Within the framework of the International Day of Indigenous Peoples, the Office of the United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights (UN-DH) reports that Mexico accumulates 46 indigenous people murdered or disappeared between 2019 and 2023 “for being defenders of their rights, towns and communities. For their part, civil organizations report that Mexico is on the verge of a “civil war” in the southern region, where hundreds of internally displaced persons are forced due to violence.
In Mexico, one of the countries in the Americas with the largest indigenous population, between 2019 and August 2023, 46 indigenous defenders were murdered or disappeared, and less than 2.2% of the cases have resulted in convictions for those responsible.
The United Nations High Commissioner in Mexico published on August 9 a press release on the occasion of the International Day of Indigenous Peoplesin which he denounced the worrying situation faced by people belonging to these groups and who are dedicated to the protection of Human Rightswho “are more exposed to reprisals or violent actions due to their visibility for the defense of their territory and way of life,” said Jesús Peña Palacios, representative of the UN-DH.
Of the 46 cases of which the international unit is aware, eight people have not yet been found, 32 were engaged in environmental activities and 33 had previously suffered security incidents; 10 of the latter have the corresponding complaint process.
The highest concentration of claims occurred in Oaxaca (south of the country), where 20 cases were reported, followed by Chihuahua (located on the northern border strip) with five reports, Guerrero and Michoacán with four, and Chiapas with three.
“In Mexico, in addition to the structural challenges that have affected indigenous peoples, generating significant gaps in inequality, marginalization, and access to their rights, also they face violence from different actors, including organized crime groups, who dispute control of their territory” denounced the UN-DH report.
In the statement, the High Commissioner expressed deep concern about the prevalence of impunity in the country when counting having issued a single criminal conviction of the 46 cases reported in five years.
Although the High Commissioner acknowledges the progress in the implementation of the Protection Mechanism for Human Rights Defenders and Journalists, he urges the Mexican State to redouble efforts at the three levels of government to guarantee expeditious access to Justice.
The Mexican State is subject to compliance with the Escazú Agreement, a binding instrument signed by 24 countries in 2018, of which Mexico was a rigorous promoter. The international instrument requires full protection of the right to access environmental matters and recognizes the importance of addressing them “with the participation of all people” as referred to by the page of the Government of Mexico.
In this context, the different international and national organizations, as well as Mexican indigenous defense leaders have denounced on numerous occasions the institutional and structural abandonment of State agencies, which have diminished in their work to guarantee strict compliance with the rights of indigenous peoples. natives.
“Chiapas on the verge of a civil war”
Mexico arrives this August 9 with multiple issues to fulfill on the agenda of commitments with the indigenous peoples of the country, who have been denouncing for months the continuous threat of forced displacement, a particularly serious case in Chiapas. The inhabitants find themselves in the middle of an “undeclared war” between criminal groups.
On an official visit to Chiapas last June, President Andrés Manuel López Obrador assured that “in general there is peace and tranquility” in the state, an assertion that has been contradicted by indigenous leaders and defenders who call the situation unsustainable. The Chiapas territory is subject to a dizzying growth of paramilitaries, hit men and cartels, as the National Indigenous Congress pointed out at a press conference on May 31, whose final position document was supported by personalities such as Noam Chomsky and Alfonso Cuarón.
“Organizations continue to shout and organize, but there is no response, there are no results,” said Miguel Ángel Villanueva, a peasant leader from the Mexico-Guatemala border area, who also commented that human trafficking and migration issues in which it has already been inserted The criminal structure of organized crime has fueled land tensions with local communities in the southern state of Mexico.
Already in 2022, Cecilia Jiménez Damary (special rapporteur on human rights of internally displaced persons for the UN Human Rights Council) pointed out that the indigenous peoples of Mexico were the object of 40% of the episodes of internal forced displacement in the country as a result of violence, agrarian conflicts, development projects and natural disasters.
Added to the serious current condition of displacement by armed groups in the area are the growing clashes and tensions between the communities of Chiapas and elements of the Army deployed in the area to combat organized crime.
“We are asking that stop the attacks by paramilitary groups. We are talking about groups allowed, financed or armed by the Mexican Army that attack Zapatista communities. At this time they are also partnering with organized crime groups that keep Chiapas on the verge of a civil war”, denounced Raúl Romero, a member of the organization The time for the peoples has come to France 24 in a demonstration that called for the “stop the war in Chiapas” last July.
The case of the Triquis in Mexico City
In December 2020, around 500 people belonging to 143 families from the Triqui Indigenous community of Tierra Blanca Copala, in the state of Oaxaca, were forced to leave their place of origin in the Mixteca area.
The displacement of the community began when on December 26 they were victims of an armed attack that took the life of Andrés Martínez López, a member of the Movement for Unification and Independent Triqui Struggle (Multi). The attack also left the activist’s three children with injuries.
The long exodus of the Triqui community led them to first settle in a nearby town to move to the country’s capital, Mexico City (CDMX) in February 2021, where they set up a makeshift camp in the first square of the city. The displaced Triqui community installed in CDMX was evicted by public security elements in the early morning of April 25, 2022 to be relocated to a property assigned by the local government.
The case of the displaced Triqui community accounts for the hostile living conditions faced by the indigenous peoples of the Latin American country.
The uprising of the EZLN and the officialization of the International Day of Indigenous Peoples
Although the meetings of the United Nations Working Group on Indigenous Peoples began in August 1982, it was not until February 17, 1995 that the resolution 49/214 of the General Assembly of the United Nations in which August 9 is decided as the International Day of Indigenous Peoples.
So, August 9 is an ideal date to travel the paths of memory and the community and remember the year 1994, which, with its many nuances, represented a watershed for the indigenous in Mexico and the world.
When the question of the indigenous is mentioned in Mexico, the figure of the Zapatista Army of National Liberation (EZLN) appears in the chinks of memory. This group originally emerged as an armed movement when on January 1, 1994 indigenous groups Tzotziles, Tzeltales, Choles and Tojolabales formed the EZLN and took over five municipal seats in the state of Chiapas.
The EZLN opposed the implementation of the North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA) as a milestone for Mexico’s entry into the international free trade system, a political situation that further marginalized and violated indigenous peoples. from the country.
Thus, Zapatismo made public ‘The first declaration of the Lacandona Jungle’, whose content articulated denunciations and specific demands to the Mexican State.
The movement had broad national and international support that manifested itself in a multiplicity of protests in the streets of Mexico. The scrutiny of the Mexican government was such that in 1996 the so-called San Andrés Agreements came to light, conceived in the shadow of the 1995 Law and Commission for Concord and Pacification (COCOPA), which sought to establish the conditions for negotiating peace with the communities attached to the EZLN.
The Zapatistas and the Government, through COCOPA and the National Intermediation Commission (CONAI), achieved some progress that was put forward as hope for a different future, as the possibility of building “a world in which many worlds fit.” The idealism did not last long, since in 2001 the dialogues resulted in a series of constitutional reforms described by the indigenous peoples as “insufficient”.
During the truce of the peace talks, the residents denounced the actions of a “low intensity war” that increased the military presence in the area. Paramilitaries took over more and more of the region until December 22, 1997, when the well-known massacre of Acteal was recorded at the hands of a local armed group, which ended with the lives of 45 unarmed people who were in the village church. .
The EZLN uprising generated a series of changes in national politics and in the social approach of the indigenous in the country. One of the great achievements of the Zapatista movement is the formation of the National Indigenous Congress in 1996, a group that collects the collective demands of the different indigenous nations of Mexico and that continues to denounce the irregularities committed by the Mexican State against the indigenous peoples. natives.
On the other hand, the indigenous peoples defend their capacity for agency and denounce that, despite the advances in the matter, the indigenous populations no longer want to “continue being protected”.
“They continue to crush us, they continue to usurp us, that is, they believe us as minors and that is part of the old and stale policy, so where is (the president’s motto of) “the poor first”? Where are the indigenous peoples first? We have said that,” the indigenous women’s leader Margarita Gutiérrez Romero questioned in an interview with EFE.
With EFE and local media
#crushing #Day #Indigenous #Peoples #Mexico #eclipsed #violence