Notes

The alt is not LITERALLY giving back the land; I cant tell you how many times Ive gotten a CX question like So how do we give this land back? or What land is being given back specifically? The alt is entirely discursive, a decolonization of the mind demands our willingness to give back the land is a giant f$@k you to the state, we are combatting the state through resistance alongside the indigenous populations in all of the Americas (no this is not Zapatistas). Kato was probably one of my favorite arguments all year against policy affs, never lost with it (Ive run it at least 5 times this year). If you find a nice policy aff with some nuke war stuff and maybe a few other extinction scenarios, Id usually break down their impacts on likelihood and timeframe, which usually nuke war, is. Even if they read other extinction scenarios, representing nuke war=extinction is just a giant link to the K. Kato can also simply act as a separate disad.

Natives K
The ACs plan affirms the violent oppression and Fourth World discourse that current Latin American policies already dictate towards Native Americans. Their resources come at the cost of the Natives home land and their embodiment as the indigenous peoples of Latin America. UN 13 United Nations, Latin American Indians Still Struggling with Colonialism (Excerpt taken from UN speech, found on Latin American
Herald Tribune) http://www.laht.com/article.asp?CategoryId=12394&ArticleId=365521

The indigenous peoples of Latin America are still suffering acts of colonization, the president of the U.N.
Permanent Forum on Indigenous Issues said on Tuesday. Carlos Mamani, a Bolivian, made those comments after speaking at the international conference The Paradigm of the Good Life in Latin America and the Caribbean, held at the Madrid headquarters of the Ibero-American Secretariat. Because

of the necessities facing countries of the region in terms of economic resources, todays indigenous peoples are under attack by the so-called extractive industries (oil, gas and mining), which persist with their acts of colonization, he told Efe. Those acts, Mamani said, are almost or entirely the same as those
that occurred in colonial times in the Latin American and Caribbean region, where more than 600 indigenous peoples live. Indigenous peoples are living in a paradox. There are countries where indigenous peoples have made truly significant progress, such as Bolivia and Ecuador, but the threats continue, he said. In

Bolivia, we Indians still number in the millions. But there are countries in the region where

Indian populations have dwindled and today are in serious danger of becoming extinct, Mamani said. In his opinion, the great contribution of Indians to democracy in the region is the plurinational state, which here in Europe they say is absurd because it would lead to a nations implosion and disintegration. Bolivias first Indian president, Evo Morales, managed to include the concept of the plurinational state in the countrys new constitution, ratified last year in a referendum. Indigenous peoples have done a lot of work to raise awareness, but we still have a long way to go to establish a democracy that answers to the needs of the region, the U.N. official said. Mamani recalled that indigenous

peoples have always tried to go through democratic channels to present their proposals. His speech was
given at the 9th General Assembly of the Fund for the Development of Indigenous Peoples in Latin America and the Caribbean, being held this week in Madrid.

Ambivalence towards the ongoing violence against Native Americans allows for the extermination of others. The discourse of the 1AC permits silence upon the other until faced with certain destructionturns their impacts. The result is a modern-day holocaust that concludes in extinction. Schwab 6 *Gabriele, Writing against memory and forgetting Literature and Medicine 25.1 (2006) 95-121// FERGUSON]
Human beings have always silenced violent histories. Some histories, collective and personal, are so violent we would not be able to live our daily lives if we did not at least temporarily sileonce them. A certain amount of splitting is conducive to survival. Too m uch

silence, however,

becomes haunting. Abraham and Torok link the formation of the crypt with silencing, secrecy, and the phantomatic return of the past. While the secret is intrapsychic and indicates an internal psychic splitting, it can
be collectively deployed and shared by a people or a nation. The collective or communal silencing an involuntary

of violent histories

leads to the transgenerational transmission of trauma and the specter of

repetition of cycles of violence. We know this from history, from literature, and from trauma studies. In The Origins of Totalitarianism, for example, Hannah Arendt

writes about the "phantom world of the dark continent."5 Referring to the adventurers, gamblers, and criminals who came as luck hunters to South Africa during the gold rush, Arendt describes them as "an inevitable residue of the capitalist system and even the representatives of an economy that relentlessly produced a superfluity of men and capital" (189). "They were not individuals like the old adventurers," she continues, drawing on Joseph Conrad's Heart of Darkness, "they were the shadows of events with which they had nothing to do" (189). They found the full realization of their "phantomlikeexistence" in the destruction of native life: "Native life lent these ghostlike events a seeming guarantee against all consequences because anyhow it looked to these men like a 'mere play of shadows. A play of shadows,

the dominant race could walk through

unaffected and disregarded in the pursuit of incomprehensible aims and needs'" (190). When European men massacred these indigenous peoples, Arendt argues, they did so without allowing themselves to become aware of the fact that they had committed murder. Like Conrad's character [End Page 100] Kurtz, many of these adventurers went insane. They had buried
and silenced their guilt; they had buried and silenced their humanity. But their deeds came back to haunt them in a vicious cycle of repetition. Arendt identifies two main political devices for imperialist rule: race and bureaucracy. "Race . . . ," she writes, "was an escape into an irresponsibility where nothing human could any longer exist, and bureaucracy was the result of a responsibility that no man can bear for his fellow-man and no people for another people" (207). While the genocide of indigenous peoples under colonial and imperial rule was silenced in a defensive discourse of progressing civilization, it returned with a vengeance. Race and bureaucracy were the two main devices used under fascism during the haunting return to the heart of Europe of the violence against other humans developed under colonial and imperial rule.

The ghosts of colonial and imperial violence propelled the Jewish holocaust, Arendt shows. In a similar vein, in Discourse on Colonialism, Aime Cesaire talks about the rise of Nazism in Europe as a "terrific boomerang effect ."6 He argues that before the people in Europe became the victims of Nazism, they were its accomplices, that "they tolerated that Nazism before it was inflicted on them, that they absolved it, shut their eyes to it, legitimized it, because, until then, it [had] been applied only to
non-European peoples" (36). Cesaire continues, "Yes, it would be worthwhile to study clinically, in detail, the steps taken by Hitler and Hitlerism and to reveal to the very distinguished, very humanistic, very Christian bourgeois of the twentieth century that without being aware of it , he has a Hitler inside him, that Hitler inhabits him, that Hitler is his demon " (36, Cesaire's italics). This is as close as we can come to the argument that, until they face the ghosts of their own history and take responsibility for all the histories of violence committed under their rule, Europeans encrypt the ghost of Hitler in their psychic life. Cesaire's statement also contains an argument about what Ashis Nandy calls "isomorphic oppressions," that is, about the fact that histories of violence create psychic deformations not only in the victims but also in the perpetrators.7 No

one colonizes innocently, Cesaire asserts, and no one colonizes with impunity either.

"[T]he colonizer, who in order to ease his conscience gets into the habit of seeing the other man as an animal, accustoms himself to treating him like an animal, and tends objectively to transform himself into an animal. It is this result, this boomerang effect of colonization that I wanted to point [End Page 101] out" (41,
One of the psychic deformations of the perpetrator is that he turns himself into the very thing that he projects onto and tries to destroy in the other:

Cesaire's italics).8 What Cesaire calls

the "boomerang effect" emerges from a dialectics of isomorphic oppression that as a rule remains largely unacknowledged and relegated to the cultural unconscious . Together with the ghost effect that emerges from the silencing of traumatic memories, this boomerang effect increases the danger of the repetition and ghostly return of violent histories. What do we have to offset such a vicious circle of violent returns? Many victims emphasize testimony,
witnessing, mourning, and reparation. Many theories, including psychoanalysis, concur with this assumption.

And Latin American Natives are marginalized just like North American Natives, this reinforced oppression upon the Fourth World allows for the worst atrocities to occur at the governments hands. The Natives are treated like animals, having their very own children taken away at a moments notice, and having their land plundered by the state. UN United Nations Doctrines of Dispossession" - Racism against Indigenous people, World Conference against Racism
http://www.un.org/WCAR/e-kit/indigenous.htm In Australia, Canada and the United States, one

damaging in the second half of the 20th century is

practice which has only been recognized as discriminatory and the forced removal of Native/Aboriginal children from their homes.

In Australia, the practice focused on mixed-race Aboriginal children, who were forcibly taken from their parents and given to adoptive white families. These children usually grew up without the knowledge that they were in fact partly Aboriginal. Today they have been named the "Stolen Generation". In the US and Canada, Native children were sent to the notorious residential schools, which persisted well into the latter part of the 20th century. Language, religion and cultural beliefs were often the objects of ridicule. Speaking native words was forbidden, and often earned physical punishment - to force a stubborn Indian child to learn to speak good English. Contact with parents and family was often discouraged, or even disallowed. In the worst examples, to discourage run-aways, children were told their parents had died, that there was no home to return to; or, vice versa, to discourage parental visits, families were told that their children had died. In an ironic twist, these falsehoods sometimes proved prophetic: there were cases where children did run away in mid-winter, dressed only in nightclothes, hoping to find their way home. Today it is assumed that they froze to death, as their parents have never been able to find them. In an earlier age, these actions were defended as being in the "best interests" of the Indian/Aboriginal child, to improve her chances in the modern world.

Assimilation was the goal. The value inherent in indigenous cultures and knowledge was not then recognized. In isolated areas, some

residential schools attracted faculty and staff of the sort who prey on children. Extensive

physical and sexual abuse has been

documented. In North America, as the abuse has come to light, victims have been identified and there have been attempts to provide
remedies and retribution. The world's indigenous peoples - or "first peoples" - do not share the same story of colonization. In the New World,

The indigenous peoples were pushed aside and marginalized by the dominant descendents of Europeans. Some peoples have disappeared, or nearly so.
white European colonizers arrived and settled suddenly, with drastic results. Modern estimates place the 15th century, or pre-Columbus, population of North America at 10 to 12 million. By the 1890s, it had been reduced to approximately 300,000. In parts of Latin America, the results were similar; in others, there are still majority indigenous populations. But even in those areas, indigenous people are often at a disadvantage.

Indigenous peoples in Latin America still face the same obstacles as indigenous peoples elsewhere - primarily, separation from their lands. Modern day discourse towards the natives justifies the rape and oppression of those viewed impure by hierarchical societies. This allows for populations to become disposable, justifying genocide- the impact is the extinction as enslavement and rape become fixations of the purest of colonizers in their attempts to cleanse the lands with which they set foot. We must destroy the ability to codify populations based on physical characteristics; the Natives respect for one another is precisely what should be mirrored by society today. Halldin 08 Graduate of University of ND School of Law, Writer for North Dakota Law Review *Amber Haldin, Restoring the Victim and the
Community: A Look at the Tribal Response to Sexual Violence Committed by Non-Indians in Indian Country though Non-Criminal Approaches. North Dakota Law Review. lexis]

The history of sexual violence against Native Americans began with the colonization of the tribes by early
settlers. n14 Because of the matrilineal nature of Native American cultures, the settlers successfully furthered the goals of colonization and conquest when Native American women were assaulted. n15 Moreover, the effects

of colonization and the devastating violence from colonization are present in modern day; Native American women continue to suffer from the highest rates of sexual assault and rape of any other race. n16 A.
Colonization and Conquest In discussing tribal sexual violence, it is important to understand the underlying feelings of Native people fro m the time of colonization.

The victimization inflicted upon tribes from colonization and conquest has had a major impact on Native American people, considering the high rate of sexual assault against women. n17 Christopher Columbus's arrival marked "the destruction of indigenous cultures, but also the beginning of rape of Native American women by European men." n18 Colonizers viewed Indians as inherently impure and polluted with sexual sin, and thus inherently "rapable" because rape of the impure was not of consequence. n19 In the mid 1800s, Native people were referred to as [*4] the "dirtiest lot" of people in the world, were
considered "filthy rags," and were said to be "swarming with vermin." n20 Additionally, colonizers believed that Indian people were not entitled to bodily integrity, considering the "history of mutilation of Indian bodies." n21 Colonizers

did not view the acts of raping Native American women as criminal because Native Americans were devalued as people. n22 As a counselor for Native Americans who have
experienced sexual violence, Andrea Smith was not surprised to find that "Indians who have survived sexual abuse would often say that they no longer wish to be Indian." n23 The consequences of colonization and the bodily destruction that Native American survivors of sexual abuse have endured have caused Native people to "internalize self-hatred, because body image is integrally related to self-esteem." n24 The experiences of Native American sexual assault victims "echo 500 years of sexual colonization in which Native peoples' bodies have been deemed inherently impure." n25 Additionally, sexual violence was used as a "tool for racism" for colonizers against Native Americans. n26 In order for colonizers to be successful in their conquest of Native people, they believed that violence against women was key. n27 Andrea Smith puts forth the proposition that "colonizers viewed the subjugation of women of the Native nations as critical to the success of the economic, cultural, and political colonization." n28 Conquering Native American women was central to the colonizers' [*5] success because of the important roles that Native women played in tribal communities. n29 B. A Matrilineal Society The Cheyenne have a saying: "A nation is not conquered until the hearts of the women are on the ground." n30 Colonizers must have understood that axiom because they assaulted the very foundation and bedrock of the Native culture. n31 Before colonization,

Native American women were at the forefront of their society and were often revered as the leaders of their tribe. n32 Men and women lived in balance; their separate roles received equal weight of importance within the tribe. n33 This view of balance differed greatly from European views on the lives of women, which caused the conquering of the sect of Native people to fit the dual purposes of conquering Native Americans and ending a women-dominated society. n34

The Alternative is to reject the affirmative and return the Natives land in both the US and Latin America. Only when we end this ongoing oppression can we discuss international engagement, colonialist discourse must be brought down first and ambivalence to the Fourth World must be addressed. Our alternative is not simply handing out reparations to the indigenous populations in question; it paves the way to destroy the colonialist paradigm at its roots by decolonizing the mind. Churchill 96Ward 1996 (Professor of Ethnic Studies at University of Colorado, Boulder, BA and MA in Communications from Sangamon
State, From A Native Son pgs 85-90) The question which inevitably arises with regard to indigenous land claims, especially in the United States, is whether they are realistic. The answer, of course is, No, they arent. Further, no form of decolonization has ever been realistic when viewed within

the construct of a colonialist paradigm. It wasnt realistic at the time to expect George Washingtons rag-tag militia to defeat the
British military during the American Revolution. Just ask the British. It wasnt realistic, as the French could tell you, that the Vietnamese should be able to defeat U.S.-backed France in 1954, or that the Algerians would shortly be able to follow in their footsteps. Surely, it wasnt reasonable to predict that Fidel Castros pitiful handful of guerillas would overcome Batistas regime in Cuba, another U.S. client, after only a few years in the mountains. And the Sandinistas, to be sure, had no prayer of attaining victory over Somoza 20 years later. Henry Kissinger, among others, knew that for a fact. The point is that in each case, in order to begin their struggles at all, anti-colonial fighters around the world have had to abandon orthodox realism in favor of what they knew to be right. To paraphrase Bendit, they accepted as their agenda, a redefinition of reality in terms deemed quite impossible within the conventional wisdom of their oppressors. And in each case, they succeeded in their immediate quest for liberation. The fact that all but one (Cuba) of the examples used subsequently turned out to hold colonizing pretensions of its own does not alter the truth of thisor alter the appropriateness of their efforts to decolonize themselvesin the least. It simply means that decolonization has yet to run its course, that much remains to be done. The battles waged by native nations in North America to free themselves, and the lands upon which they depend for ongoing existence as discernible peoples, from the grip of U.S. (and

Given that their very survival depends upon their perseverance in the face of all apparent odds, American Indians have no real alternative but to carry on. They must struggle, and where there is struggle here is always hope. Moreover, the unrealistic or romantic dimensions of our
Canadian) internal colonialism are plainly part of this process of liberation. aspiration to quite literally dismantle the territorial corpus of the U.S. state begin to erode when one considers that federal domination of Native North America is utterly contingent upon maintenance of a perceived confluence of interests between prevailing governmental/corporate elites and common non-Indian citizens. Herein lies the prospect of long-term success.

It is entirely possible that the consensus of opinion concerning non-Indian rights to exploit the land and resources of indigenous nations can be eroded, and that large numbers of non-Indians will join in the struggle to decolonize Native North America. Few non-Indians wish to identify with or defend the naziesque characteristics of US history. To the contrary most seek to deny it in
rather vociferous fashion. All things being equal, they are uncomfortable with many of the resulting attributes of federal postures and actively oppose one or more of these, so long as such politics do not intrude into a certain range of closely guarded self-interests. This is where the crunch comes in the realm of Indian rights issues. Most non-Indians (of all races and ethnicities, and both genders) have been indoctrinated to believe the officially contrived notion that, in the event the Indians get their land back, or even if the extent of present federal domination is relaxed, native people will do unto their occupiers exactly as has been done to them; mass dispossession and eviction of non-Indians, especially Euro-Americans is expected to ensue. Hence even progressives who are most eloquently inclined to condemn US imperialism abroad and/or the functions of racism and sexism at home tend to deliver a blank stare or profess open disinterest when indigenous land rights are mentioned. Instead of attempting to come to grips with this most fundamental of all issues the more sophisticated among them

seek to divert discussions into higher priority or more important topics like issues of class and gender equality in which justice becomes synonymous with a redistribution of power and loot deriving from the
occupation of Native North America even while occupation continues. Sometimes, Indians are even slated to receive their fair share in the division of spoils accruing from expropriation of their resources. Always, such things are couched in terms of some greater good than decolonizing the .6

percent of the U.S. population which is indigenous. Some Marxist and environmentalist groups have

taken the argument so far as to deny that Indians possess any rights distinguishable from those of their conquerors. AIM leader Russell Means snapped the picture into sharp focus when he observed n 1987 that: so-called progressives in the United States claiming that Indians are obligated to give up their rights because a much larger group of non-Indians need their resources is exactly the same as Ronald Reagan and

Elliot Abrams asserting that the rights of 250 million North Americans outweigh the rights of a couple million Nicaraguans (continues). Leaving aside the pronounced and pervasive hypocrisy permeating these positions, which add up to a phenomenon elsewhere described as settler state colonialism, the fact is that the specter driving even most radical non-Indians into lockstep with the federal government on questions of

The alternative reality posed by native liberation struggles is actually much different: While government propagandists are wont to trumpetas they did during the Maine and Black Hills land disputes of the 1970s
native land rights is largely illusory. that an Indian win would mean individual non-Indian property owners losing everything, the native position has always been the exact opposite.

Overwhelmingly, the lands sought for actual recovery have been governmentally and corporately

held. Eviction of small land owners has been pursued only in instances where they have banded togetheras they have during certain of the
Iroquois claims casesto prevent Indians from recovering any land at all, and to otherwise deny native rights. Official sources contend this is inconsistent with the fact that all non-Indian title to any portion of North America could be called into question. Once the dike is breached, they argue, its just a matter of time before everybody has to start swimming back to Europe, or Africa or wherever.

And the alt is a pre-requisite to all other forms of otherization Churchill 96Ward 1996 (Professor of Ethnic Studies at University of Colorado, Boulder, BA and MA in Communications from Sangamon
State, From A Native Son pgs 85-90) When you think about these issues in this way, the great mass of non-Indians in North America really have much to gain and almost nothing to lose, from the success of native people in struggles to reclaim the land which is rightfully ours. The tangible diminishment of US material power which is integral to our victories in

this sphere stands to pave the way for realization of most other agendas from antiimperialism to environmentalism, from African American liberation to feminism, from gay rights to the ending of class privilege pursued by progressive on this continent. Conversely, succeeding with any or even all of these other agendas would still
represent an inherently oppressive situation in their realization is contingent upon an ongoing occupation of Native North America without the consent of Indian people. Any North American revolution which failed to free indigenous territory from non-Indian domination would be simply a continuation of colonialism in another form. Regardless of the angle from which you view the matter, the liberation of Native North America,

liberation of the land first and foremost, is the key to fundamental and positive social changes of many other sorts. One thing they say, leads to another. The question has always been, of course, which thing is to the first in the sequence.

Kato
Their framing of nuclear war through apocalyptic rhetoric justifies the destruction of the Fourth world and Indigenous peoples in the names of nuclear testing by a government that seeks to use such rhetoric to gain power. This strips the Natives of being and labels them as a harmless other that may be disposed. Prioritizing Nuclear war as an impact is a means to undermine all forms of suffering and oppression that will end up ultimately being the downfall of the aff, thats Schaub- their ambivalence links. Kato 93 (Masahide, Nuclear Globalism: Traversing Rockets, Satellites, and Nuclear War via the Strategic Gaze, Alternatives, 18:3
[1993:Summer], pg. 354-355, IWren/JT) The latest form of domination through

the mimetic relationship between (the First World) self and matter via technosubjectivity unveils its uniqueness in the mode of propertization. Technosubjectivity materializes the
condition in which the First World self establishes property relationship with what has not been coded in the conventional space and time parameters (e.g., the earth, the ecosphere, life, environment, the unborn, the future). For example, by

using apocalypse, nuclear critics set up a privileged discursive position whereby the First World self is authorized to speak for amorphous "future" generations. This discursive position entails a colonization of temporality by the First World self. The colonization of "future" has an immediate effect: the preservation of unborn generations as a case against extinction endorsed by some nuclear critics, for instance, cannot be isolated from the extension of patriarchal self over women's bodies.50 In a similar vein, the nuclear critics' assertion regarding the preservation of the ecosphere or the identification of an individual with the earth as an antithesis to extinction betrays the extension of the First World self over
the space configured by the image of the globe. One should not, on the one hand, discount the political significance of the environmentalism emerged from the nuclear discourse; on the other hand, however, one should also be alert to the fact that such environmentalism and also

the notion of "futurity" discussed earlier are a structural counterpart of the globalization of space and time by capital (both are linked through technosubjectivity). The extension and propertization in terms of both time and space proceeds
instantaneously from the micro level to the macro level and vice versa: "the earth, like a single cell or a single organism, is a systemic whole." 51 The holism reconstructed here is a discursive translation of the instantaneous focal change (from the image of the whole to the image of the spot) from the point of the absolute strategic gaze. Overall, the nuclear critics' position in freezing the status quo that is, the existing unequal power relationshipproduces nothing short of an absolute affirmation of the latest forms of capitalist domination mediated by mechanically reproducible images.52 Thus dissolution between self and matter via technosubjectivity demarcates the-disappearance of the notion of territoriality as a boundary in the field of propertization/ colonization of capital. The globe represented as such in the age of technosubjectivity clearly delineates the advent of nonterritorial space which distinguishes it from the earlier phas0.es of capitalism. According to David Harvey, the Enlightenment conceptualization of the globe had a territorial demarcation, which corresponds to the hierarchical division between self and the other: I do want to insist that the problem with the Enlightenment thought was not that it had no conception of "the other" but that it perceived "the other" as necessarily having (and sometimes "keeping to") a specific place in a spatial order that was ethnocentrically conceived to have homogeneous and absolute qualities. 53 Therefore, what is so characteristic of the global spatial order in late capitalism is a total eradication of "the other" by abolishing the notion of territory. As I have already discussed, what

matters for the First World is no

longer the relationship between self and other but self and matter, which is nothing but a tautological self-referential relation with self. This ontological violence against "the other" underwrites the physical violence against the Third World, Fourth World, and Indigenous Peoples.

Fear mongering through nuclear war is precisely the route by which governments silence the natives. All testing is in good faith because it saves other populations, the natives are always disposable.

Indigenous populations are test subjects for an experiment they never signed up for, resistance is crucial to combating the oppressive regime of the 1AC. Kato 93 (Masahide, Nuclear Globalism: Traversing Rockets, Satellites, and Nuclear War via the Strategic Gaze, Alternatives, 18:3
[1993:Summer], pg. 356-357, IWren/JT)

The dialectic (if it can be still called such) should be conceived in terms of resistance to and possibly destruction of global space, time, perception, and discourse for the possibility of reinventing space. The nuclear warfare against the Fourth World and Indigenous Peoples should be viewed in this context. It is not their expendability or exclusion from the division of labor; rather it is their spatial-temporal construction that drives transnational capital/state to resort to pure destruction. In other words, what has been actually under attack by the nuclear state/capital are certain political claims (couched in the discourse of "sovereignty") advanced by the Fourth World and Indigenous Peoples for maintaining or recreating space against the global integration of capital. The question now becomes: Can there be a productive link between the struggles of the Fourth World and Indigenous Peoples against the exterminating regime of nuclear capital/state, and First World environmentalist and antinuclear social movements? This link is crucial and urgent for a subversion of the global regime of capital/state.
Nevertheless, we have not yet seen effective alliances due to the blockage that lies between these social movements.56

Link- Mexico
A large part of Mexicos population is indigenous people who are blindly cast aside by the government Leal 04, 2004, Leonel Leal, EDGE-War and PeaceZapatistas: The Wait for Justice P 5-6 Mexico is comprised of a minority indigenous population. After centuries of struggle indigenous populations still remain in many Mexican states. These populations struggle against discrimination, and fight to retain their language, customs, traditions, and lands. In Chiapas the indigenous population has been marginalized for many years. Everywhere in Mexico these indigenous groups are marginalized, but Chiapas seems to have prevalence in indigenous discrimination.
There could be many factors contributing to this fact. One possibility is Chiapas geographic position; Chiapas is in the sou thern-most part of Mexico an area that was a center for Mayan civilization. The entire south of Mexico and the Central American countries that lie below it were the epicenter of the once great civilizations of the Aztec and Maya. Since this Spanish conquest of Mexico and Central America, it appeared that all remains of the indigenous civilizations have vanished. The truth is that these civilizations have lived on in todays indigenous populations. According to Paulina Hermosillo,

Chiapas is home to, more than 885,000 indigenous peasants, among them Tzeltales,

Tzotziles, Choles, Tojolabales, Zoques, Mames, Zapotecos and Lacandones (71). Additionally, Chiapas borders with Guatemala and is near El Salvador, countries who also had struggles with indigenous rights and liberty. The Central American countries could have been an influence to the Zapatistas in Chiapas. Additionally, the Zapatistas had seen the failures of countries to the south and learned how to successfully fight against their oppressors. The war united and mobilized the entire indigenous population of Mexico. In states like Oaxaca, Veracruz, Quertaro, Yucatn, Michoacn, Morelos, Sonora, and Baja California, many indigenous communities also mobilized to proclaim the same cries of justice that the Zapatistas shouted.

Mexicos failure to enforce its national constitution affirms the ongoing oppression of the indigenous populations. The government doesnt care; it allows local legislation to undermine any mandates towards Natives. Native legislation by Mexico is just a show and nothing more. UNHR 11 July 7th, (United Nations Human Rights) Office of the Higher Commission for Human Rights, Advancing Indigenous Peoples Rights in Mexico
http://www.ohchr.org/en/NewsEvents/Pages//IndigenousPeoplesRightsInMexico.aspx

Under the Constitution, indigenous peoples in Mexico have the rights to self-determination, which includes, among others, the right to autonomy, education, infrastructure and no-discrimination. However, each Mexican state has its own constitution and can establish a new legislation. In some cases, as regards indigenous peoples, the local legislation has limited the provisions recognized in the national constitution. As a consequence, the protection of indigenous peoples rights varies greatly from state to state. While some political entities have established a wide range of policies aiming at the promotion of indigenous peoples rights, others have not developed an institutional framework. Mexican indigenous peoples continue to suffer discrimination in all spheres of public life. Many, especially women, receive arbitrary or disproportionate sentences in criminal courts. Political participation remains extremely marginal. According to several indigenous organizations, the main problems suffered by indigenous peoples in Mexico are linked to land and territories, natural resources, administration of justice, internal displacement, bilingual education, language, migration and constitutional reforms. They
are also more likely to live in poverty than non-indigenous. During his recent visit to Mexico, Olivier De Schutter, the UN Special Rapporteur on Right to Food, warned that 19.5 million Mexicans, approximately 18 % of the population, are food insecure, an overwhelming majority of them in the rural areas, with a disproportionate number of indigenous peoples among them. Pillay said that the promotion and protection of the rights of indigenous peoples remained a key priority for her Office. In particular, we promote and use the UN Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples as our framework for action and to further the advancement and protection of indigenous peoples rights. Pillays official visit to Mexico will end on 9 July. She is scheduled to discuss rights issues with the President Felipe Caldern, lawmakers and the Ombudsman at federal and local level, as well as with non-governmental organizations.

Link: Nuclear Testing

Nuclear Testing by the states occurs on Native soil without any prior deliberation with the Natives nor compensation for the health risks that occur due to radiation poisoning. Clay 87 Jason, Armed Struggle and Indigenous People, Cultural Survival Quarterly, Issue 11.4 (Winter 1987), Militarization and Indigenous
Peoples: Part 2 Africa, Asia, and the Middle East. http://www.culturals...digenous-people Nearly 100 percent of the thousands of nuclear tests conducted by states have taken place on the lands of distinct

tribal peoples. In no case has the group been consulted; in many cases the tribal people are the last to

learn about the tests and their consequent health risks. Many of the world's uranium mines sit on the lands of tribal people. Mining, too, often takes place without a group's permission and with little if any financial compensation.
Mining companies fail to properly explain radioactive tailings and other associated health hazards. Likewise, the mining
of a number of strategic metals, essential for the production of alloys used in weapons production, occurs on tribal land without adequate permission, compensation or warning of risk.