Namakasia: National and International Campaign in support of the Yaqui Tribe

 

Namakasia: National and International Campaign in support of the Yaqui Tribe

 

Because they taught us not to look at the noise that deafens and blinds

Because they taught us not to listen to the colours of trickery and money

Because they taught us to look at them and look at ourselves, to listen to them and listen to ourselves

Because they taught us that to be indigenous was to have dignity as a home and a destiny

Because they taught us not to fall but to rise up

Because they who taught us the value of being the colour of the earth

Because they taught us not to be scared

Because they taught us that to live, we must die

The Classmates IV, June 2013

 

In early 2010, with the entry into the Sonoran government of Guillermo Padres Elias, the implementation of the integrated project Sonora SI was announced to the media; this includes several construction projects, among them the independence aqueduct which would extract 75 million cubic meters of water per year from the Yaqui river to be sent to the city of Hermosillo, with this action dispossessing the Yaqui tribe of an essential resource which is theirs by right: the water from the Yaqui river.

The Yaqui tribe has gained an injunction (amparo, order for legal protection) in the Supreme Court of Justice of the Nation through which the Sonoran government must stop the extraction of water from the the Novillo dam, but the work has not stopped and two of the five pumps which make up the aqueduct remain active; this is now seriously affecting the Tribe and leaving them without water for human consumption, causing a dangerous situation for the life of the tribe because it leaves them without the means to survive in the Sonoran Desert, in addition to losing their crops due to lack of water for irrigation.

There are also serious ecological consequences: by removing the water from the Yaqui river, sea water enters the river basin causing salinization of fertile farming lands and salt contamination of the drinking water.

Faced with this situation we convoke the national and international campaign: Namakasia for the life of the Yaqui Nation with the objectives of supporting the fight to stop the theft of the water which belongs to the Yaqui tribe, strengthening the autonomous projects of the Yaqui nation, and spreading the word and the news coming from the traditional authority of the Yaqui Nation. Always walking in autonomy and self-determination.

 

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