Only two months ago, the Wixáritari people (better known as the Huichols) were blocking the roads and closing the schools and medical facilities of San Sebastián Teponahuaxtlán in the Western Sierra Madre, in Jalisco, Mexico, where they live. The protests lasted 50 days. They were demanding the national government enforce the judicial decision of the agrarians lawsuits they had won from the ranchers of Huajimics. Nearly 2,000 hectares of their ancestral lands had to be returned to them.

It was confirmed that the Secretary of Infrastructure and Public Works, Netzahualcóyotl Ornelas, is being detained at the meeting; as well as the Secretary of Education, Francisco Ayón López, and the Secretary of Development and Social Integration, Daviel Trujillo Cuevas; Lizana García, director of DIF Jalisco, and Mario Vladimir Avilés, director of agrarian affairs in the state; Mario Ramos Velasco, general director of the Secretariat of Rural Development (Seder); the municipal presidents of Bolaños, Juan Carlos Rodríguez Mayorga, and of Mezquitic, Misael de Haro.

Después de 13 años de constante batalla, el Consejo Regional Wixárika por la Defensa de Wirikuta (CRW), una coalición compuesta por autoridades tradicionales, civiles y agrarias de las comunidades Wixaritari de Santa Catarina Cuexcomatitlán, San Sebastián Teponahuaxtlán, Tuxpan de Bolaños en Jalisco, y Bancos de San Hipólito, continúan exigiendo al Estado Mexicano cancelar las 78 concesiones mineras que ponen en riesgo la tierra sagrada de Wirikuta y sus 140 mil hectáreas, que se extienden por los municipios de Real de Catorce, Charcas, Vanegas, Villa de Guadalupe y Villa de la Paz, en el e

Integrantes de pueblos wixaritari señalaron que están a la espera de la sentencia final del juicio de amparo que desde 2010 mantienen para la protección de Wirikuta en el estado de San Luis Potosí, un sitio sagrado y parte fundamental de su cosmovisión. Esta mañana sesionó el Consejo General Wixárika donde señalan que seguirán con la defensa de este territorio, que es amenazado por intereses de empresas mineras. “Exigimos que se dé atención prioritaria al asunto legal y se exige que la decisión del juez sea acorde al marco jurídico internacional en materia de derechos fundamentales de los p

“As long as the Mexican State, and particularly the Federal government, doesn't fulfill its basic commitment with the Wixarika people and keeps violating the rights of the Wixaritari, the indigenous community of San Sebastian Teponahuaxtlan will carry out different pressuring actions,” they said in a statement, at the same time they demanded the presence of President Enrique Peña Nieto in a community assembly to take place on May 9.

Lawyer Carlos Gonzalez Garcia and the assessor Cristian Chavez Gonzalez, both members of a coordination and monitoring commission of the CNI and the Indigenous Government Council (CIG), were traveling to the Huajimic community in Nayarit on April 12, along with local legal authorities, to reclaim the ancestral lands of the Wixarika (also known as Huichol in Spanish), when they were stopped and threatened by a group of about 200 people driving more than 20 cars.

Canadian mining corporations were not necessarily directly responsible for the deaths and acts of intimidation and violence, but some of them were carried out by company security personnel and current or former employees. So it may be the case that the implicated companies are not legally liable, but alongside the local elites and states that license and promote extractive activities, they at the least bear a moral responsibility for creating the situations of conflict in which assassinations and other acts of violence take place.

The Huicholes, who call themselves Wixarika, make pilgrimages to their ceremonial place in the Sierra Madres across the Chihuahua desert to Leunar in Mexico, their sacred mountain where the sun first rose. A Canadian mining company, First Majestic Silver Corporation, plans to exploit and mine this area. The company is planning to use cyanide to mine the sacred region. This disastrous mining will destroy the ecosystem and the sacred places of the Wixarika.