The Case That Shows How Far Indigenous Mexicans Are from Achieving Equality Andalucia Knoll - VICE News
go to original June 15, 2014

An outrageously faulty case in Mexico illustrates how the country’s indigenous citizens struggle to be treated fairly under the law.

In August 2006, police in the central Mexican state of Querétaro arrested a middle-aged indigenous street vendor named Jacinta Francisco Marcial, accusing her of kidnapping six federal agents during a melee months earlier at a market in the town of Santiago Mexquititlán.

According to town residents and eyewitness testimony, the agents, who were not in uniform, broke proper protocol in late March and illegally confiscated the vendor’s products. They raided the market under the pretext that it was selling pirated DVDs, which are ubiquitous in stalls across Mexico.

The vendors, suspecting that the “operation” was really a robbery on the part of the plainclothes agents, fought back.

Arguing and scuffling ensued. According to a brief on the incident written by Amnesty International, authorities that day agreed to negotiate with the vendors and compensate them for the merchandise. They also agreed that an agent would remain as collateral while the others collected the money. By 7PM the vendors had been paid, the agents had left, and the incident was over.

Four months later, on August 3, the government surprisingly scapegoated three indigenous vendors for the alleged “kidnapping,” which it turned out had occurred while at least one of the accused — Jacinta — was attending mass and visiting the local pharmacy.

A mother of six who was earning a living selling soft drinks and ice cream, Jacinta was a member of the Otomí, an indigenous ethnic group in the region, and spoke only the local dialect of the Otomí language, Hñähñu. She had been a street vendor she was seven, and wasn’t educated beyond elementary school.

She was the last person anyone would ever suspect of kidnapping federal agents.

Read the rest at VICE News

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