ACADEMIC INVESTIGATION: INDIGENOUS COMMUNITIES IN BAJA CALIFORNIA: COCOPAH´S CASE
Natalia Luján
INDIGENOUS COMMUNITIES IN BAJA CALIFORNIA: CUCAPAS CASE
INVESTIGATION QUESTION: How does the government´s environmental laws affect and endanger Cucapas indigenous communities and traditions in Baja California, instead of protecting them?
ABSTRACT:
Cucapas are a group of indigenous people who live in the northern state of Baja California, Mexico and in the states of California and Arizona in the United States (Navarro, 2017). They are one of the seven communities of indigenous people of Yuman-language speaking people who occupied lands along the Colorado River (www.cocopah.com), and one of the five original indigenous groups in the state of Baja California, along with Cochimi, Kiliwa, Kumai and Paipai, who have inhabited the area from more than four hundred years ago. (PBI, 2012)
These groups have had a rough development. The climate they inhabit is mainly deserted, with not enough water to sustain proper agriculture. This, along with the construction of the Hoover Dam, which reduces the water flow of the river they fish in, and depend on to live, the Colorado (Navarro, 2017). The relationship with this river is strong, to the point that the word Cucapá means “the river people” (PBI, 2012)
Due to interests in the region, they live in because of the natural resources that are found in their territory, they have been forced to relocate their fishing activities to the Colorado River delta, in Baja California´s state north-east region (PBI 2012). The government, which has made the minimal effort to help these communities, had given them the chance to fish on a certain part of the river and the sea. The problem is, this area is also environmentally protected due to the vaquita marina and to avoid the totoabas black market.
So now, for more than ten years, the Cucapas have been legally fighting for their right to maintain their tradition to go fishing, even though it is legally prohibited in the new laws that the government has failed to adapt to this groups (Navarro, 2017). These five groups, Cochimi, Kiliwa, Kumai and Paipai, are among the most endangered in Mexico according to the National Commission for the Development of Indigenous Peoples (CDI). (PBI, 2012)
CUCAPAS HISTORY AND BACKROUNDS
The Cucapas, for centuries, have maintained their traditional and cultural beliefs through the various political environments and ever changing-landscapes. Cucapah territory, at least during the last 400 years, included the slopes of the sierra Cucapah, the Rio Hardy, and the lower delta of the Colorado River. (Baja Comunidad, 2017)
Diaries and journals kept by travelers along the Colorado River and migrants into the West documented the Cocopah people. When Don Juan de Onate and Father Escobar sailed up the river, there were estimated to be about 6,000–7,000 Cocopah people living along the delta and the lower Colorado River (Cocopah Indian Tribe, 2017). Throughout the mid 1800s and early 1900s, the Cocopah Indian Tribe effectively resisted assimilation to an established reservation and maintained its social, religious and cultural identities. (Cocopah Indian Tribe, 2017)
The story of indigenous peoples of the Baja Peninsula is a sad one, according to John P. Schmal, a historian, genealogist, and lecturer. This indigenous groups live in an arid environment, and their susceptibility to the ravages of war and disease is accentuated by their marginal existence.
One thing that has not changed among the Cucapas is their main cultural and economical activity, which is fishing. Every year, they go to the Colorado River Delta, and fish the curvina, a saltwater fish that is highly priced in South America as a food fish.
Even though the Cucapas have tried to adapt to the modern ways of living according to the Mexican government, it is true that their geographical location makes it hard for them to have basic access to healthcare and security services. (Navarro, 2017)
The ancient Cucapas , fished and hunted deer, rabbit, moles, mountain lion and coyote. They also collected a wide variety of desert products, including cactus flowers, potatoes, and wild wheat. The previous image shows a map with the actual organization of the Cucapa territory.
Geography plays an important part in the consolidation of culture, and the first cultural break that can be observed in the Cucapa tribe can be tracked down to the year 1848, when the Treaty of Guadalupe Hidalgo was signed. With a divided border, Cucapas adapted differently on each country. Tribal lands between the two countries were separated.
“The most significant line slashing through the Colorado delta, is te international border between the United States and Mexico. Prior to the setting of the border, indigenous peoples in this region had territories that stretched into what today are two different national geographies. “ (Muelhmann, 2013)
Even the way and name to address to the Cucapas changed. Cocopah to the United States, and the Cucapá, for Mexico. Tribal unity between the two tribes is inexistent nowadays. (Cocopah Indian Tribe)
As the Cocopah have a specific guarded zone to live in, and inclusively have been successful to adapt to the American culture to the point in which they have established casinos and resorts, the Cucapas struggle with the Mexican government and the environmental laws that do not allow them to fish in their traditional water territory since 1993 ,with the creation of the Ministry of Environment and Natural Resources (SEMARNAT, in Spanish), the ‘Upper Gulf of California and Colorado River Delta’ Biosphere Reserve. (PBI, 2012).
This actions resulted into the creation of environmental laws, which had the purpose of conserve the region´s ecosystem.
The Cucapas where not consulted during this process at all, and the reserve’s core protection zone (zona núcleo) was established in territory which the Cucapa consider ancestral lands, where they have lived and fished for thousands of years. (Navarro, 2017). This way, the Cucapas where forbidden to do what they have always done to survive, fishing. (Rivera, PBI 2012)
The response of the Cucapas was to organize themselves into a cooperative that could allow them to demand their rights as a group. This rights, called traditional or differentiated rights, because they are different of those of people who do not belong to an indigenous group. Under this definition of right, they could demand access to natural resources, even if they are found inside a biospherical reserve, just because is their ancestral tradition. (Navarro, 2017)
The following abstract of a 2012 Peace Brigades International report, examples the harsh situation that the Cucapas have handled over the past years:
In 2002, after the Cucapa had made their complaint, the National Human Rights responded with Recommendation 008/2002. The CNDH recognised the Cucapa as traditional owners in accordance with article 2 of the Mexican Constitution, as well as their cultural relationship to fishing. In the Recommendation, the CNDH asked Semarnat and the Ministry of Agriculture (Secretaría de Agricultura) to modify and apply the policies which would permit the Cucapa to exercise their right to fish in the reserve’s core protection zone.
The law which authorised the establishment of the reserve — the General Law of Ecological Balance and Environmental Protection (Ley General del Equilibrio Ecológico y la Protección al Ambiente, LGEEPA) — does not explicitly forbid this right.
Despite this recommendation, the Cucapa still do not have an exclusive area for fishing, although their do maintain their fishing activities. They have been accused of bringing in a threatened species — the curvina golfina — but the Cucapa allege that the fish is not actually endangered, and that the quantities they catch have no impact on the species’ survival.
CCDH members have reported that the inspectors sent by the Federal Attorney General’s Office for Environmental Protection (Procuraduría Federal de Protección al Ambiente, PROFEPA) — the body responsible for the protection of threatened species — are accompanied by soldiers and marines during their inspections. “The soldiers are the intimidating ones, they threaten the indigenous people so they can’t go in [to the core protection zone] to fish.”
With this report, it is easy to conclude that the Cucapas not only have to fight with natural obstacles such as the changing tides that let them fish the curvina, or the arid conditions that do not allow them to have a constant agriculture. The Mexican government is enhanced by the international pressure to put up a reserve to save and protect the vaquita marina, but has to pay the price by affecting Cucapas. Also, the way the Cucapas fished has changed, too. If they used traditional elements and boats to go fishing, now they have had to change to modern motor-powered embarcations, so that they can go deeper into the sea and fish in the protected area, only to face authorities and marines that use violence to keep them away of the nuclear zone.
CONCLUSION
Cucapá people face many challenges as a tribe. They stand in a line in which the government must make some difficult decisions to keep the peace. To place a restricted area for the protection and the conservation of the natural resources initially aimed to protect the lands of the Cucapá as well. Over the time, corruption has led the natural resources legal exploitation rights into the wrong hands. Also, to preserve animal wildlife, government has to do really specific studies to show where the Cucapás can fish without endangering any species. Ilegal totoaba market could be eradicated or at least diminished if the fishermen had secure jobs. The problem is, how to secure that only the Cucapá are the ones who are fishing? Fishermen without differentiated rights have already attempted to go fishing pretending to be Cucapás. Enforcing the laws and the security without crossing the violence line is difficult for the government to establish, and even harder for the indigenous tribes to accept.
Cucapás have already started to learn about law terms, so they can fight. Women play an important role in organizing and leading Cocopah resistance by demanding the rights to remain in their territory and use natural resources especially for fishing (Navarro, 2016).
They adapt, and they survive with the help of some lawyers and activists in the territory. They ask the government for special permissions to go fishing in the meantime, while they wait for their demands via legal procedures to be approved. But this cannot last forever.
Education, security, healthcare prevention. Those are privileges that, unless the authorities take seriously into their matters of attention, will not be guaranteed alone. Politicians need to realize the importance of the economic and cultural value that the Cucapás fishing community has not only to the history of Baja California, but for the multiculturalism and the ethnic rights of the whole country as well.
Cucapás are the river people. While there is still water, they will prevail. They are used to fighting and adapting. But this constant adaptation process will meet a limit, in which the Cucapás will want to change no more their culture. There, where the river ends.
BIBLIOGRAPHY
· Baja Comunidad. (2017). Baja Comunidad. Retrieved 1 May 2017, from http://www.bajacomunidad.org/tribes
· Cocopah Indian Tribe. (2017). Cocopah.com. Retrieved 28 April 2017, from http://www.cocopah.com
· Gulf Program. (2017). Gulfprogram.photoshelter.com. Retrieved 1 May 2017, from http://www.gulfprogram.photoshelter.com
· Muelhmann, S. (2013). Where the river ends. Duke University Press, Durham.
· Navarro, A. (2017). Cucapás. Instituto Tecnológico de Estudios Superiores de Occidente.
· Navarro, A. (2016) Dilemmas of Sustainability in Cocopah Territory: An Exercise of Applied Visual Anthropology in the Colorado River Delta.
· Peace Brigades International. (2012) PBI Mexico: Human rights in Baja California: ancestral communities and indigenous migrants. Last seen: April 4, 2017 at: www.pbi-mexico.org
· Schmal, J. (2007) Indigenous Baja. Last seen (April 4, 2017) at www.houstounculture.org/mexico/baja.html
