Opinions | A deadly battle over control of the Yaqui river will affect us all Gabriela Laveaga Members of the Yaqui ethnic group meet with representatives of civil society in Mexico City on Aug. 9, 2014. (Sashenka Gutierrez/EPA/Shutterstock) In early June, after withdrawing cash from an ATM, Luis Urbano Domínguez Mendoza, a Yaqui water activist was gunned down in Ciudad Obregón, Sonora, in Mexico. Domínguez Mendoza is the latest Yaqui activist to be murdered, one in a long line of recent and not-so-recent attacks on the Yaqui people who seek to protect their local river. The Yaqui, today divided in eight groups and numbering a bit more than 40,000 people altogether, are known in Mexico as the undefeated tribe. To be called a Yaqui implies that you are obstinate, relentless and, potentially, fierce. Yet this historical reputation as unrelenting warriors in the face of, first, an encroaching Spanish empire and, later, an independent Mexico masks their