After years of tireless struggle, last June the community of Santa Fe de la Laguna, Michoacán, took a most relevant step on its way to free determination when, with the legal accompaniment of the Collective Emancipations, it won the recognition of its right to directly administrate their proportional part of the municipal budget before the Electoral Court of the Federation Juditial Power. The same court also decided, during the first days of September, to carry a consultation in the community to determine the qualitative and quantitative aspecs of transfering the public resources. After a series of meetings between the authorities of the community of Santa Fe de la Laguna, the municipal authorities of Quiroga and the Electoral Comission for the Attention of Indigenous Peoples of the Electoral Institute of Michoacán, technical aspects needed for the consultation were defined, and it was decided it would be carried on September 27.
However, what should have been a historical day in Santa Fe de la Laguna, turned into the stage of a farce with the lead of Quiroga’s municipal authorities. With the apparent complicity of the Justice of the Supreme Court of Justice of the Nation, Alfredo Gutiérrez Ortiz Mena, they settled a hard blow to the human rights of Michoacán and México’s indigenous communities. In an operation that was full of coincidences, thoroughly questionable legal criteria y unusual speed in the notification, right on the hour when the consultation was to be carried, the Supreme Court Justice ordered the suspension of the consultation. By accepting the argument placed by Quiroga’s municipality over a constitutional controversy, the Justice Alfredo Gutiérrez Ortiz Mena contradicts the definitive ruling by the Superior Chamber of the Electoral Court of the Federation Juditial Power that, barely fourteen months before, acknowledged the jurisdiction of the Electoral Tribunal of the State of Michoacán to decide upon this issues.
Hence, we, the community of Santa Fe de la Laguna and the Collective Emancipations, call upon society to show solidarity with our claim, that is the claim of those communities fighting for the respect of their human rights. You can help in many ways, one of them is circulating this video.
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Emancipaciones 