Messoamerica

In Mexico 8.3 million indigenous people live in poverty: CONEVAL

In Mexico, 71.9% of the indigenous population, which includes 8.3 million people, was in a situation of poverty in 2016, warned the National Council for the Evaluation of Social Development Policy (Consejo Nacional de Evaluación de la Política de Desarrollo Social: Coneval), three out of 10, that is 3.2 million indigenous people presented three or more social needs and did not have the economic capacity to acquire the basic nutritional food items, which places them in a situation of extreme poverty.

In 2015, six states of the country concentrated 64.8% of the indigenous population: Oaxaca, Chiapas, Veracruz, State of Mexico, Puebla and Yucatán.

Marginalization and precariousness are aggravated when, in addition to being indigenous, they are women or older adults, according to Coneval’s Evaluation Report of the Social Development Policy 2018.

The education levels of this vulnerable population group are very low, 50.3% have primary education (elementary).

Trump administration plans drilling on ancestral tribal territory

The Trump administration is planning to allow oil and gas drilling on ancestral territory in New Mexico despite pledges to seek additional views from tribes.

The lease sale includes federal land near Chaco Culture National Historical Park in the northwestern part of the state. Secretary of the Interior Ryan Zinke had previously said he was going to seek more study before moving forward.

“Expanded fracking in Greater Chaco further threatens irreplaceable cultural resources, as well as the health and safety of nearby communities," Sierra Club Rio Grande Chapter Organizer Miya King-Flaherty said in a press release on Tuesday. "It is unacceptable for Secretary Zinke to pay lip service to the need for cultural review and consultation while still charging ahead with plans to auction off this sacred landscape to the fossil-fuel industry.”

The All Pueblo Council of Governors, which represents the 20 Pueblo tribes in New Mexico and Texas, and the Navajo Nation are among the opponents of development near Chaco. They have called for a moratorium on development in order to protect an area where their ancestors built communities, held ceremonies and laid their loved ones to rest. 

Thank you! I specialize in Mesoamerican visual culture, and I’m particularly interested in the relationship between writing systems and their development over time. My MA thesis was an analysis of precolonial screenfold manuscripts created by the Aztec, Maya, and Mixtec people from around AD 1050 - 1500. These manuscripts are absolutely stunning to look at and, while many people assume they are simply illustrations, they actually contain a number of phonetic cues and can be considered a pictorial writing system. Below is an example from the Codex Borgia, a Mexican divinatory manual (see the British Museum for the full manuscript).

The Assassinations of Indigenous Leaders in Guatemala Trigger Fear as Political Cycle Begins

By all accounts on the morning of May 9, 2018, Luis Arturo Marroquín did not know he was being followed when he left his home to travel to a meeting in San Luis Jilotepeque, Jalapa, Guatemala. The 56-year-old was a community leader and member of the coordinating committee of the Guatemalan Campesino Development Committee (CODECA). Founded in 1992 on Guatemala’s southern coast, CODECA is a human rights organization focused on improving the conditions of the rural poor, advocating for land reform, the nationalization of energy, and the improvement of wages for both Indigenous and non-Indigenous rural workers and farmers.

Marroquín was traveling to a meeting with other members from the organization. He stopped at a small store to make a few copies before his meeting, but he would not leave alive. Shortly after his arrival, a black Toyota Hilux pickup also arrived at the store. Two men got out, entered the store and opened fire, killing Marroquín. Concerned onlookers wrote down the license plate of the vehicle, which was later identified as belonging to José Manuel Mendez Alonzo, the mayor of the nearby municipality of San Pedro Pinula, Jalapa. Mendez Alonzo is also known to be an ally of the embattled administration of President Jimmy Morales.

“The strongest hypothesis of this investigation right now is that Mr. Marroquín had intended to participate in the upcoming election, [and] that this was the primary motivation of the crime,” Pineda told Truthout. “We believe this was a politically motivated crime.”