Dressed in their distinctive hand-embroidered costumes with broad-brimmed
sombreros and carrying feathered power-wands, over 650 men and women from
Mexico’s indigenous Huichol community have been staging a "sit-in"
in a remote forest clearing on their communal lands in the Sierra Madre
Occidental since 6am on February 11.
They are attempting to halt a highway, construction of which began in November
and which the Huichol claim to be illegal. The road has now reached the
Huichol heartland in the remote state of Jalisco, an area renowned for its
sacred sites and biodiversity.
The Huichol territory, which covers zones of tropical forest as well as high
montane pine and oak forest, is listed by the WWF and the World Conservation
Union as one of 200 priority eco-regions in the world. A refuge for wolves
and mountain lions this remote region is also an important habitat for birds
such as the endangered pygmy owl and golden eagle; and the Military Macaw, a
red data species which has seen a dramatic loss of habitat over the last
decade due to logging.
The Huichol, who number around 20,000, are a native people who live in close
harmony with nature. Deliberately reclusive and wary of outsiders, they can
justifiably claim to be the only indigenous tribe left in the entire
continent of North America whose culture remains intact. They grow maize,
hunt deer, and commune with the gods of their sacred landscape using the
hallucinogenic peyote cactus. Their territory, which spans about 39,000 sq
km (15,000 sq miles) of the most inaccessible areas of Jalisco and Nayarit,
has provided them with an effective "zona de refugio" – a
sanctuary from the outside world – for centuries.
“Not since the Cristeros in the 1920s have such serious incursions been made
into Huichol territory”, says Humberto Fernandez Borja, Director of
Conservacion Humana, an NGO representing the Huichol, “This road is totally
illegal. It is being constructed without consultation with the federal
Environmental Protection Agency and in contravention of national and
international law.”
The Huichol, he goes on, are the natural guardians of this globally important
eco-system and a source of extraordinary cultural, biological and medicinal
knowledge. “The road”, he says, “threatens not only the forests and fragile
natural water-systems of this area, and the rare flora and fauna dependent
on it, but the indigenous people who hold the key to understanding it.”
The road, which is planned to route through the Huichol communities
Amatitan-Bolanos-Huejiquilla El Alto, threatens to bring the region within
easy access of illegal settlers, miners and loggers.
For further information contact Conservacion Humana AC (chac@chac.org.mx;
tel: (+52) 55 55641126)
The described case of the Huichol communities in the Sierra Madre Occidental in Mexico is the case of many indigenous people around the world that happen to dwell in so called “remote†places that they have been obliged to live in as a strategy of cultural survival, seen by westerners to be still intact, as if cultural purity was a fact. Their communities are often placed in regions that are richest in biodiversity and natural resources still left on the planet. Is this a coincidence, or does it just happen thanks to generations of indigenous knowledge in botany and collective management of their territories and resources? These places have lately become of high geo-strategic interest, not only to road-building companies, but to a large variety of transnational investment companies, such as mining-, oil- or pharmaceutical companies, just to name a few. Even so called eco- tourism and international conservation interventions are not an exception from foreign control and decision making over native territory. As the Mayan communities in Guatemala have come out of their "remoteness" to protest against Canadian mining companies that dare to reallocate whole villages and destroy vital natural resources for a larger global community, such as water, soil and forests, some of us hope that the Huichol people will face the changing face of colonialism effectively, starting with saying no to foreign consumption of their most sacred medicinal plants.
Katja Winkler, Guatemala, Guatemala
This issue does not imply that the Huicholes do not need or want roads or a selection of commodities with wich to enjoy tribal life. But, shoud roads be built to extract natural resources such as wood, instead of roads being built to connect one town to another?
It is quite common for certain government authorities, especially when involved in the "right" business, to comply with endless petitions to have roads built. The problem is that the roads they choose to build do not benefit the local population at all, on the contrary. As in this case, they decide they know more about what the population needs than what the population asks for. They do not build the roads that are required for local needs but the roads that are required by those who have no relationship with the region, or with its ancient history, its cultural knowledge, biodiversity and the importance of the balance sustained by the natural sacred sites.
Jessica Gottfried, Veracruz, Ver. , Mexico
The Juicholes have traditionally suffered from prejudice at the hands of this Mestizo culture. At anytime one can find them in the jails of the adjoining state of Nayarit for durg possession. They regularly use Peyote, mushrooms and at times cannibis. Not recreationally but in their religious rituals. They have become easy prey for a crooked cop..
This is lessening as the state governments have quite succeeded in some areas of making them tourist atractions. In my experiance with them they are kindly good people who want to be left alone.....I mean they have an ancient niche that is far safer for them then modern culture. At the sametime the government wants to exploit the mineral wealth in these regions. so you look at the equation. The huichols suffer, and will continue to be exploited. Most of the misery in rural Mexico is in these heavily indigenous regions like Chiaps, and Oaxaca...
Modern Mexicanos value these links to the countries past, but face an uphill battle.
marty price, Oakland, California