A letter to my daughters upon returning from Guerrero, Mexico

Dear Cara, Mariah e Michaela,

I spent the last week in Mexico with 2010 RFK Human Rights Award Laureate  Abel Hernández Barrera and his team at the Human Rights Center of the Montaña Tlachinollan, visiting indigenous communities in the mountain region of Guerrero, the poorest  area of the poorest state in the country.   

To be indigenous in Guerrero is like being African-American  in Mississippi 50 years ago. People barely subsist in abject poverty, and starvation is rampant. Racism has a long, wicked history and a stronghold on the present. Those who dare speak truth to power are threatened, imprisoned, tortured, disappeared, raped, and murdered with absolute impunity.

Abel and his team from Tlachinollan are the civil rights leaders of our times.  They arm communities with the tools of activism, track abuses, confront perpetrators, and forge ahead under constant threat of death. They are legal aid attorneys, defense bar, community organizers, environmental activists.  Tlachinollan staff engages both indigenous and peasant grassroots groups, and advocates to improve access to legal representation, healthcare, housing, education, plumbing, electricity and more.  Rising violence related to the Mexican government’s recent efforts to combat narco-trafficking led Abel to condemn excessive militarization and denounce abuses.  In turn, he and his team have endured increasing threats and violence.

I spoke with Inés, a woman who was raped by the military while two soldiers stood guard. Against all odds, she courageously pursued the claim against her perpetrators. Last year, the Inter-American Court of Human Rights ruled that her case must be transferred from military to civilian jurisdiction. Just last month, the Supreme Court of Mexico affirmed that decision. In response, the Mexican military issued a joint communiqué with the office of the President and the Attorney General, undermining its own Supreme Court’s opinion as mere “orienting criteria.” With no action on the part of the Attorney General, the case remains in military jurisdiction, where it has languished for nine long years.

I met two women whose husbands, Raul and Manuel, the President and Vice-President  of the Organization for the Future of the Mixtec People, were murdered after they  denounced military abuses and crimes against nature. These widows wonder how they will feed their young boys. Neighbors gave one of the women five sacks of corn seed, hardly enough on which to survive: she would need $2,200, an impossible sum in her community, to build a home in a place where she can get a job.

I met another community organizer and human rights advocate who told me he was shot eight times in retaliation for seeking to hold a member of the local power elite accountable for drug-dealing and thievery.

One married couple I met, leaders of the Organization of the Me’Phaa Indigenous People (OPIM), was in hiding because of continued death threats they received for demanding accountability for military abuses.

Those who dare demand basic rights are at greatest risk.  Their bravery harkens to John Lewis, Rosa Parks, and Martin Luther King Jr., defenders and organizers in the United States who also laid their lives on the line for others. Like these defenders, the leaders of indigenous groups are being targeted and attacked.

In the face of these attacks, the comfort level with injustice by those in authority is stunning. In the town of Ayulta, I met a defender who spent two years in prison for a crime he didn’t commit, and was released after the accuser admitted that he had made up the accusation against 15 members of the OPIM. I asked why the State Attorney General didn’t drop the charges against three men who still have arrest warrants against them based on the same falsified claim. The AG demonstrated an astounding lack of interest in basic justice. “Oh, don’t worry,” he assured me, “They will not spend more than 72 hours in jail.”

I was heartened when the recently elected Governor of Guerrero, Angel Aguirre, promised to comply with every demand we made, but our optimism didn’t last long.  I reminded the Governor that Tlachinollan’s satellite office in the town of Ayulta, closed for two years after the murders of two local human rights defenders, was reopened in June only on the assurances that the Governor would provide security. Yet, the police officers assigned to the office were present for only four days and have failed to show up ever since. “They will be there this afternoon!” he proclaimed. By the time we left, five days later, there were no cops in sight.  (Some good news—after this exchange appeared in the national press Saturday morning, two police officers appeared at the office, and have been stationed there since.)

Inés wanted a face-to-face meeting with the Governor. “Oh yes,” he told me, “I will host it myself, I will ask the federal authorities to come, and Tlachinollan will be here, too” to ensure that everyone is in agreement about next steps in her case.  When Abel called to set up the meeting, the deputy explained that the Governor was far too busy, but the deputy would meet with them.

All of this violence, the duplicity, and the impunity take place in the context of the horrific poverty and marginalization of the indigenous people in rural Mexico. In much of the Montaña region, as in so many indigenous communities across Guerrero, access to basic services is nearly non-existent.

One man I met left his home at 1 AM to walk down the mountain with his wife and two-year-old, in order to reach the closest pharmacy for dysentery medicine at 8 AM.  The pharmacy was closed.

One community was told the students would need to bring their own chairs and desks to school, buy a desk for the teacher, and pay the teacher’s salary, even though all of this is supposed to be provided by the government.  When the community managed to jump through all these hoops, instead of sending an educator, the government sent a part-time student who was also in charge of grounds-keeping.

For these indigenous children, there are no books at all which teach the native languages, traditions, and stories, or hold up a single indigenous person as a role model. Classes are taught in Spanish, and students are often made to feel ashamed of their indigenous neighborhoods, language, and community roots. In the midst of widespread poverty, as Abel says, this treatment amounts to “cultural genocide.”

In our part of New York State, a dirt road is considered quaint, and real estate prices are far higher than along the paved roads. But there is nothing quaint about the drive we took from Metlatónoc to Xalpatlahuac. The one-lane road is two kilometers long, and it took us a full hour to negotiate the pot holes the size of bathtubs, elephantine boulders, and axel-deep mud.  Communities without paved roads have little access to supplies for food, clothing, medicines, jobs, or building materials, and can be isolated for months on end during the rainy season. One of the most terrifying moments of the trip was when our caravan caught part of a gradual rock slide, as dirt and stones careened off the heavily deforested mountain, pinging our car like a round of ammunition.

In Xalpatlahuac, Father Mario convened a group of 70-plus catechists, who waited three hours for our arrival, while we were delayed by the dirt roads and mudslides. They had wasted no time, and had already drawn up a list of issues to discuss with our delegation. Father Mario described each issue, and then two or three members of the delegation stood and spoke about their own experiences and challenges in their daily lives. Several persons described how a household in Mexico City might pay less than 100 pesos per month for electricity, while the same home in the mountains, with three lamps, can cost upwards of several thousand pesos. One woman described how she had started sewing to create income, but that the electricity cost of the sewing machine was more than she could make from the  clothes she could sell.

Many others talked about the federal government’s granting of mining concessions on native lands that are considered sacred. These grants are given without consultation with, permission from, or plans for revenue sharing with the indigenous communities.  Environmental desecration is a major concern.

Still others talked about losing whole neighborhoods to migration, both within Mexico to northern agricultural fields, and to “Tlapa York,” otherwise known as Manhattan and Queens, where so many indigenous families from Guerrero have been forced to seek work. Migration widows are abandoned to fend for themselves and their children. Communities are torn asunder. In the fields, conditions are even more horrendous than in the villages left behind, as indigenous men and women become indentured servants  to their employers, and families confront wage theft, child labor, and sexual assault.

In the midst of all this, Abel and his team struggle every day. Incredibly, I can’t remember meeting a more light-hearted group of friends. They work hard, laugh easily, and rely on one another absolutely. It is breathtaking to behold, and a true tribute to the human spirit. When I asked Abel what sustains him, he spoke about the spirit of community that he and his colleagues have learned from the indigenous people of the mountain who share all they have and live for the benefit of their communities, their rivers, their forests, and their mountains. The words on the wall of Tlachinollan’s office ring true: “The Mountain will flourish when justice inhabits among the Me’Phaa, Na Savi, Nauas, Nn’anncue, and Mestizo peoples.”

Cara, Mariah, and Michaela, remember above all else that our own lives are most beautiful when such friendship is present among us all. This is the true spirit behind real justice—that we care enough about others to make sure they are treated with dignity, as we of course want to be treated. We have new friends in Abel and at Tlachinollan, and I can’t wait to share this friendship with you.

All my love,

Momma