TheNewsMexico.com
November 26, 2001

MEXICO CITY - Senators from two of the three major congressional parties have asked the lower house of deputies to direct more resources to indigenous communities and that modifications be made to the federal penal code to continue with constitutional changes required by the recently passed Indian Rights and Culture Law.

Speaking for the Party of the Democratic Revolution (PRD), Senator Marcos Carlos Cruz asked Congress to include in the 2002 federal budget funds for housing construction and social assistance programs in indigenous communities.

The lower house of Congress decides the distribution of the country's annual budget.

He also called on Congress to live up to the spirit of the Indian Rights and Culture Law and create an agenda that strictly specifies the ways in which the government will improve the conditions of Mexico's 10 million indigenous people.

Along the same lines, David Jimenez, on behalf of senators from the Institutional Revolutionary Party (PRI), called for changes in the federal penal laws that would guarantee the rights of Indians who are sentenced for crimes.

Those same modifications, he said, would also prevent and severely punish the common practice of singling out indigenous people and charging them with crimes they didn't commit when the real culprits cannot be found.

Additionally, PRI senators want indigenous people to be guaranteed the right to be provided defense teams who speak their native language and who understand their culture.

The new reforms, they said, would also obligate judges to take into account indigenous customs and perspectives when handing down rulings on cases where Indians have been charged with a crime.

These changes are "very important" in guaranteeing Indian rights and impartiality in the justice system, PRI senator Cesar Camacho affirmed.

Passed last August as an amendment to the constitution, the Indian Rights and Culture Law was the government's response to one of three demands made by National Zapatista Liberation Army (EZLN) to reinitiate dialogue after staging an armed uprising in January 1994.

However, the version approved by Congress and subsequently ratified by the majority of state legislatures, has been assailed by the EZLN and most of Mexico's Indians for being a watered down version of the bill President Vicente Fox sent to Congress days after taking office last December.

Novedades contributed to this article.