AUT: [Chiapas-L] Fox says he will send Cocopa bill to Congress (fwd)

["Harry M. Cleaver" <hmcleave@xxxxxxxxxxxxxx>]

---------- Forwarded message ----------
Date: Mon, 6 Nov 2000 12:11:41 -0500
From: irlandesa <irlandesa@xxxxxxxxxxxxxx>
To: chiapas-l <chiapas-l@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>
Subject: [Chiapas-L] Fox says he will send Cocopa bill to Congress

Originally published in Spanish by La Jornada
______________________
Translated by irlandesa


Monday, November 6, 2000.
La Jornada


Fox Will Send Cocopa Proposal to Congress on December 1


José Antonio Román

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 Andrés 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 Cañadas, "made a deep impression" on all of society, which
resolutely supported their demands for justice and dignity.

During the event, organized by the Menchú 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 1996 Bill

The legislative proposal on indigenous matters which the Commission of
Concordance and Peace made public towards the end of 1996, based on the San
Andrés Larráinzar 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."
_______________________________________________
Chiapas-L mailing list
Chiapas-L@xxxxxxxxxxxxx
http://burn.ucsd.edu/mailman/listinfo/chiapas-l



     --- from list aut-op-sy@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx ---