For an Indigenous Right for prompt and expeditious justice: Rigoberta Menchú

The Justice System “weeps blood” in the face of the lack of interpreters to guarantee the delivery of “prompt, dignified and conciliatory” justice for indigenous peoples, said Rigoberta Menchú Tum, Nobel Peace Prize winner and Honorary Doctor of the University of Guadalajara (UdeG).

“The issue of impunity really cries blood, as people from the communities would say, because many of the crimes are not judged, because in the first place people do not trust the State system to go and file a complaint, for example, and if they do not have a advice on how to file a complaint cannot come either”.

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During the master conference focused on “Indigenous Law” given within the framework of the 530 years of resistance of indigenous culture, held in the municipality of Tuxpan in the south of Jalisco, 149 kilometers away from where the State Judicial Power is located, the Prize Nobel mentioned that, in Guatemala, two parallel figures were established to impart justice with equity: the State mayor’s office and the indigenous mayor’s office.

“They have filled a gap and I think it is very important that it should now be recognized by law, because it has worked for a long time.”

In Latin America, Rigoberta Menchú denounced that there are people from indigenous peoples who are deprived of their liberty without cause or legal defense or interpreter.

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“It is urgent to review, I am not talking about a single country, I am talking about Guatemala, about Mexico, we will have to review the files that have been there for many years, that there are people who are victims and that we do not know exist, it is also urgent to review how the rule of law and the system of law for indigenous peoples”.

Menchú Tum stressed that customary law is seen as custom, and that indigenous peoples not only have customs, practices and beliefs, “they have a philosophy, a methodology, they have a time cycle to comply with and everything that science, technology and ancestral knowledge” excluded in these last topics.

Referring to the wide range of crimes typified in Mexico, the Nobel Peace Prize winner referred to forced disappearance, femicide and environmental ecocide.

“Here in Mexico we are shocked by the number of femicides that we see and the ecocide that is already being criminalized in the International Law Codes, but also other crimes that have been criminalized.”

In the conference held at the Tuxpan high school of the UdeG, the Nobel Peace Prize winner emphasized that in order to enrich the legal culture, one must “detach to learn.”

The Doctor Honoris of the UdeG and of 32 other universities, commented that at UNAM a figure of “Rigoberta Menchú Tum extraordinary researcher” and the “Rigoberta Menchú Tum Chair” were created and as of this year she is a professor at the Faculty of Law.

“The bachelor’s degree in law, indigenous law, was created. It is incredible to think that future law graduates and I hope future doctorates in indigenous law really begin a path to detach to learn, it is very important, because only in this way can we land on the concrete reality that they have the indigenous peoples not as victims but as a system, as bearers of knowledge, as builders who build tools so that humanity can continue its march”

In the municipality of Tuxtla, two hours from the Historic Center of Guadalajara and the Government Palace, Rigoberta Menchú Tum, Nobel Peace Prize winner, is part of the activities of the XXIV International Meeting of Ancestral Dances.