Indigenous People Under Threat

The Tarahumara and Tepehuan, Mexico’s most isolated indigenous peoples who number around 100,000 and 120,000 respectively, are under threat from a deadly combination of drug traffickers and loggers. These two tribes live mainly in the western Sierra Madre in the area of Chihuahua in Northern Mexico, and until now have avoided contact with the destructive forces of civilisation and have maintained an agricultural way of life supplemented by gathering and hunting. Logging is seriously depleting the forest where the Tarahumara and Tepehuan live and many of them see little option but to move to the cities, where they end up in squalid shanty towns. Many of the loggers, who are working illegally, are co-operating with drug traffickers. The two large Mexican Cartels who control the trade in drugs have tried to seize control of the Indians land, and people who have tried to resist this have been imprisoned, tortured and murdered. For more details on this and other indigenous people’s struggles, and what you can do to help, contact Survival International on: 0171 242 1441.