Landlords Impede Land Restitution to Indigenous Wixarika People
This is the third time ranchers from Huajimic stop the lawyers from the Wixarika community from recovering the land. April 12, Huajimic, Nayarit. | Photo: Twitter @CNI_Mexico
The lands were seized in the 1950s from the Wixarika community of San Sebastian Teponahuaxtlan, spread across two states in western Mexico. The National Indigenous Congress (CNI), a nation-wide Mexican organization backed by the National Zapatista Liberation Army (EZLN), denounced the aggression on two of its members fighting to restore lands to the indigenous Wixarika people in western Mexico, illegally taken by landlords and ranchers.
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.
According a press release by the CNI, the aggressors threatened them with burning their cars with gasoline, hanging them and then cutting their heads if they ever came back, and then pinched the rear tires of one of their accompanying vehicles and tried to push it to a cliff all the while about 21 police officers present at the scene did nothing. Also, they say two military vehicles approaching the scene, witnessing the events, and then leaving in silence. They were detained for two hours. To continue reading follow the link to the original Telesur article below...
