Mining access denied in sacred Indigenous area

Indigenous Wixárika people pilgrimage every year to Wirikuta, a desert landscape encompassing sites sacred to them. (Top photo by Sincronía Wixárika, index photo by Sebastián Suki Beláustegui.)

A Mexican court has ordered the cancellation of 43 mining concessions in the San Luís Potosí state Protected Area of Wirikuta, a sacred territory of the Indigenous Wixárika people. The precedent-setting, March 11 ruling by the presiding judge of the Fourth Federal District Court of San Luis Potosí state could end 15 years of legal proceedings over local mining efforts, which are aimed mainly at extracting gold and silver. But the Wixárika Indigenous communities, also known as Huicholes, fault the ruling for failing to cancel an additional 30 or so mining concessions on the outskirts of the 140,212-hectare (346,471-acre) protected area, 20 of which belong to the Vancouver-based Canadian mining company First Majestic Silver Corp. The Wixárika say that given the hydrology of the region, development of these outlying concessions will pose a threat to the protected area’s water resources. The Wixárika number some 50,000, with... Read more →