▲ In Santa Tulita, Chihuahua, the President offered a program of small health centers.Photo Presidency
From the Editorial
La Jornada Newspaper
Sunday, December 14, 2025, p. 3
In the community of Santa Tulita, in the Tarahumara mountain range, President Claudia Sheinbaum Pardo yesterday signed a decree for the restitution and recognition of 3,07 hectares of land as communal property for the Ódami Mala Noche people.
“It is about giving you what has always been yours but had not been recognized,” he said and highlighted his commitment to making the rights of indigenous peoples a reality, as established in the second constitutional article.
“Today the government of the indigenous peoples is recognized… That is why this transformation is so important,” he noted.
He highlighted that the Contribution Fund for Social Infrastructure for Indigenous Peoples and Afro-Mexicans will amount to 13,500 million pesos in 2026, and each year it will continue to increase so that the communities decide how to use the resource that corresponds to them.
In addition, the president announced that all the families to whom the 3 thousand hectares are returned will be incorporated into the Sembrando Vida program, “so that they can be part of the forestry and agricultural production of this land.”
He listened to the most pressing needs of the residents: electricity – which Santa Tulita itself lacks –, roads, water works, repairing potholes, medicines, health services, schools, telebaccalaureates and security.
“We are already seeing that (the latest) with the National Guard, and with the governor (María Eugenia Campos) for the roads, which we already know there is that problem, to solve it.”
He offered a special program to create small health centers and analyze “how we make sure doctors stay” in the communities.
He reported that as part of the Justice Plan for the Tarahumara, the Guachochi Rural Hospital will be converted into a Subzone General Hospital to improve care, and a nursing school will be built on one side.
15 artisanal roads are being built for the benefit of 15 indigenous communities, with a length of 42.71 kilometers and an investment of 158 million pesos.
Antonio Ayala Loera, representative of the Mala Noche community, highlighted: “a long-awaited desire has been fulfilled and of which there were moments that we felt would be impossible: to be owners of the land that we have inhabited for generations.”
He asked the President to continue with the restitution of lands in other communities, as well as protection and care of forests that “little by little are being lost.”
With yesterday’s signing, there are now 6,026 hectares that are being restored in the Tarahumara mountain range, and with Sembrando Vida this year, 719 supports have been given to 20,568 producers, with an investment of 1,310 million pesos.
Ariadna Montiel, Secretary of Welfare, reported that 161 thousand Chihuahuans of the mountains receive a welfare program with an investment of 5.6 billion pesos this year alone, and 446 communities have received 380 million pesos for basic infrastructure works.
At night, the federal president inaugurated the second Free Center in Ciudad Juárez, of the 17 in Chihuahua, for women.
He stressed that it is time to dignify the rights of everyone, but particularly women. “It is time for women without violence and also for freedom and love,” she said.
