The marakame is dead. On September 8, 2018, the music of the local festival comes to an abrupt halt in the village of Aguamilpa, in Nayarit, a state in western Mexico. A nasal voice announces over the megaphone the assassination of Margarito Diaz, a personality appreciated by the 200 inhabitants. He was 59 years old. He was the only marakamé in the village, a spiritual leader in the indigenous Wixarika community. Appointed from childhood for this role of shaman by the elders, he was renowned for his fights for the environment and the protection of water.
This summer Saturday, in order to escape the suffocating heat of his sheet metal house, Margarito Diaz and his wife, Modesta Chavez de la Rosa, decide to install their bed outside, under a screen that has been made for the occasion. Between them, their 2-year-old niece is already sleeping. Around 10:30 p.m., a man approaches in the dark. He utters these mysterious words: “Where does the music come from? », then draws his gun and fires a bullet. The marakamé, hit in the head, dies instantly. The murderer flees. The announcement comes an hour later.
A suspect, named Llimer Breide N., was arrested by Mexican police on July 29, 2022. Modesta Chavez de la Rosa is formal: she recognizes his voice. The investigation is still in progress. And there is, at this stage, no lead on who ordered the murder. But Margarito Diaz thus adds to the terrible list of 1,733 environmental defenders murdered in ten years, according to the latest report by the NGO Global Witnesspublished September 29, 2022. A list in which Latin America is the region of the world with the highest number of victims, as conflicts increase over the sharing of water and the grabbing of natural resources .
“We knew he was not just making friends defending the water and culture of our indigenous people, but we never imagined that it could cost him his life”explains Arsenio Diaz, the eldest of the shaman’s six children, in his thirties.
Four years later, the widow of Margarito Diaz, 53, continues to live in a climate of constant threats, denounced to the office of the Nayarit State Human Rights Commission. The latest, October 26, 2022: four men disembark from a launched, these little motorboats, and warn her: “We will give you 50,000 pesos [2 600 euros], in exchange for a video in which you claim that Llimer Breide N. is innocent. » Another raises his t-shirt, highlighting his revolver. But no question for Modesta Chavez de la Rosa to give in to blackmail.
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