas in the Chiapas zone, the reasons why they oppose the Mayan Train and other megaprojects, as well as the way in which they would act against said works and the federal government itself.
President López Obrador urged the Army to guard the construction of the Maya Train.
Sedena estimates that the EZLN could re-arm itself and maintains that “the risk of the resurgence of the rebel movement is still latent,” due to the construction of megaprojects in the southeast of the country.
It is also stated that “the EZLN group represents a possible unfavorable factor to the internal security of the Mexican State”.
The Army recommends in an analysis dated January 20, 2019 that “intelligence monitoring of this group requires the work of civil and military intelligence in national security, given its background.”
Furthermore, Sedena considers it necessary to generate ‘intelligence’ about grassroots Christian groups of the Catholic Church, which would be close to the Zapatistas, and also about their position regarding the government of Andrés Manuel López Obrador.
Galeano
Regarding Subcomandante Galeano, Sedena considers that “he cannot be underestimated.”
In the past, he managed to raise hundreds of residents in arms, “why couldn't he do the feat again today? Commander Ernesto Che Guevara already said: ‘There is no small enemy or negligible force, because there are no longer isolated peoples’.
Tour
Between May 2nd and September 12th of 2021, members of the EZLN made a tour of 30 European countries called “Journey for Life.”
Members of the EZLN during the European tour in 2021.
The reports generated show that the Army followed up on the activities carried out by the Zapatistas before, during and after their tour of Europe, with weekly reports. The military were aware of the type of coverage and impacts that the visit of the Zapatista delegations in Europe and in the international media would generate.
“In the same way, it is not observed first-hand that their activities have any negative repercussions for the Mexican government,” they detail in one of the reports.
Militarization
The military recount that in the reports the Zapatistas “disclosed the formation of 4 new autonomous municipalities (...) which could represent an expansion of its area of influence in the area bordering Guatemala”.
They also record that “currently the Caracol II (Oventic) is the one that represents the greatest relevance due to the events they have carried out and the indoctrination activities that Rafael Sebastián Guillen Vicente 'Galeano' regularly attends.” Also considering the facts mentioned, “this SND has maintained an operational deployment in accordance with the social and criminal situation in the state of Chiapas with troops under the jurisdiction of the VII RM (Tuxtla Gutierrez, Chiapas.), currently with the support of the National Guard”.
Cover image: Train tracks in the Isthmus of Tehuantepec, Oaxaca. Photo: Santiago Navarro F.
The Community Assembly of Puente Madera has denounced that on Friday September 30, César Octavio Morales Toledo, the current Communal Lands Commissioner of the Municipality of San Blas Atempa, ordered people who work for him to insult, beat, and threaten to kill Ismael Luis López, inhabitant of the Zapotec community.
This act of violence is the latest recorded and denounced by the Community Assembly of Puente Madera and the Assembly of Indigenous Peoples of the Isthmus in Defense of Land and Territory (APIIDTT). Through a communique they affirmed that the aggressions are a consequence of the Zapotec community’s resistance to the imposition of an industrial park on their communal lands.
“These aggressions against Ismael Luis López continue what we have already been denouncing, part of the criminalization of our community for roundly rejecting the installation of the PODEBI (Development Pole for Wellbeing) on our collective lands,” they emphasized through a communique.
Photo: APIIDTT
The Indigenous organizations denounce that days prior, on September 25, a mock assembly of community members was held, “putting in place another piece for the imposition of the industrial park of the Interoceanic Corridor on our common use lands of El Pitayal, through the appointment of César Octavio Morales Toledo” as representative of the commission.
The assemblies recall that since the end of August they have warned of the possible appointment of new agrarian authorities, whose urgency “responds to the necessities of Antonino Morales Toledo to continue with the intimidation and criminalization that we as the community of Puente Madera have been suffering since 2021,” due to their rejection of the industrial park.
Furthermore, they point out that César Octavio, known in the region as “Santa,” is brother to Antonino Morales Toledo, the ex-municipal president and right-hand man of the governor-elect of the state, Salomón Jara Cruz. In López’s testimony, the Indigenous Zapotec claims that Morales threw him to the ground while declaring that the park, “is going to be built because he is now the authority and that the people of Puente Madera will not impede the construction of the industrial park,” detailed the communique.
Links with Organized Crime
The Indigenous organizations stressed the necessity to review the legality of Toledo’s appointment as Communal Lands Commissioner due to his criminal record.
They point out that Morales has been detained on two occasions. The first by Federal Police in 2018, during the operation “Special Security Force Oaxaca,” for illegally carrying $250,000 pesos in cash. The second detention, documented by the magazine Proceso, occurred in January of 2022, when the military arrested him for carrying weapons designated exclusively for military use.
Photo: The brothers César (to the left) and Antonino (to the right) Morales Toledo
César Octavio Morales Toledo operates through the organization, United Front of Oaxacan Communities (FUCO), a political movement formed by his brother Antonino Morales to support the candidacy of the now governor-elect, Salomón Jara.
According to an investigation published by El Muro MX in May of this year, the US Government asked the Financial Intelligence Unit (UIF), which depends on the Ministry of Finance and Public Credit (SCHP), to freeze the accounts of 1,669 people linked to the Jalisco New Generation Cartel (CJNG). One of the people linked to the organized crime group is Antonino Morales Toledo, who has served as the main financial operator of Salomón Jara for the last six years.
The Violence Continues
The Indigenous assemblies also denounced aggressions against David Hernández Salazar and his family, who were physically assaulted on July 19 by Mariano de la Rosa Jiménez, Roberto Trinidad Jiménez, and Faustino de la Rosa Quecha, people who operate inside the community in favor of the industrial park and for the selling off of communal lands.
The Indigenous organizations blame the climate of violence in the Zapotec community of Puente Madera on local, state, and federal government officials. Among them, the brothers Antonino and César Morales Toledo, as well as Gonzalo Villalobos López, representative of the Agrarian Attorney in Oaxaca, and Rafael Marín Mollinedo, General Director of the Interoceanic Corridor of the Isthmus of Tehuantepec.
Lastly, they demand respect for the self-determination of Puente Madera in their rejection of the construction of the PODEBI on their common use lands, as well as an end to the harassment and criminalization of inhabitants and representatives of the community.
On September 6, the governor of Michoacán, Alfredo Ramírez Bedolla, threatened to remove the checkpoints maintained by the Nahua community of Santa María Ostula, which serve to protect members of their community security system. The community has exercised self-government and maintained the operation of their Communal Guard since 2009.
Through a statement, the governor of Michoacán announced that he would order the removal of the “barricades” referring to the security checkpoints that the Nahua community maintains on Federal Highway 200. At the same time, the governor launched accusations seeking to criminalize the armed civilians who he signaled as being “outside the law.”
In an interview, members of the Community Council of Ostula emphasized why they maintain the checkpoints at the entrance to their territory. The community members highlight the assassination of Hidelberto Reyes in 2015, a 12-year-old boy who was killed during an operation involving seven members of the Mexican Army, along with police and marines, when they attempted to remove the highway blockade of the Nahua community of Ostula.
The murder of the boy at the hands of militaries, solidified the distrust of the Nahua community toward the state. Through an act of their community assembly, they reiterated their rejection of whatever external governmental forces from entering their territories beneath the pretext of providing security. “That is the reason why we do not allow any state forces inside our community, it is that simple,” the community members sustained in an interview with Avispa Midia.
The Nahua community also stresses that the Communal Guard does not obstruct free transit at its checkpoints, and that there are no criminal groups that threaten the wellbeing of the people. On the contrary they emphasize, “We will defend the existence, functioning, and permanence of our Communal Guard and of our community security system because these, and not the corrupt governmental security corporations, guarantee the life and wellbeing of the inhabitants of the community and municipality.”
Following the threat from the governor of Michoacán, on Thursday September 8, inhabitants of Ostula pertaining to the municipality of Aquila, protested at the National Guard barracks located near the municipal seat. There, they demanded respect for their internal laws legitimating the operation of the Communal Guard, which together with the self-defense forces in the municipalities of Chinicuila, Coahuayana, and Aquila, sustain the community security system in the Sierra-Costa region of Michoacán.
Mining is Behind the Threat
According to information of the Secretariat of Economy, in the municipality of Aquila alone there exists 101 mining concessions, 58 of which are active. According to the Mexican Geological Survey, in the mining districts of Aquila and San Pedro, there exists important deposits of iron, silver, gold, copper, and manganese.
The company, Las Encinas, S.A., has a concession of nearly 150,000 hectares covering the mountains of the Indigenous Nahua Sierra from the south of Jalisco in the Sierra of Manantlán to the coast of Michoacán from which it extracts tons of iron. In the municipality of Aquila, it operates an open pit mine whose materials are sent to the Alzada Station of Colima for the production of agglomerates and iron sintering in the pelletizing plant owned by Ternium Mexico S.A. de C.V.
Michoacán is the principal producer of iron ore in Mexico. In 2013, the government already momentarily suspended exportations of iron because the port of Lázaro Cárdenas, located just over 200 kilometers from Ostula, was being utilized by the Knights Templar Cartel to illegally export iron ore to China.
Now, behind the threat from the governor, members of the Community Council point to the mining industry’s interests as one of the reasons for which the state seeks to disarticulate the community security system.
“We have (mining) along the northern perimeter of our community. In the municipality of Aquila, there are lands that hold minerals. We think that is the reason for which they are trying to subdue us at this moment,” say the community members who affirm that the Nahua community will never sell the lands where the concessions are located.
Communal Guard
Community Security
In the recent history of Ostula, the year 2009 is important, when approximately 2000 community members made the decision to recuperate 1000 hectares of communal lands pertaining to the Nahua people, but that were in the possession of small land owners linked to the Knights Templar Cartel.
At that moment, according to members of the Community Council of Ostula, the community was living under a narco-political regime. Organized crime operated under the cover of state officials and politicians from the Institutional Revolutionary Party (PRI), who favored the division of the community, acting violently against the Indigenous Nahuas who demanded the recuperation of their lands. Between 2009 and 2014, 34 people were assassinated and 6 more were disappeared, among them agrarian authorities and communal leaders, as part of the violent response from drug traffickers and the state.
The community members emphasize that during that time, the municipal police of Aquila had outsiders who didn’t know the context in the region. Worse still, they worked beneath the command of organized crime. For this reason, the community decided to expel the local security forces and retake their communal structure. In that context, the consolidation of the Communal Guard becomes relevant, whose task is to protect not only the inhabitants of the Nahua community of Santa Maria Ostula, but also the other towns of the municipality of Aquila.
“Our Communal Guard is recognized by a community assembly which governs our laws and customs,” explain members of the Community Council of Ostula. They emphasize that participation in the security system is an obligation of community members when they reach the appropriate age to provide free service in benefit of the population.
At the same time, the Community Council functions as the body where proposals sent to the General Assembly are analyzed and approved, and where support for the functions of the Communal Guard are continually emphasized.
For his part, the lawyer Raymundo Martín considers the intention to prohibit the activities of the Communal Guard as “an attack against the autonomous practices” of the Nahua community. At the same time that the governor makes these statements, there exists in process a reform to the public security system law in Michoacán, related to the municipal organic law, which seeks to grant validity only to communal guards recognized by the state. However, the legal basis for the communal guards lies in Article 2 of the Mexican constitution, as well as in international treaties like Convention 169 of the ILO.
The community members affirm that when they recuperated their lands and founded the population of San Diego Xayacalan, they didn’t have weapons. Now that they have them they do not intend to disarm because their self-defense is dependent upon them in the context of extreme violence in Michoacán. For this reason, they emphasize their concern for the statements from the governor of the state, aiming to disarticulate a fundamental security structure for the Nahua community. As they stated in a communique, “This leads us to suspect that the complicity between organized crime and governmental institutions continues to prevail.”
Communal Guard
Peace Amidst Worry
The community of Santa Maria Ostula is an oasis amidst spiraling violence in Michoacán. While the Nahua community members assure that there doesn’t exist homicides in the municipality of Aquila where the Communal Guard operates, in contrast, from January to July of 2022, the Executive Secretariat of the National Public Security System (SESNSP) recorded 1270 murders in the state, showing an increase of 70% compared to 2018.
The Indigenous community of Ostula affirms that their struggle has been peaceful but spirited in defense of their territory and organization. “Our community is one of the safest places in the country where we can live in a climate of peace and freedom, carrying out our everyday social and economic activities, because those times of violence, fear, anxiety, and terror are behind us,” they emphasize through a public communique.
“The (governor) doesn’t understand how we are organized. I think it is the safest municipality in the state,” affirms one of the community members interviewed, who even invites the governor to visit the Nahua community: “Let him come without security because we are going to provide it here,” he declares.The population of Santa Maria Ostula assures the foundation of its Communal Guard lies in the self-determination and autonomy of the community. For its part, the National Network of Human Rights Organizations “All Rights for Everyone” (Red TdT) released a statement on Monday September 12, declaring that the organization of Ostula has constitutional protection in relation to their human rights, “whose fulfillment corresponds to the Mexican state, in their responsibility to uphold the collective rights of Indigenous peoples and communities.”
