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RIGHTS-MEXICO:
Where the Word 'Indian' Is Used
as an Insult
Diego Cevallos
MEXICO CITY, (IPS) -
Faustina, a nine-year-old
indigenous girl, stopped going
to school in Mexico City in 2003
to escape the teasing she
suffered because of her
difficulty in speaking Spanish
and the traditional ethnic
clothing worn by her mother.
Now she hides behind her
father's legs while he plays the
accordion on the city streets
for spare change.
”I don't go to school anymore,
because people are mean and
laugh at you, so it's better not
to go,” said Faustina. Her
father told IPS about how the
family came to the capital in
2001 from the southern Mexican
state of Oaxaca, in search of
work and a better life.
”Can you spare some change for
something to eat?” he repeats
hundreds of times a day while
improvising tunes on his
accordion. Clinging to his
trouser legs, his daughter,
whose small size makes her look
much younger than her nine
years, smiles nervously.
Faustina and her father are just
two of the roughly one million
indigenous Mexicans -- members
of the Nahuatl, Mixtec, Zapotec,
Mazahua and other ethnic groups
-- living in this city of 20
million inhabitants. Around
340,000 still speak their native
languages.
The majority are poor, badly
paid and discriminated against
in a city where the word
”Indian” is used as an insult.
An estimated 4,500 indigenous
boys and girls between the ages
of six and 12 who were raised
speaking their native languages
do not attend school, according
to a study conducted by the
Assembly of Indigenous Migrants
in Mexico City, a
non-governmental group devoted
to defending the rights of
native Mexicans living in the
capital.
”There are many of us
(indigenous people) here, but we
don't all live off of charity,
and we aren't all cut off from
our communities and culture,”
Assembly spokesperson Larisa
Ortiz told IPS.
Ortiz, the daughter of
indigenous migrants, explained
that many indigenous people live
in communities created within
the city itself.
Official studies confirm that
there are neighbourhoods and
housing complexes inhabited
exclusively by native Mexicans
who have migrated to the capital
or were born there, and who have
managed to keep many of their
customs and traditions alive.
The Assembly supports this
cultural preservation, while
pressuring the authorities to
respect the right of indigenous
migrants to maintain their
traditional forms of
organisation and culture. The
group also lobbies for
multilingual and multicultural
education, indigenous-run media,
and a ”voice and vote” for
indigenous Mexicans on measures
that affect them.
But Faustina does not even
realise that such rights exist.
She lives far from any other
members of her ethnic group, in
a room that her parents rent in
the historic centre of Mexico
City.
”I don't go to school now, but
maybe I'll go back someday,” she
says. In her limited Spanish,
she describes the teasing she
suffered because her mother
still dresses ”like in the
countryside where we used to
live.”
”They laughed and said things
when my mother went to see me,
so it was better to just stay
away,” she said.
There are hundreds of cases like
these, Ortiz noted. Indigenous
people are treated with
contempt, obliged to do ”the
dirtiest and hardest work”, and
typically live in poverty, she
said.
Roughly 90 percent of the women
employed as domestic workers in
Mexico City are indigenous. The
same is true for the majority of
men working in construction or
as garbage-pickers.
According to the latest
available statistics from the
National Population Council,
roughly 10 million Mexicans out
of a total population of 105.3
million are indigenous, and 60
percent of them speak their
native languages.
The indigenous influence is much
more marked, however, given that
an estimated 60 percent of
Mexicans are ”mestizos” of mixed
indigenous and European descent.
Official sources estimate that
75 percent of indigenous
Mexicans have not completed
primary school, which is double
the national average, while over
30 percent -- three times the
national average -- are
illiterate.
While 25 percent of fourth-grade
students in Mexico have mastered
basic reading and writing
skills, the proportion drops to
eight percent among indigenous
students.
In the meantime, 73.2 percent of
indigenous children -- 22.7
percent more than the national
average -- are undersized for
their age, and almost 60 percent
of those under the age of five
suffer from malnutrition.
Average life expectancy for
indigenous Mexicans is 73.2
years, as compared to 76.2 for
the rest of the population.
A report from the United Nations
Children's Fund (UNICEF) points
out that indigenous children
suffer the highest degree of
disparity and vulnerability of
any other group in Mexico. The
majority live in poverty, and
show high rates of malnutrition,
it adds.
For girls like Faustina, the
situation is even worse.
In some of the poorest regions
of Mexico, the illiteracy rate
among indigenous women over the
age of 15 reaches 87.2 percent.
Only 8.9 percent of indigenous
women have had any education
above the primary school level,
as opposed to 15.8 percent of
their male counterparts.
In September 2000, Mexico joined
the rest of the international
community in signing the
Millennium Development Goals (MDGs).
Adopted by the United Nations
General Assembly, the MDGs
establish precise targets to
combat inequality and close the
development gap between the rich
and poor.
One of the basic goals is to
achieve universal primary
education, and ensure equal
access to schooling for both
girls and boys by the year 2015.
Faustina hopes to return to
school at some point in the
future. For the time being,
however, her father believes the
best thing for her is to
accompany him while he
panhandles on the city streets.
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