Message from Mexican Jesuits (fwd)

[Robert Peter Burns <rburns@xxxxxxxxxxx>]

---------- Forwarded message ----------
Date: Mon, 18 Dec 1995 08:48:09 -0800
From: D Shniad <shniad@xxxxxx>
To: Multiple recipients of list <pen-l@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>
Subject: [PEN-L:2034] Message from Mexican Jesuits (fwd)

> MEXICAN JESUITS REGARDING THE SITUATION OF MEXICO
>
>                To the Public,  To the People of God
>
>
>         During the present year the economic situation has hit
>         almost the whole population.
> The political and economic uncertainty,  the incorformity over the
> electoral process, the rumors,  the governments'  word given and
> later contradicted with deeds, have dug deeply into the social pact
> that unites all Mexicans.
>
>         Poverty has extended beyond the unimaginable and misery
>         has made prisoners
> the indigenous, peasant and unemployed.   A couple of years ago,
> the government talked about twenty million poor people in the
> country;   now that sum has almost double.
>
>
>         The middle class can not pay the credits entered into in
>         times of supposed
> stability,   progress and the entering of Mexico into the First
> World.
>
>           The workers,   abandoned by their union organizations
>           (with ties to those who
> control the economic policies of the country),   try to keep their
> employment on an individual basis .,   on the margin
> of their collective contracts.
>
>            With an alarming devaluation this year,   the savings
>            and the income of all
> the population has diminish.
>
>             The peace dialogues in Chiapas have gone through a
>             difficult roads of
> lack of understandings,  of words said but not fulfilled,  of slow
> advances and sudden ruptures.
>
>              The indigenous from the whole country have seen the
>              rebirth of "caciquismo"
> (political and land bosses),  defended by the authorities,   and
> have suffered the militarization of their territories.   They have
> suffered also, from the lack of trust from the government and of a
> good part of society,   who judges them as the ones causing the
> violence.   The institutions of justice have deepen inequity of
> their methods and sentences.    The legal struggles of the
> indigenous,   and the efforts to achieve respect for their
> cultures,   are being rejected by a great part the society in the
> city.   Their peaceful scream of five hundred years,  is
> considered violent and impatient,  which provokes a lynching
> climate in many media sources.
>
>         The authorities have not been able to stop the growing
>         climate of violence in the
> cities and the country.    Impunity and the law of the strongest
> are the norms that we live under.   New laws that reduce
> individual guaranties will not put an end to this situation; such
> laws convert the government into private police to protect the
> goods and the interests of the powerful.   Justice is not imposed
> with repressive laws.
>         We can not accept in a passive manner the privatization
>         of the utilities,  and the
> socialization of the costs.
>
>         For all this reasons,   from our christian vocations we
>         renew the hope of the
> Gospel in which Jesus announces a God that opposes the gods of
> money,  of the market and of the accumulation of goods.   A God
> that rejects the marginalization that excludes of an unjust
> society that leaves outside the majority of it's members.   A God
> that offers us a project in which we become more an more brothers
> and sisters living in equity and justice.
>
>         For this reason we wish to participate and strengthen
>         the ethical debate that
> has priority over the economic and political debates.   With that
> plan we see some indispensable values in a national ethic:
>
> -  the healing of the social body,  ill of corruption in politics,
> in the economy and in the handling of justice.
>
> -  the truth and the respect that become real in dialogues that
> are sincere and in words that are fulfilled.
>
> -  the right to life that become real in a distribution of the
> goods that guaranties access to housing, education,  employment,
> healthcare and food to all.
>
> -  the participation in social issues that becomes real in the
> giving of truthful information, complete and timely,  in the
> transparency of the public administration and of the electoral
> processes and the control of civil society over it's public
> servants.
>
> -  the right to liberty that becomes real in a public secured,
> protected by police that are honest and professionals at the
> service of all the towns and social groups.
>
>         With renewed hope we ask the God of Life to give us all
>         the courage to struggle
> in order to create a society where all  us can enjoy  Human
>                                                  Me'xico, D.F.
> Human Rights: the Rights of the Children of God.
>                                                  december 1995,
> Mario Lopez Barrio,   Provincial for the Society of Jesus in
> Me'xico.
>                                   La Jorrnada, thrusday December
>                                   14 , 1995, page 51
>                                      Responsible for
>                                      publication: Pedro Arriaga
>                                      *Spanish original on
>                                      Peacenet,Reg.Mexico
>                                      12-17-95.
> Responsible for above translation: Latin American Support Office,USA.
>
>
>
>
>




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