MEXICAN PRESIDENT ANDRES LOPEZ'S REQUEST
FOR FORGIVENESS AND EXPRESIDENT MICHELLE BACHELET'S REQUEST FOR FORGIVENESS IN
CHILE: VERY SIMILAR AND WITHOUT EFFECT.
Aucán Huilcamán
Expert in
International Law
The recent request
for pardon expressed by the President of Mexico, Andrés Manuel López Obrador
AMLO, before the Yaqui Tribe in Sonora is very similar to the same request for forgiveness
of former President Michelle Bachelet in Chile.
Both events, although being very relevant in terms of the human rights
of Indigenous Peoples, yet in the manner that these official acts have been
publicly presented neither of the requests bring bear any effectiveness from
which a true forgiveness may be derived. Such authentic petitions for pardon by
the heads of state in the Americas to the Indigenous Peoples would include directives
towards restoring justice, reparations and a just and equitable compensation
for the historical trauma caused in all its forms.
The issue of merit,
the earning of pardon and then forgiveness - remains undefined and is not
addressed. This refers to the fact that AMLO
has now dared to ask for pardon in his visit to the Yaqui People, which of
course has now caused a reaction at various levels, among them in the
government of Spain and even the King of Spain.
However, all of these reactions are unavoidably related to the context
of the current situation that Indigenous Peoples are living in Mexico, Peru,
Argentina, Guatemala, and Chile and across the continent where other countries continue
to deny the institutional responsibility for their policies and genocidal practices
towards the Original Nations of Indigenous Peoples over the past 500 years.
In the act of requesting
forgiveness from the Indigenous Peoples by both leaders, Michelle Bachelet in
2017 and now the president of Mexico, shows that there are pending issues with Indigenous
Peoples in the hemisphere, both in the context of issues that originate with the
Hispanic colonial relations and subsequently with the formation of the National
States, whether in Argentina, Chile, Peru, Mexico, and others. The pending
issues are related to the "International Crime of Genocide" which
remains in complete impunity until today.
With the formation of the nation states, the invasion, and dispossession, and
occupation of the indigenous territories and their resources became normalized
and then institutionalized, without the consent of the Indigenous Peoples, as
established in Article 28 of the United Nations Declaration on the Rights of
the Indigenous Peoples of the World (2007).
An legitimate pardon is commonly the result of a process of clarification of
certain controversial facts that motivate a head of state to ask for
forgiveness, however, in the case of AMLO and Michelle Bachelet, the facts
related to both pardon requests are characterized as not producing the effects
of an honest and effective process for forgiveness to be actually received. Instead, the public posturing by both
presidents of state have typified of an incomplete acknowledgement of historical
truth relative to the treatment of Indigenous Peoples, that is, a comprehensive
clarification of the facts that would necessarily provide the basis for an
authentic forgiveness is lacking.
Secondly, a public policy
of reparations and a fair and equitable compensation must direct the
manifestation of the procedures for a legitimate pardon. A pardon in terms of
human rights is intrinsically related to a policy of justice and reparation for
the damage caused, which does has not occurred in the petitions for forgiveness
of AMLO and Michelle Bachelet.
In the case of former
president of Chile, Bachelet, it was a request for pardon orchestrated for purposes
of international posturing, allowing her to constitute a precedent in her favor
for the achievement of the post of High Commissioner for Human Rights at the
United Nations, by giving the impression of a person committed to human rights of
the Indigenous Peoples. In short, the request for pardon was an eloquent use of
political theater, despite the seriousness of the criminal acts that have been
committed against the Mapuche people and which remain in complete impunity.
In the case of Chile,
the situation of injustice that Indigenous Peoples and especially the Mapuche
have experienced, has not only been used by former President Bachelet, but, now
recently, by the political parties of one side or the other. These political schemes have resorted to usurping
the legitimate Mapuche cause of self-determination to clothe themselves and
deploy a strategy to coopt the indigenous political movement in order to maintain
power, as has happened in the Constitutional Convention of the Chilean People this
year.
The injustices
related to the Indigenous Peoples is also similar to the Peoples of Africa who
were subjected to the system of human slavery in the past. Despite the lapse of
time, the issues related to human slavery had an open demonstration at the
World Conference Against Racism and Xenophobia and other Related Situations in
Durban, South Africa 2001.
In Durban, the governments and the Peoples of Africa raised the issue to the
governments of the world that human slavery constituted a "Crime Against
Humanity". This principle was preliminarily accepted by the States of the
world, which included the States of Europe that were primarily responsible for
the slave trade from Africa. However, among the political actors who invoked
the need to codify slavery as an international crime, there were those who also
created a dilemma by calling for the development of "a long process of
dialogue in the multilateral international system to codify "slavery"
as a "Crime Against Humanity". Meanwhile the public processes for the
requested pardons for the historical crimes of colonization continued and
evidently then prevailed, so that the act and procedures of public petition for
pardon overtook the process of codification of the crimes for which the pardon
was needed in the first place.
The value of a request for forgiveness and pardon is that it constitutes a
gradual overcoming of denialism and that has become unsustainable over time.
The centuries-long policy of denial of Human Rights has not only hurt
Indigenous Peoples, but also all Peoples of the continent and the world.
Some organizations of the Indigenous Peoples, as a result of the participation
of the Catholic Church in the process of European colonization of the continent
Abya Yala/Wallmapuche, have raised the responsibility of the Vatican as a state
to address the need to go beyond asking for a simple pardon, but rather, assume
the full institutional responsibility of complicity in the context of
international law. This institutional responsibility as a member state in the
UN system, emerges from the the context of the "doctrine of Discovery of Christendom",
from which the current situation of indigenous peoples is derived.
It is not the case that the relevant efforts of a public policy with the
Indigenous Peoples in Mexico and Chile go unrecognized, but this is another
matter that is not related to a policy of fair, impartial and equitable reparations
in matters of human rights regarding events of the past that continue as issues
of colonialism in the present.
The request for forgiveness of Michelle Bachelet and the request for pardon of
AMLO, augurs new times, that is, these petitions for pardon represents a
preliminary stage of the responsibility of the Latin American States, which now
depends to a large extent on the articulation among the Indigenous Peoples to bring
the of enforcement to the next stage.
This would entail the comprehensive clarification of the factual record,
demanding reparations and compensation in a fair and equitable manner for the
damage caused by centuries of colonization and establish the institutional
measures for a firm and lasting coexistence in the continent under the rule of law
and the principle of self-determination.
Wallmapuche, Temuco,
Chile October 06, 2021
