On February 16, 2022, Mexico’s Supreme Court of the Nation (SCJN, for its Spanish initials) pronounced a historic sentence for the country’s indigenous peoples. For the first time, the SCJN ordered the Secretariat of Economy to cancel mining concessions in an indigenous community—in this case, the Tecoltemi nahua community—as their collective rights had been violated by not holding a previous consultation, and the court made it mandatory to conduct consultations with all the indigenous communities that would be affected by a mining project before granting any concessions in the future. Never before in the cases of rights of indigenous peoples that reached the SCJN had permits been canceled nor had a company ever been left without a concession.

This was achieved thanks to the Tecoltemi’s struggle of 10-plus years. In 2015, this nahua community and ejidatario [1] groups and communities from Puebla’s Sierra Norte region in the municipality of Ixtacamaxtitlán, with legal support from the Tiyat Tlali Council and Fundar, filed an amparo lawsuit against the mining concessions that were granted in their territory without their consent. The mining project, which affected over 20 communities, involved diverting water from natural springs in the mining zone, which would have impacts on the land, housing, and people’s ways of life.

[1] In Mexico, ejidatarios are those who have usufruct rights to communal or cooperative land used primarily for agricultural purposes, which is known as an ejido.