The following is an English-language translation of a brief essay I wrote for a course I am taking called Epistemologías del Sur. As I dislike the academic practice of creating work that doesn’t go beyond the classroom, I’m publishing it here in case it might be of any use or interest. For the latest information on Fidencio Aldama and his case, see this recently published statement.

For the past several years, part of my work has been as a member of the Fidencio Aldama Support Group. A small, binational collective of individuals in what they call the United States and Mexico, we work through a variety of means to advocate for the immediate release of Yaqui political prisoner Fidencio Aldama and to support him and his family during his imprisonment. Currently serving a 14-year sentence for a homicide he did not commit, Fidencio’s incarceration is rooted in his and his community of Loma de Bácum’s steadfast resistance to the imposition of a natural gas pipeline through their territory. Echoes of the arguments put forward by the epistemologies from the South in this course can be easily identified through the lenses of Fidencio’s case and the centuries-long tradition of Yaqui resistance and self-defense.

As María Paula Meneses states, “colonialism is a paradigm, a set of axioms, concepts and discourses by which it seeks to represent the world through a certain perspective…” (“Colonialismo como Violência” 120). European colonizers, and later the colonial Mexican state, have been trying to coerce the Yaqui people into this paradigm since the first colonial encounter in the early 1500s. Constructed epistemologically and ontologically as the Other by the discourse of Western colonial modernity, the Spanish crown, the independent state of Mexico, and the post-revolutionary state of Mexico waged a series of battles and wars known as the Yaqui Wars, from 1533 to 1929, in an effort to subsume the Yaqui people into their hierarchical logic of colonial modernity and to capture them “as space and subject” (Meneses, “Colonialismo como Violência” 121). While the centuries of colonial aggression led to significant suffering for the Yaqui people, including the loss of territory, forced displacement, enslavement, and mass murder, the ongoing resistance of the Yaqui people, in particular the struggle of Loma de Bácum, where the water drum still beats and the deer dance is still held, demonstrates that the “civilizing mission” of colonialism has far from succeeded.

Mexico, “the realization of the desires of a small criollo elite that did not consult the various peoples it intended to confederate into an empire or a republic” (Aguilar Gil 29), nonetheless, in collaboration with transnational neoliberal capital, in the 21^st century has continued to seek to impose its will on the Yaqui people. One such example is the Independence Aqueduct, which went into operation in 2013, diverting the Yaqui River – sacred to the Yaqui people – from its path through the eight Yaqui communities to instead be “utilized to boost the large industrial sector of Hermosillo, housing large multi-billion-dollar corporations such as Heineken, Ford Motor Company, and Pepsi, while also producing electricity for the majority of the state” (Gomez Quintana 1011).

A second project, the Gasoducto Sonora, was intended to pass through the community of Loma de Bácum. An endeavor of the U.S.-based Sempra Energy, it was met with fierce opposition by the community, who in assembly refused to allow the pipeline to pass through their territory. “Through communal decision-making, direct action, and self-defense, the Indigenous Yaqui community has made clear that they will not accept the despoilation of their territory, the pollution of their sacred water, the poisoning of their crops and livestock, and the threatening of their livelihood and forms of organization for the sake of a neoliberal transnational extractivist project” (Fidencio Aldama Support Group). In understanding the response to the community’s resistance, it is helpful to draw on Rita Segato’s formulation of the “pedagogy of cruelty” (57) and theory of the First and Second Realities (76). Since its opposition to the pipeline began, Loma de Bácum has seen its community invaded by a neighboring community that is in favor of the pipeline, has suffered ten disappeared, has received ongoing threats from both the state and organized crime, as well as experienced the imprisonment of Fidencio Aldama. The interconnections of the state, transnational corporations, and organized crime in the deployment of violence in the service of neoliberal capital, in the service of colonial modernity at the expense of Yaqui ways of life, being, organization, and cosmovision are readily apparent.

Similar to the Rastreadoras de El Fuerte, as depicted by Rosalva Aída Hernández, the experiences of Loma de Bácum have led the community, as well as the Fidencio Aldama Support Group, towards a “rejection of state justice” (247) as a result of being “in the midst of an undeclared neoliberal war” (250). A neoliberal war grown out of a colonialism where “the physical and/or cognitive obliteration of colonized peoples was the cornerstone of the creation of Western modernity and the development of abyssal thinking” (Meneses, “O ‘indígena’ africano e o colono ‘europeu’” 69). The attempted obliteration of Loma de Bácum’s resistance through a confluence of violences and imprisonment bear the hallmarks of colonialism and show how the Mexican state, in alliance with neoliberal capital, views and treats the Indigenous inhabitants of the territory it claims sovereignty over.

The third and final example can be found in the so-called Yaqui Justice Plan. Launched by Mexican president Andrés Manuel López Obrador in September 2021, and being implemented by the National Institute of Indigenous Peoples, the plan is another attempt by the colonial state to try to control and administer the territory and bodies of the Yaqui people. Included in this plan is the delineation of Yaqui territory, the construction of yet another aqueduct on the Yaqui River, the building of “modern” schools and a university, and the classification of Yaqui territory as a “Special Economic Zone” for the installation of maquiladoras (“Durazo propone zona económica”). In this plan one can see a colonial attempt at territorial governance, the extraction of Yaqui resources, the implementation of Western discourses through its educational system, and the rendering of Indigenous people into a labor source in the service of the neoliberal global economy. Resolute as ever, the response of the traditional authorities of Loma de Bácum has been to reject the Yaqui Justice Plan, conditioning its negotiation on the release of Fidencio Aldama.

By navigating the various historic and contemporary attempts of colonial powers to impose their will, ways, and worldview onto a colonized population constructed as the Other by Western modernity, I have endeavored to demonstrate how the contents of this course resonate with the work I am doing with the Fidencio Aldama Support Group, as well as the broader theme of Yaqui resistance. This can be seen in the both the legacy of Yaqui struggle and its modern manifestation in rejecting projects such as the Gasoducto Sonora and the Yaqui Justice Plan. As Thalia Gomez Quintana states, “The Yaqui cultural drive to remain within the homeland in accordance with the Yaqui original instructions is attacked in everyday acts of violence and low-intensity warfare, which seek to individualize Yaqui tribal members into property-holding subjects and detribalize Yaqui communities” (1009). Despite nearly 500 years of attempts to do just that, the Yaqui people, as exemplified by the community of Loma de Bácum and Fidencio Aldama, continue to resist attempts at extermination and epistemological and ontological erasure.

Works Cited

Aguilar Gil, Yásnaya E. “¿Ni triunfo ni derrota?: La cooptación discursiva de la Conquista de México.” La Conquista en el presente, coordinado por Eugenio Fernández Vázquez, La Cigarra, 2021, pp. 25-44.

“Durazo propone zona económica en territorio yaqui; habrían maquiladoras.” Forbes México, 13 de feb. 2022, forbes.com.mx/durazo-propone-zona-economica-en-territorio-yaqui-habrian-maquiladoras/. Accessed 6 July 2023.

Fidencio Aldama Support Group. “Fidencio Aldama and the Yaqui Injustice Plan.” Forthcoming.

Gomez Quintana, Thalia. “Where There is Water There is Growth: Yoeme Land and Water Rights.” Theory & Event, vol. 23, no. 4, 2020, pp. 1004-1015. Project Muse, doi:10.1353/tae.2020.0060.

Hernández Castillo, R. A. “Cronistas del Oprobio: reflexiones feministas sobre memoria, desaparición y violencias contemporáneas en México.” Revista de Antropología Social, vol. 31, no. 2, pp. 239-252, doi:10.5209/raso.83947

Meneses, Maria Paula. “Colonialismo como Violência: a ‘Missão Civilizadora’ de Portugal em Moçambique.” Revista Crítica de Ciências Sociais, numero especial, 2018, pp. 115–140. Open Edition Journals, doi:10.4000/rccs.7741.

—. “O ‘indígena’ africano e o colono ‘europeu’: a construção da diferença por processos legais.” e-cadernos CES, vol. 7, 2010, pp. 68-93. doi:10.4000/eces.403.

Segato, Rita Laura. La guerra contra las mujeres, Traficantes de Sueños, 2016.