All These Issues as Soon as Possible

[66chandona]

It should not be forgotten that it was only in the 1990s that we began to witness recognition, on an international and national scale, of the multi- or intercultural character of many nation-states. The elevation to the character of law of respect for the history, reasons, territory, cultural and legal institutions of indigenous peoples and their right to autonomy and self-determination dates back barely three decades. Today we are observing the extent to which Mexico's legal entry into the era of multiculturalism has not succeeded in collapsing the solid national mestizo identity building.

Also to what extent this form of multiculturalism has not broken with historical racism against peoples and communities already formally recognized special data ethnically different and as subjects of collective rights, but not full beneficiaries, in reality, of these rights. Currently, for example, the current regime carries out large energy or tourism infrastructure projects without respecting the constitutional right of the people to "free, prior and informed consultation.



As the Maya-Cachiquel indigenous leader and intellectual Emma Chirix says: “When they come to Guatemala to talk to me about multiculturalism, I tell them, If you want to talk about that, let's talk about racism first." In today's Mexico, which is already aware of the crouching racism behind the mestizo project, it is often heard that once we get rid of this project, racism will end in this country. The prestigious Guatemalan academic and anti-racist activist Marta Casaús Arzú writes that her country rejected "the mestizo project of the nation and undertook a project to exalt only the Creole, and despise both the mestizo and the indigenous"17. In several seminars, she has added that this has led to racism of such virulence that it led, in 1983, to a brutal genocide, the repetition of which the Guatemalan indigenous peoples fear incessantly.