In the area of Sustainable Communities, we provide the indigenous peoples of the Sierra Tarahumara with information and assistance with the goal of ensuring that they are aware of and understand the public policies and governmental programs that concern them directly.  One of the objectives is to ensure that they can analyze these policies with a critical eye and engage with the government as rights-holders.

Similarly, we build the capacity of the communities to develop their own projects, be they for carrying out productive activities or for advocating for the respect of their collective and individual rights. We encourage the communities to carry out appraisals, evaluate the conditions in which they live, and develop, according to their resources and desires, their own proposals.

The challenges we face in this area involve carrying out advocacy regarding government programs that are developed without any sensitivity to the Rarámuri and Ódami cultures, and that treat indigenous communities as businesspeople or offer them free hand-outs or in-kind assistance.  We facilitate exercises of reflection with the communities, so that they may learn to distinguish between programs that respect their rights and those that only result in creating dependency by using official resources as if they were favors.

The approval of indigenous peoples’ projects is an important part of the consolidation of their identity as rights-holders.  Many governmental programs provide resources solely to agrarian communities, without considering the situation of communities with legal standing and the indigenous communities that live in those agrarian communities without being ejidatarios (having agrarian certificates entitling them to “membership” in the ejido) or comuneros (having agrarian certificates entitling them to “membership” in the comunidad where they have use rights).

The legal standing of the Rarámuri community of Choréachi was finally recognized when it filed its lawsuit for recognition before the Joint Agrarian Tribunal.  Its existence before government institutions was further corroborated by the fact that it had already requested and obtained, as an indigenous community, funds from the National Commission of Natural Protected Areas (CONANP) for the implementation of three environmental conservation projects.

Under this area of our work, the Alianza Sierra Madre also supports the institutional strengthening of grassroots indigenous organizations, so that they may raise their own funds independently of intermediary institutions.