Yesterday, members of the Campesino Organization of the Southern Sierra blocked the Coyuca Bridge, located in the Costa Grande region of Guerrero, in solidarity with the Zapatista National Liberation Army (EZLN).

By: Sergio Ocampo Arista, Correspondent
Chilpancingo, Guerrero

Members of the Campesino Organization of the Southern Sierra (OCSS,  Organización Campesina de la Sierra del Sur), with headquarters in the community of Tepetixtla, municipality of Coyuca de Benítez, in the Costa Grande region, blocked the Coyuca Bridge yesterday in repudiation of the counterinsurgency war that “the Mexican State and its paramilitary groups continue implementing” against support base communities of the Zapatista National Liberation Army (EZLN, Ejército Zapatista de Liberación Nacional) and indigenous peoples and campesinos in the state of Guerrero.”

In a communique, they denounced “the incarceration of Manuel Gómez (EZLN support base) and the attacks perpetrated since last May 27 on the support base community Moisés y Gandhi by the Regional Organization of Ocosingo Coffee Growers (ORCAO), a paramilitary group that operates under cover of the three levels of government with absolute impunity.”

The OCSS militants also rejected “neoliberal policies, which only dispossess and murder communities that resist destructive policies that want to disappear” the original peoples “of Mexico and the world.”

They reproached “the growing influence of organized crime groups in Chiapas and Guerrero; All this, they added, has the same purpose, which is the destruction and weakening of the autonomies that the peoples have built for decades and that has managed to stop the death and violence of the capitalist system that governs the whole world.

They stated: “Compañeros Zapatistas, we raise our voice telling them that you are not alone and that if they touch one, they touch us all,” and they warned that “with the clear example that you give us, we will defend autonomy.”

They announced their intention to continue “defending the water, mountains, jungles, forests, seas and in general, we will continue defending Mother Earth that, as our Comandante Emiliano Zapata said, belongs to the ones who work it and without it there is no life on this planet.”

“If they touch one, they touch us all”

They said they joined “the call of the National Indigenous Congress and we take up its demands: that the health of compañero Jorge (López Sántiz, Zapatista support base wounded by ORCAO paramilitaries) be guaranteed and that he be given all the necessary attention and for as long as required.

The members of the OCSS also demanded that the armed attack against the Chiapas community of Moisés Gandhi be stopped, and that their autonomous territory be respected; that the material and intellectual authors of these attacks be punished.

Likewise, “that the armed groups through which the war against the Zapatista communities remains active and growing be dismantled, as well as the immediate release of Manuel Gómez, a support base of the EZLN, whose unjust imprisonment we do not forget.”

Originally Published in Spanish by La Jornada, Monday, June 12, 2023, https://www.jornada.com.mx/2023/06/12/estados/025n1est/ and Re-Published with English interpretation by the Chiapas Support Committee