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Last November 26, around 5 in the afternoon, an armed attack was recorded on the El Caracol property, property of the Wixárika and Tepehuana autonomous community of San Lorenzo de Azqueltán, municipality of Villa Guerrero, Jalisco, Mexico (https://bit.ly/3XwSKPl).
As a result of the attack, the murder of Marcos Aguilar Rojas, an agrarian representative of the community, was confirmed. For his part, Gabriel Aguilar Rojas suffered gunshot wounds. The news was announced through a statement issued by the National Indigenous Congress (CNI, https://bit.ly/4izzgDh).
The offensive rhetoric of government agencies soon tried to present the facts as a conflict between individuals over a land dispute. The reality turns out to be very different and is explained to some extent by history. At the outset, we must recognize that the Wixárika and Tepehuana autonomous community of San Lorenzo de Azqueltán has a historical and ancient existence as indigenous peoples. Archaeological and historical sources indicate its existence before the European invasion. For example, by the 16th century, upon the arrival of the Spanish, the Tepehuanos were distributed over a large territory that was within what was later called La Nueva Vizcaya. Sources indicate a Tepehuana occupation up to the Bolaños Canyon and the Sierra del Tepeque, what is today Durango, areas of Chihuahua and Sonora, as well as Zacatecas and northern Nayarit and Jalisco.
In fact, the chronicles of the Spanish recognized since then that Tepehuans lived in the Bolaños Canyon. In the same canyon there is an archaeological vestige, specifically on the Colotlán hill (ceremonial center of the Azqueltán community). It should be noted that the territory is characterized by being a border area, which explains why the community is made up of both Wixáricas and Tepehuanos.
In colonial times, Azqueltán was under the command of the Presidio of San Luis Colotlán, it was a border command that used the natives as a militia to keep the area safe, especially from the Nayaritas who were “pacified” until 1723. In 1777, Azqueltán received a Royal Decree that established the limits of the territory, which was recognized as 94 thousand hectares. Beginning in the 19th century, the area underwent major political-administrative changes. The Kingdom of New Galicia, which at the end of the colonial era became the Municipality of Guadalajara, became the state of Jalisco, and the area was divided into two parties that would later be named cantons: Bolaños and Colotlán, although over time they would be divided into municipalities; The municipality of Totatiche was formed around Azqueltán and later became the current Villa Guerrero, which has existed since 1921.
It should be noted that the borders that the Mexican nation state imposed on the territories of the native nations – barely 200 years ago – together with the Eurocentric vision of the history of Mexico, led to the assumption that, since independence, the peoples are part of a municipality, state or federation. Going so far as to say that there are Tepehuanos from Durango or Zacatecas, when in reality the towns existed before the arrival of their delimitations, which only legitimized the dispossession and looting of ancestral territories.
During the last five years, attacks and attempts at territorial dispossession by chiefs, in collusion with organized crime, have intensified. A review of the statements issued by the community, in that period, shows us how the violence has worsened. Manuel de Jesús Aguilar Herrera, known for being linked to the violent chief Fabio Flores Sánchez, The Cockare characters who have established a buoyant chiefdom in the area, structured in illegal economies and in collusion with the state authorities. It is not unusual to understand that they are responsible for the attacks, invasions and murders that occur in the autonomous community of San Lorenzo de Azqueltán (https://bit.ly/3KwwTEJ).
Finally, we must point out that San Lorenzo de Azqueltán is an indigenous town, descending “from populations that lived in the current territory of the country when colonization began and that preserve their own social, economic, cultural and political institutions, or part of them,” as established in Article 2 of the Constitution. Indeed, its inhabitants preserve their own way of life, highlighting – among other cultural elements – a long-term historical memory; a particular relationship with the land based on the regime of communal possession and occupation, which generates and gives meaning to the normative systems of the community; an alternative health system based on traditional medicine; a set of religious festivals, the celebration of which implies a system of assigning positions; the existence of its own communal government and the participation of its inhabitants in communal work. These cultural specificities allow the inhabitants to identify with each other and ascribe themselves as indigenous people. In this regard, article 2 of ILO Convention number 169 on Indigenous and Tribal Peoples, as well as article 2 of the Constitution, establish that “awareness of their indigenous identity must be a fundamental criterion for determining” indigenous peoples.
* Doctor in anthropology. Research Professor at the University of Guadalajara.
