Historic decree to restore 2,471 hectares of ancestral land to Wixárika community

President Claudia Sheinbaum has taken decisive steps toward the restitution of ancestral lands to the Wixárika radical successful a historical process that seeks to repair decades of dispossession and agrarian struggle successful the borderline portion betwixt Jalisco and Nayarit.

The Wixárika, sometimes known arsenic the Huichol, are an Indigenous radical chiefly from the authorities of Jalisco. They chiefly unrecorded successful the municipalities of Mezquitic, Bolaños, and to a lesser extent, Huejuquilla. According to authoritative figures, this country is location to astir 14,300 Wixárikas.

The historical 2022 Caravan to Mexico City, including an encampment successful beforehand of the National Palace, marked a turning constituent successful the Wixárika’s quest for a the instrumentality of their ancestral lands. (Cuartoscuro)

According to Sheinbaum, her authorities volition contented a decree this week to instrumentality 2,471 hectares successful the Huajimic portion of Nayarit to the Wixárika assemblage of San Sebastián Teponahuaxtlán and its annex, Tuxpan de Bolaños (Wuaut+a-Kuruxi Manuwe), located chiefly successful Mezquitic, Jalisco. This determination represents the largest ancestral onshore restitution to date, connected its own, astir a 4th of the 10,448 hectares the Wixárika person claimed.  

The portion has agelong been occupied by tiny landowners and ranchers successful Nayarit who person resisted handing implicit the onshore without compensation.

The decree includes a outgo of 158.2 cardinal pesos (US $8.1 million) to the existent occupants of the lands, funded done a peculiar fund allocation ordered by Sheinbaum. The nonsubjective is to guarantee the peaceful enforcement of agrarian argumentation successful favour of the Wixárika.

The struggle implicit onshore restitution to the Wixárika began successful 2007, erstwhile the Wixárika assemblage initiated a judicial assertion based connected titles from the viceregal period, which predate those held by the existent mestizo landholders. 

In 2022, a march from occidental Mexico to Mexico City dubbed the “Caravan for Wixárika Conscience and Dignity” demanded the instrumentality of the 10,448 hectares of communal onshore on the Jalisco-Nayarit border. That march accelerated restitution, which present volition full 5,946 hectares restored truthful far. This represents 56.7% of the claimed territory, leaving astatine slightest 4,550 hectares to beryllium returned.

Earlier this year, during a sojourn to the Au’dam assemblage of San Bernardino de Milpillas Chico successful the Sierra Madre Occidental, Sheinbaum said that the Indigenous radical of Mexico are astatine the bosom of her humanistic government. 

“We spot them arsenic the essence of Mexico,” she said. “Without the Indigenous peoples determination would beryllium nary Mexico. Each Indigenous radical has its language, its culture, its land, its history, its ancestors, and that has to beryllium preserved due to the fact that if that is lost, Mexico is lost.”

 With reports from La Jornada