Mexico is world’s deadliest spot for environmental activists
Mexico has become the deadliest place in the world for environmental and land defense activists, and the Yaqui Indigenous people of northern Mexico are still mourning the killing of water and land defense leaders.
Mexico has become the deadliest place in the world for environmental and land defense activists, and the Yaqui Indigenous people of northern Mexico are still mourning the killing of water and land defense leaders.
According to a report by the non-governmental group Global Witness, Mexico saw 54 activists killed in 2021, compared to 33 in Colombia and 26 in Brazil.
The group recorded the deaths of 200 activists worldwide in 2021.
Latin America accounted for over two-thirds of those slayings — often of the bravest and most well-respected people in their communities.
That was the case with Tómas Rojo and Luis Urbano.
Authorities claim Rojo was killed by a local drug gang that wanted the money the Yaquis sometimes earn by collecting tolls at informal highway checkpoints.
They say Urbano was shot after confronting coworkers on stealing construction goods.
Between 2010 _ when state authorities built a pipeline to siphon off the Yaquis’ water for use in the state capital, Hermosillo _ to 2020, Rojo led a series of demonstrations and acts of civil disobedience, including a months-long intermittent blockade of the state’s main highway, which caused millions in losses for businesses and industry.
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People who knew Rojo and Urbano don’t believe the toll money nor the work conflict theory.
They say the activists were killed by the powerful interests that stand to profit from the Yaquis’ land and water rights in the northern border state of Sonora, across the border from Arizona.
“He was always moving, active. He never left anybody alone, neither Tomas nor the Yaqui authorities,” said Marta Estrella, Luis Urbano’s widow.
Rojo’s body was found half-buried near Vicam, nearly three weeks after he disappeared.
He was initially identified by a red neckerchief he had been wearing when he left home.
Urbano was killed weeks after Rojo’s disappearance, shot after leaving a bank on June 8.
“This is something I don’t desire for no one, even my worst enemy. It’s bad, very sad,” said Rojo’s father, Guillermo Rojo, 84, who lives in the traditional Yaqui village of Potam.
In 2014, Sonora state authorities tried to arrest Yaqui spokespeople including Rojo on what the Indigenous leaders consider trumped-up charges of kidnapping that were later dismissed.
The Yaquis are the legal owners of at least half the water in the river basin that bears their name, but they have seen much of their water redirected to feed burgeoning industries and projects to plant vineyards and avocados in the desert.
President Andrés Manuel López Obrador last month apologized to the Yaquis for past abuses and promised a series of infrastructure programs to improve their lives. But López Obrador has refused to stop the siphoning off of their water.
The Yaquis find themselves at the center of a perfect storm: Everybody from Mexican drug cartels to water-hungry lithium mines covet their land. But they themselves live in poverty and often don’t even have running water in their homes.
While some Yaquis still farm the surrounding fields, most work as gardeners, bricklayers or laborers in neighboring cities.
With little water, widespread poverty and no farm work available, younger Yaquis have begun to migrate to nearby cities and the U.S. border city of Nogales.
Drug cartels moved in because they view Yaqui territory as a lucrative path to smuggle drugs to the U.S. And lithium deposits lie to the north of the Yaquis, and reportedly into their territory, as well.
The Yaquis themselves won’t say who they think ordered the killing of Tomás Rojo and Luis Urbano; they live in a largely lawless state where a drug cartel, corrupt politician or powerful businessman can order such a murder with impunity.
César Cota, a bricklayer and farmer who worked alongside Tomás Rojo, sat beside the Yaqui River _ now just a dry gully _ and recounted 500 years of Yaqui struggle.
Cota said the river was crucial to the Yaquis. When it flowed regularly, sturdy reeds grew on its banks which the Yaqui used to build everything from houses to funeral biers.
“The Yaqui tribe was never defeated and isn’t going to be defeated now,” Cota said.
“Tomas and Luis are an example to follow. They taught us not to abandon the struggle, our land our water, and our mountains which can’t speak. The water doesn’t speak, the rock doesn’t speak, the mountains don’t speak, the sea doesn’t speak. But we do speak and we want to keep speaking for them,” he added.
