From July 26-29 protests took place in Lima, Peru against the government of Dina Boluarte and Congress.
The protests were made up of delegations from the Andean regions where 49 people were killed between December 2022 and January 2023 following the coup against Pedro Castillo. The coup was orchestrated by the parliament of the far right, in alliance with the business oligarchy and military-police forces.
One of the demands of the protests was punishment for those responsible for the massacres in Puno, Ayacucho, Apurímac, Cusco, and Junín. Marches were organized from the working-class neighborhoods of the capital city toward the city center, and were watched over by hundreds of police. Four people were detained.
On one hand, the charge of genocide against Boluarte was dismissed, while on the other, on July 30, the Attorney General’s Office denounced the president for aggravated homicide and serious injuries to victims.
Voices in defense of territory and agriculture, guardians of the Amazon, were heard in the marches toward the center of the capital city. These protests take place in a context of the onslaught of mega-mining in campesino communities, along with an emergency in Indigenous communities due to organized crime violence and the lack of security provided by the state.
In the capital city, the rejection of legislative maneuvers to control the electoral institutions was echoed in the protests. In the following months, congress will rule on the constitutional counter-reforms being pushed to dominate the judicial institutions and the next electoral process scheduled for 2026.
The authoritarian officials, with Fujimorism in charge, are pushing for the elimination of the National Board of Justice (JNI), in charge of naming judges, prosecutors, and the head of the National Office of Electoral Process (ONPE). Likewise, they intend to modify the election of the presidency of the National Jury of Elections (JNE) and the ONPE, to subject electoral authorities to impeachment and political trials which threaten their autonomy.
At least fifteen Mexican organizations doing work related to territorial defense protested this last week against the decision of the Canadian mining company Almaden Minerals Ltd. to file a lawsuit against the Mexican state. The suit was filed by the company after the Nahua community and ejido Tecoltemi of the municipality of Ixtacamaxtitlán, Sierra Norte of Puebla, achieved the permanent cancellation of two concessions for open pit gold and silver mines in the municipality, affecting at least 20 Nahua communities.
The suit was filed at the International Center for Settlement of Investment Disputes (ICSID), a legal mechanism of the World Bank. In 2022, after eight years of litigation, the Supreme Court revoked the mining concessions authorized by the Secretariat of Economy, arguing that the company’s activities had violated the human right to territory, to a previous, free, and informed consultation, and to prior consent from the Nahua communities.
Almaden Minerals Ltd. is demanding $200 million dollars from the Mexican state for not allowing the mining projects. The company has announced that it has $9.5 million dollars at its disposal to sustain the legal battle led by the Boies Schiller Flexner legal firm.
The Secretariat of Environment and Natural Resources (SEMARNAT), together with the National Institute of Indigenous Peoples (INPI), had concluded that the mining company caused social, cultural, spiritual, and human rights impacts. “The activities of Almaden Minerals Ltd. negatively affected the population, impacting the health and environment, leading to the criminalization and stigmatization of community defenders, the unweaving of the social fabric, and corporate control,” they said in a statement.
Together with the Union de Ejidos y Comunidades en Defensa de la Tierra, el Agua, y la Vida Atcolhua, an organization that has carried out the struggle against the mining company, the organizations demand that Mexican authorities consider the human rights and environmental impacts caused by the mining company in the territory as part of the arbitration procedure.
The demand is that the competent authorities—Secretariat of Economy, General Direction of Legal Consultation Regarding International Trade, Subsecretary of Foreign Trade, and President Andrés Manuel López Obrador—permit the presentation of evidence and testimony from the Indigenous communities who were affected by the mining project during its exploration phase, as well as the documentation compiled on the effects caused to the environment and human rights as the mining company attempted to establish its operations in the territory.
Furthermore, the organizations are asking that the International Center for Settlement of Investment Disputes (ICSID) facilitate the Union de Ejidos presenting its written opinion as people affected by the mining project and as a non-disputing party. “We raise our voices to demand that the damages caused by Almaden Minerals Ltd. in the municipality of Ixtacmaxtitlán be repaired, and that the Indigenous communities receive compensation and not the millionaire corporations,” add the organizations.
Cover image: Hundreds of Indigenous Lencas mobilize in Tegucigalpa to demand the recognition of their ancestral lands.
Following a week of mobilizations, more than 400 Indigenous Lencas from 12 communities in southeastern Honduras reached a historic agreement with the National Agrarian Institute (INA). The state has committed to the communal titling of more than 9,000 manzanas of land where more than 900 families live.
The Consejo Civico de Organizaciones Populares e Indígenas de Honduras (COPINH), or Civic Council of Popular and Indigenous Organizations of Honduras, an organization made up of Lenca communities, announced that the agreement was signed with agrarian authorities on Friday, July 19.
The agreement was the result of mobilizations of the Lenca communities, Montaña Verde, Limoncillo, El Achiotal, Río Blanco, Wise, El Naranjo, 1 de Agosto and Grupo Campesino Nueva Esperanza, who revindicate the communal possession of their territories.
“COPINH will be monitoring that these agreements reached with the INA are fulfilled, to ensure respect, along with just and prompt implementation. If they are not fulfilled, there will be more protests in the capital city. This vigilance is not only a duty, but a commitment to our community, to the future generations, who depend on the protection of our territories,” explained the organization through a statement following the announcement of the agreements.
The organization explained that the state committed to a concrete time frame and to specific responsibilities for the titling of the Lenca territories. “In particular the titling of four communal lands within 20 days, and the steady advance in the remaining processes. This agreement represents a major step forward toward legal certainty of the lands that our communities have possessed for generations, after more than 25 years of waiting.”
Bertha Zúñiga Cáceres, coordinator of COPINH, celebrated the agreements which will make possible the ratification of the communal possession of the Lenca lands. “These are ancestral lands, lands of the Lenca people, yet there is legal uncertainty which exposes us to judicial persecution,” she argues. In the affected communities, private property titles have been presented which causes the Indigenous population to be accused of the crime of “usurpation of lands.”
Zúñiga says that the agreement provides steps toward the solution of some cases, but there still exist other communities who demand the involvement of the National Agrarian Commission, and even the Supreme Court of the Nation, “to orient the local judges, who have played very nefarious roles in delaying processes and hindering communal possession of the lands.”
Distrust
It should be noted that the Plataforma Agraria del Aguán and the Coordinadora de Organizaciones Populares del Aguán (COPA)--campesino organizations from the valley of Bajo Aguán, in the department of Colón, who have led the revindication of campesino lands dispossessed by oil palm agroindustry--also participated in the protests.
Esly Banegas, member of COPA, indicated that there are currently multiple organizations that have signed agreements with the national administration, led by President Xiomara Castro, to reduce conflicts in the titling of lands. However, they signaled that despite the political will, “it is not reflected in solutions to the problems that have been caused by oligarchic sectors against campesino and Indigenous families.”
Justice
On the same days of action, Indigenous Lencas also mobilized at the Supreme Court of Justice of Honduras, to demand the confirmation of the evictions of eight people condemned for the assassination of the leader Berta Cáceres, which took place in March 2016.
Accompanied by campesino and human rights organizations, the Indigenous Lenca people stood up to demand a response from the criminal court judges, who have still not ruled on two cessation appeals presented by the defense, seeking to invalidate the convictions emitted in previous years.
“I cannot give an exact day, because it would be irresponsible of me to do that. What I can tell you is that we are working hard and that this will be done in the shortest time possible and it will be public knowledge,” responded the judge Mario Díaz to the Lenca protest.
Meanwhile, residents of La Esperanza, Intibucá, warned that every day more people and organizations are joining the demand for the confirmation of the convictions against the seven perpetrators and the co-perpetrator of the crime, in addition to demanding an investigation against members of the Atala family, who are accused of being the masterminds of the murder.
“They don’t want to do anything to them (the masterminds). Here the authorities are in cahoots with the companies, they agree to fix the situation and they come to us to give a certain discourse to the poor, to the humble communities, the campesinos, the women,” claimed Catalina Hernández, resident of the Lenca community.
At the same time, the mobilization also demands that the assassination of campesinos in the valley of Bajo Aguán be investigated, as well as the relations between organized crime and the agro-industrial companies that operate in the region.
Cover image: Press conference held in the capital city of Chiapas to denounce irregularities in the legal process of the Zapatista.
José Díaz Gómez, Indigenous Ch’ol, support base of the Zapatista Army of National Liberation (EZLN), has been imprisoned and accused of violent robbery. The Fray Bartolomé de Las Casas Human Rights Center (FRAYBA) pointed out that Díaz, imprisoned in CERSS No. 17, “El Bambú”, in the municipality of Catazajá, in the north of Chiapas, is the victim of criminalization accused of a crime that hasn’t been substantiated.
FRAYBA has documented the human rights violations carried out by Chiapas state police during José Díaz’s detention: executing an illegal and arbitrary detention; engaging in torture; engaging in cruel, inhumane, and degrading conduct; forced disappearance; and holding someone incommunicado.
The organizations demand that the Mexican state immediately free the Zapatista who has been held prisoner for nearly one year and nine months without a conviction. On July 8, the presentation of evidence was completed which will be followed by a verdict from the court.
“The evidence presented against José Díaz is inconsistent and lacks credibility. These details make evident the deficient investigation and lack of fairness in the judicial process,” asserted FRAYBA in a press conference held on July 29 in the capital city of Chiapas, Tuxtla Gutiérrez.
Jorge Luis López, FRAYBA’s lawyer, detailed that evidence presented by the public prosecutor is made up of four parts, “and none of them directly link José to the crime; we would expect that the judge issues an acquittal.”
The lawyer emphasized that one of the pieces of evidence, testimony of the supposed victim, was full of contradictions during the trial. Furthermore, the witness presented at the hearing confirmed that he does not know the accused. The other two pieces of evidence, two reports presented by the State Attorney General’s Office (a field forensics report and a crime scene inspection), “neither of them directly links José to the crime,” emphasizes López.
The human rights center has documented the investigation process carried out by the public prosecutor’s office, of which it assures, “is deficient because it does not comply with the requirement of being objective, nor does it have evidence to link José to the crime.” The human rights center even warns that given the accumulation of irregularities and the lack of solid evidence against José Díaz, just like four other Zapatistas who have arrest warrants out or them, are at risk of being unjustly convicted.
FRAYBA argues that the imprisonment of José Díaz is politically motivated, part of a pattern of fabricating guilt against Indigenous community organizers, emphasizing that “the prosecution didn’t carry out a legal, scientific, and objective investigation.”
“The Judge of Catazajá must consider not only the crime of robbery and an investigation lacking authenticity, but also the situation of political criminalization in the case of human rights defenders belonging to Indigenous communities,” FRAYBA says in a bulletin.
According to López, as part of José Díaz’s defense, the human rights center has met with judicial officials in Chiapas. Before the officials, they requested a change in the pre-trial detention status, arguing that there is justification to free the Zapatista so he can continue his legal process in freedom. This request was denied.
They have also appealed to international organizations like the Inter-American Commission on Human Rights where they also solicited a change in his pre-trial status because of prison conditions and overcrowding in CERSS No. 17 which are inhumane and violating the human rights of the Zapatista.
Prison in Chiapas, Inhumane and Degrading
As part of its documentation, FRAYBA assures that there exists a pattern of human rights violations of people detained in the prisons of Chiapas. Among them they have registered acts of torture, cruel, inhumane, and degrading conduct, as well as conditions of overcrowding, all of which are predominant in these prisons.
CERSS No. 17, in the municipality of Catazajá, is particularly overcrowded. With a maximum capacity of 120 people, the prison currently houses 478 inmates, and maintains practices like holding 18 people in cells that measure nine square meters.
“This situation has increased the risk of infectious diseases, worsened by compromised immune systems. We also note the presence of multiple diseases reflected in skin rashes, symptoms of fever, dizziness, vomiting, and lumps of different sizes, among other side effects…,” denounces the human rights center. It also emphasizes that the conditions worsened for lack of medical attention and lack of disease monitoring to intervene and mitigate the risks of contagion among the prison population.
FRAYBA says that the response from authorities is to forcefully and unjustly transfer the population to other prisons “putting their lives and well-being at risk.”
The litigator explains that due to the enormous number of cases, the public defenders and judges are overwhelmed with work, which doesn’t allow them time to give specific attention to each case. “What this generates is that an Indigenous person who doesn’t know how to read, who doesn’t know how to write, and who doesn’t know the conditions of our penal system, obviously will be imprisoned for more time,” the lawyer points out.
López explains that there is a two-year term limit in which a person can remain in pre-trial detention: “Precisely, before the two years is up, they accelerate the entire process so that they can give a sentence as soon as possible. The concern is that he will be convicted.”
More than 50 organizations from Chiapas, Mexico and around the world called for the immediate freedom of the Zapatista and called for actions in the context of the coming ruling, which is scheduled to be announced on August 6.
Indigenous peoples of Perú who pertain to the Asociación Interetnica de Desarrollo de la Selva Peruana (AIDESEP) have declared a state of permanent emergency after the tragic assassination of Mariano Isacama Feliciano, leader of the Kakataibo people.
This action was taken in response to the inaction of the government in the face of the increasing violence faced by Indigenous people protecting their ancestral territories, says AIDESEP.
Isacama was from the Indigenous community of Nativa de Puerto Azul, located in the province of Manu, Madre de Dios, in the Peruvian Amazon, and was found dead on the banks of the Yurac river after going missing twenty-four days ago.
The Indigenous leader had alerted the community and human rights organizations of previous threats against him prior to his disappearance. According to the autopsy report, his death was caused by a bullet wound, as well as showing signs of torture.
Isacama had sustained a persistent struggle in defense of the Amazon and against illegal mining and logging activities in the region, alongside the communities that pertain to the AIDESEP.
AIDESEP is an organization which unites Indigenous peoples of the Peruvian Amazon through its nine regional base organizations which have expressed profound discontent for the lack of justice for victims and the continued impunity surrounding these crimes.
The Indigenous Amazonian communities have announced that, with the lack of justice and security provided by the state, they themselves will prepare to take other measures. The communities have announced that they’ve been obligated to exercise their right to legitimate self-defense and “utilize the means in the same proportion with which they attack us,” with complete responsibility falling on “the government for the consequences,” says the communique.
La Federación Nativa de Comunidades Kakataibo also warns that a new practice of organized crime in the region is to let the bodies decompose, so as to disappear evidence and delay investigations.
With this case, the National Coordinator of Human Rights registers twenty-five environmental defenders and Indigenous leaders who have been disappeared and murdered since 2020. Five of the victims were from the Kakataibo people. In 2021, two members of the community were disappeared and their whereabouts are still unknown. The violence against Indigenous peoples has expanded in recent years in the Amazon regions of Ucayali, Huánuco, Pasco and Junín.
Cover image: The communal guard of Ostula is a voluntary service provided to the community. Each member is elected in the encargaturas and the service lasts one year. Photo: Regina López
By Santiago Navarro F and Regina López
She is known as La Mexicana. She is an Indigenous Nahua woman, over fifty years old. In her firm stare she holds like a secret the most decisive moments in the last fifteen years of her life “doing resistance” as she says. She’s learned how to overcome the threats from organized crime on her lands. First it was the Familia Michoacana Cartel, she says, then it was the Knights Templar Cartel, and now the Jalisco New Generation Cartel (CJNG).
Her name is Teresa Regis Nicolás. She returned from the United States fifteen years ago. After the death of her father, she returned to her native land with the legacy that he left her, to struggle for the communal lands that belong to the Indigenous people of Santa María Ostula, in municipality of Aquila, located in the state of Michoacán. These lands extend to the pacific coast, in the western part of Mexico.
It was 2009. It had only been three months since the community had carried out an armed recuperation of a fraction of their lands. Today, Teresa, her children, and more than 70 Indigenous families live on the recuperated territory. The lands are now known as Xayakalan. Prior to the recuperation, they were in the hands of landowners who had acquired property titles and were connected to organized crime. The Indigenous people have titles for their communal lands from a presidential decree from 1964, and today the primordial titles from the 1700’s that prove the land to be theirs.
Xayakalan became village number 24 that of Ostula, what the local people call encargaturas, similar to municipal agencies. “I wasn’t involved in the recuperation of the lands. But three months later, I was one of the first eight families that settled here with a small home. Since then, we have resisted,” remembers La Mexicana.
Community members recount that since 1997 they had been preparing these lands to be planted, before they were taken over by landowners.
In June 2003 they decided for the first time to physically establish themselves on the lands, constructing a series of adobe homes. In September of that same year, the homes were torn down. In 2004, the landowners sued the Indigenous people for usurping private property. “Afterwards the court ruled in favor of the landowners,” shares Evaristo Domínguez Ramos, a community member of Ostula.
In 2008, the Agrarian Court of Colima decided that these lands—highly productive and with a paradise-like beach—were property of those who had filed the lawsuits. According to the community members, these people were “linked at that time to the Knights Templar Cartel.”
From that moment on, for a year and two months, in silence, members of the communal council of Ostula began to organize a response. In general assemblies and collective meetings, each one of the 23 encargaturas were consulted about the idea of taking action to recuperate the lands. Afterwards, it was decided to name the lands Xayakalan. “That is how we began to struggle in defense. The decision was made in April 2008, we had to recuperate these lands,” shares Evaristo.
The brave action to recuperate the lands was organized by community members who maintained their plans secret, until the day of the recuperation when dozens of Indigenous men and women participated. “On June 29, 2009, the lands were retaken. It has not been easy, it has cost many lives,” he adds.
During these years of struggle, forty-four Indigenous people have been killed, and according to the Public Prosecutor’s Office of the State of Michoacan, between 2009 and 2014, there have been five disappearances. Among the disappeared is the 62-year-old communal lands commissioner, Francisco de Asís Manuel, who was kidnapped from his home in the village of Palma Sola.
It has been fifteen years now that the Nahua community has had control of their lands. On June 28 and 29, they celebrated the anniversary, remembering the dead and disappeared. They danced and sang accompanied by solidarity groups who have supported their struggle. Women and men also shared bits and pieces of memories of the most difficult moments they’ve lived through.
Communal authorities of the 24 encargaturas sharing what they remember of June 29, some of them children at that time, now have cargos authorized by the community. Photo: Regina LópezThose in charge of the organization of the 24 encargaturas participated in the celebration of the recuperation of the lands and the foundation of Xayakalan. Photo: Santiago Navarro F.
One of the participants at the event remembered that during the recuperation, on the Michoacán coast, it was crab season. It is common for the local people to go to the beach to collect crabs that come out during the rains. On the day of the recuperation, “We came across an armed commando who said to us, ´You Indian sons of bitches, there are no crabs here!´ Moments after, they shot toward us with ak-47 assault rifles. There were three elderly folks with us. One man stayed behind. He said to the armed men, ´kill me if you want. I’m not afraid´.”
This campesino from La Labor, who participated in the recuperation of the land recounts, “We were the first to arrive. We held our ground for fifteen days, until there was no more food. Women arrived with only charalitos (small fish), and fifteen years later, we continue the struggle,” shares the Indigenous man.
Teresa lived the everyday experience after the recuperation. A lump develops in her throat, she gathers her courage and explains, “We’ve been through difficult times, sad times, frightful times, but also beautiful times, like the mutual aid in the community. At first, we were many families, and at a certain moment the resistance was weakened to the point where there were only eight families. Today it is truly a community,” she shares while letting off a smile seeing the children that have been born on these recuperated lands, which now count more than double the population of the adults.”
Teresa, like the rest of the women in Xayakalan, is cheerful because it is a day of celebration, the fifteenth anniversary of the recuperation of the lands. The children run and blend in with the landscape near the ocean. The wind that brings the waves to the beach, also brings the smell of food to the entire community. “It is time to celebrate that we are still alive. To remember our dead, so that we never give up the struggle,” says La Mexicana.
In the new community of Xayakalan, the only way to survive was to make life. New couples emerged who decided to struggle together, having children while resisting constant attacks from organized crime. Today there are more than 70 families who live together in the community, their children go to the new school, and they’ve also built a church. Everyone has a house and two parcels to farm.
Teresa explains with pride, “My son is from here, he was born here, his umbilical cord is buried here. There are now more than 150 children in the community. We have the responsibility of teaching them the extension of our lands, just as our grandparents did. I’ve taken my son all the way to the peripheries of Ostula, so he will never forget,” she shares.
On August 11, 2023, the community received a judicial notification of a “forced rectification of limits” of the lands. This would imply the entrance of governmental personal to rectify the properties of those who had filed lawsuits—the landowners—with the latent intervention of the National Guard and the Military.
This ruling was emitted by Judge Arturo Bernal Lastiri, who has also been accused by the Indigenous Nahuas of San Miguel de Aquila, of supporting an unknown lands commissioner, who is allowing the exploitation of minerals in the region. They mobilized for his removal in 2022 with a protest at the offices of the Local Agrarian Court 48 of Colima.
Before this legal resolution was handed down, there was a prolonged legal process lasting a decade, from 2009-2019. This legal process began at the time of the recuperation of the 1,200 hectares that today they have converted into Xayakalan. At the time, in 2009, the court ruled in favor of re-ratifying measurements, taking into account fixed landmarks, like the ocean, mountains, and rivers.
Despite the addition of the new elements of evidence—including the primordial titles which date back to the 1700s, and which detail the limits of the territory of Ostula extending beyond the disputed strip—the court ruled in favor of the landowners. They retook old measurements, which “are wrong”, says the lawyer of the community, Carlos Gonzales.
Then arrives February 2023, following a new request from Ostula for a review of the sentence handed down in 2019, and another appeal. By August 2023, Judge Bernal Lastiri once again ruled in favor of the landowners, ordering the forced intervention in Xayakalan.
Jeronimo Flores, member of the communal council, explains: “We mobilized and they never came to execute the order. We imagine that they realized our organization is very solid.”
Indeed, it is. In August 2023, more than 600-armed Indigenous people were deployed both inside Xayakalan as well as outside its boundaries, to impede any intervention into their territory. Afterwards, “the court decided to suspend the forced execution of the order,” with an amparo numbered 463/2023, explains the community’s lawyer to Avispa.
However, this amparo only temporarily suspends the intervention until a new ruling is handed down. If they do not get a response in favor of Ostula at this court, they will have to look for options at the international level. “Regardless, nobody will remove us from Xayakalan,” says Teresa, who has been threatened with death and directly harassed by organized crime.
She explains that the community is more organized than ever: “We are safe because we have our communal guard. Here, not the army, nor the marines, nor any governmental force enters into our community without permission.”
State armed forces cannot enter these territories, unless “the community permits it. That is what was agreed upon in an assembly. Instead of helping, they come to trample on our communities, like the child who was assassinated. There are antecedents. In 2011, the army was working directly with organized crime,” adds Jeronimo.
It is important for the community to have their own communal guard, people from the community, family members and neighbors, who know the communal statutes, the territory, and the internal community dynamics. Photo: Santiago Navarro F.At the limits of the community there is a community organized security checkpoint, guarded by the communal guard, and also by community members who daily rotate at the position. Photo: Santiago Navarro F.
Autonomous Security
One of the principal strengths of this process of resistance is its communal guard and its capacity for rapid mobilization. The community member Evaristo details that “communal guard members are named by each encargatura in their assemblies,” each one is armed and prepared for whatever type of aggression.
The council member Jerónimo shares that, in case of a crisis or emergency, “all the guards of each encargatura are activated. We all have to get involved. It is an obligation to defend ourselves. We’ve already lived through moments of crisis, and we don’t want them to happen again.” Teresa was the first woman to be named by the new community of Xayakalan as representative of its inhabitants. “I was appointed the head of community security in 2018. You are the one organizing the security of the community, yet everyone participates. If there is a problem, a collective work day, or even a party, we resolve it collectively,” says Teresa, who did one year of service and afterwards integrated into the rest of the community activities, like taking turns accompanying the security checkpoint with the communal guard.
The guards stopped existing in 1999, leaving just the state police in charge of security. “The community said, we need to organize our own community police because the situation is going to get difficult. Afterwards they were renamed communal guards. With them we recuperated the lands and now they watch over the security of Ostula,” says Evaristo.
It is well known by inhabitants of the surrounding communities that this zone was occupied by the Knights Templar cartel as a base of operations. On this beach arrived boats to unload drugs.
After retaking the lands, they threatened Teresa. “I remember that a man they called Chalano (Prisiliano Corona Sánchez) threatened me with a rifle to my back. I just waited to see what would happen. It was a very difficult time, the community had been weakened,” she explains
In addition to Chalano, community members who withheld their names for security reasons, accuse Iturbide Alejo, known as El Turbinas, and Margarita Pérez, known as La Usurpadora, for threatening to kill Trinidad de la Cruz Crisóstomo, alias Don Trino. He was afterwards assassinated in December 2011.
In addition to organized crime, the area where Xayakalan is located is part of the Regional Plan for Integral Tourist Development of the Coast of Michoacan; a tourist corridor seeking investments to build resorts for national and international tourism.
Photo: Santiago Navarro F.The paradise-like beach of Xayakalan, which before its recuperation was used by Narcos, today can be enjoyed by the inhabitants of Ostula. Photo: Santiago Navarro F.Youth organize soccer matches at sunset on the recuperated beach in Xayakalan. Photo: Regina López
According to the strategy presented by the Secretariat of Tourism during the administration of Felipe Calderon 2006-2012, where the lands have been recuperated there were plans for a real estate development project, golf courses, stores, an aquatic park, museums, night life, and restaurants.
The Avispa Team also reviewed the data of active mining concessions, solicited from the Secretariat of Economy. We found that just in Aquila alone, where Ostula is located with its twenty-four encargatures, there exists fifty-three mining concessions. At least sixteen belong to Las Encinas S.A. de C.V., property of the steel company Ternium, S.A. Ternium is the steel and metallurgical company with the highest turnover rates in Mexico in 2022, mainly from the sale of steel.
This company is directly linked to the Jalisco New Generation Cartel and with the disappearances of the lawyer Ricardo Lagunes Gasca and a community leader of Aquila, Antonio Díaz Valencia. According to an investigation carried out by the media outlet, A Donde Van los Desaparecidos, these disappearances are linked “with the social and legal struggle they (the activists) have maintained against Ternium since 2019.”
This same cartel maintains constant attacks on the encargatura La Cofradía, where there are at least two mining concessions: 223431 belonging to Ternium, and 217537 belonging to Servicios Minerometalurgicos de Occidente, S.A. de C.V. which together total more than 2,500 hectares.
In the municipality of Aquila, Ternium has more than 147,000 hectares of land concessions, according to information solicited from the Secretariat of Economy.
The lands of this Indigenous community are rich in minerals, wood, and other natural resources. This wealth is under dispute between different organized crime groups. Through years of struggle, “At all times we have been on constant alert,” says Jeronimo.
Don Evaristo explains that the communal guard has to always be on alert “Because our security depends on them. We have to teach the youth because their participation is necessary, so that they can provide their services to the community.”
“We already endured years of attacks from different cartels, and we aren’t going to let down the guard. We will continue organizing and resisting, defending our lands,” adds Jeronimo.
For Teresa, it is important to strengthen the organization, “Because if we are united, they can’t do anything to us. The organizing must never end, we have to provide an example to our children, grandchildren, and all the kids, so that the organizing never comes to an end,” she shares at the celebration of the fifteenth anniversary of Xayakalan.
Just a couple days after the anniversary festivities, the community denounced in a communique that “the Jalisco New Generation Cartel” attacked “with brutal violence the Indigenous community of Santa María Ostula,” principally the encargatura of La Cofradía. This attack was more aggressive than previous ones, with drones and high caliber weapons used against houses, a school, and common spaces during the night of July 3. The attacks have been constant and the government doesn’t seem to care. For this reason, there is a saying on the murals and signs at the community organized security checkpoint: “In Ostula the struggle for security is permanent.”
Photo: Regina LópezMural of the community security checkpoint of Xayakalan, where in addition to the communal guard, you can see Don Trino, one of the people who advocated for the recuperation and who was assassinated on December 6, 2011, on these very lands. Photo. Regina López
