The people of Choreachi have recently taken a new legal approach, filing a collective land claim that raises land issues in terms of indigenous rights, and seeks recognition of their entitlement to these long held communal lands.
International legal support for the fight
SMA and EDLC decided to focus their legal strategy on international law and law from other nations to complement the community’s local lawyers’ claims based on Mexican law. EDLC recruited a team of lawyers at DLA Piper US to research and write an experts' report for use in the case pending before Mexico’s Agrarian Tribunal.
Many countries in Central America and South America have given legal recognition in recent years to the right of indigenous peoples to receive title to lands that they have traditionally occupied. Unlike in Mexico, administrative procedures have been established under these national laws that enable indigenous peoples to assert and prove their land claims.
At the same time, a key legal development has been the increasing resort of indigenous peoples to the human rights' protections afforded by the American Convention on Human Rights. The Inter-American Court of Human Rights- the legal body responsible for implementing the Convention’s protections- has declared that indigenous peoples are entitled to "special protection." The Court has also repeatedly ruled that the American Convention requires States to recognize the collective rights of indigenous peoples to their traditional lands, and to create processes to demarcate and title these lands.
The lawyers from DLA Piper therefore argued that Mexico has failed to adequately recognize indigenous land rights, in contrast to other national governments in Central America and South America, and in violation of its obligations under the American Convention and other international human rights treaties to which Mexico is a signatory. EDLC expects that the report will also be used on behalf of some of the ten million other indigenous people in Mexico whose communities may bring similar claims to the Agrarian Tribunal.
Choreachi Today
While the hearing on the merits of the community’s land claims has been delayed, one hundred forty members of the community appeared before the court at a hearing in April 2008, telling the judge of their desire to join in the land claims. These people had walked two days from Choreachi to the nearest town, slept in a school overnight, and taken a bus the following day to another town in order to attend the court hearing.
Hopes are high for a successful outcome, but if the court decision is unfavorable, the case will continue and the law firm hopes to help in other ways. The stakes are too high to do otherwise, as this case will determine the fate of a people, their sacred lands and forests, and their ability to survive as a culture.
To secure the survival of these indigenous peoples as viable, distinct cultural communities within Mexico, it is necessary to protect their land and natural resource rights.
- Experts’ Report Concerning the Land and Natural Resource Rights of the Community of Choreachi, Mexico under International Law, prepared by DLA Piper US (2007)