Tomás Rojo Valencia, a leader and spokesman for the Yaqui indigenous community in northern Mexico who is also a leader of Mexico’s Citizens’ Movement for Water, is missing and feared kidnapped by political opponents. On May 27, Rojo Valencia was exercising outdoors in the indigenous community of Vicam, in southern Sonora state, when he was reportedly seized by individuals and forced into an unknown vehicle.
Leaders of the Citizens’ Movement for Water are demanding that Mexican authorities immediately determine Rojo Valencia’s whereabouts and that he be safely released. The Citizens’ Movement explained that “Rojo Valencia, along with other members of the [Yaqui] ethnic group, has been a central figure over the last decade in promoting an alliance of the indigenous community with rural agricultural producers and inhabitants of the south of Sonora, to advocate for increased water management policies for Sonora with sea-water desalination technologies and great infrastructure projects such as the Northwest Hydraulic Plan (PLHINO).”
