A review of racial discrimination in Mexico

First of all, we have to understand what racial discrimination is. To do that we will quote a definition from CONAPRED’s official web site, in which it explains that: 

Any distinction, exclusion, restriction or preference based on motives of race, lineage, national or ethnical origin that aims at or is the result of the decrease of recognition, enjoyment or exercising under equal conditions of the human rights in the political, economical, social, cultural or any other sphere belonging to the public life is considered racial discrimination. (CONAPRED, 2011: 51)

As we were explaining in the introduction, this exclusion has been rather evident in Mexico due to all our past of colonialism and represion. Here we are going to show you some stadistics about what indiginous people consider the main problem they have to face nowadays:

This is just ridiculous, 20% of the indigenous population feels discriminated because of being  indigenous! And they consider that one of the main problems is their native language! Insane! All those indigenous languages are part of mexican culture and we the “Westerns” have made them feel that that’s a problem. The situtation here is that knowing a native dialect is a disadvantage in this country full of lots of people who speak one! They are not being part of the society, this is terrible and unacceptable. We cannot let our own culture and people die just because of indiference and ignorance. Not a lot of countries can presume being bearer of one of the most diverse cultures in the world and we undermine that. All this problem has led to all the problems we can see reflected in the survey: the lack of benefits from the goverment, the unemployment, the porverty, the violation of their rights, etc. All of these, are consequences of the miserable western system we have adopted. We haven’t been smart enough to establish a balance and incorporate all these people to the society because we don’t valorate our own culture. Even worse, if an indigenous people wants to migrate to the city and look for a job or something to feed his family, he will have to leave his traditions and manners which thing is terrible because this means losing part of his identity.

Once that we are talking about opportunities, we’ll show another graph in which indigenous people answered a question about if being part of an ethnic group gave some kind of disadvantage:

The results are not lying, we are not being fair. There is a huge crisis of fairness. justice, equality and dignity.

Bibliography

CONAPRED. (2011). National Survey on Discrimination in Mexico. February 1st, 2013, from CONAPRED’S Official Web Site. Web site: http://www.conapred.org.mx/userfiles/files/ENADIS-2010-Eng-OverallResults-NoAccss.pdf