This article was originally published in Spanish by Avispa Midia.
Leer este artículo en español.
She is known as “La Mexicana.” She is an Indigenous Nahua woman, over fifty years old. In her firm stare she holds like a secret the most decisive moments in the last fifteen years of her life “doing resistance,” as she says. She’s learned how to overcome the threats from organized crime on her lands. First it was the Familia Michoacana Cartel, she says, then it was the Knights Templar, and now the Jalisco New Generation Cartel (CJNG).
Her name is Teresa Regis Nicolás. After the death of her father, she returned to her native land from the United States 15 years ago for the legacy that he left her: to fight for the communal lands that belong to the Indigenous people of Santa María Ostula, in municipality of Aquila, located in the state of Michoacán. These lands extend to Mexico’s pacific coast.
It was 2009. It had only been three months since the community had carried out an armed recuperation of a fraction of their lands. Today, Teresa, her children, and more than 70 Indigenous families live on the recovered territory, now known as Xayakalan. Prior to the recuperation, they were in the hands of landowners connected to organized crime who had acquired property titles. The Indigenous people have titles for their communal lands from a 1964 presidential decree and the original titles from the 1700’s that prove the land to be theirs.
Xayakalan became the 24th village that is part of Ostula, what the local people call encargaturas, similar to municipal agencies. While Teresa wasn’t involved in the recovery of the lands, she was one of the first eight families that settled there three months later. “Since then, we have resisted,” recalls La Mexicana.
Community members recount that since 1997 they had prepared these lands to be planted, before they were taken over by landowners. In June 2003 they decided for the first time to physically establish themselves on the lands, constructing a series of adobe homes. In September of that year, the homes were torn down. In 2004, the landowners successfully sued the Indigenous people for usurping private property.
In 2008, the Agrarian Court of Colima decided that these lands—highly productive and with a paradise-like beach—were the property of those who had filed the lawsuits. According to the community members, these people were linked at that time to the Knights Templar Cartel.
From that moment on, for a year and two months, members of the communal council of Ostula began to mobilize in silence. In general assemblies, each of the 23 encargaturas were consulted about the idea of taking action to recover the lands. Afterwards, they decided to name the lands Xayakalan. “That is how we began to struggle in defense. The decision was made in April 2008, we had to recuperate these lands,” says Evaristo Domínguez Ramos, an Ostula community member.
The brave action to recover the lands was organized by community members who maintained their plans secret, until June 29, 2009, when dozens of Indigenous men and women participated. “It has not been easy,” says Domínguez. “It has cost many lives.”
During these years of struggle, 44 Indigenous people have been killed, and, according to the Michoacan Public Prosecutor’s Office, five people were disappeared between 2009 and 2014. Among the disappeared is the 62-year-old communal lands commissioner, Francisco de Asís Manuel, who was kidnapped from his home in the village of Palma Sola.
On June 28 and 29, the Nahua community celebrated the 15th anniversary since they have had control of their lands. They shared memories of the most difficult moments they have lived through, remembered the dead and disappeared, and danced and sang accompanied by solidarity groups who supported their struggle.
One of the participants at the event remembered that during the recovery on the Michoacán coast it was crab season, when locals often collect the crabs that come out during the rains. On the day of the recuperation an armed commando said, “´You Indian sons of bitches, there are no crabs here!” and shot at them with ak-47 rifles. “There were three elderly folks with us. One man stayed behind. Because he is brave he said to the armed men, ‘kill me if you want. I’m not afraid.’”
This campesino from the encargatura La Labor, who participated in the land reclamation, recounts that community members resisted for 15 days until there was no more food. “Later the women arrived with only charalitos (small fish), and 15 years later, we are still fighting.”
Teresa lived the everyday experience after the recovery. A lump develops in her throat and she gathers her courage as she explains, “We’ve been through difficult times, sad times, frightful times, but also beautiful times, like the mutual aid in the community.” While there were many families at first, Teresa noted that one point, there were only eight families. “Today it is truly a community,” she shares while smiling as she look at the children that have been born on these reclaimed lands, who now count more than double the adult population.
Teresa, like the rest of the women in Xayakalan, is cheerful because it is a day of celebrating the land reclamation. The children run and blend in with the landscape near the ocean, and as the wind brings the waves it also brings the smell of food to the community. “It is time to celebrate that we are still alive. To remember our dead, so that we never give up the struggle,” says La Mexicana.
Rectification of Dispossession?
In the new community of Xayakalan, the only way to survive was to make life. New couples emerged who decided to struggle together, giving birth to children while resisting constant attacks from organized crime. Today there are more than 70 families who live together in the community, where they’ve built a church and everyone has a house and two parcels to farm.
“My son is from here, he was born here, his umbilical cord is buried here,” Teresa explains with pride. “There are now more than 150 children in the community. We have the responsibility of teaching them the extension of our lands, just as our grandparents did. I’ve taken my son to the edges of Ostula, so he will never forget.”
On August 11, 2023, the community received a judicial notification of a so-called “forced rectification of limits” of the lands, allowing the entry of governmental personal to rectify the properties of the plaintiffs with the potential intervention of the military and National Guard.
This ruling was emitted by Judge Arturo Bernal Lastiri, who has been accused by the Indigenous Nahuas of San Miguel de Aquila of supporting an unknown lands commissioner who is allowing the exploitation of minerals in the region. They demanded his removal in 2022 at the offices of the local Colima Agrarian Court.
Before this legal resolution was handed down, there was a decade-long legal process, from 2009-2019, that began during the reclamation of the 1,200 hectares that today have been converted into Xayakalan. In 2009 the court ruled in favor of re-ratifying measurements, considering fixed landmarks like the ocean, mountains, and rivers.
Despite the addition of new elements of evidence—including original titles dating back to the 1700s that detail the limits of Ostula extending beyond the disputed strip—the court ruled in favor of the landowners. They used old measurements, which “are wrong” says the lawyer for the community, Carlos Gonzales.
Following a request from Ostula for a review of the 2019 sentence and another appeal, Judge Bernal Lastiri once again ruled in favor of the landowners in August 2023, ordering the forced intervention of Xayakalan.
“We mobilized and they never came to execute the order,” explains Jeronimo Flores, member of the communal council. “We imagine that they realized our organization is very solid.”
Indeed, it is. In August of last year, more than 600-armed Indigenous people were deployed both inside Xayakalan and outside its boundaries to impede any intervention into their territory. Afterwards, “the court decided to suspend the enforcement of the order,” says Gonzales.
However, the order only suspends the intervention temporarily, until a new ruling is handed down. If they do not get a response in favor of Ostula, they will have to resort to an international lawsuit. “Regardless, nobody will remove us from Xayakalan,” says Teresa, who has received death threats and been directly harassed by organized crime.
She says the community is more organized than ever. “We are safe because we have our communal guard. Here, not the army, nor the marines, nor any governmental force enters into our community without permission.”
Autonomous Security
One of the principal strengths of this resistance process of resistance is its communal guard and capacity for rapid mobilization. The community member Evaristo explains that “communal guard members are named by each encargatura in their assemblies,” each one is armed and prepared for any type of aggression. “They watch over the security of Ostula,” says Evaristo.
In 2018, Teresa was the first woman to be named by Xayakalan as a representative of its inhabitants. “If there is a problem, a collective work day, or even a party, we resolve it collectively,” says Teresa, who served for one year and then integrated into the rest of the community’s activities.
It is well known by inhabitants of the surrounding communities that the area was occupied by the Knights Templar cartel as a base of operations. Boats arrived on the beach to unload drugs.
After the land reclamation, Teresa was threatened. A man known as “Chalano,” Prisiliano Corona Sánchez, held a rifle a rifle to her back. “It was a very difficult time, the community had been weakened," says Teresa.
Community members who withheld their names for security reasons also accuse Iturbide Alejo, known as “El Turbinas,” and Margarita Pérez, known as “La Usurpadora,” of threatening to kill Trinidad de la Cruz Crisóstomo. Crosóstomo was later assassinated, in December 2011.
In addition to being of interest to organized crime, the area where Xayakalan is located is part of the Regional Plan for Integral Tourist Development of the Coast of Michoacan, a tourist corridor seeking investments to build resorts for national and international tourism. According to the strategy presented during the administration of Felipe Calderon (2006-2012), the lands that have been recovered by the community were slated for a real estate development project that included golf courses, stores, an aquatic park, museums, night life, and restaurants.
The Avispa team also reviewed data on active mining concessions, solicited from the Secretariat of Economy. They found that just in Aquila alone, where Ostula’s 24 encargaturas are located, there are 53 active mining concessions. At least sixteen belong to Las Encinas S.A., part of the Ternium manufacturing company, Latin America’s largest steel producer.
This company is directly linked to the Jalisco New Generation Cartel and with the disappearances of the lawyer Ricardo Lagunes Gasca and Aquila community leader Antonio Díaz Valencia. According to an investigation carried out by the media outlet A Donde Van los Desaparecidos, these disappearances are connected to “the social and legal struggle they [the activists] have maintained against Ternium since 2019.”
This same cartel maintains constant attacks on the encargatura La Cofradía, where there are at least two mining concessions: concession 223431 belonging to Ternium, and 217537 belonging to Servicios Minerometalurgicos de Occidente, together totaling more than 2,500 hectares (more than 6,100 acres).
In the municipality of Aquila, Ternium holds more than 147,000 hectares of land concessions, according to information solicited from the Secretariat of Economy. These Indigenous lands are rich in minerals, wood, and other natural resources, and untapped wealth that is under dispute between different organized crime groups. As the years of struggle have passed, “we have been on constant alert at all times,” says Flores.
Evaristo adds that the communal guard is always on alert “because our security depends on them. We have to teach the youth because their participation is necessary, so that they can provide their services to the community.”
“We have endured years of attacks from different cartels, and we aren’t going to let down our guard. We will continue organizing and resisting, defending our lands,” says Flores.
For Teresa, it is important to strengthen the organization, “Because if we are united, they can’t do anything to us. We have to provide an example to our children, grandchildren, and all the kids, so that the organizing never comes to an end,” she shares at the 15th anniversary celebration of Xayakalan.
Just a couple days after the festivities, the community denounced in a communique that the Jalisco New Generation Cartel “attacked the Indigenous community of Santa María Ostula with brutal violence.” This attack was more aggressive than previous ones, with drones and high caliber weapons used against houses, a school, and common spaces during the night of July 3. The attacks have been constant and the government doesn’t seem to care. For this reason, there is a saying depicted on the murals and signs at the community organized security checkpoint: “In Ostula, the struggle for security is permanent.”
Santiago Navarro F is an economist, journalist, photographer, and documentary filmmaker. He is co-founder of the investigative journalism portal Avispa Mídia, a contributor to the Truthout, and a prominent member of the Connectas Journalistic Community.
Regina López is a photographer and journalist. She has published in media such as Subversiones and Avispa Mídia.
