Last Year Alone, at least five opponents of Canadian mining projects were assassinated in Latin America: three in El Salvador, one in Guatemala, and one in Mexico. Critics of mining operations there and elsewhere were wounded and maimed in attacks while many, along with their family members, were threatened.

My name is Bianca América Enríquez López, I am from Bajío del Tule, which is part of the community of San Sebastián Teponahuaxtlan, in the state of Jalisco. I am a proud Indigenous Wixárika woman, and three years ago I moved to Guadalajara in search of new opportunities and to study law (Bianca América (Tanima) Enríquez López is a 2020 law graduate from the Universidad Enrique Rebsamen).

After four years of struggle, the Wixárika community of San Sebastián Teponahuaxtlán in Mezquitic, Jalisco, will directly receive federal resources to manage amongst themselves without the intervention of local officials or political parties. And they will do so with women at the table under an agreement of gender parity, a rarity among Indigenous governments and, indeed, governments in general.

Scholarship recipient 2018-2020. With the right that freedom of expression gives me and the communal statute as a member has given me, I give myself the opportunity to write a personal opinion about the future of the Indigenous Community of San Sebastián Teponahuaxtlán and its Annex of Tuxpán, the community that has given me a space in which to live, where to develop myself and that in gratitude I would like to express my sentiments for the space and for Our Mother Earth, Ta Tei Yurienaka.