Indian Rights Law Is Upheld in Mexico

The Supreme Court upheld Mexico’s year-old Indian rights law Friday, rejecting a challenge by Zapatista rebel supporters and 319 indigenous municipalities who claimed that they were not consulted about amendments limiting Indian self-rule.

Indigenous leaders said the ruling could trigger new violence in southern Mexico, where Zapatista rebels staged an armed uprising in 1994. An 8-year-old cease-fire is shaky, the rebels still have their weapons, and their movement for Indian autonomy has spread from Chiapas to other Mexican states.

The Law on Indian Rights and Culture, a constitutional reform that took five years to pass, was the government’s main offer in talks to end the rebellion. Instead, it prompted the Zapatista Front, the rebels’ civilian arm, to break off contacts with the government and back the effort to overturn the law in court.

All 11 judges ruled that the law was both constitutional and properly approved by Congress and a majority of Mexico’s 31 state legislatures. Eight judges said the court had no jurisdiction to hear the challenge by Indian communities from nine southern states.

Enrique Avela, a Zapatista spokesman in Mexico City, called the ruling “a tragedy” for the impoverished Indian minority.

“This sends a message that peaceful mobilization doesn’t work,” said Hector Sanchez Lopez, an Indian who heads the Indian Affairs Commission in the Chamber of Deputies, the lower house of Congress.

The law was meant to reshape the relationship between the state and the 62 Indian groups that account for about 10% of Mexico’s 100 million people. It empowers indigenous communities to apply their own traditional customs in resolving conflicts and electing leaders, to preserve their own languages and to decide whether land will be held communally or by individuals. Those principles were part of a 1996 cease-fire accord in Chiapas and the bill that President Vicente Fox submitted to Congress shortly after taking office in December 2000.

Subcommander Marcos, the Zapatista leader, made passage of the bill a condition for peace negotiations. He led a 16-day caravan through southern Mexico in February and March 2001 to lobby for the legislation. Masked Zapatista rebels made a dramatic appearance in Congress.

But lawmakers weakened the bill. They added a clause giving state legislatures power to recognize Indian peoples, based on ethno-linguistic criteria and physical location. Congress also limited the right of Indian communities to collective use of natural resources, saying they must respect private-property rights of non-Indians who live in their midst.

Indian leaders said the law, as amended, failed to meet international standards for protecting indigenous rights. In the Supreme Court, they argued that the law, by giving each state the authority to define an indigenous group, works against large Indian groups whose territories span several states.

Lawyers involved in the Indians’ case said they might appeal to international courts.

Only the states of Oaxaca and Mexico have taken steps to implement the Indian rights law. Tired of waiting, 25 indigenous communities in Chiapas have declared self-rule without legal recognition, creating land disputes with local authorities in some parts of the state. Two Zapatista leaders were shot to death in one such conflict last week in the jungle-ringed Chiapas city of Ocosingo.

Guillermo Trejo, an Indian affairs specialist at Mexico City’s Center for Economic Research and Teaching, said indigenous communities in three other southern states are on the verge of declaring de facto self-rule. After the court ruling, he said, “we can expect more civil disobedience, perhaps more violence.”

Defenders of the bill say the amendments were needed to prevent conflict between federal and state authority in Indian areas. Fernando Perez Noriega of Fox’s National Action Party applauded the court ruling, saying, “The Zapatista Front now has no excuse but to sit down to peace talks.”