Sorry, this entry is only available in Mexican Spanish. For the sake of viewer convenience, the content is shown below in the alternative language. You may click the link to switch the active language.

Sorry, this entry is only available in Mexican Spanish. For the sake of viewer convenience, the content is shown below in the alternative language. You may click the link to switch the active language.

Boletín de prensa 003

Ciudad de México, 15 de agosto de 2023

La comunidad de Santa María Ostula, Michoacán, podría ser despojada de su territorio autónomo. En el contexto del reciente y violento asesinato de Lorenzo Froylán las amenazas no cesan. La comunidad de Xayakalan fue notificada sobre la ejecución de un desalojo de alrededor de 700 hectáreas de tierra. Esta decisión fue comunicada por el Tribunal Unitario Agrario 38, a cargo del magistrado Jesús Antonio Frías Cardona. La comunidad denunció  que con esta acción se favorece a grupos criminales en la región.

La notificación se realizó el 11 de agosto, un día después de que se localizó el cuerpo torturado y sin vida de Lorenzo Froylán, integrante de la Guardia Comunal. Sin embargo, el documento está fechado el 23 de junio dentro del expediente 78/4 a favor de “supuestos pequeños propietarios”, señala la comunidad que se declara en alerta y en defensa de su territorio comunal.

Michoacán es particularmente violento para el ejercicio de la defensa de la tierra y el territorio. Las personas defensoras ambientales se enfrentan a una serie de agresiones sistemáticas como desplazamiento, desalojo, asesinato, amenazas, desaparición forzada.

La Red Nacional de Organismos Civiles “Todos los Derechos para Todas y Todos” (Red TDT) documentó que el 6 de septiembre de 2022, el gobernador de Michoacán, Alfredo Ramírez Bedolla, emitió un mensaje de amenaza de desalojo al afirmar que estaba empeñado en “dejar a Michoacán libre de barricadas que aparte de ser ilegales obstruyen el libre paso de los ciudadanos”, haciendo énfasis en el municipio de Aquila, en donde está ubicado Ostula.

Durante la historia de autonomía de Santa María Ostula, se contabilizan 40 personas defensoras asesinadas y 5 personas desaparecidas, sin que exista un proceso de justicia, reparación ni cese a las agresiones. El discurso gubernamental ha contribuido a criminalizar este proceso organizativo y deja un mensaje de impunidad para el goce de los grupos criminales.

Desde la Secretaría Ejecutiva de la Red Nacional de Organismos Civiles “Todos los Derechos para Todas y Todos” (Red TDT) señalamos nuestra preocupación ante la arbitraria decisión emitida por el Tribunal Agrario, que atenta contra la comunidad nahua, poniendo en riesgo la vida, la seguridad física, y el ejercicio mismo de la autonomía y libre determinación.  Esta órden es violatoria del derecho a defender derechos humanos, así como del acuerdo 169 de la Organización Internacional del Trabajo que contiene el derecho a la libre determinación de los pueblos originarios.

Por lo que instamos a las autoridades agrarias, Estatales y Federales:

• Que se adopten las medidas necesarias que garanticen el ejercicio del Derecho de audiencia, seguridad jurídica, debido proceso con perspectiva y enfoque  intercultural y comunitario, apegado a los más altos estándares internacionales.

• Se ponga fin a cualquier acto de desalojo, hostigamiento, amenaza o ataque que ponga en riesgo la vida, la seguridad física, de las personas que conforman la comunidad y ejercen su derecho por la defensa del territorio.

• En todo momento garantizar el respeto para la construcción de acuerdos y búsqueda de soluciones, y evitar el uso de la fuerza pública o la violencia.

Red Nacional de Organismos Civiles de Derechos Humanos “Todos los Derechos para Todas y Todos” (Red TDT)

Aquí descargue el PDF:

Boletin-urgente-Ostula

Sorry, this entry is only available in Mexican Spanish. For the sake of viewer convenience, the content is shown below in the alternative language. You may click the link to switch the active language.

Este pasado 29 de junio se celebró el 14 aniversario de la recuperación de tierras en donde hoy se encuentra la encargatura conocida como Xayakalan.

Presentamos aquí, cortesía de Komün Cinema, un video de la celebración y los audios del evento.

Sorry, this entry is only available in Mexican Spanish. For the sake of viewer convenience, the content is shown below in the alternative language. You may click the link to switch the active language.

Por Dante A. Saucedo y Regina López

El pasado 22 de marzo, elementos de la Policía Federal detuvieron en Nayarit a Federico González Medina, El Lico. En los días siguientes a su aprehensión, la Comisión Nacional de Seguridad y la Procuraduría de Justicia de Michoacán emitieron comunicados para adjudicar la captura del jefe de plaza de Los Caballeros Templarios en La Placita —en el municipio michoacano de Aquila— a trabajos coordinados de «inteligencia».

En la sierra-costa michoacana, sin embargo, los boletines de prensa de las corporaciones de seguridad del Estado mexicano no son suficientes para borrar de la memoria los años de agravios y violencia que El Lico provocó con la aquiescencia o franca complicidad de los tres niveles de gobierno. Para el pueblo nahua de Santa María Ostula, el nombre del jefe Templario es sinónimo de una época de terror, cuyas memorias y dolores apenas comienzan a sanar.

(Continuar leyendo…)

Source in English: Chiapas Support Committee Blog

All kinds of interests cross each other within their territory: the governments seek to implement highway projects that facilitate the shipment of merchandise and stimulate tourism at the beaches; the mining companies want to exploit the vein that originates in San Miguel de Aquila; the small property owners want to plant their lands or subdivide and sell them; and, the drug traffickers have and important point for circulation of their merchandise here.

Self-defense forces (autodefensas) enter Xayakalan, Michoacán

By: Adazahira Chávez

Organization of the Nahua community of Santa María Ostula, Michoacán, in its struggle for land, was renewed in February of this year. Later, in June 2009, the comuneros activated their Policía Community Police and took back the place known as La Canaguancera (renamed Xayakalan). They confronted a wave of murders and disappearances —especially against members of the traditional guard of of the communal wealth (commission)— that established a climate of terror and obliged the displacement of entire families.

But they are returning now and, as they declared in 2009, assert that they will not abandon their lands. Recently, accompanied by self-defense groups from Tierra Caliente, the community guards re-entered their territory —many of them, like their commander Semeí Verdía, were exiled— and the displaced comuneros also returned to Xayakalan, which continues in a legal dispute with the small property owners of La Placita, who invaded it four decades ago. The urgent task, they point out, is to construct anew the assemblies and to work the lands that gave them sustenance and that they had to abandon.

The task does not look easy, and the Nahuas know it. They tell that all kinds of interests cross each other within their territory: the governments seek to implement highway projects that will facilitate the shipment of merchandise and stimulate beach tourism; the mining companies want to exploit the vein that is born from San Miguel Aquila; the small property owners want to plant their lands or subdivide and sell them; and the drug traffickers have an important circulation point here for their merchandise. In this state —according to the denunciations that the comuneros have made for years— many times these actors are the same subjects. And the comuneros of Ostula are the owners of this coveted land.

Rich land, dispossessed [stolen] land

The communal capital de Ostula and its 22 administrative districts encompass more than 28,000 hectares (approximately 69,000 acres) of Aquila Municipality, one of those of greatest marginalization in Michoacán. The Nahuas have populated the portion of their territory that extends to the Michoacán Coast little by little.

Municipality of Aquila, Michoacán, which lies along the Pacific Coast, is in red.

The lands corresponding to the district of Xayakalan, the comuneros report, are located inside of their land titles that in the 18^th Century were the very first and also inside of the Presidential Resolution that recognized part of its territory in 1964. Despite that, they confront agrarian litigation over some 700 hectares that six small property owners of La Placita invaded “not only for the planting of papaya, mango and tamarind, but also to sell it to the highest bidder” in spite of precautionary measures in favor of the indigenous. The Commission for the Defense of the Communal Wealth of Ostula points out that some of those invaders are heads of organized crime in the region.

Aquila’s land has an abundance of minerals (silver, zinc, gold and copper), besides iron deposits, which the Ternium, Sicartsa and Metal Steel companies currently exploit, and it contributes one fourth of the national production. The vein that runs through San Miguel Aquila —a community from which members of the traditional guard and the comuneros also had to leave due to conflicts with the mine and with organized crime— arrives in the lands of Ostula, and the Argentine company Ternium has in sight its future exploitation. Ternium is the owner of half of Peña Colorada, the mine in Ayotitlán, Jalisco, which has also provoked persecutions against leaders of the Nahua comuneros like Gaudencio Mancilla.

Inside of this invaded territory pass not only the rich mineral veins, but there are also beaches with animal species in danger of extinction. There, they contemplate the expansion of the Coahuayana-Lázaro Cárdenas Highway, and even the construction of a port for transporting the materials that Ternium extracts from San Miguel Aquila.

Pristine beach in Aquila Municipality, Michoacán.

On June 13 and 14, 2009, the National Indigenous Congress published the Ostula Manifesto, which vindicated the right to self-defense. After several fruitless attempts at negotiation and upon feeling mocked by the government, the comuneros took back the lands of Xayakalan in 2009, established their community guard “to care for the territory that belongs to us” and around 250 people, belonging to 40 families, settled here.

Los comuneros decided not to participate in the 2011 official (national) elections, just like their Purépecha brothers of Cherán, Pómaro and Coíre, in rejection of the authorities’ lack of efficiency and the divisionism that, they denounced, the political parties promote.

The response to their challenge was deafening. In the last three years, 32 residents of Ostula were brutally murdered or disappeared. The executions in 2011 of the leaders Trinidad de la Cruz Crisóstomo, known as don Trino or el Trompas, in charge of the community guard, and of Pedro Leyva stand out. The Navy bases —that were established after 2009— did not help to stop the wave of violence. Judicial authorities did not resolve even one single crime. Bullets from the “goat horns” (AK- 47s) populated the crime scenes, and the threatened families fled.

Few residents stayed in Xayakalan, but those displaced occupied themselves with planning their return and the reconstitution of their autonomous organization, which was concretized this 2014. On February 8, “a group of comuneros of Santa María Ostula, in coordination with self-defense groups from the municipalities of Coalcomán, Chinicuila and from the capital of Aquila, took control of the tenancy of Ostula,” they reported in a public document.

Xayakalan

Coincidentally, since that day “groups of federal ministerial police and members from the public ministry, in a totally illegal way, have been threatening the comuneros that live in Xayakalan with evicting them.” For the indigenous it is “the continuation of the grave conditions of an undeclared war that Ostula has lived through precisely since it resolved to guard the lands of Xayakalan, on June 29, 2009.”

This February 10, a federal Army platoon attempted to disarm the community guard and the self-defense groups that were supporting them, but residents made the soldiers return the weapons. On February 13, more than 1200 comuneros in an assembly decided to formally reorganize the Community Police. Now, efforts are centered on strengthening community decision mechanisms, reconstructing the material base for their organization and survival —food and scarce resources— and on maintaining security within their territory. Despite the years of terror, they indicate to Ojarasca from Ostula, “the people respond to their ancestral organization.”

——————————————————–

Originally Published in Spanish by Ojarasca #203

La Jornada Supplement, March 2014

Translation: Chiapas Support Committee

En español: http://www.jornada.unam.mx/2014/03/08/oja-costa.html