By Gilberto López y Rivas, La Jornada

The National Indigenous Congress (CNI, Congreso Nacional Indígena) and its Indigenous Council of Government (CIG, Consejo Indígena de Gobierno) made public a call to commemorate, this October 12, the 531 years of the beginning of the resistance and rebellion of indigenous peoples and communities against what was described as the “greatest genocide in the history of humanity, against the conquest, against the dispossession of our lands and territories, against the extermination of our institutions, languages, culture and traditions… against the death that global capitalism produced and continues to produce.” In addition, on this date the 27th anniversary of the founding of the CNI “as the space for struggle and unity of the indigenous peoples of Mexico” is celebrated, within the framework of the San Andrés dialogue between the government of the Republic and the Zapatista Army of National Liberation (EZLN).

The CNI-CIG call constitutes a vigorous denunciation of the character of the current government as a safeguard and guarantee of big capital, which, based on militarization and complicity with organized crime and paramilitarism, seeks to implement its megaprojects of death, such as the Mayan Train, the Interoceanic Corridor, the Morelos Comprehensive Project and Santa Lucía International Airport, “which, based on colonialism, patriarchy, homogenization, […] hatred and fear, seek to order and reorder our territory.”

As unequivocal and forceful signs of this war against the people: the siege against the Zapatista communities and the EZLN, massacres such as that of Acteal, the executions and forced disappearances of members of the Consejo Indígena y Popular de Guerrero-Emiliano Zapata (Indigenous and Popular Council of Guerrero-Emiliano Zapata) are pointed out. and the Nahua community of Ostula, as well as the disappearance of the 43 young people from Ayotzinapa, along with the growing and continuous violence against women, and the murder of land defenders, such as the case of Samir Flores Soberanes.

The CNI-CIG, together with the Espacio de Coordinación Nacional Contra la Guerra (National Coordination Space Against War), express their view that Chiapas is Mexico, and it is in this state that the violence that afflicts the entire national territory is concentrated. Likewise, it is considered that the border has moved to the southeast and, with it, the war, which the current administration has not stopped, but rather deepens with the process of militarized and criminal recolonization. The people are organizing to stop this war that is structured through increasing dispossession and exploitation, which involves the plundering of water, the extraction and distribution of hydrocarbons, mining and infrastructure megaprojects aimed at the violent reorganization of the communities, the borders and territories.

It is in this socio-political context, to which the interoligarchic conflicts and contradictions entailed by next year’s early electoral process are added, that the CNI-CIG calls on the people of Mexico and the world who resist against death and oblivion, to social, civil and political organizations, and to good-hearted women and men, to raise their voices against the war in Mexico and the world–especially the war against the Zapatista peoples and the native peoples of the country. The CNI-CIG calls on everyone to carry out on October 12, “according to their times, ways, calendars and geographies”, a global action against this war, a national and international day of dislocated actions, to celebrate the third anniversary of the taking of the building of the Instituto Nacional de los Pueblos Indígenas (National Institute of Indigenous Peoples), by the Otomí indigenous community, and to a central mobilization in the heart of Mexico City.

This call shows the analytical-conceptual level and the organizational-representative capacity achieved by the National Indigenous Congress-Indigenous Council of Government during these 27 years of resistance.

The ethical congruence demonstrated and recognized by the electoral authorities in obtaining citizen signatures in support of the candidacy of their spokesperson Marichuy, in 2018; legal defense and political support for communities and defenders of land and territories; their active and committed presence in the resistance of the peoples of the entire national geography against the recolonization and comprehensive occupation of the territories, as a recognized and honest interlocutor; permanent accompaniment to the Zapatista Army of National Liberation; their defense of the Zapatista autonomous governments and the autonomous processes of leading by obeying in various regions of the country, make the CNI-CIG, together with the EZLN and its solidarious movement, a bastion of anti-capitalist, anti-patriarchal, anti-racist, to the left and from below struggle, which, irreducibly, it does not tire, it does not give up and keeps the flame of rebellion and fight for life alive, of everything for everyone, for us nothing, and the hope of a better world.

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Translated by the Chiapas Support Committee from the original in Spanish published September 29, 2023, in La Jornada, Mexico City. Available here: https://www.jornada.com.mx/noticia/2023/09/29/opinion/alto-a-la-guerra-contra-los-pueblos-de-mexico-y-del-mundo-1975