Andrea Becerril and Fernando Camacho
La Jornada Newspaper
Saturday, October 11, 2025, p. 7
During a forum on federalized spending, mayors and deputies warned that a 10 percent cut was made in the budget allocated to municipalities to be allocated to indigenous peoples, without guaranteeing that the resources would reach them in full.
In this regard, the head of the Coordination Unit with Federal Entities of the Ministry of Finance and Public Credit (SHCP), Fernando Baca, maintained that no cuts have been made and, on the contrary, stressed that local governments will have resources that represent 3.8 percent of the Gross Domestic Product (GDP).
He pointed out that in recent years local governments have increased their own resources by 50 percent.
However, the representative of the Labor Party for Oaxaca, Martha Araceli Cruz Jiménez, pointed out that the Contribution Fund for Social Infrastructure with a Focus on Indigenous and Afro-Mexican Peoples (Faispiam) was created to support that sector, but it has not produced results.
He added that it operates with 10 percent of the resources of the Social Infrastructure Contribution Fund (Fais). “I don’t like this policy of taking that money away from the municipalities,” he stated.
In the case of Oaxaca, the funds are not distributed to the communities directly, but to colonies with indigenous populations, and represent less than the mentioned percentage.
The PT representative stressed that although she supports the Fourth Transformation, “we are not going to ruin our countrymen either.”
Officials accuse that indigenous peoples are prioritized
No governor attended the work table, organized by the budget and public accounts commission of the Chamber of Deputies, as had been announced, due to “the inclement weather,” according to the Morena deputy, Daniel Andrade, who was coordinator of the event.
Only the head of the Mayor’s Office of Miguel Hidalgo, Mauricio Tabe, was present, who denounced without evidence that “the indigenous cause has been used as a pretext to take resources away from the municipalities.”
The PAN member, who is also president of the National Association of Mayors, in which the councilors of the PAN are grouped, demanded that the budget cut to the Fais be stopped, since the mayors and city councils accumulate a loss of more than 20 billion pesos and this is “subtracting services and attention from the population.”
In response, the representative of the Ministry of Finance, Fernando Baca, argued that the definition of public entities for the governance of indigenous communities is in process, and the entire municipal tax structure is being reviewed.
The important thing, he added, “is that it is going to be the best year for federal tax collection and there will be more resources for local governments.”
