The State is failing the Yaqui people, says journalist Daliri Oropeza

In the presentation of the book Yaquis: unbeatable resistance, Its author, Daliri Oropeza Álvarez, said that the government of that ethnic group does not represent No difficulty for the implementation of policies. Rather, the problem is that the Mexican State has not understood that the Yaquis were before the Mexican Nation and that they have to ask for permission, in addition to knowing that they have their government, uses and customs, traditions and times, that they should respect, because in this the strength of the peoples resides. It is there where the Mexican State is failing culturally with the Justice Plan of the People of Yaqui.

Edited by the Rosa Luxembourg Foundation and the Center for Studies for Change in the Mexican countryside, the volume was first presented in Yaqui territory, which allowed Oropeza to realize a discontent much more generalized than before with respect to the Justice Plan for the Yaqui people, that the main demand is water and that there is a tremendous division.

The journalist and photographer also reached that territory in 2014 motivated by reading, when he was 12 years old, of Barbarian Mexico, by John Kenneth Turner. He was surprised that, in the time of Porfirio Díaz, They had led an entire town from their own territory to a totally distant one to be slaves in the henequene haciendas of Yucatanamong other places. He wanted to know how they resisted such an outrage.

As for his way of working, he explained: Within the journalism I do I have a listening methodology. It is a methodology of research journalism, sensitive, circular, which seeks to be a sufficient mirror in which those who are there see themselves in a position of dignity, hope, not to let the problems become serious, but to show them that in them is the solution.

In turn, the opinion coordinator of The day, Luis Hernández Navarro, stressed that Yaqui is “one of the three indigenous peoples of our country that have been machine -gunned by the Mexican army, along with the trichis and the Zapatista peoples in Los Altos, in 1994. Daliri’s work is not strictly in the line of anthropology, but of the deep dimension of the Yaquis.

Take the best of the journalistic tradition, such as John Kenneth Turner or Fernando Benítez, with a substantial difference: Daliri has only had the support of his effort.

The Teacher Yaqui Zulema Izáraga, from Pótam, Sonora, who addressed the problem of lack of water: For 25 years we have not seen the river run. Martha Singer also participated, a specialist on political representation of indigenous peoples, for whom this is a book that remains as an important testimony of a reality that we have pending before our eyes.

The Rosa Luxembourg Foundation supported the publication of Yaquis: unbeatable resistance because many issues such as memory and link between the past and the present are addressed, They are the same topics that we work with other organizationssaid organism director Gerald Smith.