The joint unbeatable resistance the legitimate demands of the Yaqui people

The book Yaquis: unbeatable resistance It is full of legitimate demands of people from the eight peoples who have fought for natural resources and their culture; For them, having a river is decisive for the existence of that original nation based in Sonora, said its author, the journalist Daliri Oropeza.

The photographer also referred to The day that the traditional Yaquis authorities affirm that “the deer is thirst; That is, that sacred animal that dances with water drums, whose meaning is the heart of the earth and living beings. They say: ‘How will the deer dance if you don’t have your river water?’ ”

Oropeza said that those who are fighting for water flow They are also those who are fighting for the tongue and because the traditions of Lent or sacred rituals are not lost, such as the dances of the deer and the coyote.

The volume, which will be presented on March 13 at the Rosa Luxembourg Foundation, expands the documentation made by Oropeza from the rescue of the Coyote dance (The day, 11/14/24), and is linked to the struggle for the defense of water and the Yaqui cosmogony.

The journalist explained that, Culturally, the Justice Plan for the Yaqui people failed them, because now nothing else remains a person who knows how to dance, none of the eight villages have water and there is no way that people have enough resources to stay to exercise their culture. They have to go to work, look for life and wells.

He warned that “there is an urgency to restore the dynamics of the tribe through the river, which is the one that marks or delimits its culture, the interjet, as if it were that connection of the peoples that are fighting for the liquid.

The problems that mostly in the tribe, even with the justice plan, are dirt and water, because it has not reached them. They are supposed to inaugurated an aqueduct, but it is not active, nor the district, and the Yaquis have no water.

Daliri Oropeza remarked that the issue of liquid It crosses from the cultural to the political; That tries to narrate this book, which is based on culture, which seeks its history, but is also loaded with political potential, because it documented promises on essential resources.

He reported that the Yaqui struggle has been parallel to the fight for the river. “Seeing it dry is a matter of life for the Yaquis, because they have it not only for their cosmoexistence, but for their medicinal plants and their paths drawn through it.

The connection of the eight villages is given thanks to the torrent. How is a matter of existence of an indigenous nation to which the Mexican State has made war over the centuries, an issue as fundamental as to protect traditions and customs.

Unfulfilled promises

He exemplified with the grandparents of the community, such as Don Camilo Flores Jiménez, on whom he deals with the first story of the text. “His life is portrayed here, and in one of the last chapters his death is narrated, which happened while waiting for them to fulfill the promise of having water. Several times I went to his house, talk to him and the situation. It was deplorable. I had to get with carafes to make coffee and leave it a little.

“Every time he told me: ‘The wells are not working. The promise is from Lázaro Cárdenas, who gave us this endowment of water, but from now on it has not been fulfilled, they have only reduced it to us. ‘ They are stories that afflict people. It was the illusion of Don Camilo’s parents to return, because they were survivors of Yaquis deportation, who were taken from Sonora to Oaxaca and Yucatan to be slaves in henequene and sugar farms.

He described how his family remembered the territory and the river, and had the desire to return. Don Camilo and his family wanted to return because they remembered the caudalous, wide, abundant tributary. How do we get dry?

Oropeza mentioned that a narrative thread of his book is the river, but even dedicates a chapter to the history of its importance for the Yaquis. Not only do they want to give them water, but we worldwide live a brutal climate crisis that also hits them and, clearly, the river has to be a character. It’s alive for them.

Daliri Oropeza stressed that in the volume sketches of the Yaqui War, 1870 onwards; the Porfiriato, from 1900 to 1910; Even when they bombed them, and the impulse of claiming that people in the Mexican revolution as a process that helped them return to their territory; The post -revolutionary stage, and the mandate of President Lázaro Cárdenas.

The period of the Independence Aqueduct is more widely treated to date: “15 years of wrestling, vivid, because I think that structure was the one that ended up ‘killing’ the river. The story of how it dried is a transcendental point, ”Oropeza said.

He concluded: The tributary It is 100 percent dry; You can see the trees to the shore that are already drying too. This depends on the existence of a people. It is unfortunate that the promises of water that made them from Cárdenas have not been fulfilled, because the culture of all that indigenous nation is on the edge of the crisis.