Margo Tamez is an Apache poet, scholar and activist.
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Eminent Domain, Border Walls and Displacement in South Texas
U.S. government seeks to forcefully relocate indigenous people in South Texas to build anti-immigrant fence.
by Margo Tamez
I WISH I was writing under better circumstances, but I must be fast and direct. My mother and elders of El Calaboz, since July have been the targets of numerous threats and harrassments by the Border Patrol, Army Corps of Engineers, NSA, and the U.S. related to the proposed building of a fence on their levee.
Since July, they have been the targets of numerous telephone calls, unexpected and uninvited visits on their lands, informing them that they will have to relinquish parts of their land grant holdings to the border fence buildup. The NSA demands that elders give up their lands
to build the levee, and further, that they travel a distance of 3 miles, to go through checkpoints, to walk, recreate, and to farm and herd goats and cattle, ON THEIR OWN LANDS.
This threat against indigenous people, life ways and lands has been very very serious and stress inducing to local leaders, such as Dr. Eloisa Garcia Tamez, who has been in isolation from the larger indigenous rights community due to the invisibility of indigenous people of South Texas and Northern Tamaulipas to the larger social justice conversation regarding the border issues.
However recent events, of the last 5 days cause us to feel that we are in urgent need of immediate human rights observers in the area, deployed by all who can help as soon as possible--immediate relief.
My mother informed me, as I got back into cell range out of Redford, TX, on Monday, November 13, that Army Corps of Engineers, Border Patrol and National Security Agency teams have been going house to house, and calling on her personal office phone, her cell phone and in
other venues, tracking down and enclosing upon the people and telling them that they have no other choice in this matter. They are telling elders and other vulnerable people that "the wall is going on these lands whether you like it or not, and you have to sell your land to the U.S."
My mother, Eloisa Garcia Tamez, Lipan Apache and descendent of Chiricahua descent elder, Aniceto Garcia, (passed away) who gave her traditional indigenous birth welcoming ceremony and the lightning ceremony, is resisting the occupation firmly. She has already had two
major confrontations with NSA on the telephone since July--one in her office at the University of Texas at Brownsville, where she is the Director of a Nursing Program and where she conducts research on diabetes.
She reports that some folks have already signed over their lands, due to their ongoing state of impoverishement and exploitation in the area under colonization, corporatism, NAFTA and militarization.
This is an outrage, but more, this is a significant violation of United Nations Declaration on rights of Indigenous People, recently ratified and accepted. Furthermore, it is a violation of the United Nations CERD, Committee on Racism and Discrimination.
My mother is under great stress and crisis, unknowing if the Army soldiers and the NSA agents will be demanding that she sign documents. She has firmly told them not to call her anymore, nor to call her at all hours of the night and day, nor to call on the weekends any further. She asked them to meet with her in a public space and to tell their supervisors to come.
They refuse to do so. Instead, they continue to harrass and intimidate.
At this time, due to the great stress the elders are currently under, communicated to me, because they are being demanded to relinquish indigenous lands, I feel that I MUST call upon my relatives, friends, colleagues, associates in Texas, involved in indigenous rights issues,
to come forth and aid us.
Please! Please help indigenous women land title holders! Please do not hesitate!
My phone number is: 509-595-4445
My office number is: 509-335-7268
Call anytime!
Margo Tamez
(Jumano Apache West Texas-Chihuahua & Lipan Apache South Texas-Tamaulipas, Apacheria Nuevo Santander Land Grant--Basque Colonia)
http://www.nativewiki.org/Margo_Tamez
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