In south Texas, existing oil and gas production, several planned fracked gas pipelines and President Trump’s effort to build a border wall between Texas and Mexico have created a trifecta of environmental injustices and generated opposition from environmentalists, property owners and especially a local native American tribe, the Carrizo Comecrudo.
The 1,200-member tribe is not recognized by the federal government and therefore lacks the minimal protections and benefits that federally recognized tribes have. Their claims to the land go back before European contact. In late May, the tribe organized an online, two-day human rights tribunal that featured tribal members, anthropologists, ecologists, climate activists and local residents. Their main goal was to establish a record of fact and expert testimony that would support a successful lawsuit for violation of their rights.
Between The Lines’ Melinda Tuhus attended the two-day online tribunal and afterward spoke with Juan Mancias, chairman of the Carrizo Comecrudo tribe. Here, he describes the challenges his people face and current efforts to win justice.
JUAN MANCIAS: They were supposed to be built three years ago, but we’ve been able to make them go over their paperwork because they were doing poor, poor due diligence. And until we came on board, we started telling them, you gotta do some due diligence here. Because got to see a pasture there does not extend to one bay, it goes all the way across this bay where you built that shipping channel, shipping channel cut into some of these sacred sites. And we don’t know what they did with those artifacts that you have found here. We have pipes, that are like tubular pipes that you just put a cane or a piece of stick with a hole in it to smoke them. And we have a lot of those that were recovered at some of these sites, and we don’t know where they are and those are sacred because they went into the grave with our ancestors and they’ve taken them out.
MELINDA TUHUS: Juan Macias, you brought a lot of allies into your struggle. I was so impressed with the people who are on the tribunal call a few weeks ago. Can you talk a little about that?
JUAN MANCIAS: Well, we’ve gotten a lot of people to come in and out, and of course, we want to be able to keep our lands because it’s right in the middle of an oil deposit and where we hold seven, eight mineral rights on it. So we don’t want to lose it to anybody who could come in and just starts digging again. We’ve gotten some allies to come in and really start talking for us at the UN. We really need to find those allies that can just help us just one time, so we can get on our feet again and get back into the fight because the Covid taken a lot out of us too. We are a service organization as well. We’ve been trying to help our tribal members to get food and to get any kind of supplies like masks and gloves and whatever things they need. But right now, I mean, the biggest thing over our heads, is trying to maintain some land structure. I think that it’s a lot to not forget who we are and where we come from and to maintain an identity that connects you to the land because the land itself identifies who you are.
MELINDA TUHUS: What do you need at this point to stop this new infrastructure?
JUAN MANCIAS: Well, we need to have a base, a foundation and that’s what the 30 acres were. And we needed to be able to house people that are coming in to help us at the border, to help us with the LNGs (liquid natural gas) and kind of give them an orientation of what’s going on because it’s a totally different animal that we’re fighting when it comes to those LNGs down in South Texas, because they’re also getting mixed up in with the Homeland Security stuff. So we’re doing what we can. We need people to start demanding those due diligence, because the EIS’s (Environmental Impact Statements) are not being followed. And that’s because the people in power right now, even the Army Corps of Engineers, are making it hard for anybody to get out there. Like we can’t even get out there even to just drop some tobacco. We have to do it from the fence way, far away,
MELINDA TUHUS: EIS being Environmental Impact Statement, which by the way, Trump is saying shouldn’t even be required.
JUAN MANCIAS: You know, we’re trying to do it in a peaceful and caring manner to respect our ancestors. But the way that you know, these people are doing it, it’s making it really difficult to be able to survive.
For more information, visit the Carrizo Comecrudo Tribe of Texas’ website at carrizocomecrudonation.com.
