Indigenous people in Mexico and Peru (II): Between fear, dispossession and criminalization
In the Yucatan peninsula, tourism and large projects of wind and photovoltaic systems are the main threat to the indigenous people of the Mayan ethnic group
The first part of this report, Indigenous people in Colombia (I): Between massacres, displacement and drug trafficking, dealt with violence against indigenous communities in that country. It also included the story of how drug trafficking, paramilitarism and mining are part of the harsh reality experienced by native peoples.
This situation experienced by indigenous people on Colombian soil is not very different in other countries such as Peru, Guatemala, Honduras and Mexico. There, the same scourges and crimes make ancestral native communities a direct target for the mafias and they are linked to Colombian drug trafficking.
Massacres, gunmen, fights over territory, forced displacements, government restrictions and the COVID-19 pandemic have exacerbated the reality of indigenous communities.
The restrictions that governments ordered to stop the spread of the coronavirus have served as a ‘vehicle’ for criminal organizations to control indigenous territories and silence their leaders.
In the case of the aboriginal population, there is not only the need to reduce mobility and quarantine to avoid infections. They also live in total vulnerability in the face of criminal groups that take advantage of the confinements to eliminate indigenous people and carry out massacres.
Mexico: «the culture of fear»
The Mongabay Latam report explains that the original Mexican peoples face a context of violence very similar to that of the indigenous communities of Colombia. Ángel Sulub, Mayan delegate of the National Indigenous Congress (CNI) condemns the resurgence of a war waged by businessmen, the Government and criminal organizations.
For Sulub, the territorial dispossession, the persecution of environmental defenders and the disrespect for indigenous rights worsened in 68 communities. This happened as the COVID-19 confinement order was prolonged.
In the Yucatan peninsula, tourism and large projects of wind and photovoltaic systems are the main threat to the indigenous people of the Mayan ethnic group.
The leader said that public policies have undermined their traditional economies, such as sowing, to favor large foreign companies; and that the same policies that have promoted megaprojects such as the Mayan Train are actions that are “tremendously harmful” for the communities.
“Confinement began and tourism stopped, hotels were closed and there was a brutal dismissal of Mayans”, laments Sulub. The restrictions to prevent the spread of the coronavirus forced the indigenous people to stay in their homes, leave their organization process and their fights.
Mafias and companies seek to control indigenous territories
The CNI delegate indicates that with the pandemic, the judicial courts closed. Later, when they began to respond with limitations, they rejected the demands and judicial remedies that the Mayans sought to contain the degradation of their territory.
Meanwhile, the Mayan Train and the other projects continue during the quarantine period. Also mining activities and clandestine logging that overwhelms communities in other regions.
Sulub remarks that organized crime and large companies often seek control of indigenous territories. A reference dates from February 2019 with the murder of Samir Flores, an environmental defender of the Nahuatl ethnic group who was against the comprehensive Morelos Project.
Sulub recalls that days before Flores was assassinated, he and other social activists had been accused of being conservatives in a political statement.
“This type of accusation puts us in the eye of crime”, he says. Likewise, the Mayan region is the point where the criminal systems, that operated in the center and north of the country, now converge.
The result — he adds — has been a daily routine of executions in which the Mayans are the protagonists.
Victims of COVID-19 and criminal groups
The coordinator of the defense line of the Serapaz territory, Citlalli Hernández, indicated that organized crime sustains dozens of illegal activities.
Other neuralgic points are Michoacán and Chiapas — says Hernández — localities that are within the process for the control of territories. There, the armed groups find vulnerable communities that cannot react and that are neglected by the State in terms of security and health.
She adds that although there is no aggression against communities or environmental defenders all the time, there is a kind of social submission. That happens because of the culture of fear, after finding corpses in the streets and in mass graves.
In this sense, Sulub highlights that in the course of the pandemic, an estimated 20 indigenous environmental defenders have been killed in Mexico.
A recent work by Serapaz and the consulting firm Aura Investigación Estratégica determined that the COVID-19 pandemic further evidenced the inequalities between indigenous and non-indigenous peoples.
According to the Faculty of Medicine of the National Autonomous University of Mexico (UNAM), the lethality of the coronavirus in indigenous communities is 10% higher.
In addition, at the beginning of August the official figures showed around 6,800 indigenous people infected by COVID-19, with at least 800 deaths.
Peru: multiple murders
Peru had not yet completed a month of the State of emergency due to the pandemic when the indigenous leader Arbildo Meléndez Grandez was assassinated.
The incident occurred on April 12 in the community of Unipacuyacu, in Huánuco. Meléndez, apu catacaibo, had been demanding the titling of his people’s lands for years, and that had brought him a series of threats. Coca growers and land traffickers were looking for him.
The following month, the Ashaninka leader of the Hawaiian community, Gonzalo Pío, also died. He is suspected of being killed by land usurpers. In July, the same thing happened to the leader of the Sinchi Roca native community, Santiago Vega. Pío and Vega, like Arbildo Meléndez, had death threats.
So far in 2020, these have been the three murders perpetrated in Peru against indigenous defenders of their lands, according to the National Human Rights Coordinator (CNDDHH). With this, this institution has documented that criminal groups, that stalk native communities, have killed 16 indigenous people between 2013 and 2020.
The CNDDHH lawyer, Mar Pérez, cites in the report that in the last five years this type of crime has had a worrying increase and already configures a trend that is worsening due to the advance of illegal economies.
It points out that drug traffickers were involved in two of the three murders this year. That is, gangs that invade communities, deforest to grow coca, and threaten the community leaders.
The president of the Inter-ethnic Association for the Development of the Peruvian Jungle (Aidesep), Lizardo Cauper, considers that land trafficking constitutes the main hazard and threat against indigenous populations. But it does not ignore the risk that illegal mining, logging and oil extraction also pose to indigenous peoples.
Two of the most representative current cases of communities that have been victims of intimidation are Nueva Austria de Sira, in Huánuco, and Boca Pariamanu, in Madre de Dios.
The first is stalked by land invaders who have already attacked the community leader. Meanwhile, the other registers harassment by miners towards the leaders who guard the limits.
Criminalization of indigenous people and COVID-19
Peru does not have the high numbers of crimes against indigenous people that other countries in the region report. But, Mar Pérez explains that criminalization is one of the strongest harassment methods,
“They open unfounded trials with very long sentences, and they no longer need to assassinate them to get them out of the way”, says Pérez.
For his part, Lizardo Cauper affirms that there are currently 11,300 indigenous people accused of different crimes.
Alicia Abanto is deputy of the Ombudsman’s Office for the Environment, Public Services and Indigenous Peoples. She commented that “it is urgent to strengthen the intervention of public entities to prevent acts of violence or threats in the same territory where the leaders are”.
“The work of the Ministry of the Interior, the Ministry of Justice and Human Rights and the Public Ministry must be oriented towards risk prevention”, she adds.
Cauper is sure that the disease shows the historical neglect of indigenous populations. Even its high vulnerability in terms of health and safety.
The National Center for Epidemiology, Prevention and Control of Diseases of the Ministry of Health revealed in August that more than 21,000 indigenous people were infected by COVID-19. In addition, Aidesep reports that, so far, 393 natives have died from the pandemic in the Amazon.
The general coordinator of the Coordination of the Indigenous Organizations of the Amazon Basin (Coica), Gregorio Mirabal, warns that in all the Amazonian indigenous peoples, the number of infected is around 60,000 and that the number of deaths reaches 2,000.
In addition, he maintains that everything that the pandemic and its scourges entail are a process of extinction of the indigenous peoples of the Amazon basin. That is something that they qualify as “an ethnocide”.
The third and final part of this report will address the situation related to repression, kidnappings and the abandonment of the State suffered by the indigenous communities of Honduras and Guatemala.
