Update on Mexico: Indigenous Law Denounced

The Mexican Congress recently approved a modified version of the Law on Indigenous Rights and Culture. It was proposed over five years ago as a result of peace talks between the Mexican government and the Zapatistas, but was never submitted to Congress for approval under former President Zedillo. President Fox made submission of the proposal to Congress one of his first acts upon taking office in December 2000. The law is intended as a constitutional amendment.

The indigenous rights law was substantially modified from its original form, and indigenous rights groups across the country who had lobbied for passage of the original proposal have vehemently denounced the version approved by Congress, citing its failure to fulfill the basic rights of Mexico's 23 million indigenous people, the majority of whom live in severe poverty and lack adequate representation in the government. For hundreds of years, Mexico's indigenous peoples have been marginalized and isolated from the rest of society. The Zapatista rebellion in 1994, launched the issue onto the international stage.

Passage of the indigenous rights law was the final precondition for peace talks that the Zapatistas had put before the Mexican government. Other demands, which had previously been met by the Fox Administration, included the closure of key military bases in Chiapas and the release of a number of Zapatista political prisoners. After publicly rejecting the version of the indigenous rights law that came out of Congress, the Zapatistas cut off dialogue with the government and vowed to continue their rebellion in Chiapas.

This rapid succession of events occurred after an intense lobbying campaign on the part of the Zapatistas and other indigenous rights groups in Mexico, for passage of the original Law on Indigenous Rights and Culture as proposed by COCOPA (Commission on Concordance and Pacification) back in 1996. The proposal was based on the San Andres Accords signed by the government and the Zapatistas that same year.

As part of their campaign to build support for the COCOPA proposal, a group of Zapatista leaders marched for two weeks from Chiapas to Mexico City in early March 2001. Once in Mexico City, Zapatista leaders met privately with members of Congress to try to convince them to approve the COCOPA law. They also spoke in favor of the indigenous rights bill on the floor of Congress.

The original COCOPA proposal called for a number of reforms, including the right of local indigenous communities to administer justice according to their traditions, to choose their own form of local government, to exercise greater control over the use of natural resources on their lands, and to preserve their traditional languages and cultures. In the course of their consideration of the indigenous rights law, Mexican legislators made serious substantive changes to the COCOPA's proposal. The principal changes denounced by indigenous rights groups are:

1) The modified law does not grant full autonomy to Mexico's indigenous peoples, as did the original COCOPA proposal. The new law states, "The indigenous communities, within the municipal structure, may coordinate themselves and associate themselves according to the terms and for the effects provided by the [prevailing] law." The new law leaves it up to each state to determine the extent to which indigenous autonomy and structure will be recognized within its political boundaries. This severely limits the autonomy of an indigenous people whose geographic boundaries cross state lines.

2) The law also subordinates the rights of indigenous peoples to solely determine usage of natural resources on their lands and territory to current state and federal laws governing natural resource exploitation.

According to Mexican news reports, the center-left Revolutionary Democratic Party (PRD) may reintroduce the COCOPA proposal in the coming months in the hopes that a compromise can be reached. In the meantime, the law that was passed at the end of April will continue to go through the ratification
process by all the states to determine if it will be formally amended to the constitution. Seventeen of Mexico's 32 states must ratify the law in order for it to become a constitutional amendment. The final outcome of this process is not likely to be known until early fall when all state legislatures will have had time to consider it.

The National Indigenous Congress of Mexico, a body representing all of Mexico's indigenous groups, along with approximately 150 civil society and indigenous organizations, have launched a campaign to lobby the state legislatures to reject the law. On May 11, the Indigenous Congress delivered a petition against the law and in favor of the original COCOPA proposal with 60,000 signatures to President Fox.

General Assembly

The Central America Update Report to the 199th General Assembly (1987) stated: "Governments are to be held to account for the ways they use their authority and power, for the purposes and priorities they choose and defend, and most particularly for their treatment of the poor and powerless. ... [We] need to evaluate the use of power by all governments in that region...according to our understanding of the biblical constitution of God's government (Minutes, 1987, Part I, p.347).

Therefore, the 206th General Assembly (1994) "Calls on the government of the United States, through existing programs and capacities, to aid the government of Mexico in all appropriate ways to implement the political, social, and economic programs needed to guarantee human rights and meet the social and economic needs of the indigenous people of Mexico in general and the Chiapas region in particular...