Statement for immediate action in the Nahua community of Santa María Ostula

We demand immediate action from the state and federal governments to dismantle the criminal groups that are attacking the Nahua community of Santa María Ostula (Michoacán, Mexico)!

To the Mexican State and Federal Governments
To National and International Civil Society
To National and International Human Rights Organizations
To the Press
To the Free Media
To the Indigenous Peoples of Mexico and the World

In the first days of July 2024, the indigenous community of Santa María Ostula, located in the Mexican state of Michoacán, once again suffered a brutal attack by the Jalisco New Generation Cartel (CJNG). The armed attacks intensified and have placed the civilian population at grave risk. As always, the community responded with exemplary resistance and has demanded that state and federal authorities stop these attacks, but their pleas have gone unanswered.

These acts of violence occur within the context of the dispute over natural resources in the Michoacán coastal highlands: minerals, precious woods, and beaches for tourism. Mining concessions for gold, silver, and iron exist on Nahua territory. The community of Ostula has managed to protect and defend its territory from the incursion of one of the world's largest mining companies, Ternium, which has generated a climate of violence in the neighboring community of Aquila due to its voracious exploitation of its mineral resources.

Narco-capitalist violence and state inaction in the face of these acts appear today as the new normal. As we have witnessed in various countries ravaged by drug wars, especially Colombia, Ecuador, and Mexico, networks of violence against Indigenous peoples are a strategy for dispossession; they sow terror, fragment communities, displace them, and ultimately, facilitate the entry of all kinds of illicit businesses into Indigenous territories.

As members of CLACSO Working Group on Bodies, Territories, Resistances (GT Cuter) We join the many voices demanding immediate action to dismantle criminal groups and to respect the self-determination and autonomy of this community under brutal siege.

Respect their communal forms of security! Ostula is not alone!

For more information see https://www.facebook.com/share/p/zG2vbr4NgxotUSuB/?mibextid=oFDknk

July 8, 2024
Planet Earth
CLACSO Working Group
Bodies, territories, resistances

This text expresses the position of the aforementioned Working Group and not necessarily that of the centers and institutions that make up the CLACSO international network, its Steering Committee or its Executive Secretariat.