San Juan Copala

San Juan Copala is a Triqui community and municipal agency of Santiago Juxtlahuaca in western Oaxaca, at about 1,550 to 1,580 m and some 20 km south of the municipal seat. The 2005 census counted 786 people; there are fewer today, because many families left during the years of violence. The Triqui call the place Chuman'a, "the centre", and the Mixtec knew it as Sahatnuncutu; Copala comes from Nahuatl and refers to copal.

It was an independent municipality from 1826 to 1948, when the Oaxaca congress dissolved it and attached it to Juxtlahuaca. Since then the Triqui have asked to recover their municipality, and the struggle over local government has at times been violent, with Triqui groups and organisations in conflict with one another, among them MULT, UBISORT and MULT-I, which split off in 2007. In 2006-2007 part of the population declared the Autonomous Municipality of San Juan Copala, on the model of the Zapatista municipalities in Chiapas. In 2010 UBISORT blockaded the town for months, cutting off food, medicine and water, and the human rights observers Jyri Jaakkola and Bety Cariño were killed while a humanitarian caravan tried to reach it. Hundreds of families from Copala and nearby communities were displaced, and return programmes have moved slowly and with friction.

Copala is not a tourist destination and has no visitor services. What exists is information about its history and social situation, and the security situation can change from one month to the next. If you have a reason to go, such as work, study, a family visit or an invitation from the community, go with someone you trust from the area and let the community authorities know.