ZAPATISTAS REPUDIATE THE MASSACRE OF PALESTINIAN PEOPLE

Moisés (with mic), Tacho (in forefront) and Galeano, aka Marcos, (way in back with eye patch) address indigenous meeting in La Realidad

By: Isaín Mandujano

TUXTLA GUTIÉRREZ, Chis. (apro) – More than 300 representatives of indigenous peoples and some 1300 Zapatista support bases expressed their solidarity with the people of Palestine that are under attack from the Israeli Army.

Within the framework of the meeting “First exchange of the original peoples of Mexico with the Zapatista peoples,” Comandante Tacho was the one in charge of giving the principal message at the event that Subcomandantes Galeano (aka Marcos) attended, as well as Moisés.

In La Realidad Trinidad, a community enclaved in the Lacandón Jungle, Tacho welcomed more than 300 representatives of different indigenous peoples of the country, the EZLN’s 1300 support bases and insurgents and members from the autonomous municipalities and from the Good Government Juntas.

“We came to share our sufferings and pains that this neoliberal system has given us; but not just that. It is also certain that we came to share the valuable knowledge, experiences with struggle, organization and challenges in front of the neoliberal capitalist invaders that have caused us so much damage,” Tacho emphasized.

To these invaders, he abounded, “it’s not enough with the theft and looting that the Conquistadores did in 1492, that those Conquistadores encountered resistance from the original peoples, tribes and nations of these lands, of this country that is Mexico.

“They murdered those who opposed being subjected to the power of the Spanish monarchy. These perverse invaders and executioners stained their hands with indigenous blood, stole the riches that our oldest grandfathers were caring for. But not only did they persecute the Indian peoples of Mexico and All of Latin America with the proposition of disappearing them and eliminating their existence. They didn’t achieve that; the example is that we are present here,” Tacho added.

Thus passed “500 years in all corners of our Mexican country. We original peoples were ignored, deceived, forgotten, exploited, for more than 500 years, enslaved in domination. And now again the powerful neoliberals’ invention is the machinery of destruction, of the disappearance of our peoples,” he pointed out to the audience.

Nevertheless, he warned, now “the strategy has made it larger and modern, protected with laws and bad rulers to once again invade with their new plan, dispossessing us from our Mother Earth, with the machinery of the power of money, to take out all the riches that Mother Earth has, which she has kept there for millions of years.”

This machinery, he denounced, “has been accompanied by death and destruction of the peoples and of Mother Earth.”

Within that framework, he maintained, it is like the death and destruction that is happening now against the Palestinian people.

“Because we hear it and read it, in which they say that ‘the Gaza conflict,’ as if there were two equal forces that are confronting each other, as if by saying ‘conflict’ the death and destruction would be hidden, and that way death no longer kills and destruction no longer destroys,” Tacho said.

But as Indigenous, he added, you know well that what is happening is not a “conflict,” it’s a massacre, “that what the government of Israel is doing is a war of extermination against the Palestinian people and that the rest are words that want to hide the reality.

“But we also know, as the Indigenous that we are, that the people of Palestine will resist and will rise up again and walk again and will then know, although far away on maps, the Zapatistas embrace you now as we did before, as we will always do, in other words we embrace you with our collective heart,” the Zapatista comandante said.

The war machinery of money, he accused, “is without a brain, has no memory, its representatives are perverse, savage animals that threw themselves against the indigenous peoples of Mexico.

“The destruction is not important to them, the death of our entire peoples, of tribes and nations. We the original peoples of Mexico are not protected by laws and are suffering bad governments. The only hope is that us. No one is coming to save us, no one, absolutely no one, is going to struggle for us. Not political parties, not politicians, not laws, there is nothing for us,” the masked man admitted.

And therefore it is necessary “to all struggle together to defend Mother Earth: The land that saw us born, which gives us life and finally gives us rest in her eternally.

“Therefore, we are all the colors that we are, all the languages that our hearts speak, therefore we are peoples, we are tribes and we are a nation. We are the guardians of these lands, of this country Mexico, of this continent and of the world. And so compañeras and compañeros, today will be the beginning of our walk and the search for how we must make our common defense, there is no more time,” Tacho noted upon inaugurating the event this morning.

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Originally Published in Spanish by Proceso

Translation: Chiapas Support Committee

Monday, August 4, 2014

En español: http://www.proceso.com.mx/?p=378798