MEXICO- Every time he has the opportunity, the Nobel Peace Prize 1992, Rigoberta Menchúvisit the Mexican communities in which Guatemalans settled who fled an armed conflict in the 80s of the last century and have fully integrated into the states of Chiapas, Campeche and Quintana Roo.
Come as part of your activities of the Rigoberta Menchú Foundation and because they are a symbol of what she seeks for the world and her life mission, which is the common good.
But perhaps they mean more, he says in an interview with this newspaper: “In Mexico, Guatemalans have benefited from exile for many decades due to regional conflicts and here they have found hospitality.”
A tangible sample of the results of a major dream of this multi-awarded woman with 27 Honoris Causa at different universities: one world government.
He digested the concept in an interview with this newspaper in the office of his foundation’s representation in Mexico, where he announced the signing of collaboration agreements with the Foundation for a Better Mexico, of Farmacias Similares, to extend its help to people with disabilities. and caring for the environment, in Guatemala.
Fundación México has better brought patent-free medicines and some philanthropic programs to tiny towns like Chimel, where she was born in 1959). That is why now the activist promotes “Dr. Simi”, as the company is known, for the Nobel.
An integration, then.
“There is always something that unites me to Mexico”I was exiled here, like many of my brothers, and now we are projecting a regional and international agenda,” he highlights.
The Guatemalan activist grew up in a country affected by armed conflict between the government and a guerrilla that demanded social justice.
In the policies of official persecution against the indigenous Mayan population, his mother and older brother were tortured and murdered by the military; her father, burned alive during a protest.
In 1977, Menchú became a soldier in the Peasant Unity Committee and fled to Mexico in the mass exodus of 1981, from where he continued with the denunciations and contributed to the preparation of the Declaration of the Rights of Indigenous Peoples at the UN.
He knows as much about martyrdom as he does about governance and the good practices that indigenous communities have to teach the world.
“We have not been listened to, but that is no longer the important thing,” he comments. “We must take action”.
The ancestral law system attests to this, where people from the communities get involved to protect themselves. Particularly in these times when violence derived from organized crime and impunity expel thousands from Guatemala, Mexico and all of Latin America.
“There is talk of self-determination of nations, but there is also self-determination of people, communities and regions and if there is now global chaos, new paths must be sought,” he highlights. “How am I going to protect a forest if I don’t count on those who live in the forest?”
To this end, he adds, It is necessary to promote the culture of unpaid community service in which all citizens should participate because it means having a better place, from image to water care and even public safety.
“In the ancestral law system, communities decide how to protect themselves and what is theirs and it has been successful in many cases,” he highlights. “So, we have to shake ourselves up a bit with questions that seem unattainable but that give us time to understand with new ideas and apply them on a global level.
– Wouldn’t a world government be something similar to the United Nations (UN)?
– We should see what we have to reform in the United Nations, in the parliaments, the institutions… And also look at the citizens because people are excluded from the solutions, sometimes the solutions are also at the local level. I believe that citizen participation.
MIGRATION?
The concept of nations is very recent in the history of humanity: from the 19th century onwards and one of the examples of human beings’ incomprehension of these limits is the crossing of borders, the coming and going, among them, the communities of Guatemalans to which Menchú belongs.
The state of Chiapas was part of Guatemala and then they decided to annex it to Mexico; Centuries later, during the persecution of the guerrillas, the easiest thing was to move to Chiapas and relocate from there…
In recent days, thousands of Guatemalans cross into Mexico to reach the United States, to do business, to study and even to hold religious celebrations for Lent.
Guatemalans celebrate the Christ of the Three Falls in the community of Tecún Umán and take the opportunity to cross to the Mexican side where dozens of merchants set up shop at the so-called First Friday Fair in Suchiate, Chiapas.
“We are brothers,” Menchú insists.
“For many decades, due to the regional conflicts that are experienced in Guatemala and Central America, our indigenous brothers have found hospitality here because the face of national migration is indigenous, it is also young and they prepared for life and then they could not dream and they simply go and search where there is: that is why peace must be global.”
Due to the Civil War in Guatemala, it is estimated that around 46,000 Guatemalans took refuge in different settlements in the state of Chiapas and later they were officially relocated to Campeche and Quintana Roo.
Six years later they were given the option: stay or return. Half became Mexican.
“The model of two durable solutions was unique in the world. They had the option of repatriation and integration. Here there were very defined groups that had already decided to stay in Mexico under whatever conditions,” says Marlen Pozos Lanz, who worked for the UNHCR from 1987 to 2000.
The UN Office for Migration (UNHCR) pushed that formal settlements were created in uninhabited areas where the refugee population itself built its houses on lots donated by UNHCR.
For example, in Santo Domingo Kesté, Campeche, a private ranch that had a fruit production area and a livestock ranch was purchased through a trust. He also financed farmers with credits to produce the land they paid for by recovering it with the crops.
Then, Menchú says from his own experience and that of his people: “All crises are opportunities and now we have a serious problem with insecurity in our countries to improve the world.”
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