A Mexican school boy caught fire and burned badly in the classroom – “the only crime” is the original language in a country that struggles to end racial discrimination.
Two classmates were accused of pouring alcohol into Juan Zamorano’s chair in a high school in the state of queretaro in June.
When the 14 -year -old player realized his pants were wet and standing, one of them burned Zamorano, according to his family.
He suffered a second and third level burns and only this week was released from the hospital.
Juan has suffered for weeks because of intimidation due to the original automy root, according to his family lawyer, who filed a complaint of the alleged attacker and school authority.
With an estimated population of 350,000, automy is one of the dozens of native groups in Latin America.
Automic language is Juan’s mother tongue “but she doesn’t like to talk much because it is the cause of ridicule, harassment and intimidation,” Ernesto Franco, one of the family lawyers, told AFP.
The family accused the media that even Zamorano’s teacher was harassing him because of its origin.
“He thinks that we are not his class, we are not his rail,” Zamorano’s father, who described the attack as “attempted murder,” said the El Universal newspaper.
‘Recurring attacks’
The Prosecutor of the State of the queretaro state has announced an investigation of the attack and the perpetrators allegedly faced the possibility of legal proceedings.
President Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador said that if necessary, the State Attorney Office might handle this case.
“The only crime that speaks automy,” tweeted spokesman Lopez Obrador Jesus Ramirez, who said that eradicating racism was the responsibility of everyone.
The National Institute of the Mexican indigenous peoples urged the authorities to “underage sanctions and adults involved in harassment and repeated attacks on minors.”
Urgent steps are needed in schools to prevent further discrimination and racism cases, he said.
Discrimination is common in Mexico, a country with a population of 126 million where 23.2 million people identified as indigenous people and more than 7.3 million speaking the original language, according to the 2020 census.
In a case in March, an automy woman accused staff in a restaurant in the Mexico City environment who was trendy to prevent her using toilets, telling her that it was only for customers.
Systemic racism
Around 40 percent of the indigenous people complained of discrimination in a survey issued by the National Statistics Agency in 2018.
Nearly half feel that their rights are slightly respected or not at all.
This survey also revealed prejudice for indigenous people.
Three out of 10 people who were asked agree with the statement: “Poverty of indigenous peoples is because of their culture.”
Cases such as Zamorano are not isolated but part of systemic racism, said Alexandra Haas, Head of Mexico of the Oxfam International Charity Agency.
In 2019, an Oxfam study in Mexico discovered that speaking the original language, identified with the original, black or mixed ethnic community, or has a darker skin color, meaning less opportunities for education and labor progress.
Mexico has laws that aim to prevent discrimination and have created institutions that are responsible for dealing with complaints.
Even so, the Zamorano case is a clear illustration of “how far discrimination can occur,” according to Haas, the former President of the National Council of the State to prevent discrimination.
“We cannot say that it is impossible to predict. There are centuries of race discrimination, original and very structural,” he said.