HEALTH-MEXICO: Huichol Indian Farmworkers Poisoned by Pesticides

By IPS Correspondents Reprint | | Print |

Diego Cevallos

MEXICO CITY, Aug 21 2001 (IPS) - Huichol Indians in Mexico are poisoned by the pesticides used in the tobacco fields where they work, but a broadcasting law limits their right to have access to information in their own language on the risks they face.

Every year, hundreds of members of the Huichol community leave their remote villages in the Sierra Madre mountains, northwest of Mexico City, between the months of January and May to find work picking tobacco in the state of Nayarit on the Pacific coast.

Originally a centuries-old annual pilgrimage to the sea – revered as “our mother Aramara” by the Huichol, or Wixárika, as they call themselves – the migration to Nayarit has more recently become an essential source of income for the Huichol, who number close to 20,000.

Tobacco giants like British American Tobacco and Philip Morris send labour contractors to Nayarit to hire Huichol Indians, who have become highly skilled at the artisanal job of cutting and threading tobacco leaves.

The Huichol have reached the 21st century with many of their age-old religious beliefs and practices intact. Members of the community continue to wear traditional dress and to speak their own languages.

Patricia Díaz, coordinator of the Huicholes and Pesticides project, told IPS that the work in the tobacco fields is badly paid, and the day labourers are often mistreated. But, she underlined, the worst part is that entire families are exposed to toxic pesticides, which are used heavily in tobacco cultivation.

For the past four years, the Huicholes and Pesticides project has been broadcasting radio messages in 12 native languages to inform indigenous farmworkers of the dangers of working with insecticides.

But spokespersons for the project complained earlier this month that a local radio station had invoked an old law still on the books to keep them from airing their announcements.

One clause of the federal law in question stipulates that stations must broadcast “in the national language”, Spanish, and that the use of other tongues will be authorised “in special cases,” but only if a version in Spanish immediately follows.

“We had never worried about that, but the radio station’s refusal to air our messages reminded us of the existence of an archaic law,” said Díaz.

Huicholes and Pesticides has been broadcasting its informational messages over radio stations run by the governmental National Indigenist Institute, the only stations authorised to use vernacular languages.

But the announcements were also aired by commercial stations, which simply did not take heed of the language clause contained in the law on radio and television broadcasting.

Since 1985, Huicholes and Pesticides has been documenting the health and environmental risks posed by the use of toxic chemicals in tobacco fields, and working with the Huichol people to raise awareness on the dangers.

Díaz explained to IPS that the project launched an international campaign over the Internet calling on the government of Vicente Fox to amend the law regulating television and radio broadcasting.

A source at Mexico’s ministry of the interior, which is ultimately in charge of enforcing the law, told IPS that the Fox administration, in office since December, was open to discussing changes.

Despite her concern over the law, Díaz stressed that every time her group has sought permission to broadcast its radio announcements on pesticides in native languages, authorisation has been granted in less than a week.

“The question of the law is very important, but even more so is the situation that the Huicholes are suffering in the tobacco fields,” she added, pointing out that the high levels of contamination on the plantations and in the bodies of indigenous day workers have been documented.

In November, the Pesticide Education Center, based in the U.S. city of San Francisco, and the Mexican universities of Guadalajara and Nayarit will release a study conducted in tobacco fields that provides precise data on the risks facing the Huichol Indians and other farmworkers, said Díaz.

The Pesticide Action Network North America (PANNA) reports that both children and adult Huichol Indians are exposed to deadly chemicals, many of which have been banned in other countries.

One of the main reasons for the poisonings, according to PANNA, is the lack of training among farmworkers regarding the proper use and handling of pesticides, and the fact that workers are not provided with essential safety equipment like gloves, gas masks and protective clothing.

Research has demonstrated that exposure to insecticides by children – who often work alongside their parents in the fields – can give rise to a host of health problems, such as mental retardation, damage to the nervous and reproductive systems, and cancer, PANNA warns.

The World Health Organisation put the global number of deaths caused by pesticide poisoning at 220,000 in 1985, while a 1990 study published in the World Health Statistics Quarterly estimated the total number of severe pesticide poisonings of farmworkers in developing countries at around 25 million a year.