Catholic Church leaders: Mexican indigenous are forgotten

“As Mexico prepares to elect a new president July 2, the problems for indigenous people in Chiapas state seem to be forgotten amid other issues, said a Mexican bishop.

“The indigenous issue has been diluted in the other fundamental issue, the economy,” said Bishop Felipe Arizmendi Esquival of San Cristobal de las Casas, in the Chiapas highlands.

But only eight years ago, days before Christmas 1997, 45 men, women and children were massacred by paramilitary forces in Acteal, a tiny village in the southern Mexican highlands. The survivors still live sandwiched between the community that spawned the killers and a rebel group, the Zapatista National Liberation Army, that blames the government for failing to stop the massacre.”

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