Mexican schoolboy set on fire - his only crime - speaking indigenous language

A Mexican schoolboy was set on fire and badly burned in a classroom -- his "only crime" was speaking an Indigenous language in a country struggling to end racial discrimination. Two classmates are accused of pouring alcohol on Juan Zamorano's seat at a high school in the central state of Queretaro in June. When the 14-year-old realized his trousers were wet and stood up, one of them set Zamorano on fire, according to his family, as reported by AFP.

He suffered second and third-degree burns and was only this week discharged from the hospital. President Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador said that if necessary, the country's attorney general's office might handle the case. Juan's "only crime was speaking Otomi," tweeted Lopez Obrador's spokesman Jesus Ramirez, who said that eradicating racism was everyone's responsibility.

Juan had already suffered weeks of bullying because of his Indigenous Otomi roots, according to his family's lawyers, who filed complaints against the alleged attackers and school authorities. With an estimated population of 350,000, the Otomi are one of the dozens of Indigenous groups in the Latin American country. The Otomi language is Juan's mother tongue "but he doesn't like to speak it much because it's a cause of ridicule, harassment and bullying," Ernesto Franco, one of the family's lawyers, told AFP.

The family has alleged to the media that even Zamorano's teacher harassed him because of his origin. "She thinks that we're not her class, we're not her race," Zamorano's father, who described the attack as "attempted murder," told the newspaper El Universal. Mexico's National Institute of Indigenous Peoples urged the authorities to "sanction minors and adults involved in harassment and recurring attacks on minors." Urgent measures are needed in schools to prevent further cases of discrimination and racism, it said.