The Mexican Wixarikas

National
The new companies sink to the exploitation of the Sandbank
The Mexican Wixarikas
By: Carlos Damian June 4, 2012
The wixárikas will request to the CIDH emergency precautionary measures
México. - In the mining project of Silver First Majestic (SFM) in Real de Catorce, San Luis Potosi, it will occupy a 6 thousand hectares approximately in the sacred territory of Wirikuta, in the one that supposedly the company gave 761 hectares to the federal government, it is in progress the ‘Universo Plan’ that will embrace 42 percent of that area, around 60 thousand hectares, the Front in Defense of Wirikuta (FDW) informed. It specified that the sacred area doesn't decrease to specific places where they surrender the offerings, but rather “it is the group of stones, springs, cactus, snakes landscapes that embrace a continuous extension of more than 140 thousand hectares."

Revolution Resources (RR) it announced in December the Universo project in the sacred area of Wirikuta and their influence area, in territory of Santa Gertrudis' prey with the purchase of Lake Shore Gold, landlady of the concessions located in the municipality The Charcas, and old mining region. The company acquired four properties that among them “they combine “.Of which we can mention, to Universo and Montaña de Oro, of agreement with the information of their Webpage.”It is a property 350 thousand hectares, in the heart of a line 300 kilometers long with important mines of beautiful metals."

The community affirms that, “the new companies that seek to not only exploit the existent minerals in the Sierra de Catorce are arising but in the whole Sandbank". On the Charcas they are carried out perforations of explorations and of a previous stage of exploration. It considers that for the type of locations, the mining mega-projects would be exploratories with the cut method to open sky as of the mining San Xavier which already dynamited San Pedro's Hill, which appears in San Luis Potosí's shield. During the exploration the first works were made in the area of the first amplification of the public land of the Santa Gertrudis’ Prey, municipality of Charcas.
It will request to the CIDH emergency precautionary measures
This area is adjacent with the edge south west of the ecological Reservation of Wirikuta. At the moment there are four administrative procedures against this mine. Representative of RR gave to know the Social Movement of the Huicholes (FDW), they impel a campaign to win the permission of the assemblies of ejido- the collective grouping of the community - of the region and to begin the mining works that which they have achieved it. Only in the public land Las Margaritas, municipality El Bernalejo -sacred place of Wirikuta -, there is four mining concessions that are part of that project. Another affectation to which has not occurred enough attention is since the one that cause the agro-industries, the region it has high tomatoes’ production.



The Wixarikas -Huicholes - they make “the annual route to their sacred places, situation that threatens the mining concessions under way, reason why could request ’Habeas Corpus’, besides going before the Interamerican Commission of Human Rights (ICHR), to request emergency precautionary measures to stop the damage that it threatens to be irreversible for the protection of its sacred places", according to Magdalena Gomez in a presentation that made in a forum before the Senate. Many laws were created for mining concessions, natural resources and the extractor - technical, but they forgot the most important thing the environmental protection and the massive violations to the indigenous consultations prepared in the Agreement 169 of the International Organization of the Work. That is to say, “the legality goes at the same time with the illegality."
The Universo plan in 42% of the sacred area is in progress
Juan Carlos Gonzalez, legal representative of the mining SFM, Felipe Serio Chino, leadership of the Unión Wixárika of ceremonial Centers of Jalisco, Nayarit, and Durango summarized what the ‘white men’ have not understood, Wirikuta is the life of the people Wixárika. It is not a game, it is not a joke neither a petition, and it is a basic right of existing. A lifetime of a wixárika, of their family, of their positions in the community depends on fulfilling the tradition. To affect Wirikuta is to put an end to the lifelong absolute configuration of people's thousands, but besides the candles of the life that continue taking care like town for the maintenance of the world and therefore of the whole humanity. The womb of that to reborn constant is in Wirikuta.

In Carmen Aristegui's program, Juan Carlos Gonzalez defended the ordinances like area of Mining National Reservation, saying that they were “considerable studies” to define it. Perhaps these studies they are those carried out previously by the company Micon, in which is founded his current project, based on the silver veins detected from principles of last century. The geo-reference works were made to defend Wirikuta from the “federal government's strategy” and they were carried out by the Ministry of the Agrarian Reformation and that they reduce Wirikuta to only a line that doesn't represent anything and some present altars in the pilgrimage like sacred areas, that is to say doesn't protect absolutely anything, although it is spoken of a polygon of 200 hectares to decree a Federal Protected area.

The scrupulous studies to define this reservation, so much that it is defined by the 72 mining concessions that embrace 70% of the reservation of Wirikuta. But it little that it is that is around 45 thousand hectares it is decreed like Mining National Reservation, not affecting the ambitious attacks of the mining companies. The certain thing is that the company continues declaring that its project continues at the present time that in 2013 it makes the construction stage and in 2014 the exploitation stage, a speech begins totally different to that of the Mexican State, and this should demonstrate that its word is worth making that the mining project of SFM gives up the company of destroying Wirikuta. The circus mediatic of the federal and state governments evidences the decomposition of the Mexican State. (La Jornada, Sociedad y Justicia, p. 37, May 28, 2012)