Nahua People of Alpuyeca Seek Indigenous Recognition via Mexico’s Supreme Court

ByMexico Solidarity

This article originally appeared in the January 8, 2026 edition of Desinformémonos.

Mexico City. Since 2019, the Nahua people of Alpuyeca have been requesting that their municipality in Morelos be declared Indigenous territory in order to exercise autonomy and their right to self-determination, including decisions regarding internal forms of social, political, and community organization. The lack of response from the local Congress has led the Supreme Court of Justice of the Nation to review the omission and delay in this process.

With a divided vote of five to four, the Plenary of the highest court exercised its power of attraction on the amparo [injunction] in review 384/2024, at the request of the ministers Hugo Aguilar Ortiz, President of Mexico’s Supreme Court, and Irving Espinosa Betanzo, due to the lack of action of the Legislative Power of Morelos.

The Court will analyze whether the delay in the procedures for the creation of the Indigenous municipality violates human rights protected by the Constitution, considering that the inhabitants of Alpuyeca initiated the procedure more than five years ago for the corresponding consultation to be carried out, without the responsible authorities having carried it out until now.

The request for judicial review was supported after hearing from representatives of the Union of Indigenous and Afro-Morelos Municipalities and Communities, who denounced that the Morelos Congress had exceeded the legal deadlines established in the local Constitution and its own regulations for issuing the ruling on the creation of the indigenous municipality of Alpuyeca. The matter will be assigned to a justice for the drafting of the proposal to be submitted to a vote by the full court.