{"id":657,"date":"2019-04-23T17:32:00","date_gmt":"2019-04-23T17:32:00","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/tierra.jerrejerre.com\/es\/?p=657"},"modified":"2021-05-01T21:43:13","modified_gmt":"2021-05-01T21:43:13","slug":"sin-territorio-no-somos-nada","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/tierraderesistentes.com\/en\/2019\/04\/23\/sin-territorio-no-somos-nada\/","title":{"rendered":"\u2018Without territory we are nothing\u2019"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

Those who defend the Sierra Tarahumara, one of the most important forested areas in Mexico, are up against drug traffickers, local political bosses, extractive projects and government indifference. These defenders are mainly indigenous people whose identities were forged in the mountains, cliffs, forests and creeks. Without their territory, they say, they are nothing. This is why they protect it. It is the reason they oppose their forests being cut down and their springs drying up. It is the reason they confront those who try to cut off their roots. <\/strong><\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n

When someone dies in the family of the Rar\u00e1muri<\/span>, indigenous people from Coloradas de la Virgen, it is their custom to drink tesg\u00fcino<\/em>, a corn fermented traditional drink. They collect the objects that the deceased person cherished or made, everything that identifies that person, and then give them to him or her symbolically. They talk with the person and give them advice. They advise them not to return and to remain with those who have already died. To stay there. To rest. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

It must be done three times if the deceased was a man and four times if it was a woman, explains a traditional Rar\u00e1muri doctor. He is a defender of the forests of his territory and friend of Juli\u00e1n Carrillo Mart\u00ednez, a Rar\u00e1muri, murdered<\/a> on October 24, 2018 in Coloradas de la Virgen, a community from Sierra Tarahumara in the Mexican state of Chihuahua.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The day after Juli\u00e1n was murdered, his family left Coloradas de la Virgen.<\/strong> They knew the murderers could come back and kill them as well. They abandoned their house, their belongings and their animals. They were prevented from following their custom. Juli\u00e1n did not have the farewell of his community\u2019s tradition.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cHe knew that they wanted to kill him\u201d<\/strong>, says Mar\u00eda, his wife, in Rar\u00e1muri. The traditional doctor translates her words to Spanish. \u201cHe said that if something happened to him, we should stay on the farm. If we chose to leave we would not be able to come back to our land. But we had to leave.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Mar\u00eda has suffered the death of her people. In February 2016 they murdered her son V\u00edctor Carrillo. In December that year, they burnt her house down. In 2017 they killed two of her nephews and in July 2018 they killed her son-in-law. And now, she has lost Juli\u00e1n. She is far from home and displaced with her four sons, two daughters-in-law and four grandchildren in the north of the country. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

The community of Coloradas de la Virgen, including Juli\u00e1n and his family, have been receiving death threats for years. The threats increased when the indigenous people began their legal fight to oppose the cutting down of trees<\/strong> grown in the territory inhabited by their parents, grandparents and great-grandparents. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

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PHOTOGRAPH OF JULI\u00c1N CARRILLO, ASSASSINATED IN OCTOBER 2018, FROM THE SIERRA TARAHUMARA, CHIHUAHUA STATE, MEXICO, FEBRUARY 4, 2019. (GINNETTE RIQUELME)<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n\n\n

When Juli\u00e1n was murdered, he was the community\u2019s president of collective property. His role was to protect what belonged to all of them: trees, water and land. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Weeks before his murder, he discovered that the Mexican government had granted concessions for mining in Coloradas de la Virgen. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

One of these concessions was granted to Mario Humberto Ayub Touche<\/span>, a powerful entrepreneur from Chihuahua, and two sons of Artemio Fontes Lugo, a local political boss who has a long been reported by indigenous people as the person responsible for the cutting down of their forest and the dispossession of their territory, as well as being linked to drug-trafficking groups.  <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Juli\u00e1n was murdered soon after he and his colleagues who defend the forests of Coloradas de la Virgen began denouncing the existence of these mining concessions<\/strong> for the exploration and exploitation of minerals in their community.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Coloradas de la Virgen is only one of several communities from the Sierra Tarahumara that defend their natural resources and territory from local bosses, concessions for mining, touristic projects, illegal logging and drug trafficking. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Defending an ancestral territory<\/strong><\/h2>\n\n\n\n

Coloradas de la Virgen lies in the southern part of the state of Chihuahua and the Sierra Tarahumara, in the municipality of Guadalupe y Calvo. A territory with more than 49,500 hectares shared by the Rar\u00e1muri Indians and to a lesser degree by the \u00d3dami, who live dispersed in about 50 small farm houses. <\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

This is the land where Juli\u00e1n was born. He and his colleagues inherited the battle that their parents began years ago to defend their forest. The indigenous people from Coloradas de la Virgen have been claiming recognition of their territory since 1934, without any success.<\/strong> <\/p>\n\n\n\n

In 1953 after several of the indigenous people who first campaigned for recognition of their territory had died, the Mexican government registered the most forested area as an ejido<\/em> (or a type of common land). The remaining territory, in particular the canyons, remained an agrarian community. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

“The people from that time allowed him to stay… But then they never wanted to leave. They started to grow poppy and marijuana and cutting down trees”<\/p><\/blockquote>\n\n\n\n

In 1992 an assembly was held to determine a new list of ejidatarios<\/em> (common landowners) because many of them had died. Juli\u00e1n and other inhabitants of Coloradas denounced several irregularities that happened during the assembly. For instance, several signatures and \u201cdigital prints\u201d of indigenous people who had already died at that time appeared on documents<\/strong>. Seventy-eight new members were included in the ejido<\/em>, the majority of whom were not indigenous. Artemio Fontes Lugo and some of his relatives and workers were among them.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Artemio Fontes Lugo settled in Coloradas de la Virgen in the 70s.  \u201cHe arrived with his family\u201d, narrate the elders of the community, \u201cThe people from that time allowed him to stay… But then they never wanted to leave. They started to grow poppy and marijuana and cutting down trees\u201d. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

The indigenous people reported the abuse of the Fontes family but only encountered indifference from the Mexican environmental authorities. In April 2007, the ejido<\/em>, which was under the control of Artemio Fontes Lugo, was granted permits for use and exploitation<\/span> of the Coloradas de la Virgen forest. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Following the advice of the Sierra Madre Alliance, the Rar\u00e1muri and \u00d3dami decided to take legal action<\/strong> to demand the cancellation of forest exploitation permits and the recognition of their right to the territory where they have lived for generations. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Poppy instead of trees<\/strong><\/h2>\n\n\n\n
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AT LEAST 15 DEFENDERS HAVE BEEN KILLED BETWEEN 2009 AND 2018 FOR DEFENDING THIS TERRITORY. CREDIT: GINNETTE RIQUELME.<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n\n\n

Chihuahua, located in the north of Mexico, is the state with one of the most important forest surfaces of the country. It has 16.5 million hectares<\/strong>, of which 7.6 million are coniferous and lowland deciduous forests, ecosystems concentrated in the mountains, cliffs and valleys that shape the Tarahumara Range. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

According to researcher Salvador Anta Fonseca of the Mexican Civil Council for Sustainable Forestry, most of the water that disperses throughout the semiarid area of Chihuahua and nourishes large agricultural areas of Sinaloa comes from the springs of the Sierra Tarahumara.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

This is also one of the regions with most forest damage. According to the Global Forest Watch monitoring initiative<\/a>, the region lost 19,100 hectares from 2001 to 2017.<\/strong> The most serious impacts were registered in 2012 (almost 4,500 hectares) and 2017 (nearly 2,000 hectares).<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Guadalupe y Calvo, where Coloradas de la Virgen is located, is one of the municipalities that has sustained the highest tree loss<\/span>. From 2001 to 2017 at least 3,014 hectares<\/a> of forest were felled, according to data from Global Forest Watch. The most critical years were 2011, 2016 and 2017.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Those who grew up in Coloradas de la Virgen remember the clearing of forest becoming more extensive since the 1980s. From then on, people from outside the community started arriving, began growing marijuana and poppy and cutting down trees. <\/strong>Sometimes they set fire to the area after clearing off all its trees. Most of the time they would take the wood in rolls and sell it in the sawmills of the city of Parral. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

What used to happen in only a few communities began to extend into several regions of the Sierra Tarahumara, especially since the federal government of then president Felipe Calder\u00f3n launched<\/a> what he called the \u201cwar\u201d against drug trafficking in 2008. From that moment on, the mountain region of Chihuahua became an area of territorial struggles between different groups seeking control over opium poppy cultivation, as well as dispossessing local communities of their territory and natural resources.  <\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

In 1996, five municipalities of the mountain range were identified as drug crop areas. Today, the number has increased to 20, according to a report<\/a> published in 2018 by the civil organization Community Technical Consultancy (Contec) titled \u201cDiagnosis and Proposals on violence in the Sierra Tarahumara\u201d. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

The report also indicates that while the growing of marijuana stopped in Tarahumara in 2012 when it began to be legalized in some regions of the United States, opium poppy crops increased.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The soil surface of opium poppy crops increased from 25,200 to 30,600 hectares from 2016 to 2017<\/p><\/blockquote>\n\n\n\n

According to monitoring<\/a> carried out by the United Nations Office against Drugs and Crime (UNODC) and the government of Mexico, the soil surface of opium poppy crops increased from 25,200 to 30,600 hectares from 2016 to 2017.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

This report points out that the area known as \u201cThe Golden Triangle\u201d where the states of Sinaloa, Durango and Chihuahua share territory (in the south of the Sierra Tarahumara), is among the main producers of opium poppy in the country.  <\/p>\n\n\n\n

The traditional doctor, granted anonymity because he has been subject to threats, explains how his community began to suffer the loss of their forest: <\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cBefore they began to cut down trees there was lots of water; there was a lot of snow; there was a life for us: a good harvest, it rained a lot, the streams did not run dry.<\/strong> If the wood disappears, the springs of the land will dry up. It will be the end of the wild animals. Everything will be finished. Where wood exists, everything lives.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Feeding the streams<\/strong><\/h2>\n\n\n\n

Rar\u00e1muri women meet at the Bahuinocachi school to speak about what they have been suffering during the past few months. Some of them walked for about half an hour to get to the school. Along the way they passed by the remains of what was a part of their forest. Now only scattered branches and stumps remain on the land.<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Only the women with their coloured scarfs and shawls wrapped around their heads and bodies attend the meeting. The men went to work the land or stayed at home. Only the women dare to tell their stories. They do it in an organized way, without interrupting each other.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The first forest destroyers arrived in this region of the municipality of Bocoyna in February 2018. They cleared the forest through day and night. This carried on for months.<\/strong> Stones were used to block the paths and complaints were filed before the environmental and state federal authorities, all attempts in vain. The police and inspectors only visited some of the affected areas, but never saw the most impacted ones. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Finally, in October 26, 2018, when 5,000 trees had already been cut down in an area of 226 hectares, some federal and state officials<\/span> arrived, among them the governor of the state, Javier Corral. They promised<\/a> a strategy to stop illegal forest clearing in the Sierra Tarahumara. Fifteen days had not passed before the illegal loggers returned.<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

The women from Bahuinocachi speak very softly as if whispering a secret:<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u2014Now they\u2019ve come back to cut trees. Well, they are making a mess. They are leaving everything completely bald. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u2014And we, unable to do anything, because they are armed.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u2014Now they have destroyed everything. How are those trees going to grow again? <\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u2014It will be 20 o 30 years before the small pines can become strong and with good seed. We have been planting pines already, but let\u2019s see if they grow because there are no big pines to protect them from the cold anymore. When ice sticks to them they dry more easily.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The women remember what their parents used to tell them, \u201cThe trees that are close to the streams should not be cut down<\/em> because the water will leave\u201d.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

They learned a more ancient ritual from their grandparents: to feed the streams with pinole<\/em> (traditional flower made with corn) and tortilla.<\/strong> And when they feed them, they chat with the water that is born in that place.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u2014We ask it not to leave. We feed the water for it to become stronger and not leave that place, so we can continue alive ourselves, all our family and also the animals. We talk with the stream about all of that.<\/p>\n\n\n\n