Alliances fight for Huichol land
Alliances fight for Huichol land
Philip Burnham, ICT
March 26, 2007
NUEVA COLONIA, Mexico - When Indians lose land, conventional wisdom says, they never see it again. In central Mexico, a grass-roots organization is working to prove the old wisdom wrong.
The Jalisco Indigenous Groups Support Association assists central Mexican tribes in filing land claims and achieving economic self-sufficiency. AJAGI has devoted much of its attention to the Huichol, a people isolated in the western Sierra Madre who have lost land to loggers, planters, ranchers and narcotraffickers.
AJAGI founder Carlos Chavez described the delicate work of partnering with tribes: ”We don’t give them a solution. We plan with them. We brainstorm with them. We evaluate our positions together. We’re not so much colleagues as companions.”
The party most responsible for land loss, said Chavez, speaking by telephone from his office in Guadalajara, has been the Mexican government. The 1910 Mexican Revolution made possible the return …
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