CNI Comunicado for solidarity with the peoples affected by the earthquake and denouncing the continuity of capitalist dispossession

The earthquake has left at least 350,000 people homeless in Chiapas. Photo: Proceso.

To the National and International Sixth

To the free communications media

To the people of Mexico

The indigenous peoples, nations, tribes and barrios of the National Indigenous Congress express our support and solidarity with the compañeros of our brother peoples in the region of the Isthmus of Tehuantepec, Oaxaca, as well as our brothers and sisters of the coast of Chiapas, who faced the earthquake that occurred the night of September 7, which left destruction, injuries and death for compañeros in our communities.

We know that, as bad governments are accustomed to doing, they go only to mock our suffering, to take a photograph over the rubble and to profit from the pain of the peoples’ misfortune; therefore, we call upon the men and women of good hearts, to the collectives of the National and International Sixth and to all the people of Mexico, to be in solidarity and to collect blankets, non-perishable food and medicines in support of the peoples of those regions in the home of the Indigenous Government Council (CIG, its initials in Spanish) of the National Indigenous Congress located at Calle Dr. Carmona and Valle No. 32, Colonia Doctores, in Mexico City, a block and a half from the Cuauhtémoc Metro Station. At the same time we make a call to open collection centers throughout the national geography trying to channel the support through the CIG so that it will arrive directly to the affected peoples. For that we make available the official email address:

comunicacion@congresonacionalindigena.org

Our respectful accompaniment to all of them!

We denounce the continuation of the capitalist war to dispossess our peoples. Particularmente la comunidad autónoma Tepehuana and Wixárika autonomous community of San Lorenzo Azqueltan, in Villa Guerrero municipality, Jalisco, which is confronting dispossession of their lands by alleged small property owners and attacks on their agrarian authorities. Recently, the dispossessions of the communal lands and the harassment of agrarian authorities on the part of Municipal President Aldo Gamboa Gutiérrez have intensified. He has instigated the violence, dispossession, harassment and threats against the comuneros, because he has gifted cattle to individuals outside the community so that they will take possession of communal lands and threaten the community authorities with death, like the threats that they received on Monday, August 21 of this year upon leaving the municipal presidency where they met with the president to try to stop the aggressions. That followed the denial of municipal services to children of comuneros, such as transportation from the community to the municipal headquarters where they study the police harassment of the agrarian authorities.

Because of the foregoing, we place responsibility on the municipal president of Villa Guerrero, Jalisco, Aldo Gambóa Gutiérrez for the integrity and security of the authorities and comuneros of San Lorenzo Azqueltán and we demand that the dispossession of their lands cease.

We repudiate the violent events that happened last September 3 of this year in the Ikoot community of San Mateo del Mar, Oaxaca where gunmen working for the political boss Jorge Leoncio Arroyo Rodríguez, fired bullets at the population when they finished electing municipal authorities by uses and customs, an attack that left several compañeros injured.

Sincerely,

National Indigenous Congress

For the Integral Reconstitution of Our Peoples

Never More a Mexico without Us

September 9, 2017

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Originally Published in Spanish by the Congreso Nacional Indígena

Saturday, September 9, 2017

http://www.congresonacionalindigena.org/2017/09/09/comunicado-del-cni-la-solidaridad-los-pueblos-afectados-sismo-denunciando-la-continuidad-del-despojo-capitalista/

Re-Published with English interpretation by the Chiapas Support Committee