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| Yaqui blockade with support from area farmers |
Yaqui maintain major highway blockade since June
Indigenous Peoples from Four Directions urged to come for Oct. 18, 2013 gathering in Vicam
By Brenda Norrell
Censored News Exclusive
Sept. 16, 2013
copyright Brenda Norrell, Censored News
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VICAM PUEBLO, Sonora, Mexico -- Yoeme (Yaqui) in Vicam Pueblo maintained their highway barricade in defense of their water in the Rio Yaqui, as representatives of the National Indigenous Congress met over the weekend with directives from the Zapatistas Little School.
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| Ofelia Rivas/Vicam Photo Brenda Norrell |
Ofelia Rivas, O'odham representative of the National Indigenous Congress, attended the gathering in Vicam on Saturday, Sept. 14, 2013.
"Vicam Yoeme are calling for international support for a meeting on October 18 in the defense of water in Vicam," Rivas said. The Northwest regional meeting of the National Indigenous Congress included the states of Sonora, Sinoloa, Chihuahua and Baja.
"Yaqui are sending a special invitation to the Mohawks to attend this important meeting on water rights on October 18," Rivas said. Earlier, Mohawks joined Subcomandante Marcos and Zapatistas commandantes in Vicam Pueblo for a gathering in 2007. It is located about seven hours southwest of Tucson on the coast of Mexico.
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| Vicam Water Forum/Photo Brenda Norrell |
"Water is essential to our survival," said Mario Luna, spokesman for the Yoeme Traditional Authority of Vicam.
"Generations paid with their blood to maintain our homeland for future generations," Luna told the gathering this weekend.
Luna said the illegal construction is already underway on the Independence Aqueduct. It is a diversion project of Yaqui water from the Rio Yaqui to the city of Hermosillo. Luna said neither the diversion project, nor Mexico's government officials have consulted with Vicam Yaquis as required for the impact statement.
Yaquis said their around the clock, 24-hour a day, highway barricade of federal highway 15, manned by Yoeme warriors, has lasted more than 100 days and has had a major impact on produce flowing into the US. The barricade blocks traffic on the major highway between the Pacific Coast and the city of Hermosillo, a major route from the coast to the US. Yoeme lift the blockade for short periods, allowing trucks to pass after halting the trucks for hours, causing extensive delays, around the clock.
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| Yaqui highway blockade |
Rivas said, "They have cars blocking the highway now. It is causing delays in produce like tomatoes getting to the US on time."
Traditional Authorities of Yaqui Vicam Pueblo issued a summons for this weekend's gathering, in accordance with the Zapatistas Little School.
http://enlacezapatista.ezln.org.mx/
The Traditional Authorities said the water theft of the Yaqui River Basin will destroy the natural resources of this Indian territory.
"Considering that we have inhabited this territory for 2,500 years, a place where we were born and we have developed our existence, where mother earth provides us with everything for our life and like all the world's indigenous peoples live as brothers, with plants, trees, animals, birds, insects, the air, the heat, the cold, the sun, moon, stars, earth and water, of which is our home, food and healing, and the source of our power."
"Whereas in the territory of the Yaqui tribe, our people are made of earth and water and all that comes from them. While building our culture and creating and consolidating our own institutions, in the vicinity of the river today known as Rio Yaqui, the current government perpetrated one of the most colossal robberies of living memory, stealing the waters of the basin and trying to spoil our people more."
"Whereas for more than 520 years we have suffered, in our lives and in our hearts, the war of extermination, one of the longest and bloodiest wars of living memory, brought on by the political and economic power that is in power today," Yaqui said of the current authoritarian misrule.
Yaqui said today the resistance and civil disobedience is for Yoeme Autonomy and Self-determination.
"Whereas the existence of Mother Earth and humanity is threatened by the hegemonic capitalist system for their insatiable greed and excessive economic and natural resource exploitation and death of ecosystems, carried out by large multinational corporations seeking to divest from our territories and to be strongholds of natural resources, in collusion with corrupt government institutions and the collusion of free market policies, such as NAFTA Puebla-Panama Plan, and its project northwest of the Sea of Cortez known as the Coastal Highway, along with that project, the current state government is stealing water from the Yaqui River basin through the illegal construction of the Independence Aqueduct, with the aim of more plunder, and giving an existential hit to our people."
"Today through unfair and illegal, bidding, construction and operation of the Independence Aqueduct, they steal Yaqui river water and divert it to the city of Hermosillo, with the evil purpose of feeding large transnational businesses, real estate developments, and to encourage the speculation of businesses, with the rampant corrupt government complicity of Guillermo Padres Elias and consent of the current Federal Government."
"The Yaqui Tribe, like most indigenous peoples and the more than 50 million poor who inhabit the country are on the border of extermination, as a result of economic policies that favor the success of the market," Yaqui said.
The Traditional Authority said Mexico wants to "turn water into a commodity, by privatizing and commodifying," water while neglecting the development, autonomy and the right to self-determination of Indigenous peoples.
The Zapatistas, in conjunction with the Mexican Indigenous National Congress, issued a statement of solidarity and support for Yaqui.
“We believe that the earth is our mother and that the water that runs through her veins is not for sale. The life it gives us is a right, not something that the bad government or the business owners have granted us."
“We demand the immediate cancellation of the arrest warrants and false accusations against members of the Yaqui Tribe, and we condemn the criminalization of their struggle. To the political party-based bad governments we say that the Yaqui River is the historical carrier of the ancestral continuity of Yaqui culture and territory, and that a slight against any of us is a slight against all of us. We will respond accordingly to any attempt to repress this dignified struggle or any other. We make a call to the international community and to our brothers and sisters of the International Sixth to be alert to the events in Yaqui territory and to join in solidarity with the Yaqui Tribe and its demands.”
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| Photo: Vicam Water Rights Gathering Sept 17, 2013 |
The Yaqui Traditional Authorities released the following statement at the beginning of the blockade in June:
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| Yaqui Vicam Pueblo Water Forum/Photo Brenda Norrell |
MARIO LUNA/ SECRETARY OF THE YAQUI TRADITIONAL AUTHORITIES
YAQUI Territory, México. June 2013
In defense of water from our rivers, the
Yaqui People have now blocked federal highway 15 for 21 days. Mario
Luna, secretary for the Traditional Authorities of Vicam, describes how
disinformation of the legal strategy in defense of Yaqui territory
reminds us that only dignity and strength have made it possible for the
Yaqui People to defeat the long series of invasions and attempts to rob
the land and its natural resources. This time the call is to alert all
of the threat from public law enforcement authorities to dismantle Yaqui
blockade of federal highway 15.
From federal highway 15, by
Vicam Pueblo -- first headquarters of the 8 Pueblos of the Yaqui tribe -- with 45 centigrade degrees in the shade -- Traditional Authorities are
gathered and through me, express the following:
The defense of our
territory, land and water goes back hundreds of years since the arrival
of a culture of ambition and theft. With wars that have manifested
heroic and glorious defense and others have been inhuman actions and
total disregard to life, ethnocide and inhumanity.
The Yaqui faces
of men, women, elders, youth and children demonstrate determination and
endurance yet does not express how they have survived for past
generations to sustain many armed incursions in addition to mass
deportations - driven to the southernmost part of Mexico to be sold as
slaves -in the best of cases- if they were not killed by those who tried
to take over their land based on Terra Nullius.
Such attitude of
dignity and endurance has allowed the Yaqui People to drive back
colonizers during the history of Mexico through warfare. Successful in
their battles against historical invasions from foreign nations or bad
governments during the independence wars as well as Mexican Revolution-
including the takeover of the National Palace in Mexico City along with
the Revolutionaries-and the bloody Yaqui War.
As Indian People,
the Yaqui demand and exercise an autonomy recognized and formalized in
several peace treaties and accords for economic, social, and cultural
development.
During the last few years of total disregard for the
San Andrés Larrainzar (document/treaty elevating indigenous rights to
constitutional level) the robbery and extermination campaign against
indigenous Peoples that have recovered and conserved their autonomous
lands in Chiapas, Guerrero, Oaxaca, Michoacán and many more in the
country have continued. In our case the governmental apparatus has
turned against us in order to carry out the last great robbery, called
“Acueducto Independencia”, by pretending to reroute the waters from the
Río Yaqui to the Rio Sonora basin to satisfy the urgent water needs of
the Hermosillo industrial zone -high use water zone for the Ford
assembly plant, Coca-Cola, Pepsi, Big Cola and beer plants for Tecate
and Heineken. In this same action, industry CEO's expect huge profits
to cover large and extensive land grabs which now have no commercial
value, yet when they acquire adequate water supply, their property value
will increase 2 thousand percent.
The Yaqui tribe was not
formally consulted but discovered about this megaproject through various
sources and is thus tired of living in a state of low intensity warfare
since the last peace treaty in 1927. Therefore, the Traditional
Authorities from Vícam Pueblo, decided to legally confront this
situation with the new battlefront strategy of using a judicial and
institutional process. It began with a water restitution lawsuit in the
Agrarian Tribunal Tribunal Unitario Agrario número 35, based in Ciudad
Obregón, August 2010. Through this measure, we were able to obtain a
cautionary recourse that should have blocked this Megraproject. It
commits or limits actions or rights on volume water extrations related
to “El Novillo” dam. In 2011 we requested a legal waver from the federal
justice system in opposition to an environmental impact statement
provided by Department of Environment and Natural Resources (SEMARNAT)
to “Sonora Operations Fund” “Fondo de Operaciones Sonora SÍ” for the
construction of Acueducto Independencia. After this waver was denied in
several courts, it was finally approved on behalf of the Yaqui tribe in
Culiacán, Sinaloa District Court and later formalized and published in
the Tenth District Court Hermosillo, Sonora.
SEMARNAT then
requested to review the waiver and motivated by a series of
irregularities denounced by National Human Rights Commission and the
Plural Commission (federal Chambers of Senate and Deputies from various
political parties) in a historic decision, the National Supreme Court
applied their right to summon and resolve to ratify the waiver to the
Tribe by recognizing their legal character as Indian Peoples and
constitutional and international rights as Yaqui People, to freely seek
and be informed with respect to internal protocols, representation as
well as by their customs and traditions.
This May 8, 2013 the
Supreme Court ruling nullifies the environmental impact statement for
the Acueducto Independencia. This also ratifies the status of
construction and operation of the aqueduct as illegal to this day.
With the experience lived during hundreds of years of Yaqui Peoples'
struggle and today in confronting impunity from Guillermo Padres
Elias, Governor of Sonora to take significant volumes of water from “El
Novillo” dam, the Traditional Authorities have decided to strengthen
civil resistance actions along with the Citizens Movement for Water
Movimiento Ciudadano por el Agua – made up of agricultural producers,
micro-farmers and civil society from the seven municipalities in
southern Sonora who will be impacted by the loss of water being
rerouted by the Aqueduct reservoirs.
On May 28, after an enormous
march in Ciudad Obregón (over 30 thousand participants, according to
organizers), it was decided to take the highways that same afternoon by
blocking the entries of both south and north part of the city. Other
protesters later joined the blockade from Bacum and Esperanza. As the
government continues to show no intention to stop the pumps that
illegally take the water stored in the dam, the Traditional Authorities
along with the Yaqui troops from Potam and Belem, the protesters took
over the highway at Vicam.
On June 11, after several days of
continual blockade at several points on the highway (Cajeme, Bacum and
Vícam), the delegate of the Department of Communications and
Transportation Secretaría de Comunicaciones y Transportes (SCT) in
Sonora announced that they had filed a complaint with the Attorney
General’s office of Procuraduría General de la República (PGR) against
several leaders of Movimiento Ciudadano por el Agua and Yaqui Tribe.
The Sonora Attorney General, Carlos Navarro Sugich, announced this as a
successful measure by the State Government and has undertaken a media
campaign against those responsible within the Commission for defense of
tribal water rights.
By seeking approval of the Traditional
Authorities of other members in the Yaqui Nation, the State Government
was unanimously rejected of its intention to orchestrate the use of
public force against the road blockade. The main conflict is that
protesters demand that Sonoran rule of law be applied- presently in
violation by the Governor of the State - and an end to illegal water
extraction of El Novillo dam - covered under the resolution granted by
the National Supreme Court Justice to the Yaqui People.
In a
climate of tension and rebellion that we live these days, we share these
concerns with all Mexican and international people. We have the support
and solidarity from the Indian community’s network of Congreso Nacional
Indígena National Indigenous Congress, as well as solidarity from
teachers of the national coordinator of education workers (CNTE) and
public representatives of most local legislators in southern Sonora
districts. There is also a political agreement for a joint call to
Governor Guillermo Padrés by these local legislators and seven municipal
Presidents of southern Sonora (who were present in the traditional
guard event at Vicam on June 15) to stop the theft of our water and the
rule of law in Sonora.
In the face of constant threats and rumors
as to the use of public force against the demonstrations, our call is to
be on the alert and avoid the selective use of prompt and expeditious
justice against those of us who defend our right to life to use and
benefits of our waters. Let us all avoid the impunity and intolerance of
a State Government that with their actions promotes divisiveness
between southern Sonora with the northern part of our State.
From: Yaqui Territory, June, 2013
Mario Luna Romero
General Traditional Secretary for Vicam Pueblo
Main Headquarters for the eight Yaqui Pueblos
Published: June 2013
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Copyright Brenda Norrell, Censored News
