It has been a huge fight against what they call customs and habits. The most recent measure has been the approval by the Senate, this March 13, of an amendment to the second constitutional article. The article goes on to acknowledge that the indigenous peoples and communities They can “apply their own regulatory systems, subject to the general principles of this Constitution.” It also maintains the provision that they must do so “respecting individual guarantees, human rights and, importantly, the dignity and integrity of women.” The new amendment, however, adds: “and the best interest of girls, boys and adolescents, without any practice to the contrary being justified by the exercise of their uses and customs.”
The amendment, which still must be ratified by two-thirds of federal deputies and the majority of local congresses, was presented by senators as a ban on child marriage in indigenous communities. The truth is that it is not, it is not even mentioned. It does point out, however, that the rights of minors cannot be violated under the protection of uses and customs.
The tricks that our politicians are making after having converted in 2001, with Vicente Fox, the indigenous uses and customs in a constitutional “right.” No one can object to any community – indigenous, Mormon, Catholic, Islamic, gay – adopting its own ways of dressing or expressing itself. This freedom, however, cannot justify violations of individual guarantees. Usage and customs have been a pretext to deny the political rights of women, to expel from the community those who profess different religions, to punish homosexuals. They have also been used to force girls to marry or simply to sell them. That is why the liberals of the 19th century, who like Benito Juárez fought against the uses and customs of the indigenous communities, maintained: “Apart from the law, nothing; above the law, no one.”
The opening sentence of the first constitutional article should have been sufficient to ensure respect for individual guarantees: “All people will enjoy the rights recognized in this Constitution.” However, a conservative spirit disguised as progressivism has caused this article of the Constitution of 1917 by inventing different rights for people of different ethnicities. Contrary to the liberal principle that we are all equal before the law, today we have a racist Constitution that assigns rights based on ethnic origin.
Human rights must be enjoyed by all human beings. Uses and customs seek to create rights only for members of a people, an ethnic group or a culture. If they do not violate human rights, practices and customs are covered by the individual guarantees that we all enjoy. For those in control of indigenous communities, however, they are a useful instrument to strip women, girls, or those with different beliefs of their rights.
Today, the senators want to remedy the evils that they themselves have caused by recognizing the uses and customs with new additions to the Constitution. We must applaud, of course, an amendment that clarifies that the rights of women and girls cannot be violated under the justification of uses and customs. It would have been much better, however, to return to a Magna Carta with human rights for all, because indigenous women and girls are also human.
Evaporated
The Constitution of CDMX established in 2017 the “right to water” and added: “This service cannot be privatized.” The Water System was going to receive private investment for 8.125 million pesos in water treatment plants, controls and telemetry, but with this “right” the investment evaporated. Today AMLO wants to bring water from Hidalgo. The people of Hidalgo will ask themselves: “And why me?”
“They are not usages and customs. “They are abuses and customs.”
Eufrosina Cruz Mendoza
#Abuses #customs
