Northwest Mexico Showdown on Indigenous Fishing Rights

Frontera NorteSur

A long-running dispute over indigenous fishing rights in the Gulf of California, or Sea of Cortez, has flared up again. Armed Mexican marines and federal police helped environmental and legal authorities confiscate 9 tons of gulf corvina from a Cucapah fishing community last week.

"We're surrounded by federal police and soldiers as if we were delinquents," said Cucapah leader Hilda Hurtado. "The federal government's action is very denigrating. It's very bad. We are indigenous and fisherwomen who work from March to May in order to live the entire year."

Bernabe Esquer, the Baja California state delegate for Mexico's Attorney General for Environmental Protection, said that the confiscated fish, which amounted to three days' harvest, were caught without the proper permits.

A ban on snagging corvina is in effect from the beginning of May to the end of August in order to protect the species during reproduction season and prevent its extinction, Esquer said. In 1993, the upper portion of the Gulf of California and Colorado River Delta, where the Cucapah-federal conflict is underway, was declared a protected federal biosphere subject to fishing restrictions. Esquer added that his agency, supported by the Mexican navy, will begin patrolling the upper Gulf of California and San Felipe area to enforce the fishing ban beginning next week.

Non-indigenous fishermen tipped off federal authorities that Cucapahs were allegedly harvesting fish in violation of the summer ban last week. "We respect it, but they do not…," said Carlos Tirado, spokesman for fishermen from the community of Santa Clara. Tirado said that he did not understand why the Cucapahs were not respecting a federal law designed to protect a marine species.

Cucapah leaders and legal representatives maintained that current federal regulations ignore centuries of indigenous traditions and uses. Alejandra Navarro, a researcher with the Autonomous University of Baja California, contended that Mexico's federal government has not delivered scientific studies solicited by the Cucapah group that would prove the need for the fishing restrictions.

"What do they want us to do in order to survive?" Hurtado said. "This is honorable work, and we are proud to be indigenous people and fisherwomen. Maybe there are few of us Cucapahs, and we do not generate a lot of votes, but the government has gone too far and we don't know what is going to happen."

An estimated 150 Cucapah families depend on fishing in the Gulf of California and Colorado River Delta. Almost two years ago, the indigenous-federal conflict drew some international attention. Garnering the backing of the Zapatista-inspired “Other Campaign,” Subcomandante Marcos visited the Cucapah to show his support of their cause.

© 2008 Frontera NorteSur

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