President-elect Vicente Fox, speaking to representatives from indigenous peoples of several continents, announced his decision last night to send the Congress of the Union - this December 1 - the proposal for an Indigenous Rights and Culture Law drawn up by the Commission for Concordance and Peace (Cocopa), which "includes" the San Andre's Accords "in every detail."
"This will demonstrate, through actions, the willingness of my administration to establish the conditions for peace with justice and dignity in Chiapas, and to begin a great national dialogue," he said.
At the closing of the work of the Satellite Conference of Indigenous Peoples on the World Conference Against Racism, Fox stressed that everyone's participation is necessary, especially that of legislators, in order to respond, with results, to the demands of the Indian peoples. He said they are asking for something very simple, but something which, as a country, we have not been able to give them: to be freer, stronger, more respected and more dignified. That simple, that important.
Accompanied by the former Senator and Cocopa member, Luis H. Alvarez, the future head of the Executive recalled that six years ago Mexicans woke up to a "painful cry" against injustice. "We woke up to a reality which, as a society, we had wanted to avoid." Without ever mentioning the Zapatista Army of National Liberation (EZLN) directly, he said that that cry, which came from Las Ca~adas, "made a deep impression" on all of society, which resolutely supported their demands for justice and dignity.
During the event, organized by the Menchu' Tum Foundation, where the 1992 Nobel Peace Prize winner was present, Fox Quesada enumerated five objectives on which the new relationship with indigenous peoples should be based.
First, recognizing their right to be different, to have special rules of coexistence and even of government, of the roots, cultures and practices of each one of the indigenous peoples. There can only be treatment between equals when differences are respected and one accepts that the other has his own voice and his own heart.
"We will respect their customs, we will do so without losing sight of the fact that our social life is sustained by fundamental universal principles which we should share: democracy, human rights, dignity and gender equality," he said. In the second place, we have to learn to respect, to admire and to understand, not only different cultural characteristics and identities, but also their abilities. We have to share path and destiny.
Fox noted that, in the third place, a new kind of coexistence must be achieved, reinforcing the knowledge of each from their own experience, so that the one can learn from the other, and thus emerge enriched. Recognizing the other as someone different, but capable of assuming their responsibility in the country's development.
In the fourth place, actions should be carried out which will reverse the conditions of exclusion, backwardness and marginalization of the indigenous peoples, with total respect for their identity, their culture, their customs and their ecological environment. "We will work decisively to eradicate poverty and marginalization. So that no Mexican will ever again have to resort to arms in order to have their voice heard. We will honor our word, and we will listen to the voices of our brothers. We will give the word its importance back, and we will learn to listen to a different speech."
Lastly, he said, we have to see that society builds a new relationship with our indigenous brothers, from that point on no one, ever again, will any longer see them with indifference or pity, but with dignity and respect being the basis for coexistence.
During the event, held last night in the Inter-American Center for Social Security Studies (CIESS), of the IMSS, he committed himself to taking up and supporting the best proposals to come out of the Satellite Conference, in order to present them jointly, as peoples and governments, at the World Conference Against Racism, Racial Discrimination and Xenophobia and Related Forms of Intolerance, which will be held in the middle of next year in South Africa.
He said that the marginalization, discrimination and exclusion which the people of America and of other parts of the world have suffered were first inflicted by the colonial countries, but they are now being inflicted by the dominant societies of our nations.
Because of that, one of the great challenges of the next century is to build bridges of communication in order to develop new forms of coexistence built on the recognition of diversity and the right to cultural difference. "I recognize the enormous historic debt we have with our indigenous peoples. I am deeply offended that what is stated in the law is not made real by actions: you are our brothers, with the same rights and obligations as all Mexicans. It hurts me to find that many communities and many indigenous are being excluded from education, from health services, from basic public services, from adequate food and nutrition. It offends me that, instead of offering them dignity, what they have received is indifference, discrimination, racism, contempt and even forgetting."
In addition he said that "representation" of the indigenous peoples will be "right next" to his office, "in order to remind us every day of their existence and of their demands." Democracy in the country will be incomplete as long as the indigenous peoples continue to be discriminated against and excluded. National development will be inadequate as long as poverty, hunger and marginalization continue to exist.
The legislative proposal on indigenous matters which the Commission of Concordance and Peace made public towards the end of 1996, based on the San Andre's Larra'inzar Accords, restores the right of the indigenous peoples to self-determination, and, proceeding from that, to autonomy in respect to the Mexican State, in order to define their own forms of coexistence and social, economic, political and cultural organization.
The Cocopa bill - which has not yet been formally presented to the Congress of the Union - would involve changing Articles 4 and 115 of the Constitution. However, five other Articles - 18, 26, 53, 73 and 116 - would have to be adapted in order to make way for the new law drawn up by the Commission of Concordance and Peace.
The document notes that those communities and municipalities which believe themselves to be members of an indigenous people will be recognized to have "the right to define, in accordance with their own political practices of each of their traditions, the procedures for electing their authorities or representatives and for the exercise of their own forms of internal government within a framework that assures the unity of the national State."
The Cocopa's bill - which was completed on November 29, 1996 - notes that "the right of free determination of the indigenous peoples will be respected in each of the arenas and levels in which their autonomy is asserted, being able to take in one or more indigenous peoples, according to the particular and specific circumstances of each entity."
In defining indigenous peoples, the Commission states that they are all those "who are descended from populations who resided in the country when colonization began, and prior to the establishment of the borders of the United Mexican States, and, whatever their legal standing might be, have preserved their own social, economic, cultural and political institutions, or a part of them."
It similarly recognizes the right of the indigenous peoples to have collective access to the use and enjoyment of the natural resources of their lands and territories, "those being understood as the entirety of the habitat which the indigenous peoples use or occupy, except for those whose direct control belongs to the Nation."
Originally published in Spanish by La Jornada ______________________ Translated by irlandesa