(Translation from Spanish by Katherine Mosser and Racquel Cruz) a struggle over land and the rights of the indigenous people across the Mexican state of Oaxaca reached murderous heights The Chatino people faced losing their ancestral lands and we’re engaged in a life and death battle Despite the combined opposition of the state and landowner class On the thirtieth anniversary of his murder a collection of writings and memories edited by one of his daughters will be published What follows is translation of the book’s foreword Tomás Cruz Lorenzo (1950-1989) was a Chatino activist who belonged to that generation of communal among whom you can find Floriberto Díaz and Jaime Martínez Luna are a clear call for the defense of the Chatino language and culture and for the autonomy of the Chatino land that extended from the coast to the highlands of the sierra in southeast Oaxaca Killed while waiting for a bus in 1989 (the murder remains unsolved) Tomás lives on in this collection of writings that establishes a dialogue with the new This collection is a tribute that both honors the past and updates the fight and resistance to present day and the defense against extractive practices on the land 2019 saw the thirtieth anniversary of my father’s murder His death was a decisive event in the history of the attacks on the Chatino people which involved much violence against community and indigenous leaders in Oaxaca from landowner’s forces and those of the state At this time when the participation of young people in the movement for the protection of rights is increasingly important we do not want to forget his murder: we choose to commemorate his life will continue to be defended and promoted by new generations titled evitemos que nuestro future se nos escape de las manos (we can’t let our future escape through our fingers) It was born from the desire to continue his dialogue to make his ideas about Chatino autonomy available to the new generation and to relay the need to decide our own destiny We want to again hear his call to reflect on and analyze questions of rights Since his unexpected death in 1989 there continues to be pending conversations It was a hard blow that for a long time rendered us lost we can resume our course and move forward— as he would want us to For those who didn’t know my father and never got the chance to speak with him Tomás left enough written material that we are able to continue the conversation This is how we want to celebrate his struggles and his wisdom Faced with this need to close our wounds and open new conversations I also collected writings of his from El Medio Milenio I gathered some young Chatinos together who wanted to participate in the project by reading some of my father’s writings and offering their own reflections The first exercise was to read; each month they were sent an article from El Medio Milenio to go over each participant chose one article to write a reflection about in their own style and according to their own interests These reflections are included in this book interwoven with the articles that inspired them I also conducted an interview with my mother about what it means to be the wife of a social fighter and to carry on as a widow with several children and no money This book is a collective exercise in which Tomás is remembered as a father He is remembered for his fight against discrimination and for his work so that all Chatinos could have the basics a human needs to survive: a roof Tomás’ work left a profound mark on the movement for Chatino rights in particular for those of the town in which he was born to but also for Chatinos in general His effect was so great that even in distant villages you will hear people say proudly This collective memory we have compiled here is without a doubt an homage to the past It is also a force to strengthen Chatino rights and the rights of all indigenous people in Mexico Tomás made journalistic notes on the Chatino region which borders the municipalities of Santa Cruz Zenzontepec This piece is a translation from the book’s foreword by the editor The book will be published in September (Spanish language) The book release event will be on September 26, 2019 in the Claustro de la Biblioteca Juan Córdova Authorities of six Indigenous and farming towns questioned the campaign promises of Mexican president Andrés Manuel López Obrador to respect Indigenous rights and protect the environment the Council of Peoples United in Defense of the Río Verde (Copudever) vowed to continue their 12-year struggle against the damming of their river which has been protected by a legal injunction since January of this year they received a letter from the Secretariat of the Environment and Natural Resources (Semarnat) in Mexico City informing them that the Mexican company GENERACIÓN ENERSI S.A had submitted a proposal for a hydroelectric project on the Río Verde The dam would generate 30 megawatts of energy affecting the municipalities of Santa Cruz Zenzontepec Santiago Jamiltepec and Santiago Pinotepa Nacional Authorities say the letter implied that in the absence of a response they would be considered to be in compliance with the project In a statement communal and municipal authorities affirmed that “throughout our life as Peoples we have coexisted with because it is the mother of our waters and represents a source of life in this watershed and in our Mixtec Chatino and Afro-Mexican territories.” They notified Semarnat and the company GENERACIÓN ENERSI S.A that they will not allow preliminary studies for the hydroelectric project nor its construction “due to the serious effects that this would bring to our lives and to mother nature.” This is not the first time that communities have opposed the damming of the Río Verde Copudever was formed in 2007 when dozens of communities organized to stop the Federal Electricity Commission from building a hydroelectric dam on their river which they say would have flooded their homes and contaminated their only source of water local residents maintained a 24-hour blockade to impede the access of workers machinery and security forces associated with the project Copudever members say they “are surprised that the current federal government insists on this type of projects For more than ten years we have argued our opposition to the Paso de la Reina Hydroelectric Project that was promoted by the state-owned Federal Electricity Commission in light of the privatization of the energy sector private companies have their eyes on our commons.” “We do not understand why Semarnat intends to deny a right that has been demonstrated and won in the courts We do not understand why Andrés Manuel López Obrador in his discourse says that he is with the poor and Indigenous people but in his governance he cheapens our rights and favors the companies.” Copudever members affirmed that they are on alert and will continue to organize communities in the Southern Sierra and Coastal regions of Oaxaca in the defense of the Río Verde Metrics details While prevailing theories of crop evolution suggest that crop diversity and cultural diversity should be linked empirical evidence for such a link remains inconclusive few studies have investigated such patterns on a local scale we address this issue by examining the determinants of maize diversity in a local region of high cultural and biological richness in Southern Mexico We collected maize samples from villages at low and middle elevations in two adjacent municipalities of differing ethnicity: Mixtec or Chatino Although morphological traits show few patterns of population structure we see clear genetic differentiation among villages with municipality explaining a larger proportion of the differentiation than altitude Consistent with an important role of social origin in patterning seed exchange metapopulation model-based estimates of differentiation match the genetic data within village and ethnically distinct municipalities but underestimate differentiation when all four villages are taken together Our research provides insights about the importance of social origin in structuring maize diversity at the local scale In contrast to the popular assumption that there is a direct relationship between ethnolinguistic diversity and maize diversity there is little research that has formally and systematically addressed that interaction We collected maize samples from two environments—low and middle elevation—in two neighboring indigenous municipalities with different language affiliations We hypothesized that maize collections from the same municipality would be more similar than those from different municipalities even though comparable environmental variation occurs within each We found the effects of social origin (municipality) in structuring morphological and genetic diversity stronger than that of elevation Application of a metapopulation model suggests that genetic differentiation is because of the lack of seed flow between municipalities We collected a total of 135 maize samples from the four villages (33 from M-M Each maize sample consisted of 12 seed quality ears of each farmer-identified type that the household planted in the previous year Ecological information and management of each sample was recorded by a survey we considered that each sample represents one maize population The samples of each village were grouped by local name and race and organized according to variation in ear morphology Five maize samples from each village were selected to plant in the common gardens; these samples resembled the total variation of maize in that particular village we used only the data from two common gardens under fertilization treatment one in the Chatino village low elevation (Ch-L) and another in Mixtec middle elevation (M-M) These were the fields with the best soil conditions to perform morphological characterization Each of the common gardens had a complete random block design with three repetitions 60 experimental units per garden (4 villages × 5 samples × 3 blocks) Morphological data recorded from common gardens included days to anthesis Twenty plants were measured from the two rows in the center Flowering time was recorded when 50% of the plants had reached anthesis or were silking all the plants of one row located in the center of the plot were harvested HEX) were obtained for these loci (Invitrogen) Multiple PCRs were performed in a 25 μl reaction volume containing 4 pmol μl−1 of R and F primer (Invitrogen) 1 U of GoTaq flexi DNA polymerase (Promega) and 25 ng of DNA The amplification program was: 95 °C for 4 min and then followed by extension at 72 °C for 60 min PCR was performed in a GeneAmp PCR System 9700 (Applied Biosystems PCR products were analyzed by capillary electrophoresis in a 3130 Genetic Analyzer (Applied Biosystems) Fragment sizes were scored using GeneMapper v4.0 (Applied Biosystems) based on the second-order rate of change in the log probability of data between successive K-values was used to determine the most likely number of clusters (K) with significance (α=0.05) calculated after 1000 permutations but these were later fitted to the observed FST data Principal component analysis plot (PC1 vs PC2) for morphological traits sorted by municipality data from middle and lowlands common gardens there are some differences between common gardens The effect of municipality was weaker in the low elevation garden perhaps because of the lower overall morphological variation observed STRUCTURE graphical results assuming two (a) after a burning period of 30 000 iterations and 1 000 000 replications for estimations Each individual plant is represented by a vertical line Each color represents the membership to each cluster (k) Labels in the x axis show the village of origin Our AMOVA finds relatively strong population structure (Table 4) Most of the genetic variation (73%) was found within populations with less variation assigned to municipality (4%) and elevation (1.75%) The results of the AMOVA are confirmed by the matrix of pairwise genetic distance (FST) among villages FST between villages of the same municipality (0.019 Mixtec 0.021 Chatino) are lower than between populations of the same elevation but different municipalities (0.041 middle FST between villages from different municipalities and different elevations are also large (M-M vs Ch-L is 0.059 but the largest difference is between Mixtec Lowlands and Chatino Lowlands (0.066) All FST values are significant (α=0.05) calculated after 1000 permutations All statistical methods used to analyze molecular markers show greater support for structure because of social origin than environment (elevation) who suggested that indigenous groups isolate maize populations in a way similar to geographic barriers An important next step is to expand the research to a contiguous Zapotec municipality to improve the test of the effect of ethnicity in structuring maize populations we found no differentiation of maize populations by elevation (races morphological traits and molecular markers) likely because of the much smaller geographic scale of our population sampling Within elevation regimens (between ethnolinguistic groups) or among all villages the model was only able to fit observed FST values with a substantial reduction in the pollen migration parameter or with a smaller reduction in pollen migration and setting seed migration frequency to zero Because of the good fit of the model within villages and between villages within an ethnic group the decrease in migration (pollen or seed) required to fit the model to elevation groups or the entire data is consistent with the idea that ethnolinguistic group is a limitation to maize gene flow in this region Previous studies that have found morphological differences among maize from different villages have not found much differentiation at the genetic level suggesting that selection for a particular 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Available at: http://www.R-project.org accessed 25 May 2014 Inbreeding coefficients and coalescence times Relationships among the Mexican races of maize Isozymatic and morphological diversity in the races of maize of Mexico Independent molecular basis of convergent highland adaptation in maize mays) in communities of the western highlands of Guatemala: geographical patterns and processes (2007) Population Genetics of Traditionally Managed Maize: Farming Practice as a Determinant of Genetic Structure and Identity of Maize Landraces in Mexico PhD Dissertation Wageningen University: The Netherlands Genetic diversity in a crop metapopulation and introgression in a large sample of maize landraces Population structure and genetic diversity of New World maize races assessed by DNA microsatellites (1996) Changing Fortunes: Biodiversity and Peasant Livelihood in the Peruvian Andes Download references We thank CONACYT and UC MEXUS for funding this research through a doctoral scholarship and a dissertation grant Mexico) for maize racial classification; Cinthia Guzman Laura Carrillo and Juan Sánchez (Colegio de Postgraduados Mexico) for genotyping work; Dr Mark Grote (UC Davis) and Jonathan Fresnedo (UC Davis) for statistical advice; Joost van Heerwaarden for sharing an R script to run the metapopulation model; and farmers and authorities from Santiago Amoltepec and Santa Cruz Zenzontepec for their support and for allowing to carry out this research We also thank CIGA-UNAM for a postdoctoral scholarship to improve the writing of this paper JRI would like to acknowledge support from USDA Hatch project CA-D-PLS-2066-H and NSF Plant Genome award 1238014 We thank to four anonymous reviewers for theirs comments Centro de Investigaciones en Geografía Ambiental The authors declare no conflict of interest Supplementary Information accompanies this paper on Heredity website Download citation Anyone you share the following link with will be able to read this content: a shareable link is not currently available for this article Genetic Resources and Crop Evolution (2024)