By: Yessica Morales

They invited all the organizations from below and to the left with a presence in Chiapas, in the region of the Isthmus, Tabasco and the Yucatan Peninsula, to communicate through elsurresiste@riseup.net, to add themselves to the events programmed during the tour. They also invited all the national and international to prepare for their participation in the International Gathering on May 6 and 7, 2023.

The caravan and international meeting “The south resists 2023”, left on April 25 from the coast of Chiapas and will travel the Isthmus of Tehuantepec from south to north to continue in the Yucatan Peninsula and will end with a meeting between organizations. This Wednesday, it arrived at Puente Madera in Oaxaca, where they denounced that the wind turbines, mining and the Interoceanic Corridor are connected projects, this being a place: a beacon for the peoples in resistance.

While, on the first day of the caravan tour was held in the community of Pijijiapan, as well as in Tonalá, both in Chiapas. After that, they moved to Puente Madera, where they spent the night and started activities.

Thus, members of the Autonomous Council of the Coast of Chiapas, members of the National Indigenous Congress (CNI) narrated the resistance they maintain for the defense of their territory and against the projects that threaten their territory, such as: mining, struggle against high electricity rates and the gas pipeline project that crosses from Coatzacoalcos to Guatemala and that is part of the mega Interoceanic Corridor project.

In addition, they demanded the immediate release of Zapatista political prisoner Manuel Gómez Vázquez, who belongs to the Nuevo Jerusalén region, Caracol 9. The young indigenous Tseltal, has been illegally deprived of his freedom for 2 years 4 months in the Social Reinsertion Center (CERESO) No. 16 “El Encino,” in Ocosingo.

On April 18, the Good Government Junta (JBG) announced that it carried out a deep and true investigation of the facts to verify the falsification and criminalization that Gómez Vázquez is experiencing.

It should be remembered that the caravan will travel through the south-southeast of Mexico through the territories affected by the interconnected megaproject Maya Train-Interoceanic Corridor, articulating the peoples, communities, colonies, neighborhoods and indigenous, peasant, feminist, union, popular and civil society organizations that are in struggle and resistance to different forms of dispossession of the State, as well as world and patriarchal capital.

At the end of that tour that will take place from April 25 to May 5,they convened an international meeting to share pains, hopes and strategies of articulation outlined, to learn from the struggles of other geographies and continue weaving solidarity networks of planetary resistances and rebellions.

We call on all, all, all, the neighborhood resistances, the peoples who struggle, the urban collectives and the peripheries, those who build autonomies and rebellions in all corners of the global south, to be twinned, to meet again to know each other, exchange knowledge and feelings, articulate global struggles, agree on joint actions to name, point out and claim the right to a dignified life of peoples and nature, said the coordination and organizing commission “The south resists 2023.”

Likewise, they emphasized that it’s time to listen and point directly to those who are behind the causes of dispossession living in their territories. To that 1% of the world’s population whose decisions and ways of life have caused the current climate crisis that forces them to be displaced as peoples, reconfigures their territories and confronts them with exploitation, extractivism and war.

We know that the struggles are not only here in Mexico, they are in many places in the world where comrades from the global south are placing their bodies to defend their territories from the corridors, trains and death projects of global corporate capitalism, the commission added.

Finally, they know that in the corners of what is called “the global north” there are people resisting, who are also part of the global south. Therefore, they called on them to join their voices to that struggle because they are that 99% that resists the onslaught of those who destroy them and seek to dominate them.

Originally Published in Spanish by Chiapas Paralelo, Thursday, April 27, 2023, https://www.chiapasparalelo.com/noticias/chiapas/2023/04/caravana-el-sur-resiste-2023-deja-chiapas-y-seguira-su-camino-de-resistencia/ and Re-Published with English interpretation by the Chiapas Support Committee