“We live in oblivion and marginalization; we suffer triple oppression for being women, indigenous and poor,” the Zapatistas pointed out during the meeting with María de Jesús Patricio. Photo: José Carlo González

“THE TIME HAS COME TO DECIDE: DESTINY IS IN OUR HANDS and THOSE OF THE MEXICAN PEOPLE”

From the Editors

Guadalupe Tepeyac, Chiapas

The indigenous Nahua woman María de Jesús Patricio, known as Marichuy, spokesperson for the Indigenous Government Council (CIG, its initials in Spanish), met yesterday in the community of Guadalupe Tepeyac, Chiapas, with the Good Government Junta “Towards New Hope,” Border Jungle Zone, and with the support bases of the Zapatista National Liberation Army (EZLN).

The meeting in Guadalupe Tepeyac is the first stop on the tour that inside her proposal as an independent candidate to the Presidency of the Republic will be held in the five Zapatista Good Government Juntas between the 13 and 19 of this month. Different CIG members will accompany her during the tour.

Comandante Tacho participated in the reception for Marichuy. In the name of the Indigenous Revolutionary Clandestine Committee (CCRI, its initials in Spanish) Border Jungle Zone, Aurora welcomed her. In her speech she said that they were proud of the meeting attained by the original peoples for the first time in history. “The time has come –she explained– of everyone being represented, the countryside and the city, by a compañera that will fight for the people of Mexico.”

Comandanta Everilda spoke in the name of the EZLN’s General Command. She analyzed the situation of exploitation, oppression and discrimination that the Indian peoples, campesinos and workers in Mexico and in the world experience. She explained the existing cruelty against those below on the part of the bad governments and the neoliberal capitalists. She documented the process of privatization underway of communal and ejido lands, rivers, forests, jungles and mountains.

Comandanta Everilda warned that they have resisted death as indigenous and campesinos. “We are here –she said–, you and us, we came from the more remote times of this history and we must not ever permit that foreign invaders invade us again.”

Marichuy met in the community of Guadalupe Tepeyac with the Good Government Junta “Towards New Hope” and with the EZLN’s support bases. Photo José Carlo González

The conquest of liberty and justice, the comandanta explained, will only come from the people, and from no one else. It will not come from the parties, the corrupt politicians or the capitalists. The life of the people of Mexico, of the planet and of humanity depends only on the organization of the countryside and the city.

Upon talking about women, she asked for men to pay attention. “We (women) live in oblivion and marginalization in capitalist society. In the countryside and in the city our situation is worse than what we just heard. We suffer a triple oppression because of being women, indigenous and poor. As indigenous, we have never been taken into account in the countryside.”

To conclude, she said: “Now is the time to win our rights, to prepare ourselves, to stand up and demonstrate that as indigenous women we are capable of constructing a new and better world, but we will only achieve it organized from below and to the left, and thus achieve a Mexico where the people command and the government obeys.”

She said to the CIG, to María de Jesús, to the National Indigenous Congress and to the people of Mexico: “the time to decide has come. It’s time to organize! Destiny is in our hands and those of the people of Mexico.

The widow, the children and the family of Galeano, the Zapatista teacher that Cioac paramilitaries murdered on May 2, 2014 in La Realidad, who dedicated his life to fighting for humanity, participated in the meeting. In the name of the women of Guadalupe Tepeyac, Gloria Elisa Benavides gave a biographical sketch of the fighter and explained how his killers continue free with the government’s complicity, and they ridicule the family. Through her, they sent a greeting to the mothers and fathers of the 43 disappeared from Ayotzinapa and to all those who seek disappeared relatives.

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Originally Published in Spanish by La Jornada

Sunday, October 15, 2017

http://www.jornada.unam.mx/2017/10/15/politica/010n1pol

Re-Published with English interpretation by the Chiapas Support Committee