By Cordelia Rizzo
I remember meeting Mexican politician and human rights activist
Gilberto Rincón Gallardo seven years ago and hearing his story about his incarceration in the mythical Lecumberri prison. He was charged with throwing stones and “quickly running away from the cops” during one of the 1968 student-police confrontations. Gallardo, the first head of the CONAPRED (National Council for the Prevention of Discrimination), was a short man, with a limp. His arms were undersized, with one of them being something of a vestigial structure. He spent three years in jail on that occasion.
Gallardo told the story with great humor, for the true story tells
itself:The Mexican justice system frequently picks on those who
are the least able to defend themselves, launching its attacks without
considering the most basic rules of common sense. When judicial officials incarcerated Gallardo, they did not even have the decency to give a plausible justification for the arrest.
Jacinta Francisco, on the other hand, is an Otomí woman. By human
rights standards she is vulnerable in two fronts: She is a woman and
she is a member of an indigenous community. Three years ago, Francisco-–who sold fresh beverages at the local tianguis (street market)–was accused along other two indigenous women of kidnapping six police federal agents in Querétaro. While today she is bilingual, three years ago Jacinta could only speak her
native Otomí and Ñha-ñhu and was pressured to review and sign many documents written in Spanish. Additional irregularities in the investigation have since been exposed and the national media has consistently demanded her release in the past few months. However, the most basic question was never asked when Jacinta was first convicted: How could she have handled herself the kidnapping of six trained criminal investigators?
Jacinta was aided by Mexican NGOs that work closely with indigenous
people and lawyers from the Miguel Agustín Pro Center handled her
case. She was released this September after spending three years in
prison. More often than not Jesuit priests who live in the communities show a deeper understanding of the indigenous situation than government and judicial officials, and this is especially true with regards to the disadvantages they face when they encounter the judicial system.
In Mexico, those who are part of this system are frequently oblivious
to the rights of the minorities and lack substantive knowledge of
their circumstances. I have witnessed this ignorance first-hand and seen the complications that arise when an indigenous person faces the Mexican judicial system. Still, what amazes me the most is the fact that those who fabricated the case against Jacinta, as well as the ones who jailed Rincón Gallardo, acted without any constraint or fear that a critical mind could easily see through the ridiculous manner in which they assigned guilt and robbed innocent people of their freedom.
Cordelia Rizzo holds an M.A. in Philosophy from the University of Leuven. She currently works at Nuevo León’s human rights commission promoting minority rights.
