Tijuana, BC. The Cochimíes were declared extinct; the Kiliwas aroused a morbid interest because there were only four speakers of that language left and the countdown had to be kept; the Cucapás continue to fight for their ancestral right to fish at the mouth of the Colorado River; the Kumiai and the Paipai make an effort not to be dispossessed of their small territories. The five native ethnic groups of Baja California were abandoned to their fate by the Mexican State; but “we are here and we want to be recognized”.
Norma Meza is a Kumiai leader. The warmth of her smile contrasts with her deep voice and energetic speech of hers. She explains in detail the preparation of acorn-fed coffee, a daily drink in her town, with the same intensity that she frowns to remember that the Kumiai “were a nation” before Mexico or the United States existed, the two countries where they were divided.
Meza is recognized because she works on the development of a dictionary of her language with the University of California in San Diego, and fights for the authorities of Baja California to have interpreters in the Judiciary in order to serve the members of their tribes.
She acknowledges that they are going through an accelerated process of miscegenation, but there are cases like that of one of her sisters, who was imprisoned for 15 days and died months after being released because she did not have an interpreter or the insulin she needed.
The meeting at the House of Culture in Tijuana is the first time in a long time that the five tribes have come together to show Baja Californian society that they are still alive and, above all, that they demand legal recognition. They have the same root: they are Yumans, and they belong to that ethnolinguistic family.
It includes those who live “on this side” – some have their counterparts in California and Arizona – and they point out that in Mexico there are no more than 2,000 Yumans. They are part of the original groups of the north (of what is now Mexico), and unlike the Mesoamerican indigenous people, they were not farmers. They inhabited the inhospitable Aridoamérica, located in the old geography maps.
The meeting included the sale of handicrafts, food, conferences and music, expressions that had different tones.
Delfina Albañez, a member of the Paipai community, recalled that on several occasions they have asked the authority for spaces to sell their handicrafts, without success. “For us it is more difficult to move to Tijuana. Many of us take care of our communities, our territory. We have talked with several administrations about having a place in Ensenada, closer to us, and we will do it again”.
The “experts” declared the Cochimí people extinct several decades ago and were left out of the conversation of the native communities, until they demanded to be listened to, accounted for and cared for by a government that paid more attention to the academy than to the inhabitants themselves. .
María de la Luz Villa Poblano, a Cochimí from the Santa Gertrudis mission, was one of the representatives of her community at the Tijuana meeting in April.
On more than one occasion, she reminded attendees that, like her, her brothers “adapted to oppression” and “to dispossession,” or emigrated, hid their language (which disappeared) in order to “go ahead, survive.”
He recalls with emotion the ceremony where President Andrés Manuel López Obrador received in 2018, in the zocalo of Mexico City, the baton of command of the 68 native peoples of Mexico. “I thought that they were not going to mention us, but when they began to read the list, in alphabetical order, at number five were the Cochimíes from Baja California. I share it with great joy because it is a new story.”
In the meeting of the Yuman peoples it is perceived that in the United States a better job is done to preserve the identity of the first peoples that inhabited the peninsula and the south of the neighboring country.
The needs are multiple and there is a constant fear of dispossession of their lands. They have no representatives in popularly elected positions and no one to speak on their behalf (as ethnic minorities, the Oaxacans who emigrated to the San Quintín Valley and Tijuana have an advantage in obtaining representation spaces).
“In the missions we don’t have water, medical services, sources of work, schools and no urban service from the authorities or the Church, because there aren’t even any priests,” said María de la Luz, a Cochimí resident of the Santa Cruz mission. Gertrudis, located three hours from Guerrero Negro.
At the closing ceremony, the members of the towns were grateful for the opportunity to get to know each other and sell what they do in their communities. Javier Ceseña, Kumiai, who together with his family manages an ecotourism center, grows grapes and makes wine. He said he hopes that all the municipalities know about them.
Norma Meza said that her festivities have nothing to do with the Catholic patron saints brought by the Spanish. For example, the acorn-fed atole, which “is like their tortilla”, is prepared for the singers and dancers of the ceremonies that take place when someone turns one year dead, “what you call the end of the year”. In the four Kumiai communities settled in different territories of Baja California, part of their culture is intact.
“We do this so that they listen to us, to demand that the State pay attention to us. We have a different organization, we are native peoples of Baja California”.
Two days after the Yuman meeting, during the Fandangos por la Lectura (federal program that promotes encounters with letters), the Mixtecs were given a voice on behalf of the original peoples, but the Kumiai or Cucapá poets were not invited.
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