Indigenous rights activists across Mexico and the world are celebrating the news that a federal court suspended 38 mining concessions in the sacred Wirikuta Reserve in San Luis Potosí, Mexico.  The court prohibited the granting of any further permits within the municipality of Real de Catorce, San Luis Potosí, as long as the core issues of the conflict between the Huichol (Wixarika) people and mining companies remain unresolved.

Hundreds of Wixárika pilgrims traveled last week from their homes in the Western Sierra Madre mountains to Wirikuta, expressing their united determination to save this most sacred place. Wearing ceremonial dress and bearing gifts and offerings, they traversed the path of their ancestors to the place where the sun first rose, Wirikuta.  Customarily, small groups of Wixárika people (better known by their name in Spanish, Huichol) travel the pilgrimage route on their own.

Mexico has assigned a special commission to consider the protests of the Wixárika (Huichol) people against mining and other environmentally destructive projects within the Wirikuta Natural and Cultural Reserve, according to a letter Cultural Survival received from Mexico’s Office of Mining. Signed by the General Director of Mining, Lic.

More than 150 writers and artists from 30 different countries joined together to sign a petition against the First Majestic Silver mine proposedwithin the Wirikuta Natural and Cultural Reserve, reported the Associated Press last week.

Another area considered sacred by the Huichol people of Mexico has been licensed out in concessions by the government. According to the Secretary for the Environment and Natural Resources (Semarnat), approximately 250 acres of beachfront property including the sacred area of Tatéi Haramara will be developed for tourism.

On October 26 and 27, hundreds of Huichol people traveled 20 hours to the Mexican capital to demand, once more, that President Felipe Calderón cancel mining concessions in their sacred lands and fulfill his promises to the Huichol people.

The Wixárika Regional Council and its allies in the Front for the Defense of Wirikuta Tamatsima Waha'a are mobilizing public events and demonstrations in Mexico City this week. They urge everyone to join them, both locally and internationally, in calling for permanent protection for the Wirikuta Natural and Cultural Reserve. Read their call to action below, in English, and the original Spanish here on their website.

James Anaya, the UN Special Rapporteur on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples, recently published a report on his correspondence with the Mexican government regarding  mining concessions within Mexico’s Wirikuta Natural and Cultural Reserve, an area that is sacred to the Wixárika (Huichol) people.

Anaya presented the following facts to the State of Mexico:

United Nations Human Rights chief Navi Pillay reported recently on the state of human rights in Mexico, after a visit to the mostly Indigenous state of Oaxaca.