New book tells the story of the Yaqui’s ongoing water struggle.
Journalist Daliri Oropeza has returned to Yaqui territory with 400 copies of her book “Yaquis: the unbeatable resistance”, a collection of reports and chronicles she has written about the indigenous people’s struggle for water and dignity.
Daliri first arrived in Yaqui territory in 2014 to report on the resistance to the Independence Aqueduct, which takes water from their river to Hermosillo, leaving the tribe’s villages without water. The struggle had been repressed and there had even been political prisoners, such as Mario Luna and Fernando Jiménez, but the resistance to the aqueduct continued.
“My intention in coming here was to deal with the issue of water and the aqueduct, but also to unravel the strong history of resistance of the Yaqui, because they are a people who were even bombed by the Mexican army during the time of Porfirio Díaz”, Daliri told Raíchali in an interview that coincided with the days of Holy Week, the most important dates in Yaqui spirituality. In addition to learning about the Yaqui struggle for water, she also learned about their deep spirituality. She has since returned to continue her reporting on water, territory and Yaqui sovereignty.
“I was so impressed that I said to myself, ‘Well, I think this is a struggle that is worth fighting, because it is also the strong identity of the Yaqui, this strength that has allowed them to continue with their customs and traditions even in the face of the greatest adversity, such as the imprisonment of their comrades.”
On these trips she met people like Don Camilo Flores Jiménez, a Yaqui historian of his own people, and Raquel Padilla, a Yaqui anthropologist with whom he formed a close friendship. It was Raquel who invited Daliri to cover the revival of the Coyote Dance, a warrior dance that the tribe was losing at a key moment in their struggle for water.
Although photography and filming are strictly forbidden during Yaqui ceremonies, the village’s traditional authorities decided to make an exception and invite Daliri to document the dance. But Raquel was murdered a month before the 2019 rescue, so the ceremony was turned into a funeral rite in which the anthropologist was ‘sown’ in the Bacatete, the Yaqui’s sacred land, next to the warrior Tetabiate.
Daliri did not go to the Yaqui territory on that occasion, but returned the following year at the invitation of the traditional authorities. As a warrior dance, the ceremony was also a kind of premonition of things to come. In the book, it also marks the beginning of a new narrative, that of the Justice Plan for the Yaqui people proposed by the government of Andrés Manuel López Obrador.
“It is a complicity in which I am called to make this documentation, and at the moment that I am returning and doing this particular work, being here in the territory, I am also documenting the meetings that have taken place regarding the Justice Plan, in other words, the whole beginning of the Justice Plan has touched me a little unintentionally”, Daliri commented.
That was the year that processes began in the territory to reach an agreement between the authorities of the eight Yaqui villages and representatives of the federal government to implement the plan, which was intended to resolve the Yaqui tribe’s historic claims to their river and land.
“The heart of the book is undoubtedly water. For me, the Yaqui are heroes. Heroes of all humanity. Because by preserving their territory, by preserving their river, by preserving their customs, they are making a cultural and environmental contribution in the midst of a global climate crisis. So they are basically heroes, because they are saving not just this piece of the planet, but the lifeblood of the Earth. And the demand for water is one of the most worthy, because at the end of the day they have a historic water supply that I think has not been met.”
But through the chronicles and accounts that Daliri gathers in this book, it is clear that her approach is not to reproduce the federal government’s discourse, but to bring together the multiple voices surrounding these negotiations: those of the traditional authorities who are unhappy with the Justice Plan, those of the ordinary people who fight for water every day, and, of course, those of the federal authorities.
As she says, it was a ‘side by side’ reporting with the people.
The existence of these indigenous peoples has always been a problem for the exploitation of the Yaqui River by the Creole, mestizo or ‘yori’ governments. Through the voices of Don Camilo and Raquel, Daliri recounts the struggles and injustices they have faced, such as the war between the Yaqui and the government of Porfirio Díaz, who deported more than half of the population to work on the haciendas in the south of the country, or the decree by Lázaro Cárdenas that gave the Yaqui tribe half of the water in the Angostura dam, a right that has never been respected.
But the new justice plan has also failed to resolve the Yaqui people’s fundamental problem, which is their right to the river and their land. The journalist explains that, for example, the agreed Yaqui Aqueduct is not complete and does not bring water to the villages; the Irrigation District 18 proposed by the plan to supply their agriculture limits the amount of water available and trades their ownership of the river as an indigenous people for a government ‘concession’; and the lands returned to them were not the most fertile of the lands they claim, but the desert lands.
“Even if there is the infrastructure of the aqueduct, even if there is the infrastructure of the irrigation district, what are you going to fill that infrastructure with, what is that infrastructure going to transport? It used to be that they were the ones who resisted. Now I think it is a general demand of the tribe. Not all of them, of course, because half the people have been bought off, but it is something that is more in the conscience of the people”, says the journalist, “that they be given back the source of water from above the river and not just from Oviachic [dam]. On the other hand, they are indignant, very indignant, because it is their river, you go and take the water from the river and take it to your house. Now they want to give them a concession to pay for the water supply. They say it’s not for the service, it’s to pay for the work they do to get the water, right?”
But for the Yaqui it is not just a question of asserting their right to take water from the river whenever they want and without paying, it is a question of balance, of natural equilibrium. At the moment, the river is dry and the poplars along its banks are dying. Its flow is stopped by dams such as Angostura, El Novillo and Oviachic, diverted by aqueducts such as Independencia and used for intensive agro-industry. There is also the growing threat of lithium mining in the region, which would require huge amounts of water.
“What they want is the return of their ecosystem, it’s not just a question of wanting water to drink, it’s a question of ‘we want to continue to live with our uses and customs, with our rhythms, and that can only happen if we have our ecological system in balance”, explains the journalist, “for example, a group of women camp nearby and organise events near the river to make the new generations who have never seen a river aware that there is one. I have seen that there are tours on the river for the new generations, so that they know what the Footprint is”.
The book gathers the feelings of the population – or as they call themselves, ‘la tropa’ – towards the negotiations of the Justice Plan and explains the context in which they took place, a history that stretches from the times of the Porfiriato to the government of the 4Ts. It is these words and feelings that he is now giving back to the Yaqui communities, as he has previously given them reports or photographs.
There are currently six amparos filed by traditional authorities and members of the armed forces against the decisions made in the Justice Plan. However, there is a not very encouraging precedent: an amparo filed by the Yaqui against the aqueduct that brings water from the river to the city of Hermosillo has never been respected. Times have changed and the Yaqui people are increasingly aware and organised in the face of this dispossession, says the journalist.
“I think that all the Yaquis are aware, in one way or another, of the history of slavery, of the history of exile that they have lived through. I think they are also aware of the history of when Lázaro Cárdenas gave them water. Within the Yaquis there is a strong imprint of this memory of struggle, that this is an episode, and I hope that this book will contribute to sustaining the struggles that are to come, so that it is not forgotten that even within the most progressive government that Mexico has had recently, progressive in quotes of course, but even within this Mexican context of supposed transformation, there has been no transformation and the Yaquis can continue to struggle and must continue to struggle. So this book for me is a dream that would be that point of union where they would say, is it worth it for us to do things the way they have always been done for the tribe? With or without the government? But the most important thing for me was to present and give back to the Yaquis the word they shared with me.”
During her tour of presentations in Yaqui territory, the journalist made presentations to the authorities of the Traditional Guard of the Loma de Bácum in the Telesecundaria 146 in Loma de Bácum; to the authorities of the First Sacred Church in the town of Huirivis; to the Troop of the Loma de Bácum in the town of Huirivis; and to the Troop of the Loma de Bácum in the town of Huirivis; and with the troop of the Loma de Bácum in the town of Loma de Bácum; with the troop of the Loma de Guamúchil; with the authorities of the Guardia in the villages of Vícam via Guaytana, Belén Pitahaya and Pótam; with the students, family members and teachers of the Secundaria técnica 23 in Pótam; and in Cajeme, Ciudad Obregón. The book was distributed free of charge. It will then be available in bookshops and will be presented at the Rosa Luxemburg Foundation in Mexico City on 13 March 2025.
