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Shadows Of History Still Haunt Mexico’s Indigenous Peoples

Mexico City (dpa) – In the centre of Mexico City, a dozen Aztec dancers clad in gilded costumes made of jaguar skin perform a ritual dance, much as they may have done a thousand years ago.

To a frantic drum beat and amid blue incense clouds, they work themselves into a frenzy, bird-of-paradise feathers in their hair flailing wildly.

They are dancing in the heart of what was once the capital of the Aztec empire, Tenochtitlan – yet they look strangely out of place.

Around them, on the congested road circling the Zocala square, a convoy of green VW beetle taxis and crowded buses move sluggishly under a low, hazy sky as hawkers loudly praise their cheap plastic wares to passing commuters.

“What you see here is indigenous people trying to preserve our culture,” says the organizer, a hint of anger in his voice. “When the conquistadores came 500 years ago, they massacred us. They almost destroyed our culture. We’re trying to save what’s left.”

The shadows of history are everywhere in Mexico, and the conflict that started when Europeans brought horses, muskets and germs to subdue Mesoamerica’s empires still haunts this hybrid culture today.

When Hernan Cortez showed up in 1519 – armed with religious zeal and hungry for silver – he encountered a civilization with 3,000- year-old roots that had built cities and pyramids, invented a script and a calendar, waged wars and traded with vassal states.

Within two years the Aztecs were defeated, their capital levelled and the foundations of Mexico City built on the rubble.

Today, a short walk from the Aztec dancers lie the ruins of Templo Mayor, which stood at the heart of Tenochtitlan. Long buried and forgotten, the temple was only rediscovered when a subway system was built in the 1970s to ease congestion in one of the world’s largest cities, which is now packed with 20 million people.

The adjacent central Aztec palace, however, is unlikely to be unearthed – the Mexican national palace now stands on its site. Inside its cool walls, the mural of Mexico’s national artist Diego Rivera depict idealized images of Indian rural and court life besides grotesque scenes of slavery, torture, disease and destruction.

Today millions of indigenous Mexicans remain at the receiving end of the societal pecking order and are more likely to have slum homes, menial jobs and short lives than their lighter-skinned compatriots.

Nowhere is that conflict more real than in the southeastern state of Chiapas. Home to the descendants of another ancient empire, the Mayas – whose temple ruins remain scattered throughout the cloud forest – it is Mexico’s poorest state. National land reforms early this century passed by the agrarian state, leaving much of the arable land in the hands of wealthy cattle ranchers.

In a cool mountain valley, amid a patchwork of small farms and forest, lies the colonial town of San Christobal de Las Casas, named after the 16th century Bishop Fray Bartolomeo de Las Casas, a noted advocate of Indian rights.

Indigenous culture remains strong in Chiapas, which was once part of Guatemala and long enjoyed a quasi-independent status. In a church in the nearby Indian village of Chamula, a group of women, their hair braided in twin plats, sit on pine needles on the ground and whisper in the Tzotzil they choose to speak rather than Spanish, the “devil’s language” of ranchers and government officials.

Outside the church, barefoot children with runny noses chase after tourists, selling small, black puppets of masked men with wooden rifles. “This is Marcos,” smiles a little girl, offering for a few pesos a likeness of the guerrilla leader who led a brief but bloody indigenous peasant uprising here six years ago.

Known only as “Subcommandante Marcos”, he led the Zapatista revolt on New Year’s Day 1994, the start of a pan-North American free trade agreement that he saw as good for business but bad for the poor. Clashes in four Chiapas cities claimed more than 160 lives and focused world attention on a long-smouldering conflict.

The fighting ended and, while peace talks were held and abandoned, the heavy hand of the Mexican military descended on Chiapas, with thousands of troops setting up road blocks and army bases.

Since then sporadic outbursts of violence have punctuated an uneasy truce. Paramilitaries thought to be paid by ranchers have killed Indians and burned down their villages in the ongoing battle for land, while authorities have all too often turned a blind eye.

“The military is harassing them, too,” said Loel Coleman, a Texan activist who visited several autonomous communities last year with a human rights delegation and returned to watch recent local elections. “The Indian groups aren’t so much fighting as waging a campaign of civil disobedience. All they want is their land and the right to live their way, in peace.”

Coleman described a remote indigenous community with farms, a school and an Internet-age media centre that spreads their message around the world. “Next door, the military has set up a base,” he said. “The soldiers watch everything that’s going on, and most days helicopters hover over the village. They call it a war in slow motion.”

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