President Claudia Sheinbaum on Thursday said that the federal government is attending to people’s needs in the Sierra Tarahumara, after a reporter highlighted a recent media report about slavery in the mountainous region of the northern state of Chihuahua.
At Sheinbaum’s morning press conference, Reyna Haydee Ramírez, an independent reporter, raised the topic of “forced recruitment” in the Sierra Tarahumara before asking the president whether she had read the report “Esclavos en la Sierra Tarahumara: Sobrevivir a los campos de trabajo forzado del narco” (Slaves in the Sierra Tarahumara: Surviving drug cartels’ forced labor fields), published by investigative journalism outlet Quinto Elemento Lab in May.
#MañaneraDelPueblo | Claudia Sheinbaum dice que atender desplazamiento en la sierra tarahumara también es responsabilidad del Estado de Chihuahua. pic.twitter.com/W3Aw9wdyXR
— AguascalientesHoy (@agshoy1) June 18, 2026
The report, a six-part narrative investigation, details a system of modern slavery in the Sierra Tarahumara, where men recruited with fake offers for jobs in construction or on ranches ended up as forced laborers in narco-controlled poppy and marijuana fields, living in caves under armed guard.
In a social media post, Quinto Elemento Lab summarized the report this way:
“Modern slavery? They were offered jobs, but ended up as slaves in drug cultivation fields in the Sierra Tarahumara, in Chihuahua. Some of them managed to escape. Since 2015, there were reports, but it wasn’t until July 2019 that 21 men were rescued during a police operation. The story didn’t end there. Some time later, other men escaped from those same fields.”
According to the report, members of drug cartels, including the Sinaloa Cartel, used forced labor in poppy and marijuana fields at eight different locations in the Sierra Tarahumara, a region that includes more than a dozen municipalities, including Guadalupe y Calvo, Guachochi, Batopilas and Urique. Up to 300 men were tortured by drug cartel members, almost starved to death and forced to work without pay, according to the report. Information obtained by the report authors indicated that slave labor was used in drug cultivation in the Sierra Tarahumara until as recently as 2024.
🚨| ¿Esclavitud moderna?
Les ofrecieron trabajo, pero terminaron como esclavos en campos de cultivo de drogas en la Sierra Tarahumara, en Chihuahua. Algunos lograron escapar. Desde 2015 existían denuncias, pero fue hasta julio de 2019, que 21 hombres fueron rescatados durante un… pic.twitter.com/W2FJZCIKQr
— Quinto Elemento Lab (@quintoelab) May 28, 2026
Sheinbaum: The federal government has a ‘presence’ in the Sierra Tarahumara
After Ramírez asserted that people in the Sierra Tarahumara are “still requesting support due to forced displacement,” Sheinbaum interrupted to say, “I’m going to talk about what we’ve done in the Sierra.”
“Firstly, all the welfare programs. They didn’t exist before,” she said, referring to programs introduced by the government of former President Andrés Manuel López Obrador, including employment schemes such as the “Sowing Life” reforestation initiative and the “Youths Building the Future” apprenticeship program.
“Secondly, we’re making progress on artisanal roads,” Sheinbaum said, referring to paved roads built by members of the local communities where they are located.
“… We’re building artisanal roads for connectivity, we’re taking electricity [to Sierra Tarahumara communities], and we’re also working on different actions, among others health actions in that area,” she said.
Sheinbaum also said there is “a greater presence today” of the National Guard in parts of the Sierra Tarahumara with security problems, such as the municipality of Guadalupe y Calvo, located in the mountainous Golden Triangle region of northern Mexico, which is notorious for drug production.
“In Guachochi, … we’re going to build a nursing school,” she added. “… I committed to that because a lot of the time there aren’t nurses who want to go to that part of the Sierra.”
Sheinbaum assured Ramírez and other reporters that the federal government has a “presence” in the Sierra Tarahumara, even though the Quinto Elemento Lab depicts a different scenario — one more akin to abandonment by the state.
She also said that the government attends to reports of disappearances in the area. In addition, Sheinbaum said that the Chihuahua state government has a responsibility to not just focus on Chihuahua city and Ciudad Juárez — the two largest cities in the northern state — but on the Sierra Tarahumara as well.
Pushed as to why the Mexican state “allows” slavery almost two centuries after it was abolished in most of Mexico, Sheinbaum — who didn’t reveal whether she had read the Quinto Elemento Lab report — took umbrage with the reporter’s question.
“Let’s see, Reyna, we’re making progress. The way that you ask it, it’s as if the Mexican state hasn’t done anything. On Tuesday we presented a 46% reduction in homicides,” she said.
“… There are arrests in all the states, there is attention to the [root] causes [of crime],” Sheinbaum continued.
“… The state is present in many spheres of national life, including in the protection of communities,” she said.
With reports from Infobae
