Mexico returns territory to Indigenous Tarahumara people

By AFP

Mexican President Claudia Sheinbaum issued a decree on Friday returning more than 2,000 hectares to two communities of the Tarahumara Indigenous people in the northern state of Chihuahua, on the border with the United States.

"Today is a historic day because we are returning a land, a territory to its owners," said the president, detailing the restitution of two sections of 1,485 and 693 hectares each at a ceremony held in the Spanish and Tarahumara languages.

The Tarahumara people -- also known as the Raramuri -- live in the Sierra Tarahumara region, which is criss-crossed by seven gorges, some of them deeper than the Grand Canyon in neighboring Arizona.

Recognition of Indigenous peoples is a commitment of Sheinbaum's ruling Movement for National Regeneration (Morena).

The president's office said 4.7 billion pesos ($235 million) had been invested in a "justice plan" for the people of the Sierra Tarahumara.

In September, Morena's vast majority in the federal parliament adopted a constitutional reform that recognizes the rights of Indigenous and Afro-Mexican peoples.

The policy was initiated by former president Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador, architect of Morena's rise to power after his election in 2018.

In 2022, Lopez Obrador returned around 30,000 hectares of land to the Yaki community in the northern state of Sonora.

In Mexico, about 23.2 million people -- or 19.4 percent of the population -- self-identify as Indigenous, according to the National Statistics Institute.