SMA PROGRAMS: INDIGENOUS RIGHTS:
The Tragic History of Coloradas de la Virgen

For over 30 years, Coloradas de la Virgen has been terrorized by the Fontes. Police records indicate that the Fontes were accused of cattle theft from neighboring ranches in the early 1970’s. Ranchers who pressed charges were brutally murdered. Before the end of the decade, the Fontes became the major drug traffickers and growers in the region. Artemio’s brother, Alejandro Fontes became regional chief of the Rurales, a highly feared state police unit.

By the 1990’s, the Fontes were also logging Indigenosu community lands and murdering any Indigenous people who protested. Thirty four Tarahumara were murdered in Coloradas between 1986 and 1994 before the Fontes were exposed by an international Campaign led by SMA and indicted by Federal Attorney General Teresa Jardi.

Thirty four Tarahumara were murdered in Coloradas between 1986 and 1994.Despite this brutal history, Tarahumara resistance continued when the Fontes emerged in 2002 with a permit to log lands belonging to the Tarahumara pueblo. In February, 2003, five Tarahumara women initiated a blockade of fourteen logging trucks as Isidro led 20 Tarahumara into the forest to convince the loggers to stop cutting trees and leave the area.

Although the truckers and loggers protested aggressively, sided by local police, the women held their ground as other Tarahumara arrived. Finally, a military commander intervened on behalf of the Tarahumara, who had a court order which suspended the logging permit.

The Unjust Arrest of Isidro

Two weeks following the blockade, state police arrived at Isidro’s home, conducted an illegal search and arrested Isidro and Domingo in front of fifteen witnesses. The defendants were transported to police headquarters and forced to port arms. Police photographed them and released the photos to the newspaper. The police are now charged with defamation among other crimes. However, no charges have been made against the cacique who allegedly paid the police to arrest Isidro, Artemio Fontes.

Isidro, now 38, learned to fear the Fontes at an early age. In 1982, he and his brother Trini were clearing a bean field in the mountains above their home when they were approached by three mestizos, who tried to coerce them into joining the Fontes “gavilla” (or gang) that was then transforming from cattle theft to large scale drug cultivation and trafficking. Isidro and Trini refused to join them. A a few moments later they heard gunshots – coming closer and closer. Soon bullets were whizzing by them and they ran to the safety of their home.

In 1984, Artemio Fontes managed to carve a federally registered ejido out of the community lands. Fontes omitted over 90 percent of the Tarahumara from the ejido registry. The ejido boundaries included nearly all of the productive forests, leaving the Tarahumara with rights to pine and oak savannas and steep desert canyons. When Fontes began logging in 1986, the Tarahumara protested, led by Isidro’s father, Julio Baldenegro, who was murdered shortly thereafter.

Soon bullets were whizzing by them and they ran to the safety of their home.Systematic murders of Tarahumara leaders continued before an international campaign led by SMA and Edwin Bustillos of CASMAC, in collaboration with PGR Teresa Jardi, led to the arrest of two of the Fontes assasins, various relatives, and an arrest warrant against Artemio Fontes.

Logging that was by then subsidized by a World Bank Forestry Program was also stopped and the World Bank cancelled the project. However, Artemio Fontes gained protection from a federal judge and never went to trial.

The PGR resorted to corrupt administration in the mid-1990’s; Edwin Bustillos, the communities greatest champion, fell ill and died; and SMA struggled to help half a dozen endangered communities with a tiny staff and budget. All these factors enabled the Fontes to regain their power and a new logging permit in 2002.