Sonora, Mexico: Dictatorship over the Yaqui River Basin

Dictadura sobre la Cuenca del Río Yaqui | Artículo

Redacción AN / LP

The Conagua, the CEA and the city's water operator body presented a communication addressed to Cenace, requesting that the El Novillo hydroelectric plant suspend power generation to recover the minimum levels in that reservoir that would allow the pumping required by the operation of the Aqueduct

 

When the construction of the Independencia Aqueduct was completed in 2013, which illegally transfers water from the middle part of the Yaqui River Basin (Plutarco Elías Calles Dam, El Novillo) to the city of Hermosillo, it was admitted by many that around the work -In addition to the disrespect for the law and violations of the rule of law in which it was incurred to impose it- its construction had served as a scandalous feast of tampering with public resources, to such a degree that the aqueduct ended up being dubbed a “monument to corruption” . At that time, few realized that its technical unfeasibility would soon make it a monument to stupidity as well.

 

And indeed, according to the authorities of the State Water Commission (CEA), the Hermosillo Drinking Water Operator Agency and Conagua, due to the drought cycle, the Novillo reservoir is a few days before its levels reach by below where the extraction tubes that hang from the pumps are installed to carry out the transfer. They are therefore days away from being able to suck only air and mud.

 

The abuses committed for its construction were indicated and documented, as well as the "jumping of bars" to obtain the resources demanded by the work. Now nature is in charge of pointing out its technical inadmissibility, when the sustainability of its operation implies “closing the floodgates” to the runoff from the Yaqui River, in order to raise the levels of the Novillo site and make possible the height of the water that allows the operation of the pumps. Action that threatens to leave the users of the lower basin without water, that is, the Yaqui Tribe, the productive activities of southern Sonora and seven of the municipalities that are located in this region

 

Even without the city of Hermosillo having legal rights as a user of the basin, Conagua, CEA, and the city's water utility, presented, on June 17, an official letter addressed to the Northwest Control Manager of the National Center. of Energy Control (Cenace), in which they request that the El Novillo hydroelectric plant suspend turbination (power generation) to recover the minimum levels in that reservoir that allow the pumping required by the operation of the Aqueduct. Two days after this request, Cenace stopped turbining and generating energy. With this, the water flows to the lower part of the basin were suspended, where the Álvaro Obregón dam is located, which feeds the Yoreme territory and the Yaqui Valley. In that same request, they ask that the Angostura Dam, derive water to the Novillo to have a greater supply that makes the operation of the work viable.

 

These actions are added to the large repertoire of illegalities that make up black history, full of abuses and outrages, which marks the construction of the aqueduct. Once again, by means of the facts, of influence peddling, in addition to violating the decree of Lázaro Cárdenas that assigns use and destination to the waters of the Yaqui River, they also violate the presidential decree that gives the site of the Novillo the unique function to operate as an electricity generating dam and for the control of avenues and floods. All this in the light of a federal administration that presumes a historic transformation.

 

It is not for the best that Hermosillo becomes an obese city and that it reaches the presumptuous name of the financial capital of the Northwest. What is inadmissible is that it does so at the cost of dispossession of the Yaqui Tribe and the economic asphyxiation of southern Sonora. The concurrence of real estate speculators from different regions of the state and the country, who have gathered in the state capital, are deployed as factual powers that now seek to regulate, by means of facts, that the administration of the waters of the Yaqui River basin is governed based on the arbitrariness that the operation of the Independencia Aqueduct is the priority.

 

They had only pulled out the teeth, now they pulled out nails and teeth at the same time. They want to exercise an administrative dictatorship over the Yaqui River basin. As the classic saying goes: they are never satisfied.

Ciudad Obregón, Sonora as of June 30, 2021

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Washington Post

A deadly battle over control of the Yaqui river will affect us all

For more than a century, Yaqui people have risked their lives to protect their river

Members of the Yaqui ethnic group meet with representatives of civil society in Mexico City on Aug. 9, 2014. (Sashenka Gutierrez/EPA/Shutterstock)

 

 

A deadly battle over control of the Yaqui river will affect us all

Washington Post

A deadly battle over control of the Yaqui river will affect us all

For more than a century, Yaqui people have risked their lives to protect their river

By Gabriela Soto Laveaga
June 27, 2021 at 3:00 a.m. MST

In early June, after withdrawing cash from an ATM, Luis Urbano Domínguez Mendoza, a Yaqui water activist was gunned down in Ciudad Obregón, Sonora, in Mexico. Domínguez Mendoza is the latest Yaqui activist to be murdered, one in a long line of recent — and not-so-recent — attacks on the Yaqui people who seek to protect their local river.

The Yaqui, today divided in eight groups and numbering a bit more than 40,000 people altogether, are known in Mexico as the undefeated tribe. To be called a Yaqui implies that you are obstinate, relentless and, potentially, fierce. Yet this historical reputation as unrelenting warriors in the face of, first, an encroaching Spanish empire and, later, an independent Mexico masks their vulnerability today. Indeed, the story to edge the Yaqui off their land and stake claims to the Yaqui River — considered sacred by Indigenous communities — is not a new one.

For many political and business leaders, the Yaqui and their ancestral claim to both land and river have long stood in the way of what was deemed progress: modernization via commercial agriculture. The river and its irrigated banks drew 19th-century politicians and speculators alike to the region with dreams of an agricultural basin that would export food across borders to places as far away as New York and Panama. By the mid-20th century, agriculture, specifically cash crops such as cotton, rice and wheat, transformed Sonora into one of Mexico’s wealthiest states. Today, because of the region’s place in global food chains, the outcome of the battle for control over the once-mighty Yaqui River reaches far beyond this region and its people and affects us all.

Before the arrival of Europeans, the Yaqui, Pima, Mayo, Seri and other Indigenous groups in what is now Sonora relied on the Yaqui River and its adjacent rich soil for agriculture. In the late 1880s, Mexico’s dictator Porfirio Díaz sponsored the Sonoran Scientific Commission to survey the lands of northern Mexico with an eye toward building future federal irrigation projects and expanding mining. In the 1890s, Mexican entrepreneur Carlos Conant formed the Sonora and Sinaloa Irrigation Company, which prepared to build canals, locks and dikes, and sell bonds to potential American investors.

The Yaqui who lived in the region resisted this encroachment, knowing well that if the waters of the river were tamed into canals and dams, they would lose control of the region. They protected their territory by sabotaging irrigation canals and water pipelines that crisscrossed their land, and within a few years the irrigation company went bankrupt.

In 1905, the Los Angeles-based Richardson brothers — W.E. Richardson and Davis Richardson — took over the failed venture, opening the door to major water projects that arrived hand-in-hand with land colonization when they developed a new town (the future Ciudad Obregón) and connected it to the Southern Pacific railroad. Photos of the time show the Richardson Company headquarters under heavy guard and surrounded by barrels filled with cement to protect against attacks by Yaqui people who refused to cede their land to engineers and investors.

The Mexican army was sent to battle the Yaqui to protect the irrigation project which had attracted both new investors and colonos, “colonizing” farmers who promised to develop Sonora into a major agricultural hub. Unable to defeat the Yaqui and determined to clear space for agricultural production and ranching, the government hatched a plan to deport the various tribes to faraway Yucatán on cattle rail cars.

Deportations purposefully separated families, tearing children from mothers, to impose trauma and weaken Yaqui resistance. The majority who survived the train and boat rides to Yucatán were sold as forced laborers to plantations where most died of malaria, other endemic diseases and physical abuse in the peninsula’s henequen fields. The state of Sonora seized the property of those deported.

In 1910, muckraker John Kenneth Turner wrote “Barbarous Mexico,” an exposé of Diaz’s abuses, which detailed “the extermination” of the Yaqui and described how at this time they were hunted for sport, with a pair of Yaqui ears fetching nearly $100 for soldiers.

Yet it took almost two decades for a Mexican president, Lázaro Cárdenas, to acknowledge the injustices suffered by the surviving Yaqui in Sonora. In 1937, he granted the tribe, via a presidential decree, ownership of their traditional territory and, most important, the water they needed to farm. Two years later, the Yaqui were awarded rights to half of all the water contained by the (at the time) only dam on the Yaqui River.

However, with continued heavy domestic and international investment, southern Sonora also became a haven for agricultural research. In the 1940s, famed agronomist and Nobel laureate Norman Borlaug selected Ciudad Obregón as a site to experiment with hybrid wheat seeds. By that time two major dams, with a third on its way, controlled the Yaqui River, making required water available for experimental plots. The fabled seeds that launched the Green Revolution transforming farming from India to Ethiopia to Colombia were manufactured in these fields, former Yaqui lands, fed by the Yaqui River. By mid-century, despite possessing only 7 percent of Mexico’s total agricultural lands, more than 60 percent of which is irrigated, Sonora became the nation’s most productive agricultural state.

And so, despite presidential decrees, the Yaqui continued to struggle to attain water for their land, and had to compete with growing agribusiness in the region. In 2010, the Sonoran government approved and began construction of a 145-kilometer-long (90-mile-long) aqueduct that would take water from the Yaqui River to the water-starved state capital Hermosillo. When construction began the Yaqui blocked highways and went to court. They won the right to stop construction — seven times.

Despite this, the aqueduct was finished and has been siphoning water away from southern Sonora since 2013. Climate change has exacerbated water shortages, groundwater has been depleted or polluted, and the aqueduct’s siphoning of water has led to an urban-rural struggle to control natural resources — in the midst of one of the region’s worst droughts. Water for everyone in the region is still a major issue — and even though today most Yaqui are not farmers but rent out their lands to larger commercial farmers, they continue to protest what they see as illegal power grabs and environmental violence by agribusiness.

Despite government acknowledgment of the historical persecution of the Yaqui and a promise in 2020 to set up a multiagency Justice Commission to examine enduring water and land claims, attacks on them continue. In fact, in a new wave of violence Yaqui water activists have been jailed, killed or disappeared, including the Yaqui spokesman for water rights Tomás Rojo, who was taken while out for a walk. He was last heard from in late May, and recently his remains were found and identified.

This violence and the killing of Domínguez Mendoza is not simply the story of another murdered Yaqui leader; it is about control of an increasingly scarce natural resource: water. This historical struggle is relevant to all of us because, ironically, the Yaqui’s defense of the river allowed commercial agriculture to thrive in this region. With less water even commercial farmers and cattle ranchers are now desperate for the crucial resource, and their plight will be felt across food supply chains and, eventually, our dinner tables.

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Dictatorship over the Yaqui River Basin

Dictadura sobre la Cuenca del Río Yaqui | Artículo

Redacción AN / LP

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UNPFII 2018: Statement by Mario Luna Romero, Tribu Yaqui [Sonora, Mexico]

United Nations

Permanent Forum on Indigenous Issues

17^th Session, 17-27 April 2018

INDIGENOUS PEOPLES’ COLLECTIVE RIGHTS TO LANDS, TERRITORIES AND RESOURCES

17 APRIL 2018

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TONATIERRA
Message to Tom Lantos Human Rights Commission:
Human Rights of  Indigenous Peoples in the Americas

November 23, 2020

A comprehensive historical understanding and analysis of the systematic human rights violations against Indigenous Peoples in the Americas [North-Central-South] must necessarily integrate a critical position in terms of the international trade policies of the “Corporate Metropolitan States”  in competition and systemic collusion over the extraction of natural resources and labor of the Original Nations of Indigenous peoples of the Great Turtle Island Abya Yala.  As both example and evidence, the “Privileges and Prerogatives Granted by Their Catholic Majesties to Christopher Columbus (1492)” outline the rewards and protections of the initial colonial enterprise of seeking World Trade Organization routes to the Indies on behalf of the European Royalty.  These packages of privilege and profit are institutionalized today via the multilateral international trade agreements such as the recently adopted US-Mexico-Canada Agreement USMCA (2020).

 

On this point, we would concur with the statement by TLHRC co-chair James P. McGovern (D-MA) made during the virtual hearing on November 20:

 

“We should be examining the impacts of our trade agreements on Indigenous Rights.”

 

De Canada hasta Chile: Complicidad del Estado Vaticano en los Crimines de Genocidio y Colonizacion

En Canadá Encuentran 215 Niños Indígenas Enterrados.

HECHO SIMILAR: CRIMEN DE GENOCIDIO EN PUEL MAPU Y NAGMAPU
[Chile y Argentina]

Aucan Huilcaman: Experto en Derecho Internacional.

Comúnmente Canadá se presenta en Chile de parte de la clase política como modelo político de entendimiento con los Pueblos Indígenas. Sin embargo, muy pocos se esperaban que se encontrarían alrededor de 215 niños indígenas enterrados en un centro de educación. Establecimiento creado para el adiestramiento de los niños indígenas, la evangelización y para sustituir su identidad colectiva, por la identidad nacional canadiense del colonizador. Este hecho, por sus características, constituye un crimen de lesa humanidad tipificado en varias normas del derecho internacional.

Pero los que presentan como ejemplo a seguir a Canadá, omiten la valiosa decisión política de haber conformado una “Comisión de la Verdad y la Reconciliación. Situación que se podría homologar en la Araucanía para superar las crecientes tensiones y controversias y que tienen raíces similares en los hechos que se siguen descubriendo en Canadá.

 

Esta información pareciera que proviene de un lejano territorio. Sin embargo, si examinamos la historia en la relación del Estado Chileno y Argentino con los Mapuche, especialmente en los actos coercitivos militares de la denominada “Pacificación de la Araucanía” y la “Conquista del Desierto en Neuquen, Río Negro y Chubut” sucedió situaciones muy similares de extrema gravedad y que constituyen crímenes de lesa humanidad y que permanecen en la más completa impunidad y que con mucha liviana y ligereza se le denomina “conflicto Mapuche” y para su criminalización se le denomina “conflicto indígena”.

En el exterminio de los 215 niños en Canadá, está comprometido el Estado Canadiense propiamente y la Iglesia Católica, es decir, el Vaticano. Ambas instituciones siguen teniendo una responsabilidad institucional desde la conquista hasta el día de hoy. Por ello, con legitima razón, se ha planteado internacionalmente revisar las consecuencias de la “Doctrina del Descubrimiento” en donde el Vaticano como Estado tiene directa responsabilidad en la situación histórica y actual de los Pueblos Indígenas, entre ellos con los Pueblos Indígenas de Canadá y de los Mapuche en el sur.

Con motivo a la visita que efectúo el Papa Francisco en enero 2018 en el territorio Mapuche, escribí un libro que le denominé “A Mi Vecino el Papa Francisco”. Allí, aborde varios hechos que conforman crímenes de lesa humanidad, como es el genocidio, el secuestro y tortura con niños Mapuche de la Araucanía, Neuquén, Río Negro y Chubut.

A modo de ejemplo “Después de la campaña del general Villegas al Nahuelhuapi en 1881, fueron llevados a patagones unos 300 indios en el más lastimoso estado. Los pusieron entre las paredes de la iglesia, que llegaba a una altura de metro y medio. Ahí estuvieron más de un mes bajo el azote de los vientos y temperaturas invernales, el padre Fragano que los había acompañado en su largo viaje, pasaba con ellos todos los momentos que sus ocupaciones les dejaba libre: le enseñaba el castellano, reglas elementales de higiene y los instruía en la religión.

Después de 1 mes de adoctrinamiento, bautizó a 30, pero esa misma tarde ocurrió un episodio trágico, se dio orden de separar a todos los niños para entregarlos a familias de los pueblos ribereños. Fue una escena desgarradora…(..) hubo una madre en la desesperación de su dolor arrojó su criatura sobre los ladrillos, ahí quedaron con sangre inocente salpicados de sangre inocente los ladrillos del templo como una triste imagen de la profanación de los derechos humanos” (Curruhuinca-Roux, 1986, p.97)

En el contexto de la Pacificación de la Araucanía el general José Manuel Pinto, utilizó a su favor la buena fe de los Mapuche y celebró un acuerdo aparente de paz, y en alianza directa con la iglesia católica en la persona de Fray Estanislao María Leonetti celebró un acuerdo con Faustino Quilahueque que tenía por objeto, comprometer a Quilapan para el cese de la resistencia y sustrajeron a los niños Mapuche y de ésta manera efectuar un acto de secuestros masivos. El supuesto acuerdo, tuvo 2 puntos:

1.-Entregar todos los cautivos españoles que los indios tienen en su poder y todos los bandidos y ladrones que asilan en su territorio,

2.-Entregar igualmente cada Cacique, 2 hijos varones, en garantía de fidelidad. (Leandro Navarro, 2013, p.264)

Los hechos confirman la participación directa del Vaticano, en la aplicación de la doctrina del descubrimiento, la participación en los secuestros masivos de niños indígenas de diversas nacionalidades, la tortura y el genocidio cometido en la era colonial y en la formación y expansión de los Estados nacionales desde Canadá hasta la Patagonia y de manera ejemplar el secuestro de Ceferino Namuncura. En este sentido, se ha planteado la necesidad de constituir una Comisión de Esclarecimiento Histórico a nivel continental para determinar la responsabilidad institucional del Vaticano desde la aplicación ilegitima de la “doctrina del descubrimiento” y en la actualidad en que perviven los Pueblos indígenas.

Especialmente en este momento que el Vaticano está liderado por un “Vecino del Pueblo Mapuche”, el Papa Francisco, quién tiene pleno conocimiento de los que ha sucedido en la relación colonial y en la relación estatal en el Continente con los Pueblos Indígenas y con sus vecinos Mapuche.

El ejemplo que pudiéramos seguir de Canadá consiste en la formación de una Comisión de la Verdad y Reconciliación. Esta situación es completa y absolutamente aplicable con los Pueblos Indígenas del Continente y en especial con el Pueblo Mapuche que ha sido objeto del crimen de genocidio y que permanece en absoluta impunidad y que en la actualidad constituye una de las causas que se manifiesta en las regiones del sur y que no es más que un asunto pendiente. El establecimiento de la verdad, la reparación al daño causado es la condición para construir una paz firme y duradera en el Wallmapuche/Araucanía.

Estos hechos tienen correspondencia con la carta enviada por los Mapuche al Comandante en jefe del ejército de Chile Ricardo Martinez con fecha 03 de marzo 2021. En donde se le pide que, no incursionen en el territorio Mapuche por su responsabilidad en el crimen de genocidio y que tal hecho representa una herida abierta con el Pueblo Mapuche.

Wallmapuche, Rimuguen Kuyen, 01 de junio de 2021.

 

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Encíclica de los Pueblos Originales de Abya Yala

El genocidio no puede ser santificado.
La colonización no puede ser santificada.
Y disculpas no proveen la justicia.

Comunicado a la Santa Sede:
DESMANTELANDO
la Doctrina del Descubriminto

V Cumbre Continental de los Pueblos Indígenas del Abya Yala

Noviembre 15, 2013

La María Piendamó, Cauca [Colombia]

Con la intención de abordar las cuestiones de violaciones de Derechos Humanos, en particular el derecho a la autodeterminación de los Pueblos Indígenas, con el fin de instituir  medidas correctivas colectivas en el rechazo de la Doctrina del Descubrimiento, ya que la Doctrina continúa sirviendo como una manta de camuflaje para la patología y para la colonización que deforma y viola el espíritu y el bienestar de nuestra Humanidad Común;

Nuestra posición es que el Estado del Vaticano, la Santa Sede y Su Santidad el Papa Francisco deberán tomar las medidas adecuadas y llevar adelante un proceso de responsabilidad internacional por el papel que la Iglesia Católica ha jugado en el origen y autoría intelectual de las violaciones de Derechos Humanos que siguen siendo normalizadas por la Doctrina del Descubrimiento.  Exhortamos Su Santidad a hacer comentario público en repudiación de la Doctrina del Descubrimiento y en clarificación de las contradicciones aquí documentadas.

Asamblea Plenaria de la V Cumbre Continental

de los

Pueblos y Nacionalidades Indígenas del Abya Yala

Secretaría del Consejo Continental de las Naciones y Pueblos Indígenas del Abya Yala

TONATIERRA

From Canada to Chile: Complicity of the Vatican State in the Crimes of Genocide and Colonization

In Canada 215 Indigenous Children Found Buried.

SIMILAR FACT: CRIME OF GENOCIDE IN PUEL MAPU AND NAGMAPU
[Chile and Argentina]

Aucán Huilcamán, Mapuche Nation

Expert in International Law

 

Canada is commonly presented in Chile by the political class as a political model of having achieved a certain level of understanding with Indigenous Peoples. However, very few expected that recently around 215 indigenous children would be found buried in an education center. This establishment was created for the training of indigenous children, via evangelization and to replace their collective indigenous identity with the Canadian version of the national identity of the colonizer. This fact, due to its characteristics, constitutes a crime against humanity typified in various norms of international law. But those who present Canada as an example to follow, omit the valuable political decision of having formed a “Truth and Reconciliation Commission”. This is a concept that could be considered in Araucanía to overcome the growing tensions and controversies and that have similar roots in the events that continue to be uncovered in Canada.

 

Mapuche Children

This information seems to come from a distant time and territory. However, if we examine the history of the relationship of the Chilean and Argentine State with the Mapuche, especially in the coercive military acts of the so-called "Pacification of Araucanía" and the "Conquest of the Desert in Neuquén, Río Negro and Chubut" very similar situations occurred of extreme gravity. These are acts that also constitute crimes against humanity and that remain today with the most complete impunity. Instead, these issues are simply dismissed as the so-called "Mapuche conflict" and for purposes of criminalization they are called the "indigenous conflict”.

 

In the extermination of the 215 children in Canada, the Canadian State itself and the Catholic Church, that is, the Vatican, are involved. Both institutions continue to have an institutional responsibility from the times of the original European colonial invasions until today. For this reason, with absolute legitimacy, it has been proposed internationally to review the consequences of the "Doctrine of Discovery" where the Vatican as a State has direct responsibility in the historical and current situation of Indigenous Peoples, included among them the Indigenous Peoples of Canada in the north and the Mapuche in the south.

 

 Mapuche Children

On the occasion of the visit that Pope Francis made in January 2018 in the Mapuche territory, I wrote a book that I called “To My Neighbor, Pope Francis”. There, I addressed various events that constitute crimes against humanity, such as genocide, kidnapping and torture of Mapuche children from Araucanía, Neuquén, Río Negro and Chubut. By way of example:

“After the campaign of General Villegas to Nahuelhuapi in 1881, some 300 Indians were taken to Patagones in the most pitiful state. They were placed between the walls of the church, which reached a height of five feet. There they spent more than a month under the lash of the winds and winter temperatures, Father Fragano, who had accompanied them on their long journey, spent with them all the moments that their occupations left them free: he taught them Spanish, elementary rules of hygiene. and instructed them in religion. After 1 month of indoctrination, he baptized 30, but that same afternoon a tragic episode occurred, order was given to separate all the children to deliver them to families in the riverside towns. It was a heartbreaking scene ... (...) there was a mother in despair of her pain threw her child on the bricks, there the bricks of the temple were left with innocent blood sprinkled with innocent blood as a sad image of the desecration of human rights" (Curruhuinca-Roux, 1986, p.97)

In the context of the Pacification of Araucanía, General José Manuel Pinto, used the good faith of the Mapuche in his favor and entered into an apparent peace agreement, and in direct alliance with the Catholic Church in the person of Fray Estanislao María Leonetti celebrated an agreement with Faustino Quilahueque that was intended to commit Quilapan to the cessation of the Mapuche resistance. Instead, Mapuche children were abducted in an act of mass kidnappings. The supposed agreement had 2 points:

1.-Deliver all the Spanish captives that the Indians have in their power and all the bandits and thieves who have taken asylum in their territory,

2.-To deliver equally each Cacique, 2 male children, as a guarantee of fidelity. (Leandro Navarro, 2013, p.264)

The facts confirm the direct participation of the Vatican, in the application of the Doctrine of Discovery, the participation in the massive kidnappings of indigenous children of various nationalities, the torture and genocide committed in the colonial era and in the formation and expansion of the Nation States from Canada to Patagonia. In prominent example is the kidnapping of Ceferino Namuncura.

In this context, the need to establish a Commission for Historical Clarification at the continental level to address the issues of collusion and complicity has been raised to determine the institutional responsibility of the Vatican as a state ever since the illegitimate application of the "Doctrine of Discovery" and till today.

The Indigenous Peoples have survived this genocide. Now, at this juncture, especially when the Vatican is led by Pope Francis, who has full knowledge of what has happened during the initial colonial period.  As a "Neighbor of the Mapuche People", Pope Francis is also very aware and informed of the bloody history of the successor state of Chile, in terms of the Indigenous Peoples of the continent and with the neighboring Mapuche Nation specifically.

 

The example of the Truth and Reconciliation Commission in Canada is a consideration for what should be a Commission for Historical Clarification at the continental level. This proposal is completely and applicable in terms of the geopolitical agenda of the Original Nations of the Indigenous Peoples of the Continent Abya Yala.  Especially among the Mapuche People who have been the object of the crime of open genocide and who today continue to endure the compounded violation of absolute impunity. This situation constitutes to be one of the root causes that is manifested in the conflict in the regions of the south, which is more than simply “an unfinished business”.

Establishing the truth, repairing the damage caused, is the condition for building a firm and lasting peace in Wallmapuche/Araucanía.

These events correspond to the letter sent by the Mapuche to the Commander-in-Chief of the Chilean Army Ricardo Martinez dated March 3, 2021, in which he was asked not to enter the Mapuche territory due to his responsibility in the crime of genocide, and such actions represent an open wound with the Mapuche People.

Wallmapuche, Rimuguen Kuyen, June 1, 2021.

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Encyclical of the Indigenous Peoples of Abya Yala

Genocide cannot be sanctified.
Colonization cannot be sanctified.
And apologies do not bring justice.

Communiqué to the Vatican:
DISMANTLING
the Doctrine of Discovery

V Continental Summit of Indigenous Nations and Pueblos of Abya Yala

La Maria Piendamo, Cauca [Colombia]

November 15, 2013

With the intention of addressing the systematic violation of Human Rights of the Indigenous Peoples of Abya Yala, in particular the Right of Self Determination of Indigenous Peoples, and with the goal of instituting collective corrective measures in repudiation of the Doctrine of Discovery which continues to serve as a mantel of camouflage for the pathology and colonization that deforms and distorts the spirit and well being of our common humanity;

Our position is that the Vatican State, the Holy See and Your Holiness Pope Francis must take adequate measures and advance in the process of international responsibility for the role that the Catholic Church has played in the origin and as intellectual author of the criminal violations of Human Rights which continue to be normalized by the Doctrine of Discovery.

We exhort Your Holiness to make public comment in repudiation of the Doctrine of Discovery and in clarification of the contradictions here documented.

TONATIERRA