Amicus Curiae in support of the right of the Union of Residents of Chablekal to guard the mountain

Mérida, Yucatán, Mexico, December 13, 2022. Researchers from the CLACSO Working Group on Bodies, Territories, and Resistances submitted an amicus curiae brief (friend of the court) , a document that can be presented to the relevant court due to a group's interest in the situation or issue. In this case, the brief was submitted so that the agrarian judge could consider it in their ruling. The document was presented last Friday to the Unitary Agrarian Court (TUA) Number 34, located in the city of Mérida.

The Union of Residents of Chablekal is a group, as its name indicates, of residents that was formed in 2014 in response to the excessive sale of land by ejido members to real estate developers. These sales began in 2000, and since then, this town has sold 80% of its territory. For this reason, the residents question why a group of 300 people should decide the future of the territory of an entire town.

The discontent intensified when they began selling off the communal lands, those intended for the use and enjoyment of the entire community, not just the ejido members. “Chablekal is an Indigenous community, and the ancestral lands have been, and continue to be, part of our territory,” the document states. This realization spurred them to take possession in 2014, when their struggle began, of the Misnebalam forest, which comprises 286 hectares and which the residents have described as “the last corner of Chablekal’s ancestral territory.”

The importance of this mountain lies in its status as a sacred space due to the presence of cenotes and pre-Hispanic mounds. In 2018, a ceremony was held at the foot of the nojoch múul , or main mound, to give thanks for the struggle; a description of the ceremony can be found in the document. Furthermore, Misnebalam is also important because its young custodians consider it a kind of ecological reserve with a diversity of native plants (with medicinal, forestry, and timber uses, among others) and animals (such as the Yuya, the deer, and the wild turkey, among others).

These are some of the elements that the undersigned researchers considered when drafting the amicus brief , in which they argue, from the perspective of Mayan culture and worldview, their right to be custodians of these forests. Additionally, since November 2016, they have obtained a precautionary measure from the Agrarian Court (TUA) to prevent these forests from being affected by the ejido commissioner; that is, they cannot be sold, rented, usurped, subdivided, or subjected to any other action while the legal proceedings are underway. The message from the Union of Residents is that the land does not belong solely to those who work it, but also to those who care for it, protect it, and defend it.

The CLACSO Working Group on Bodies, Territories, and Resistance is an interdisciplinary network comprised of 45 researchers from 15 countries in Latin America and the Caribbean. One of the pillars of this Working Group is to contribute, through socially engaged research, to the struggles resisting dispossession—structural, historical, symbolic, epistemic, and systemic—in order to support their demands for the recognition of their rights and freedoms in practice, not just on paper.

December 13th 2022
CLACSO Working Group
Bodies, territories, resistances

This statement expresses the position of the CLACSO Working Group on Bodies, Territories, Resistances and not necessarily that of the centers and institutions that make up the CLACSO international network, its Steering Committee or its Executive Secretariat.