Attorney: Free trade, ecotourism can lead to human rights abuses in Mexico

VALPARAISO | Ecotourism and the North American Free Trade Agreement often result in human rights violations toward the indigenous people of Mexico. 

That was the message Saturday from Priscilla Ruiz Guillen, the keynote speaker at the Peace and Social Justice Symposium at Valparaiso University.

Ruiz Guillen, an attorney with the Fray Bartolome de las Casas Human Rights Center in Chiapas, Mexico, spoke to students, faculty and community members about her work in empowering indigenous communities to resist government-forced displacement and military confrontations. Ruiz Guillen's center also documents human rights violations and defends such cases in the Mexican legal system.

Ruiz Guillen said indigenous communities are often displaced from their own lands to accommodate NAFTA agreements with foreign companies that work on "megaprojects," such as mineral and petroleum exploration and hydroelectric dam and road construction.

"The construction of new roads ends up dividing communities so foreigners can take advantage of ecotourism," said Ruiz Guillen, speaking through an interpreter. "People who still have land in the region can't get there to harvest crops because of the (government) military presence."

Indigenous community members are forced to relocate to "rural model cities" with the promise of better health care and schools. In reality, the community experiences higher infant mortality and maternal death rates because the clinics "have no doctors, no nurses and no medicine," she said.

While residents of the "model cities" are limited to one or two light bulbs per family, electricity produced by the hydroelectric dams "isn't directed toward indigenous communities," but is used in Mexico City and even the United States, she said.

Indigenous communities displaced from their own lands to create popular ecotourism destinations do not benefit from revenue generated by such ventures, Ruiz Guillen said.

The money "goes directly to government," Ruiz Guillen said. "This is never explained to the tourists who arrive there."

Ruiz Guillen said her organization hosts "solidarity workers" from foreign countries who "install" themselves in indigenous communities to document human rights violations, such as "forced disappearances" and even massacres.

"They go back to their country and demonstrate in front of Mexican embassies," Ruiz Guillen said. "As a result, the Mexican government feels pressure and we've been able to prevent human rights violations."

Ruiz Guillen said that despite their hardships, the communities have begun to empower themselves with the help of centers like hers.

"They've constructed their own self-government with people chosen by their own communities to resolve disagreements and decide what their future is," she said. "They develop their own autonomous health care where they do their own vaccinations and work on community development projects to support the organization of the communities."