This weekend Mexico will elect 20,286 representatives, including a new president, 128 new senators, 500 federal deputies, governors, municipal presidents and members of state legislatures.
Although several challenges have been addressed during the electoral campaigns, one topic that has hardly been talked about is human rights, despite the continued calls by civil society organisations for this to change.
In 2022, Mexico’s National Institute of Statistics and Geography (INEGI) recorded 156,743 human rights violations. The most frequently occurring types of violations were arbitrary detention, acts of discrimination carried out by public officials, and the denial or inadequate provision of public services like water and electricity.
One type of human rights violation that receives even less attention but is also all too common in states across the country is that of the right to freedom of religion or belief (FoRB). In its 2022 National Survey on Discrimination (ENADIS), the National Council to Prevent Discrimination (CONAPRED) found that three in ten people of diverse religious backgrounds reported that they had experienced discrimination in the past 12 months. This statistic translates to approximately four million people. The same proportion said that the main problem they face is a lack of respect for their traditions and customs.
One emblematic example is the case of over 150 Protestant Christians in the state of Hidalgo, who have been forcibly displaced from their villages of Rancho Nuevo and Coamila to the municipal seat, Huejutla de los Reyes. They have now spent over a month waiting for the government, at any level, to respond to their situation, including the acts of violence and threats they have faced from community leaders because of their religious beliefs.
CSW has documented threats, discrimination and aggression towards this religious minority group since 2015, culminating in their expulsion from the community last month. Village leaders claim that the refusal of the families to convert back to Roman Catholicism, the traditional majority religion in both communities, justifies their forced displacement. They have invoked ‘Uses and Customs’ – a system that allows indigenous communities to maintain traditional forms of government and to protect their culture – as giving them the legal right to enforce religious uniformity. In truth, this is an abuse of Uses and Customs, and constitutes a serious violation of state, federal and international human rights law. Over the past decade, as FoRB violations have been ongoing and become increasingly severe in both communities, the municipal and Hidalgo state governments have ignored recommendations from the State Commission on human rights, including those of the United Nations.
Complicating the matter, the municipal president, who has primary responsibility to respond to this type of situation, has stepped down, as he pursues a seat as a federal deputy in the upcoming elections. In his place it falls to the government secretary to address the mistreatment of these religious minority families. The municipal government appears to have little interest in finding a solution to the situation which would comply with the law. Instead, they continue to downplay the gravity of the case and are revictimising the families by pressuring them to sign an illegal agreement that would require them to comply with any demands to participate in religious activities, prohibit five families from returning to the village altogether, and fine the victims, cumulatively, over 750,000 Mexican Pesos (approximately GBP £34,600). So far, the Hidalgo State government, which should intervene when the municipal government fails to fulfil its responsibilities under the law, has done nothing.
This is just one example of the discrimination that exists in Mexico. The problem is by no means limited to Huejutla de los Reyes, or even the state of Hidalgo. Over the past 15 years, CSW has documented over 100 similar such cases across eight different states, where the system of Uses and Customs is regularly misapplied with impunity to pressure and to punish individuals who do not wish to participate in activities associated with the religious majority.
Many such situations are currently active. Religious minority individuals and families routinely see their access to basic services such as water, electricity, and sewerage services cut off, their children banned from attending local schools, and their ability to bury their dead in the public cemetery blocked. In the most severe cases, unfortunately all too common, these illegal acts are accompanied by violence, arbitrary detention, the confiscation of land and property and forced displacement. The government, at every level, consistently fails to intervene to protect the rights of the victims and to uphold its own laws which guarantee FoRB for all.
Sadly, this means that countless such cases have gone dormant with those affected having no choice but to accept that they cannot count on any semblance of justice. Over the past decades, since the 1970s, tens of thousands of people have been forcibly displaced because of their religion or belief. The culture of impunity surrounding such acts, means that they are never able to return to their homes and their ties with their culture, their land, and in many cases their family and ethno-linguistic identity are irrevocably broken.
This cycle cannot be allowed to continue in the case of Coamila and Rancho Nuevo, but the municipal and state governments’ clear reluctance to uphold the law is troubling. Worse, it is reflective of the government’s approach, on the national level, towards the situation – one of passivity at best, and consent, at worst. Government officials at every level must take an unequivocally clear position in affirming the FoRB guarantees laid out in in the law including the Mexican Constitution and in the international human rights law to which Mexico is party.
CSW calls on the authorities at all three levels – municipal, state and federal – of government who will be elected this weekend to pledge that they will actively take measures in their new positions to ensure that no-one is treated as a second-class citizen just because they are part of a religious minority.
By Pablo Vargas, National Director – Mexico for CSW/Impulso18 AC
Featured Image: Bhargava Marripati via Unsplash.