Mexico's Indigenous Left With No Options Circe Vargon and Yvonne Reyes Campos - Rumbo de Mexico
go to original August 12, 2012

Mexican campesino plowing field with oxen in the state of Oaxaca, Mexico. (profimedia.si)

MEXICO CITY – The National Campesino Confederation (CNC) stated on Thursday’s International Day of the World’s Indigenous Peoples celebration that the government’s abandonment of Mexican agriculture and farmland has left more than 12 million Mexicans with no choice other than to migrate from their communities or die of starvation.

CNC President Gerardo Sánchez García noted that the states with the largest indigenous populations living in extreme poverty are Chiapas, Chihuahua, Durango, Guerrero, Hidalgo, Nayarit, Oaxaca, Puebla, San Luis Potosí and Yucatán.

He added that it is a shame that Mexican indigenous communities continue to suffer social exclusion and poverty in the 21st century, going on to say that indigenous cultures are on an inexorable march toward extinction.

Sánchez García warned that more than 140 indigenous languages are on the verge of extinction, and that the nearly 20,000 communities in more than 1,500 municipalities are still burdened by extreme poverty exacerbated by a welfare system established by the current National Action Party (PAN) administration.

The CNC president underscored findings presented by the Tlachinollan Human Rights Center that reported high incidences of militarization, drug trafficking, arms trafficking, land conflicts, communal violence, illiteracy rates, maternal mortality rates, malnourishment and mass migration to the United States among indigenous communities.

Guanajuato Institutional Revolutionary Party (PRI) Senator-elect Sánchez García filed a complaint with the federal government, calling for the implementation the 2007 United Nation’s Universal Declaration of Rights for Indigenous Peoples, adding that, “those who leave their communities to work as day laborers in fields in Sinaloa, Jalisco, Chihuahua, Sonora and Baja California, and in the United States and Canada … are victims of abuse and discrimination by intermediaries and employers.”

He warned that in the coming months, the price of grain imported into Mexico will increase because of widespread drought in the United States. He added, “Seasonal and subsistence farmers are the grain reserves of our country, and right now that reserve has collapsed … farmers have no other alternatives … and I believe that in a month or two we will see a massive food crisis.”

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