The Triqui Are Fighting for Autonomy and Fleeing Violence in Mexico Jennifer Kennedy - Latin Correspondent
go to original December 16, 2015

Mexican Triqui indigenous women protest for a vote by vote recount of last July 2 presidential elections outside of the Federal Electoral Tribunal, TRIFE, in Mexico City, Mexico. (AP Photo/Eduardo Verdugo)

Violence has forced thousands of indigenous Triqui people to flee their homes in the highlands of Oaxaca in southern Mexico.

The Triqui people are from the mountainous area known as the Sierra Mixteca, but since the 1980s thousands have abandoned their communities in San Juan Copala amid a bitter and complex conflict between warring factions.

“Our men have been beaten and murdered, our women raped and our houses burned to the ground. We had to flee or face death,” Braulio Hernandez, a former resident of San Juan Copala, told the MailOnline.

Until the late 1940s, the Triqui enjoyed a degree of autonomy. This changed, however, as Mexico’s then ruling-party, the Institutional Revolutionary Party (PRI), sought to assert its control over area.

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