Rarámuri Territory: Colonial Continuities and Indigenous Fugitivity in the context of Drug Trafficking in the Tarahumara mountain, Northern Mexico

The eighth 2025-2026 Indigenous Learning Forum will take place April 30, 2026 at 3:00 p.m. ET on Zoom. This talk will be given in English with Spanish translation.

Se ofrecerá interpretación en español/inglés.

This event is open to all but registration is required.

Fatima del Rocio Valdivia Ramirez, indigenous rights defender in the Tarahumara region since 2009. Co-Founder of the Center for Training and Defense of Human and Indigenous Rights (CECADDHI), a local NGO based on the Tarahumara Mountain. Doctor of Latin American Studies by the University of Texas at Austin, Master of Social Anthropology by the Centro de Investigaciones y Estudios Superiores en Antropología Social (CIESAS), Lawyer by the University of Guanajuato, Mexico. Postdoctoral fellow at CNAIR, APS.

This talk is a summary of my doctoral research on the link between the continuity of colonialism in Mexico and the drug trafficking phenomenon. I argue colonialism is one of the axes that links the political structures of the Mexican state with those who use private violence in drug trafficking in the Tarahumara Sierra.  I will expose some of the consequences of the imposition of this new version of colonial violence on indigenous territories and their governance schemes, as well as some of the cultural, political, and religious expressions of the Rarámuri people that escape colonial understanding and allow their historical continuity despite this precarious context.