April 2018

To the CIG Support Networks and Marichuy booths:

To those who participated in the Civil Association “The time has come for the flourishing of the peoples:”

To the National and International Sixth:

To the people of Mexico:

To the free, autonomous, alternative, independent media:

To the national and international press:

Faced with the worsening of war, dispossession and repression that invade our peoples together with the advance of the electoral process and according to the steps walked through the geographies of this country by our spokeswoman Marichuy together with the council members, we respectfully direct ourselves to the people of Mexico to tell them that:

We listened to the pain of all the colors that we, the Mexico of below, are.

With the pretext of the period of collecting signatures, we toured the indigenous territories of our country where together, we made our political proposal grow from below, from where the struggle of many original peoples, their problems and their proposals were made visible.

With our participation in this electoral process, we reiterate to the indigenous and non-indigenous peoples of Mexico that we will not remain quiet while they destroy and grab the land from us that we inherited from our grandparents and that we owe our grandchildren, while they contaminate the rivers and perforate the hills to remove the minerals. We will not stay quiet while they convert the peace and the life that we have been constructing every day into war and death through the armed groups that protect their interests. Have no doubt! Our answer will be organized resistance and rebellion to heal the country.

With the large mobilization of thousands and thousands of compañeros and compañeras of the support networks throughout the country, we realized “and it became blatantly visible that in order to appear on the electoral ballot it’s necessary to guaranty that we are equal or worse than them, that if we present signatures they must be false or they are not valid, if we spend money it must be of dark origins, if we say something it must be a lie, if we agree to something serious, it must be with corrupt politicians, with the extractive industries, with the bankers, with the drug cartels, but never, ever, with the people of Mexico.”

Appearing on the electoral ballot is only for those who seek to administer the power of above oppressing those below, because the power that they seek is rotten throughout. It is a competition that can be won with cheating, money and power, like the merchandise that the elections of the political class are, in which there is no room and will not be room for the word of those below, of those who are indigenous or that without being part of an original people, scorn power and construct democracy making decisions collectively, which then become government in a street, in a barrio, in a community, an ejido, a collective, a city or a state.”

Then the electoral process is a big pig sty in which contest the one who was able to falsify thousands of signatures and the one who has billions of pesos that permit coercing and buying the vote, while most of the Mexican people struggle helplessly between poverty and misery.

That’s why our proposal is not the same, that’s why we’re not campaigning, that’s why we don’t turn in falsified signatures, nor to seek and spend monies that the people of Mexico occupy to attend to their vital needs, that’s why we don’t concern ourselves with winning any election or mix with the political class, but rather it’s the power of below that we are seeking, which is born from the pains of the peoples and that’s why we walk seeking the pain of all the colors that the people of Mexico are, because there is the hope that a good government that governs by obeying will be born and it can only emerge from organized dignity.

It’s not only the racism of the political structure that doesn’t allow our proposal to figure in the electoral ballot, because if those who oppose the capitalist destruction of the world share with other almond-shaped eyes, blue or red, public policies and supposed democracy would be made for excluding them.  The original peoples and those who walk below and to the left don’t fit in their game; not because of our color, our race, our class, our age, our culture, our gender, our thought, our heart, but because we are one with Mother Earth and our struggle is so that everything is not converted into merchandise, because it would be the destruction of everything, starting with the destruction of us as peoples.

That’s why we struggle, that’s why we organize ourselves. That’s why we not only don’t fit into the structure of the capitalist state, but every day we feel more repugnance for the power of above, which makes the profound scorn against all Mexicans more notorious every day. The grave situation that our peoples are experiencing and that has been worsened gravely in recent weeks by repression and dispossession has only merited the complicit silence of all the candidates.

Consequently, by agreement of the second work session of the Indigenous Government Council, held on April 28 and 29 in Mexico City, neither the CIG nor our spokeswoman will seek nor accept any alliance with any political party or candidate, nor will they call to vote or to abstain, but rather we will continue looking for all those below to dismantle the pestilent power of above.  Vote or don’t vote, get organized!

We will walk constructing the keys for healing the world.

In the original peoples of this country, where the Indigenous Government Council was in agreement, and that is where our spokesperson walked weaving, as was the mandate of the general assembly of the CNI, are the resistances and rebellions give shape to our proposal for the whole nation. That’s why, together with the councilors from each state and region, we toured their geographies, where the war and the invasion of the capitalist monster is experienced day b y day. Where the land is dispossessed so that it stops being collective and remains in the hands of the rich, so that the territories are occupied and destroyed by mining companies, the aquifers devastated for the extraction of hydrocarbons, the rivers contaminated, the water privatized in dams and aqueducts, the sea and the air privatized for wind parks and aviation, the native seeds contaminated by transgenic ones and toxic chemicals, cultures made folklore, territories configured for the functioning of transnational drug trafficking, and the organization of below subjected by the terrorist violence of narco paramilitary groups that serve the bad governments.

We also saw ourselves on the paths that are illuminated in the worlds that protect their cultures, when in them is drawn the proposal and word of the other indigenous peoples, and from their own struggle and from their own language emerge the foundations that are the reason for being of the Indigenous Government Council.

It is there where the hope that we’re seeking shines, as it also does in organized civil society in the cities with the Sexta (the Sixth), with the groups and Networks in support of the CIG that not only came out to show their solidarity and to make an agenda throughout the country, but also came out to construct from below, from the capitalist ruins, a better country and a better world.  Our admiration and respect to all of them.

We call on all of us who are the people of Mexico, the compas of the Support Networks for the Indigenous Government Council in all states of the country, the compañeras and compañeros that formed the Civil Association “The Time has come for the Flowering of the Peoples” to follow us consulting and evaluating, making assessments, finding and walking the new paths that we will decide, always organizing, although you may vote or not vote for some candidate.  Your words, feelings and proposals are important to us.

We will continue building respectful bridges with those who live and struggle, so that together we can grow the collective word that helps us resist against injustice, destruction, death and dispossession, to reconstruct each and every fabric of the country with the conscience of those who dream below and rebel with their own geographies, cultures and ways.

Our word that is directed to the world is protected in the collective proposal of the peoples. We will continue walking towards below, towards the indigenous peoples, nations and tribes that we are, therefore we will call in the month of October 2018 the General Assembly of the National Indigenous Congress, to learn the results of the evaluation of the original peoples grouped in the CNI, and to advance in the next step.

Sisters and brothers of the people of Mexico and the world, let’s continue together because what’s missing is missing.

For the Integral Reconstitution of Our Peoples

Never more a Mexico without Us

National Indigenous Congress

Indigenous Government Council

Sixth Commission of the EZLN

 En español: http://enlacezapatista.ezln.org.mx/2018/05/02/falta-lo-que-falta/