Guatemalan Indigenous Woman And Doctoral Student Says She Was Mistaken For Peddler, Thrown Out Of Chiapas Cafe Due To Prejudice

Ali Roxox, a Guatemalan doctoral student at the Chiapas University of Arts and Science in Mexico's southeast state of Chiapas, who is a member of the K'iche' indigenous ethnic group, says she was thrown out of a café on Tuesday after being confused with a peddler because she was wearing traditional dress. Her friend and fellow student Montserrat Balcorta Sobrino, who was accompanying her friend at the time, wrote on Facebook that the employees of Oh La La Pasteleria in the city of San Cristobal de las Casas had prevented her friend from entering the store, telling them that they couldn't sell their goods inside.

"Such a nice day today and they just ran us out of the French pastry shop-coffee house Oh La La," wrote Sobrino. "They stopped Ali Roxox at the door, tyrannically keeping her from entering, telling her that she couldn't come in and sell her things. It isn't the first time that this has happened to us." Sobrino added, using a vulgar expression, that she was fed up with "so much racist humiliation and violence against the indigenous women of this place."

According to Proceso, Roxox called it "unfortunate that in the 21^st century, indigenous people are still considered inferior just because of their ethnic identity and that they're associated in this context with informal commerce, with illiteracy, and that they're discriminated against for their gender and cultural, educational and economic condition." She added, "But let me affirm that indigenous people possess the same levels of intelligence and ability as anyone else, we have the same rights and can choose and get along in different academic, labor, political and economic spaces."

"I feel pride in being a indigenous K'iche' Maya woman from Guatemala and in having had the opportunity to access these academic spaces in which I am currently involved and which are the product of my personal efforts during the process," she wrote.

After the incident became known in Mexican media, the Facebook page of Oh La La Pasteleria, the café from which the two women were allegedly thrown out, was inundated with comments accusing the business of racism. In response, the management wrote a post directed at Roxox, customers and "all the new people who took out the time to insult us" which sought to clear up what they called a "misunderstanding". "We have never had a discriminatory or racist attitude," it said, and ended the note by adding, "Reminding you all that everyone makes mistakes at some point but it's human to clear it up."

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