Amid killings and COVID, Mexico's Yaqui people get pledges

For free real time breaking news alerts sent straight to your inbox sign up to our breaking news emails Sign up to our free breaking news emails Sign up to our free breaking news emails SIGN UP I would like to be emailed about offers, events and updates from The Independent. Read our privacy policy 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. “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. “It is a dead-end street to promise water that isn’t available” in exchange for Yaquis renouncing their rights to water stored in a dam upstream that is currently being used to supply the Sonora state capital of Hermosillo, Vizcarra said. The Sonora state prosecutor’s office has suggested that the murder of Yaqui leader Tomás Rojo Valencia in May and the abduction and apparent killing of the 10 Yaquis in July were the work of drug cartels or allied local gangs.