The Carrizo Comecrudo Tribe of Texas has hidden itself well in the pages of history, as they have hidden in present-day society. Today, on the verge of a new awakening, the Carrizo Comecrudo Tribe brings others to their existence, which never faded, just remained hidden.” - From the Carrizo Comecrudo website
The last weekend in May, the Carrizo Comecrudo Tribe of Texas, the Gulf Center for Law and Poverty, and Gulf South for a Green New Deal hosted an Indigenous-led People’s Tribunal for Human Rights in Floresville, Texas, about half an hour southeast of San Antonio. It was the first Indigenous-led people’s tribunal held in virtual space due to the restrictions of social distancing. The tribunal addressed violations of human rights, Indigenous sovereignty, and the ecological integrity of the lower Rio Grande Valley, which is part of the ancestral homelands of the Carrizo Comecrudo (known as Esto’k Gna in their native tongue).
The Sierra Club’s Lone Star (Texas) Chapter and Dirty Fuels Campaign helped sponsor the tribunal, which aimed to raise public awareness about violence against Indigenous people and degradation of the environment in the borderlands, while simultaneously establishing a record of fact to support of a lawsuit against the government and corporate actors for those violations.
“The findings at this tribunal will be used to develop litigation against the entities that have caused this harm,” says tribal member Christopher Basaldú, PhD, pictured above, a Sierra Club organizing manager based in Brownsville, Texas. “The tribunal connects the dots between petrochemical development, violence against Indigenous women, environmental justice, border militarization, and migration.”
The Sierra Club has teamed up with the tribe in opposing the Trump administration’s border wall and the fracking industry’s proposal to build three liquefied natural gas (LNG) terminals on ancestral tribal lands near Brownsville and Garcia Pasture, where the Rio Grande empties into the Gulf of Mexico.
“This area contains Esto’k Gna ancestral village sites, hunting grounds, and burial grounds,” Basaldú says. “The federal government and their allies in the fossil fuel industry have perpetrated environmental, cultural, and spiritual racism by disrespecting the sacred sites of the original Native people of Texas and attempting to erase our existence for profit.”
A partial list of charges and grievances documented and archived at the tribunal includes:
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Violating Indigenous sovereignty
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Polluting and despoiling Native territory
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Building the racist border wall on tribal lands
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Waiving environmental laws to facilitate the wall’s construction
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Perpetrating violence against tribal members, including the murder and kidnapping of Indigenous women and girls
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Eradicating Native languages, and disrupting Indigenous lifeways, relationships, and responsibilities to the land
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Proposing construction of LNG export terminals and pipelines on or through tribal lands and burial grounds without consultation or consent from Indigenous people
“Installing pipelines and LNG facilities on Garcia Pasture would pave the way for more oil and gas drilling in West Texas,” says Cyrus Reed, the Lone Star Chapter’s interim director, “and the marginalized communities that contribute the least to climate change will be affected the most. Cooking our planet means melting our ice, which means Garcia Pasture and Brownsville would go underwater. Protecting Garcia Pasture is also part of a much larger battle for survival.”
Reed told the tribunal that the Sierra Club is “evolving, learning, and becoming a better organization because of our friendship [with the Carrizo Comecruda]. Sierra Club staff and volunteers have for years been taking steps to integrate anti-racism principles and the Jemez Principles into our work and break down racial and class privilege within our organization.
"The most powerful thing the Sierra Club can do right now," he added, "is amplify the voices from communities of color and support their needs inside and outside the organization.”
The Human Rights Tribunal attracted an international audience of over 400 participants on Zoom, and more than 10,000 views on Facebook live from countries as disparate and far-flung as El Salvador, the United Kingdom, Ireland, and Norway. “It was a resounding success,” Basaldú says.
People’s tribunals have emerged as an autonomous alternative to state-based legal authorities in response to war crimes, genocide, and other violations of human and Indigenous rights around the world.
“We’re trying to maintain an identity that’s thousands of years old,” says Carrizo Comecrudo Tribal Chair Juan Mancias. “The government and corporate interests have gone to great lengths to hide this information. We’re holding this tribunal so the public will understand why we are standing up and what this means to us. We want people to understand that we are the protectors of our ancestors' connections to these lands, this sacred river, these waters, and our way of life.”
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Watch Day 1 and Day 2 of the tribunal on Zoom. The tribe also hosted a post-tribunal community visioning session, which can be viewed here.