The tourism industry and drug trafficking in Mexico: from the perspective of the Mayan Peoples

Written on 29 April 2022.

BY ANGEL SULUB FOR DEBATES INDÍGENAS

Before the advance of the presence of the State, the Maya Máasewáal nation lived in times of abundance. However, schools began teaching that the milpa was “poor man´s” work, whiles mass tourism turned the Mayas into a source of cheap labor. The arrival of tourists to cities such as Cancun, Playa del Carmen and Tulum resulted in a market for drug trafficking and drug dealing in the region. In the same light, the mega-project of the (misnamed) Mayan Train is bound to have destructive consequences for nature. At the same time, the tourism industry will expand to rural regions that until now have lived from the production of the land and have not suffered from organized crime. Hope lies in community organization, resistance and struggles for the defense of the land.

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Plurinationality and the Chilean constituent process: container and content for a space in dispute

Written on 22 April 2022.

 BY JUAN CARLOS CAYO RIVERA AND CONSTANZA MONTECINOS PANIAGUA FOR DEBATES INDÍGENAS

The new Constitution will establish the guidelines for Chile for the next 50 years. The Indigenous constitutional assembly members are aware of this and are therefore promoting a more complex political debate, which includes political autonomy, territorial autonomy and the recognition of legal pluralism. The recognition of Indigenous peoples' collective and individual rights will lead to a change in the nation's way of conceiving the State and its development model.

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Indigenous Peoples of Latin America in the Light of Drug Trafficking

Written on 26 April 2022.

BY GILBERTO LÓPEZ Y RIVAS FOR DEBATES INDÍGENAS

Organized crime pressures communities to grow poppy and marijuana. The strategy of "combating drug trafficking" militarizes territories and dispossesses Indigenous peoples of their natural resources. In addition to the cases of Colombia and Mexico, there is drug trafficking in Central America and on the borders between Bolivia, Ecuador and Peru. The Bowman Expeditions and the mapping of regions for U.S. strategic purposes also demonstrate the complicity of academia with neocolonialism and dispossession.

Poppy cultivation in Mexico. Photo: Salvador Cisneros

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Indigenous Peoples’ Rights and UNESCO World Heritage Sites: Submission to the UN Special Rapporteur on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples

Written on 19 April 2022.

Submission to the UN Special Rapporteur on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples for his report to the 77^th Session of the UN General Assembly:

Indigenous Peoples’ Rights and UNESCO World Heritage Sites

Jointly submitted by:

International Work Group for Indigenous Affairs (IWGIA), International Indigenous Peoples’ Forum on World Heritage (IIPFWH), Indigenous Peoples of Africa Co-ordinating Committee (IPACC)

30 March 2022

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