Cochoapa El Grande
The Rodriguezes are a na savi family from Cochoapa El Grande in which there have been three weddings arranged between minors, links in which the bride’s family is paid to consent to the marriage. They don’t think they’re buying women. For them, marriage and love are different from how they see them in the Western world.
Baltazar Rodríguez, the head of the family, says love is to have many children, plant corn and vegetables to feed them healthily, enjoy the grandchildren and care for them when they need something.
He didn’t get married by the church. He got together when he was 14 and Juanita, his wife, 13. They didn’t know each other. They’ve been together 38 years. They had five children, two women and three boys, who already gave them nine grandchildren.
Read: Total Ban on Teen Marriage Violates Their Rights and Leaves Them Unprotected: GIRE
If Baltazar’s wedding had occurred after June 4, 2019, the law would punish his parents for making such an agreement.
From that day on, the prohibition of marriage of children under the age of 18 entered into force in 31 civil codes of the states of the Republic. Only Baja California retains exceptions and waivers in its state laws.
Now, every minor wedding, regardless of customs and customs, will be punished in Mexico.
Among customs, abuse
The Mountain Human Rights Center, Tlachinollan, has documented for 19 years more than 200 forced marriages in the Mountain region, indicating that not all unions – although in communities they defend customs – they mutually agree between the counter-citizens; many women seek legal help to dissolve pacts that they don’t know until they have to get married.
Read: Gave her 10-year-old daughter to a 60-man for 30 thousand pesos: the drama of child marriages in Latin America
Neil Arias Vitilio has been the hope of impunity. Tlachinollan’s lawyer says that, from the Public Prosecutor’s Office, the Community Police, justices of the peace and mayors, they have not only consented to this practice of changing money or paying for a woman, but forcing abuse by arguing “uses and customs” and extorting families.
“At these weddings, it is the relatives of man who give the money for the party and get to spend amounts of between 40, at 140 thousand pesos. Men think they buy something, a commodity, then there’s violence in the home. They tell the girls: I bought you, you’re going to serve me,” Arias explains.
Another abuse he has documented is when they marry the girls, then take them from agricultural labourers to fields in Sinaloa, Chihuahua, and Zacatecas: cheap labor. “So much works the girl, the woman, the son.” Some bride and groom go into debt to perform their wedding. To pay, already married, they take the wife with them to the planting camps: it is as if somehow the bride paid for herself, going to work in the field forcefully.
Read: In Mexico, more than 75,000 minors live in marriage; 8 out of 10 are girls
Neil says that he has received cases of girls between the ages of 12 and 13 who are in the agricultural fields are asked in marriage or married according to tradition. Social workers in these spaces have seen these unions between minors, sometimes girls have not even had their first menstrual period.
Because of the migratory phenomenon, several couples get nuptials outside Guerrero under the same traditional scheme. Tlachinollan follows up on three cases of abandoned pregnant 13- and 14-year-old girls who migrated to work: young people asked for in marriage and then left.
This year there were at least four cases of women who rebelled to marry by force. Neil believes that the incidence did not increase, but if there are more complaints, they become more apparent. The lawyer believes that there must be a cultural change but first there must be justice. The impunity of these cases is 100 percent: there are no men paying for these behaviors.
Shows some cases. The first is from a woman who fled her community on March 8th. She got married and the groom’s mom returned her at age two. He said the girl wasn’t serving because she didn’t procreate at the time. They demanded from her and her grandparents the 80,000 pesos that were spent on a party where there were musical groups and food for an entire town.
16-year-old Patricia said clear: I’m not going back to him. And although the prosecutor of indigenous peoples threatened her with a “term” to return the money, Tlachinollan was able to prevent her from frightening the family. There is no argument, says Neil, other than customs and customs. “I said to the Prosecutor, do you know the General Law on Women to a Life Free from Violence? What he does, it’s violence.”
Reads: Poverty, sexual violence and limited educational access behind child marriage warns
Another 14-year-old na savi girl who was studying technical high school in Metlatónoc, because in her village, Cochoapa El Grande there is not, she returned one day to see her parents and a 19-year-old boy stole it. “What will the girl tell you, didn’t come back then, they feel dirty. The social reproach is strong: if you already fell asleep with a boy one day you are no longer worth it.” They threaten to make witchcraft to them, to their families.
The high school girl decided to escape the colony where the young man abducted her, once there was no light. She went with her mother-in-law to bring candles to the church and managed to run to her parents’ house. This is eight months after being a slave to the family. A justice of the peace intervened, demanded that he return: “(the groom’s family) gave money to the justice of the peace, and he made a document—that the girl never signed—where she says she is for her taste.”
The municipal police were looking for her and preferred to flee her home. His whole life has changed. He stopped going to high school.
It does not matter that the Supreme Court of Justice of the Nation (SCJN) is against these unions, if judges and magistrates in the state resolve unfair and misogynistic judgments, regrets the lawyer.
It gives another example: “A trial judge acquitted a subject who raped a 14-year-old girl. The girl came to work… The subject raps her anal and vaginal. He sent her to the hospital. The judge says the girl was not reactive, that she should have reacted. We got them to revoke the acquittal.”
He believes that this violence can lead to cases of femicide. It’s an attack on his body, will, and dignity.
A wedding for taste
It’s May. The bride’s house in a na savi community in Cochoapa El Grande is full of people, food and drink. In the kitchen, a group of 15 women, aunts, godmothers, sisters, cousins and nieces of the groom watch huge pots with hot water. Women walk diligently. They’re getting ready not to sleep. They have to pluck, cook and cook the 30 chickens and 10 guajolotes for the wedding. They put the nixtamal for the tortillas they will give at the banquet and chop vegetables for the meat mixiotes.
–Shuj’guaáh! It’s dog,” it translates into two screams, an aunt of the groom running to the animal that lurks near a chicken ready to stew.
Gu ma, it’s omelette; yaj’duúj, broth; í’shí, corn; Gu’ni, smoke, they learn from the bride’s three friends who help for a few hours, and who had never plucked a chicken.
– Mam bayá means, I will help you and nando’gu hua, I love you, instruct the godmother.
It’s midnight. The largest dialogue in me’phaa (tlapaneco) inside the small, hot and smoke-filled kitchen. They pluck chickens, talk their seven-hour journey, from their community to here. They’re tired and in a hurry. They say that when they got married it wasn’t, their relatives helped them in everything. Today the groom’s family put money and work; The bride’s, her house. The wedding will be between a me’phaa and a na savi (mixteca).
The hustle and bustle of the wooden kitchen contrasts with the silence of the courtyard. Uncles, godparents, brothers, cousins and nephews of the groom break the beef that cost 35,000 pesos ($1,800) and will feed about 200 guests from the Na Savi community, eight hours from Chilpancingo, the state capital. Men separate cow’s viscera into trays. They drink hot beer quarters. In the adjoining room are seated the “main”: elders who advise the new couple to preserve their traditions.
There would be two musical groups: wind band and cumbia mixteca; 200 cartons of beer and cigars, plus 100 packets of soft drinks to treat guests. All this cost at least 160 thousand pesos, as calculated by the “ambassador” figure that, in the absence of the groom’s father, he came to ask the bride, to offer apologies because she will marry pregnant, and to give the father of the bride what he asks. There was a listing called “relationship” with food and drink requests. In addition, they gave two large guajolotes as “present”.
On the day of the wedding, the bride and groom are tired because things didn’t go as planned. They were failed by the musical group: they didn’t get on time. They didn’t hire the videasta who would record the whole wedding as usual: mass, toast, cake party, sea viper. The bride’s family is annoyed, while ladies of multicolored huipiles dance with their beers in hand.
The wedding belly is noticeable despite the crinoline of the dress. They’re on the street in front of his house. Gradually, minutes before the mixiotes and beers are handed out, women of all ages will hang tickets all over their bodies on their clothes. Between the two bride and groom, they collect about eight thousand pesos. There are bills of 20 pesos and a few dollars. The stress of what doesn’t go well, it doesn’t overflow them, stare and agree to leave on Monday to return to their classes, that is, in just two days.
They are 20 and 21 years old. They study at the Regional Normal Mountain School for teachers. For a month when the bride’s family has known about the six-month pregnancy, she lives with the groom and he pays for her education. At the end of their wedding for the iglesthey kiss. The girl does not wear huipil mixteco but white dress, he suit tailor: jacket, shirt, tie and trousers.
Read the full note in Poppy.
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