Mexico: bishop criticizes official for calling for end to assistance for large families

May 16, 2014

A Mexican cabinet minister, Rosario Robles, has called for the end to public assistance to indigenous women with more than three children, asserting that the women have more children in order to receive additional government benefits.

Her comments have been met with criticism from indigenous rights activists, some political figures, and a retired bishop who lives in the forest, ministering to indigenous people, according to Proceso, a Mexican news magazine.

Robles, Mexico’s Secretary of Social Development, “does not know the ethnic structure, does not even know that the women of the indigenous people do not know what abortion and contraceptives are,” said Bishop Arturo Lona Reyes, 88. “They only know about the miracle of life.”

Robles, the prelate added, “should study the history of the indigenous people” and not make “absurd and discriminatory” remarks.

 

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Further information:

• “Estudiar historia indígena”, sugiere obispo de Oaxaca a Rosario Robles (Proceso)
• Panistas acusan a Rosario Robles de discriminación ante la Conapred (Proceso)
• 88-year-old Mgr. Lona continues to defend the indigenous population (Fides)