Indigenous organizations in Mexico have rejected the government’s reform proposals, saying they don’t go far enough. The Mexican government made the proposals after negotiations with the Zapatista National Liberation Army, which led an aboriginal uprising in January.
“We deeply worry that we don’t see a real intention to provide solutions that will lead to fundamental changes in the relations between Indigenous peoples and the nation-state,” said a declaration signed by 77 aboriginal organizations. The groups met in early March to discuss the government’s response to demands for social change put forth by the Zapatista rebels.
The aboriginal groups said Mexico’s government still holds on to an “ethnocentric conception of democracy, which has excluded Indigenous Peoples,” and “is reluctant to modify the neoliberal economic model which has been precisely the cause of conflicts in Chiapas [the area where the rebellion started].”
“The government has not understood anything significant from the Indigenous rebellions in Chiapas, nor about the solidarity which has awakened, nor the demands for autonomy from Indigenous peoples of the nation,” says the three-page declaration.
