Indigenous Self-Determination and Drug Trafficking in Mexico’s Tarahumara Region

IN OCTOBER 2018, Julián Carrillo Martínez, an indigenous Rarámuri defender, was killed in his community of Coloradas de la Virgen, located in the municipality of Guadalupe y Calvo, in the northern state of Chihuahua, Mexico. Together with his community, Julián had actively defended indigenous Rarámuri lands and forests against dispossession by different actors, members of drug-trafficking organizations among them.Julián’s murder is the tip of the iceberg. Every day, indigenous people in the Tarahumara region face acts of racial violence that affect their land, their natural resources, and their lives. These include the imposition of extractive projects such as logging, mining, and tourism, and the implementation of public policies that serve to erase the indigenous population as political subjects, treating them instead as if they were children. Drug trafficking has been part of this assault for the last twenty years or more, a powerful phenomenon that solidifies the privileged position of the region’s mestizo1 men while dispossessing indigenous people.
In what follows, I explain briefly how Rarámuri self-determination is being challenged and transformed by drug-trafficking groups. These observations are based on my nine years’ experience working in the region as a lawyer2 and researcher in support of Rarámuri territorial rights. I do not suggest that Rarámuri communities can be represented in a monolithic or heterogeneous way, as their experiences are diverse and not identical. But I do bring to light the criticism of academic colleagues with respect to the effects of drug trafficking on indigenous communities in Tarahumara, and offer my limited experience and knowledge as a tool to support the indigenous struggle for survivance.3