Amid killings and COVID, Mexico's Yaqui people get pledges
ABC News
Mexico’s Yaqui people have been hit by a wave of killings and coronavirus deaths, so the country’s long-awaited public apology for centuries of abuses rang a little hollow
MEXICO CITY -- Mexico’s Yaqui people have been hit by a wave of killings and coronavirus deaths, so the country's long-awaited public apology for centuries of abuses Tuesday rang a little hollow.
President Andrés Manuel López Obrador had hoped the ceremony would mark a turning point in the woes of what he has described as Mexico’s most persecuted Indigenous group, which suffered a government campaign to exterminate or exile its members around 1900.
“We are here to try to repair, to the extent possible, the damages that were done to the Yaqui peoples,” López Obrador said, calling the war against them “one of the most shameful chapters in our country's history.”
In the 1960s, the Yaquis became known abroad for the mystical and visionary powers ascribed to them by writer Carlos Castañeda.
