SHROUDED in mystery and Myth, the heroes of Mexico's Aztec past are honoured in glorious monuments all over the country.

But the living descendants of Montezuma are not allowed to eat in some of Mexico City's best restaurants.

Although all Mexicans are considered equal under the country's constitution, Mexican society remains deeply divided on racial lines.

And as the richest and poorest of the 91 million Mexicans are driven further apart by such sweeping changes as the North American free-trade agreement, many Mexicans are starting to discover the dangers of their own deeply ingrained, yet rarely acknowledged, brand of bigotry.

The racial inequities are not limited to the Maya Indians in the state of Chiapas, who took up arms on the very day NAFTA took effect a year and a half ago in what is slowly taking on shades of a national civil rights movement for Indians. Indigenous people all over Mexico -- and those with Indian features and dark skins, all feel a degree of the same kind of intolerance.

While Mexicans typically deny that discrimination exists, the not-so-subtle racial undertones of their society are apparent to foreigners who live and work here.

When Henry McDonald, director Of the Cushman & Wakefield Real Estate office in Mexico City, took his family out for dinner last August, he didn't think twice about inviting his housekeeper, Gabriela Miranda, 45, an Indian.

It was a Friday night, and they went to a popular Italian restaurant called Prego in the polanco section of Mexico City.

"We got there early by Mexican standards, around 7:45, and the place was empty," Mr. McDonald said. "But we stood there waiting and waiting until finally the maitre d' came along and told me, in English, that domestics are not served here." Mrs. Miranda was not wearing a uniform, Mr. McDonald said. The restaurant simply assumed that because she was an Indian, she was a maid.

The restaurant manager, Mario Padilla, acknowledged that it is policy at Prego and other top restaurants to prohibit servants and drivers, many of whom are Indians.

"The type of people who usually come to restaurants of this class all have servants, but they usually leave them at home, " Mr. Padilla said. He said the restriction is needed to protect patrons against people who "lack discretion" and try to bring their servants.

He denied that the policy is discriminatory. "We're not racists," he said. "We're just trying to protect the image of the restaurant."

Now that Mexico is struggling to overcome an economic crisis caused by the peso's devaluation last December, there is concern that racial tensions will flare.

More than half a million Mexicans have been thrown out of work in the last six months, and the struggle to survive is likely to be decided on the basis of education access to money and cultural connections, all of which are based in large part on racial identity.

"There is going to be a sharp increase in social tensions," said Sergio Aguayo, a human- rights activist in Mexico City, "and some of it is going to be racially inspired."

Bias against Indians has long been more economic than personal. Sixty per cent of Indians over 12 years of age are already unemployed, and of those who work, most earn less than the minimum wage of about $2.50 a day.

But most Mexicans say bigotry does not exist here. School children are drilled on the life of Benito Juarez, a Zapotec who was president of Mexico in the 19th century, and told that his election proves all Mexicans are equal.

Mexico has no affirmative-action laws. The National Commission of Human Rights has never received a discrimination complaint and does not have a process to handle one.

Complicating questions of race is the mixed lineage of most Mexicans. From the Spanish founding of Mexico, social class has been determined by racial purity, with those born in Spain at the top and full-blooded Indians on the bottom. But centuries of intermarriage mean that nearly all Mexicans are considered part Indian.

Now it is the degree of Indianness, or the darkness of skin, that determines status.

Mexicans living in cities rely on hair dyes or skin lighteners to appear less Indian.

"Yes, Mexicans honour their Indian roots with statues," said Miguele Acosta, an investigator at the Mexican Academy of Human Rights at the Autonomous National University of Mexico, but historic roots are not at all useful when it comes to eating or just living today.

Mexico City has the highest concentration of Indians in the country, yet most times they are nearly invisible, showing up only in knots of beggars at busy intersections and among the feathered dancers who perform for tourists.

No Indians serve in the cabinet of President Ernsto Zedillo, and only a handful are in the congress, although 3 in 10 Mexicans is considered Indian. The racial insensitivity extends to blacks, although few live in Mexico. A recent commercial on national television featured a dark-skinned man in a white tuxedo telling viewers that at Comex, a Mexican paint company, "they're working like blacks to offer you a white sale."

There were no complaints about the ad "because we don't have a racism problem -- that's the key to it all," said Marisela Vergada, an account executive at Alazraki Agency, the large Mexican advertising firm that produced the 20-second spot. "It is simply an expression that everyone uses."

Such expressions pop up in a commercial for packaged toast that features a black baker boasting that his skin colour gives him the expertise to recognize the right shade of toast. Aunt Jemima pancake mix goes by the brand name "La Negrita" here.

About Racism as a Form of Power

by Javier Elorriaga

When we read that the Zapatista delegates present at the negotiating table of San Andres complain about racism on the part of the delegates from Gobernacion [Justice Department], we become indignant, but we are not surprised. This same racist attitude is known by land squatters when Pronasol [the government anti- poverty program widely known as Solidarity as well] is imposed upon them, university students know it when their assigned resources are managed by the discretion of the president's office, and the millions of unemployed know it when they are unable to voice an opinion about the political economy, and voters know it when the popular will is scammed.

And so it is that in the relationship between government and governed in our country little changes as the centuries go by. If the forms change, the content does not. For example, racism and more specifically racism as a constant practice in the exercise of power by the different "governments" throughout our history. Kings, viceroys, lodges, dictators, emperors, scientists, party- ists, partidazo [state-party, PRI], neo-liberals, what is the difference between them besides their dress and their language? The evil is the same, superiority over the governed has always been considered an attribute of power. Sometimes the superiority is justified by the divine, sometimes by social science, by blood, by laws, or by diplomas written in languages other than spanish, but superiority at the end, based on a racist conception of power which goes beyond the simple racism which has to do with the color of the skin. The racism of power is that which believes that thanks to power itself, reason, history, and the future, are naturally, on its side.

There, far back in time, thundered the voice of the monarch; I am the power, because God wants it that way and my laws and tribunals confirm it. I give the land, life, and the right to have a soul if I am pressed, to all the inhabitants of my kingdoms. More than 300 years passed in order for this concept to age, at least on paper, but in practice new monarchs, boards, lodges, dictatorships, empires and more dictatorships continue to thunder: I am the power, and my laws, congresses, universal reasons, foreign and domestic armies, confirm this.

In response, millions of people have traveled from one end of the country to the other, on foot, by horse, mule, train, fighting to reach a different era precisely for the majority. In this way little by little, a national conscience was forged which was unwilling to accept the supremacy of the government over the governed for the sole reason that they occupy the seat of power. Then the voices of the partidazo[state-party, PRI] thundered and said: I am the power, because I embody the historic struggle of the Mexican people and my laws and armies confirm this. Some years later it would add; and my means of mass communication and northern neighbors confirm this as well.

This goes on and until until it becomes completely ridiculous, then the neo-liberals appear! With the arrogance and insanity of absolute power, they ignore history, death and everyone who is not a member of their corporation, which is the majority of Mexicans, and they decree that the nation is more free and sovereign if it depends on the foreigner and they serve as the administrators of what remains of the "global" wealth, by sending it beyond these borders. There were no longer any limits, not to corruption, not to the shameless sacking of the Nation, not to the violations of the laws and values, not to the pretense and facade constructed with the support of the majority of mass communications electronic media.

Similar to the extraordinary efforts to rob us of our past and present, neoliberalism intends to steal our future as well. But its racism, and its contempt for the majority betrays it. The fresh air which blows from the Mexican southeast since January of 1994 helped at the same time, among other things to dissipate the fog which neoliberal propaganda had used to obscure the national reality. The fresh air, at the same time, cleansed our spirit and gave us the will to fight off the robbery of that which we call "nation". There are no more excuses for inaction, and threats, jails and assassinations cannot stop history. All of our history of struggle, and the conscious effort to inherit it, mark only one path: it is not possible, we cannot agree to begin another century suffering from the ancestral racism of the powerful over the governed. Even so, even if history is on our side, it must be wooed, and similar to all love affairs, in this courtship imagination, vigor, and sacrifice count a great deal. But the reward is well worth it, the pride of calling ourselves Mexicans in a country which is free, democratic and sovereign.

*Jorge Javier Elorriaga has been in Cerro Hueco prison in Tuxtla Gutierrez since February 9th of 1995. He is accused of being a member of the EZLN. His case, as well as those of the other 35 or so prisoners accused of affiliation with the EZLN is plagued with legal irregularities. He is married to Maria Gloria Benavidez, who is also in prison. They are parents of a two year old son.

Return to Indigenous Peoples' Literature

Compiled by: Glenn Welker
ghwelker@gmx.com