SMA PROGRAMS: INDIGENOUS RIGHTS:
A Call for Policy Change

SMA is dedicated to helping communities as they create the internal organization, security and other conditions necessary towards a sustainable future, balanced with nature. Coloradas de la Virgen remains too preoccupied with the struggle for their lands and immediate danger to their lives to plan other projects, yet their leaders such as Isidro dream of restoring their forests and a peaceful future. They will need help to free their dependence on drug cultivation, which is the only source of revenue in their community.

Families starve if they do not achieve a harvest, but suffer from the lawlessness regardless of their success.

Neither the anti-drug policies of the United States nor those of Mexico provide such help. Mexico is the only drug producing country in Latin America that does not receive US funding for rural alternatives to drug cultivation. As long as the war on drugs continues, it will continue to empower the worst types like the Fontes who find opportunity in the remote, lawless canyons of the Sierra.

An eradication-only policy is self-defeating. The more drug plantations we destroy, the higher the prices rise and the more desperate the people become to plant more. Families starve if they do not achieve a harvest, but suffer from the lawlessness regardless of their success.

Rather than stimulating corruption, provoking environmental destruction, and provoking migration from hopeless areas, a small investment in rural development and a lot of listening to the needs and priorities would stimulate civil society and give incentives to the majority to cooperate with rather than defy the law. It would also give hope to the thousands of children who have little or no hope for education, suffer from chronic health problems and malnutrition, are under-clothed and underfed in the harsh conditions of the Sierra.

We Must Create Alternatives to Drug Production

SMA requests our friends to urge Congress to require at least ten percent of all US aid to Mexico be dedicated to creating alternatives to drug production in rural areas so that the Tarahumara and tens of thousands of campesinos have a chance for a better future. This strategic prioritization of aid would provide resources for many of Mexico’s poorest and most endangered communities in Chihuahua, Michoacan, Oaxaca, Guerrero and other regions.

At stake are not only endangered indigenous communities, but some of the most biologically diverse regions in North America that are degraded indiscriminately in the chaos