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Words of the EZLN at the closing of the 5th CNI Congress
WORDS OF THE EZLN AT THE CLOSING OF THE SECOND STAGE OF THE FIFTH CNI CONGRESS
Subcomandante Moisés at ConSciences for Humanity.
ZAPATISTA NATIONAL LIBERATION ARMY
MEXICO
JANUARY FIRST, 2017
Sisters and Brothers of the National Indigenous Congress:
Compañeras, compañeros y compañeroas of the national and international SIXTH:
Peoples of Mexico and the world:
23 years ago we rose up in arms against oblivion.
The indignation and the desperation obliged us to be willing to die to live,
To live the only way that it’s worth living, with freedom, with justice, with democracy.
The people of Mexico looked at us and talked to us, told us that our struggle and our demands are just, but that they are not in agreement with violence.
Accordingly they left knowing the inhuman conditions of our life and our death, it was agreed everywhere that the causes of our uprising could not be questioned, although the form in which our disagreement manifested itself could.
Now the conditions of the people of Mexico in the countryside and the city are worse than 23 years ago.
The poverty, the desperation, the death, the destruction, are not only for those who originally populated these lands.
Now the disgrace reaches everyone.
The crisis also affects those who believed they were safe and thought that the nightmare was only for those who live and die below.
Governments come and go, with different colors and flags, and the only thing they do is to make things worse.
With their policies, the only thing they do is make misery, destruction and death reach more and more people.
Now our brothers and sisters from organizations, barrios, nations, tribes, and original peoples, organized in the National Indigenous Congress, have decided to shout their YA BASTA.
They have decided that they are not going to permit destroying our country to continue.
They have decided not to let the people and their history die because of the sickness that is the capitalist system.
A system that exploits, dispossesses, represses and scorns human beings and nature all over the world.
The National Indigenous Congress has decided to struggle to heal our soils and our skies.
And they have decided to do it through civilian and peaceful paths.
Their causes are just and undeniable.
Who now will question the path they have chosen and that is calling us all?
If there is no respect, if you do not say hello, if you do not support your struggle and the path you follow, then what message do you give as a society?
23 years ago we started our uprising, but our way was exclusive, not everyone could participate.
Now, the National Indigenous Congress calls us to a struggle in which we can all participate, all; Regardless of age, color, size, race, religion, language, pay, knowledge, physical strength, culture, sexual preference.
Those who live, fight and die in the countryside and in the city now have a path of struggle where they unite with others.
The struggle to which the National Indigenous Congress calls us and invites us is a struggle for life with freedom, justice, democracy and dignity.
Who dares to say that it is a bad fight?
It is time that all the working people, together with the native people, sheltered by the banner of the National Indigenous Congress, which is the flag of the native people, unite in this struggle which is for those who have nothing but pain, anger and despair.
It is the hour of the peoples, of everyone, of the countryside and of the city.
That’s what the National Indigenous Congress is telling us.
It is telling us that it is enough waiting for others to tell us what to do and how, that they want to lead us, that they want to deceive us with vain promises and lies.
It is telling us that everyone in their place, with their own way, at their own times, govern themselves. That the people themselves address themselves, no more lies, no more deceit, no more politicians who only see their government work as a way accumulating wealth by stealing, betraying, selling.
It is telling us that we must fight for truth and justice.
It is telling us that we must fight for democracy, which means that the people rule.
It is telling us that we must fight for freedom.
They are wise and know who are in the National Indigenous Congress.
They have been resisting and fighting for life for centuries,
They know of resistance, they know of rebellion, they know of struggle, they know of life.
They know who is responsible for the pains that affect everyone, everywhere, all the time.
The National Indigenous Congress, for this struggle that they commit to undertake, will be attacked, they will be slandered, they will want to divide it and they will want to buy it.
They will seek by all means for it to surrender, to be bought, to give up.
But they will not be able to.
We have been meeting for more than 20 years, and more than 500 years of knowing this destruction, death, contempt, robbery, exploitation, history.
Their strength, their decision, their commitment, does not come from themselves.
It comes from the organizations, neighborhoods, nations, tribes and native peoples in which they were born and formed.
We, the Zapatistas, prepared 10 years to start our struggle on January 1 23 years ago.
The National Indigenous Congress prepared 20 years to reach this day, and show us a good way.
Whether we follow it or not, will be decided by everyone.
The National Indigenous Congress is going to speak with truth; it will listen with attention.
It is not a game of struggle for the National Indigenous Congress.
They have told us that they are going for everything for everyone.
And that means that:
They are for respect for human rights.
They are for the liberation of all political prisoners.
They are for the living presentation of the missing and disappeared.
They are for justice for those who have been killed,
They are for truth and justice for the 46 absentees of Ayotzinapa.
They are for support of peasants and respect for mother earth.
They are for a decent home for everyone below.
They are for enough food for all the homeless.
They are for decent work and just salary for the workers of the countryside and the city.
They are for complete and free health care for all the workers.
They are for free, secular and scientific education.
They are for land belonging to those who work it.
They are for factory employees.
They are for shop and bank employees.
They are for the respect of alternative commerce, and small and medium commerce.
They are for the public and commercial transport for those who drive the vehicles.
They are for the field for the peasants.
They are for the city.
They are for the territory of the native peoples.
They are for autonomy.
They are for self-management.
They are for respect for every form of life.
They are for the arts and sciences.
They are for freedom of thought, of word, of creation.
They are for freedom, justice and democracy for Mexico from below.
That’s what they’re calling us to support.
Each one will be able to decide if this fight is good, if that idea is good, whether or not it responds to the call they make.
We, as Zapatistas, answer yes, we are with you, yes we will accompany the National Indigenous Congress.
We will see ways to support them with all our strength.
We will support you because the struggle you propose, sisters and brothers of the National Indigenous Congress, is perhaps the last chance that these soils and these skies will not disappear in the midst of destruction and death.
So we just have to tell them:
Listen to the heart, the pain and the rage that is in every corner of this country.
Walk and tremble this soil at its core with your steps.
Let the Mexican soil be astonished.
May the heavens look upon them with surprise and admiration!
May the peoples of the world learn from the example of the National Indigenous Congress and feel the courage to participate.
And above all, it does not matter what happens, it does not matter that they attack you with everything, do not give up, do not sell out, do not give in.
And above all, it doesn’t matter what happens or everything that they have against, it doesn’t matter that they attack you with everything, however don’t give up, don’t sell out, don’t give in.
LIBERTY!
JUSTICE!
DEMOCRACY!
From the mountains of the Mexican Southeast,
In the name of the women, men, children and elders of the EZLN,
Subcomandante Insurgente Moisés.
Mexico, January 2017
The Power of Below
Zapatista women and children listen to discussions at 5th National Indigenous Congress.
By: Raúl Zibechi
It’s unheard of in Latin America that dozens of indigenous peoples and nations decide to endow themselves with their own government. The recent decision of the 5th National Indigenous Congress (CNI), after consultation and approval by 43 peoples, to create the Indigenous Government Council that proposes “governing this country,” will have repercussions in the country and the world.
As the communiqué “And it shook!” points out, we are faced with dozens of processes of radical transformation, of resistances and rebellions that “constitute the power of below,” which will now be expressed in the Government Council. Simultaneously, the organism will have an indigenous woman as spokesperson, and she will be an independent candidate in the 2018 elections.
It’s the mode that the peoples found so that “indignation, resistance and rebellion figure on the 2018 electoral ballots.” In that mode they seek to “shake the conscience of the nation,” to “dismantle the power of above and reconstitute ourselves, no longer just as peoples, but also as a country.” The immediate objective is to stop the war, to create conditions for organizing and collectively overcoming the paralyzing fear that the genocide of above provokes.
In the final part the communiqué emphasizes that perhaps this may be “the last opportunity as original peoples and as Mexican society to peacefully and radically change our own forms of government, making dignity the epicenter of a new world.”
In broad strokes, that’s the proposal and the path for making it a reality. From the distance it calls attention to the fact that the debates since last October had been centered on the question of the indigenous woman spokesperson as a candidate in the 2018 elections, setting aside a fundamental theme that, I believe, is the formation of the Indigenous Government Council. It’s evident that the new political culture that the CNI and the EZLN embody cannot be understood with the blinders of the old culture, centered on media discourses and on elections as almost the only way of doing politics.
That the indigenous peoples of Mexico decide to create a government council seems an issue of the greatest importance. They are peoples and nations that no longer will be governed by anyone else. Millions of men and women establish self-government in a coordinated way, in a single council that represents all of them. It’s a parting of waters for the indigenous, which will have repercussions throughout all of society, like the January 1, 1994 Uprising had.
Here is where it’s convenient to make some clarifications versus the more absurd interpretations and, my apologies if I’m wrong. The political culture that Zapatismo and the CNI practice consists of promoting the self-government of all the sectors of society: rural and urban, indigenous, campesinos, workers, students, professionals and all the sectors that want to be added. They never sought to govern others; they don’t want to supplant anyone. “Govern obeying” is a form of government for all the oppressed, which each one implements in their own way.
The communiqué clarifies that they do not seek to compete with the professional politicians, because “we are not the same.” No one that even minimally is familiar with Zapatismo throughout these 23 years can imagine that they will be dedicated to counting votes, to getting positions in municipal, state or federal governments. They won’t be dedicated to adding or subtracting electoral acronyms, because they’re on another path.
In times of war against those below, I believe that the question that the CNI and the EZLN raise is how to contribute to the way the most diverse sectors of the country are organized? It’s not about (the CNI and the EZLN) wanting to organize them, that’s the job of each sector. It’s about how to support, how to create the conditions so that it’s possible. The indigenous candidacy goes in that direction, not as “vote-getting,” but rather as the possibility of dialogue, so that others may know how they did it.
The creation of the Indigenous Government Council is the sign that if millions of individuals from peoples and nations can do it, self-government is possible; why can’t I do it in my district, in my neighborhood, wherever it may be? The 1994 Uprising multiplied rebellions; it contributed to the creation of the CNI and of multiple social, political and cultural organizations; something similar can happen now. There is nothing as potent as the example.
This year we celebrate the hundred-year anniversary of the October Revolution. The obsession of the Bolsheviks and of Lenin, which can be corroborated in the marvelous book of John Reed “Ten days that shook the world” (Diez días que estremecieron al mundo), is that everyone would organize into soviets, even those that as of that moment were fighting against them. They even called to the Cossacks, enemies of the revolution, to create their soviets and to send delegates to the congress of all of Russia. “The revolution is not made, but rather is organized,” said Lenin. Independently of what one thinks about the Russian leader, the assertion is the nucleus of any revolutionary struggle.
The transition from indignation and rage to solid and persistent organization is key to any process of profound and radical change. Rage abounds in these times; it lacks organizing it. Will the 2018 campaign be able to become a leap forward in the organization of the peoples? No one can answer that. But it’s an opportunity for the power of below to be expressed in the most diverse ways, even in electoral events and tickets, because the form is not essential.
Reflecting on the criticisms, which are not few, instead of accusing the CNI and the EZLN of being divisive, they could recognize their enormous flexibility, being capable of entering territory that, as of this moment, had not been probed and, of doing it without flags, while upholding the principles and objectives. The coming months and years will be decisive for delineating the future of the world’s oppressed. It’s probable that in a few years we will evaluate the formation of the Indigenous Government Council as the turn for which we were waiting.
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Originally Published in Spanish by La Jornada
Friday, January 6, 2017
http://www.jornada.unam.mx/2017/01/06/opinion/018a1pol
Re-Published with English interpretation by the Chiapas Support Committee
And it shook! A Report from the Epicenter
To the Original Peoples of Mexico
To Civil Society of Mexico and of the World
To the National and International Sixth
To the Free Communications Media
Brothers, Sisters,
It is the time of the peoples, for seeding and reconstructing ourselves. It’s the time for going on the offensive and this is the agreement that is drawn in our eyes, in the individuals, in the communities, in the towns, in the National Indigenous Congress; it’s time that dignity governs this country and this world and on the way democracy, liberty and justice will flourish.
We announce that in the second stage of CNI 5 we minutely evaluated the result of the consultation with the peoples that are the National Indigenous Congress and that took place in the months of October, November and December 2016, in which in all the modes, forms and languages that represent us in the geography of this country we issued agreements of communal assemblies, ejido assemblies, of collectives, municipal, inter-municipal and regional, that one more time lead us to understanding and assuming with dignity and rebellion the situation through which our country, our world crosses.
We greet the messages of support, of hope and of solidarity that intellectuals, collectives and peoples gave, which reflect hope in our proposal that we named “May The Earth Shake At Its Centers” and that web made public in the first stage of CNI 5. We also greet the critical voices, many of them with fundamentally racist arguments, which reflect a furious indignation and scorn over thinking that an indigenous woman seeks not only to contend in a presidential election, but also sets forth to really change, from below, this pained country.
To all of them, we say that in effect the earth shook and us with her, and that we seek to shake the conscience of the nation, that in effect we seek that indignation, resistance and rebellion figure in the 2018 electoral ballots, but that it’s not our intention to compete in anything with the parties and all the political class that still owes us a lot; every dead, disappeared and incarcerated person, every dispossession, every repression and every defamation. Don’t be confused about us, we don’t seek to compete with them because we are not the same, we are not their lying and perverse words. We are the collective word of below and to the left, that which shakes the world when the Earth shakes with epicenters of autonomy, and that make us so proudly different that:
- While the country is submerged in the fear and terror that is born among thousands of dead and disappeared, in the municipios of the mountains and the coast of Guerrero our peoples have created security conditions and real justice. In Santa María Ostula, Michoacán, the Nahua people have united with other indigenous communities to keep security in the hands of the peoples, where the epicenter of resistance is the communal assembly of Ostula, guarantor of the ethics of a movement that has now permeated the municipios of Aquila, Coahuayana, Chinicuila and Coalcomán. On the Purépecha mesa the community of Cherán has shown that with organization, taking the politicians out of their bad government structure and exercising their own forms of security and government, one can not only construct justice, but also that just like in other geographies of the country only from below, from rebellion are new social pacts, autonomous and just, reconstructed and we don’t leave nor do we stop constructing from below the truth and justice denied to the 43 students from the teachers college in Ayotzinapa, Guerrero, disappeared, the 3 compañero students that were murdered and the compañeros injured, all of them by the Mexican narco government and its repressive forces. Meanwhile the bad governments criminalize social struggle, resistance and rebellion, persecuting, harassing, disappearing, incarcerating and murdering faultless men and women that fight for just causes.
- While the destruction reaches all corners of the country, without knowing the limits separating the belonging to the land and the sacred, the Wixárika people, together with the committees in defense of life and water of the Potosí Highlands have shown that one can defend a territory, its environment and equilibrium based on recognizing one with nature, with a sacred vision that renews each day the ancestral links with life, the land, the sun and the ancestors, encompassing 7 municipios on the sacred ceremonial territory of the Wirikuta in San Luis Potosí.
- While the bad governments deform State policies in education matters placing it at the service of the capitalist corporations so that it stops being a right, the original peoples create primary and secondary schools, high schools and universities with their own education systems based on protection of our Mother Earth, on territorial defense, on production, on the sciences, on the arts, on our languages and despite the fact that the majority of those processes grow in support at no level of the bad government, it is at the service of everyone.
- While the communications media for pay, spokespersons for those who prostitute every one of the words that they publish and deceive keeping the peoples of the countryside and the city asleep, passing off as criminals those who think and will defend what is their and they are always the bad ones, the vandals, the misfits. Meanwhile, those that live in ignorance and alienation are the socially good ones, and those that oppress, repress, exploit and dispossess are always the good ones, those that deserve to be respected and govern to serve themselves. And while that’s happening the peoples have made their own communications media de ideating different forms so that the conscience is not clouded by the lie that the capitalists impose, also using the media for strengthening organization below, where every true word is born.
- While the representative “democracy” of the political parties has been converted into a mockery of popular will, in which votes are bought and sold like so much merchandise and are manipulated by the poverty in which the capitalists keep societies in the countryside and the cities, the original peoples continue caring for and strengthening forms of consensus and assemblies as organs of government in which the voices of all make profoundly democratic agreements, embracing entire regions through assemblies that are versed in the agreements from other assemblies and at the same time emerge from the profound will of each family.
- While governments impose their decisions for the benefit of the few, supplanting the collective will of the peoples, criminalizing and repressing those who are opposed to their death projects that impose over the blood of our peoples as is the case with the New Mexico City Airport, feigning that they are consulting while they impose their death, the original peoples have the modes and the constant forms of prior consultation, as free and informed for small as for large.
- While with their privatizing reforms the bad governments deliver the country’s energy sovereignty to foreign interests and the high cost of gasoline betray the capitalist lie that only traces paths for inequality and the rebel response of the indigenous and non-indigenous peoples of Mexico, which the powerful will not be able to hide or silence; the peoples make a front and fight to stop the destruction of our territories through fracking, wind parks, mining, oil wells, and gas and oil pipelines in states like Veracruz, Sonora, Sinaloa, Baja California, Morelos, Oaxaca, Yucatán and all of the national territory.
- While the bad governments impose toxic and GMO food on all the consumers of the countryside and the cities, the Maya peoples maintain a tireless struggle for stopping the planting of GMOs on the la de Yucatán Peninsula and all over the country for conserving ancestral genetic wealth, which also signifies our life and collective organization and the basis of our spirituality.
- While the political class only destroys and promises, the peoples construct not to govern but rather to exist with autonomy and self-determination.
Our resistances and rebellions constitute the power of below, they don’t offer promises or bright ideas, but rather real processes of radical transformation in which all participate and that are tangible in the diverse and enormous indigenous geographies of this nation. It’s because of that as the National Indigenous Congress, 43 peoples of this country gathered together at this 5th Congress, AGREE to name an Indigenous Government Council with representative men and women from every one of the peoples, tribes and nations that belong to it, that this council proposes to govern this country. And that it will have as the voice an indigenous woman from the CNI, in other words, that she will have indigenous blood and she knows her culture. Or it’s that it has as spokesperson an indigenous woman from the CNI that will be an independent candidate to the presidency of Mexico in the 2018 elections.
It’s because of that that the CNI as the House of All the Peoples is the principle one that configures the ethics of our struggle and in which all the original peoples of this country fit, those principles on which the Indigenous Government Council is lodged are:
To obey and not command
To represent and not supplant
To serve and not serve yourself
To convince and not conquer
To step down and not up
To propose and not impose
To construct and not destroy
It’s what we have invented and reinvented not for gusto, but rather as the only way we have to continue existing, in other words those new paths taken from the collective memory of our own forms of organization, are the product of resistance and rebellion, of making a front every day against the war that has not stopped and that has not been able to finish with us. In these forms it has not only been able to draw the path for the integral reconstitution of the peoples, but rather new civilizing forms, collective hopes that become community, municipal, regional and state hopes and that are giving precise answers to real problems in the country, far away from the political class and its corruption.
From this 5th National Indigenous Congress we call to the original peoples of this country, to the collectives of the Sixth, to the workers, the fronts and committees in struggle in the countryside and the cities, to the student, intellectual, artistic and scientific community, to unorganized civil society and to all people with a good heart to close ranks and go on the offensive, to dismantle the power of above and to reconstitute ourselves no longer only as peoples, but also as a country, from below and to the left, to add ourselves to a single organization in which dignity is our ultimate word and our first action. We call on you to organize and stop this war, to not be afraid to construct and plant over the ruins left by capitalism.
That’s what our humanity and our Mother Earth that is the land demand from us, in it we find that it’s time for rebel dignity and that we are materialized convoking a constitutive assembly of the Indigenous Government Council for Mexico in the month of May 2017 and from this moment we will tender bridges to the compañeros and compañeras of civil society, the communications media and the original peoples to make the Earth shake at its core, conquering fear and recuperating what belongs to humanity, the land and the peoples, for the recuperation of territories invaded or destroyed, for the presentation of the country’s disappeared, for the freedom of all political prisoners, for truth and justice for those murdered, for the dignity of the countryside and the city. In other words, have no doubt, we’re going for it all, because we know that we face perhaps the last opportunity as original peoples and as Mexican society of changing peacefully and radically our own forms of government, making dignity the epicenter of a new world.
From Oventik, Zapatista Territory, Chiapas, México
Never More a Mexico Without Us
National Indigenous Congress
Zapatista National Liberation Army
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Originally Published in Spanish by Enlace Zapatista
Monday, January 2, 2017
http://enlacezapatista.ezln.org.mx/2017/01/02/y-retemblo-informe-desde-el-epicentro/
Re-published with English interpretation by the Chiapas Support Committee
https://chiapas-support.org/2017/01/04/and-it-shook-a-report-from-the-epicenter/
CNI announces an autonomous parallel government for Mexico
THE EZLN EXTENDED THE CONSULTATION TO DEFINE ITS PRESIDENTIAL CANDIDATE
Zapatistas at anniversary celebration – Photo: Janet Schwartz
By: Isaín Mandujano
OVENTIK, Chiapas. (proceso.com.mx). – Some 3,000 participating delegates of the National Indigenous Congress (Congreso Nacional Indígena, CNI), with support from the Zapatista National Liberation Army (Ejército Zapatista de Liberación Nacional, EZLN), announced the constitution of an Indigenous Government Council (Consejo de Gobierno Indígena, CGI) as an autonomous parallel government for the country.
Today, they also delineated the profile that the candidate will have that they will postulate in the 2018 elections for the presidency of the Republic.
Within the framework of the 23rd anniversary of the EZLN’s armed uprising in Caracol II at Oventik, the CNI today called: “to all the original peoples throughout the country, to all persons with a good heart to close ranks and go on the offensive,” in this new stage of struggle, to reconstruct ourselves no longer just as people but also as a nation.
After two days of closed-door sessions, this Sunday January 1, the CNI and the EZLN held an open-door plenary meeting to which the communications media had access. In it they announced the report of the results of the consultation held during October, November and December of 2016 in at least 43 different indigenous towns throughout the country.
The work group in which Comandante David was present, as the host in the EZLN’s Los Altos of Chiapas bastion, and with Subcomandante Insurgente Moisés, military commander of the armed group, were half a dozen delegate participants from the CNI who announced the details of how the CGI will be created and how they will present themselves heading towards 2018 with an independent woman candidate.
“Indignation, resistance and rebellion will figure in the 2018 electoral ballots, said the women that read the results of the consultation in that extensive auditorium gathered together in a big wooden structure with a sheet metal roof.
They indicated that some 43 different original peoples of 25 of the country’s states were consulted.
The indigenous agreed to construct paths of resistance in which the struggle will be collective and above all they proposed eliminating from their communities everything that divides the indigenous peoples, like the political parties and the governmental assistance programs.
They proposed expanding communication and making it permanent among the peoples throughout the country; in the same way, creating commissions at the community, regional, state and national level.
They indicated that after the consultation during the three prior months, the CNI came out strengthened and doubled the number of attendees in its plenary meetings, but that above all they expanded their presence in more communities that participated in the consultation and that were not considered previously.
While they demonstrated the need for respecting the peoples that are not in agreement with this process of struggle that the CNI and the EZLN propose, they recognized that in many communities they were not able to carry out the consultation because of the violent situation that exists or because of the change of authorities in those communities.
The women said that after the two-day closed-door meeting, they agreed to continue the consultation, which will be permanent, as is traditionally done among the original peoples and communities. Besides the fact that Afro-Americans and immigrants lack being consulted.
As one of the principal agreements, they ratified the creation of an Indigenous Government Council (CGI) as the representative of all the peoples and tribes of this country. This Council, they specified, will be collective; it will not do what occurs to it, but rather what all the original peoples represented there mandate.
It was also agreed that this CGI would have as its spokesperson and indigenous woman from the CNI. This same woman will be the candidate in the 2018 elections.
They said that the CGI will be formally constituted next May 18, and that the spokesperson of that body will be a woman that has permanence in the CNI, who belongs to one of the original peoples of Mexico, who speaks that indigenous language, who must proposed and legitimized in assembly, who is distinguished as a person that has accompanied the peoples in their struggles.
She will also practice the principles of govern by obeying (mandar obedeciendo, she will know that making agreements will be by consensus and that those who make up the Council of which she is the spokesperson, and they must be aware that the CNI’s Assembly will be the only one able to take away that position when it is so considered.
The CGI will have several commissions, such as security, finances, communication, culture, elders councils, health, environment and a commission charged with Mother Earth and territory.
Said council that would govern for all the original peoples of the country was defined as an anticapitalist collective, from below and from the left, that will respect the decisions of the people and decisions of the CNI, and that above all will have the ability to create alliances with other peoples that are not from the CNI.
They said that the woman candidate will be on the ballot in 2018, but they warned:
“Don’t get confused thinking that we seek to compete with them because we are not the same. We are the collective word of below and to the left.”
They indicated that while the country is submerged in fear and terror, the peoples have created conditions for security and real justice. And only from below is it possible to construct autonomy.
Before this scenario what’s necessary, they insisted, is the creation of the CGI that is being proposed to govern this country and that will impel its own candidate to do that; and, this project is not exclusive, because all the original peoples of the country fit.
Subcomandante Moisés said that the time for the peoples has come, for all the peoples that are in the countryside and in the city. And he said that what the CNI now proposes is a “¡Ya Basta!” (Enough!) of hope that others will tell us what to do and how to do it.
He said that it has been sought to deceive the peoples of Mexico “with promises and brazen lies,” and that what the CNI now proposes is what the peoples themselves will direct.
Moisés outlined fighting for truth and justice, fighting for democracy, but where the people govern and the government obeys. He called to fight for freedom, and for that it’s necessary to rescue the history of the original peoples that have centuries resisting for life.
He said that they EZLN and the CNI already have many years of knowing each other. He ratified that the EZLN is now and will always be with the CNI on the path that has been outlined.
“We’re with you, we’re definitely going with the National Indigenous Congress (…) Listen to the pain and rage that there is in every corner of this country. May the Earth shake at its core with your step. May they look at you with surprise and admiration, may the peoples of the world admire you in your decisions and goals. And above all, it’s not important that they will use everything they have against you, that they attack you in every way, don’t surrender, don’t sell out, don’t give in,” Moisés concluded.
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Originally Published in Spanish by Proceso.com
Sunday, January 1, 2017
http://www.proceso.com.mx/468261/amplia-el-ezln-consulta-para-definir-a-su-candidata-presidencial
Re-Published with English interpretation by the Chiapas Support Committee
https://chiapas-support.org/2017/01/02/cni-announces-an-autonomous-parallel-government-for-mexico/
EZLN asks scientists to form schools within its territory
[Administrator’s Note: Official EZLN communications from “The Zapatistas and ConSciences for Humanity” are very long and, therefore, are taking a long time to translate; so, we’re posting news articles about it. This article has special significance to us (the Chiapas Support Committee) because our solidarity work is with the autonomous Zapatista education system.]
Galeano walking around at “The Zapatistas and ConSciences for Humanity.” It’s interesting to note the absence of his military cap and shirt.
By: Angeles Mariscal
“We want to learn and do science and technology to earn the only competence that matters: that of life against death,” members of the Zapatista National Liberation Army (Ejército Zapatista de Liberación Nacional, EZLN) pointed out at the inauguration of the meeting with scientists from different countries that came to Chiapas to meet with members of the insurgent group.
The gathering named The Zapatistas and ConSciences for Humanity called to Germany, Canada, Chile, United States, Spain, Israel, Paraguay, United Kingdom, Uruguay, Brazil and Mexico -some members of the National Investigators System -, who will debate with the Zapatistas the work of the scientific community facing the social, economic, political and environmental crisis derived from the capitalist system.
“Scientifically are there studies about whether one can live without capitalism? What is the scientific or non-scientific explanation of why money was invented? Scientifically, can you explain to us the principles of neoliberalism? Scientifically, can you explain to us why capitalism prepares certain crisis every so often to reactivate its economy? What are the ethical principles?” These are some of the questions that the EZLN’s political and military leader, Subcomandante Galeano, asked during the inauguration.
For ten days scientists from diverse fields will debate about this and other themes, “as a start for watching and walking what to do in the world in which we live,” explained Subcomandante Moisés, who in the name of the General Command of the EZLN considered that scientific research and discoveries have been used as an instrument for the accumulation of wealth: “the rich changed the destiny for which it was created, gave it another use, for their convenience.”
“Our survival is in our hands, or the other construction of a new world (…) We Zapatistas, we’re here now as your pupils, your students, your apprentices. We don’t conceive knowledge as a symbol of social status or a measure of intelligence (…) We don’t want to go to the university, we want the university to be erected in our communities, to be taught and to learn together with our people.”
The insurgent leader threw out a challenge to the scientific community to share their knowledge with members of the EZLN. “The question that moves us, the scientific curiosity, the zeal to learn, to know, comes from a long time ago, so long ago that scientific calendars don’t have a count (…) we don’t want to go to big laboratories and scientific research centers in the metropolis, we want them constructed here. We want schools built for the formation of scientists, not workshops disguised as schools, which only teach the functions of work at the service of capitalism (cheap and poorly qualified manual labor). We want scientific studies, not just technical studies. We want to learn and make science and technology to gain the only competence that’s worth the effort: that of life against death.”
“We cannot delegate to others the work that corresponds to us as complete human beings, Subcomandante Galeano stated.
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Originally Published in Spanish by Chiapas Paralelo
Tuesday, December 27, 2016
Re-Published with English interpretation by the Chiapas Support Committee
CNI-EZLN, the Mexican State and the registry of an independent candidate
The CNI-EZLN and the MEXICAN STATE VERSUS the REGISTRY of an INDIGENOUS WOMAN AS AN INDEPENDENT CANDIDATE FOR 2018
By: Gaspar Morquecho
It’s probable that on January 1, 2017 the CNI-EZLN will announce the strategic agreements, “if there are any,” facing “the offensive against the peoples” (…) and the steps that they are going to take: “for dismantling from below the power that above imposes on us and that offers us nothing but a panorama of death, violence, dispossession and destruction.”
It’s also probable that they will make public the results and evaluation of the Consultation around the proposal to create: “an indigenous government council whose word will be materialized by an indigenous woman, a delegate from the CNI as an independent candidate that contests in the name of the National Indigenous Congress and the Zapatista National Liberation Army in the 2018 electoral process for the presidency of this country.” (Joint Comunicado from the CNI-EZLN. October 14, 2016.)
Perhaps the most important debates can be presented around the proposal for the participation “in the 2018 electoral process;” even more in the debate as to whether the indigenous woman is registered or not as an independent candidate. It’s very clear that the EZLN is in favor of entering the 2018 contest and in favor of the registry of the independent candidate. In that way they will be able to measure the acceptance of the proposal and its incidence in the indigenous population and in the non-indigenous population. If they don’t register the candidate in the 2018 campaign it will be difficult to go beyond the ambit of the adherents to the VI, of the close allies and sympathizers. Without registry, the day’s work would be something like the Other Campaign but now with an indigenous candidate.
Going for the Yes to the 2018 political electoral contest and for the registry of the candidate can require:
1. – The mobilization of the EZLN and the CNI in their regional and national ambits.
2. – The mobilization of their national and international allies.
The Electoral Law requires the following for the registry of the indigenous candidate:
1. – Getting 820,000 signatures within 120 days from voters of at least 17 federative states.
2. – Forming a civil association, presenting it to the Tributary Administration System and opening a bank account for that purpose.
3. – In that way, in this case, the independent presidential standard bearer would have the same rights as her competitors, like access to time on radio and television, public and private financing, and designating representatives to the INE.
In other words, the CNI and the EZLN would have to organize and mobilize a network in at least 17 states to get at least one million signatures. Upon achieving that, they would have a first indication of the indigenous and non-indigenous population that supports their initiative in this conservative, racist and patriarchal country.
Those million signatures would also be an indicator of the minimum number of votes they could obtain in the contest and to design a campaign to add at least 5 million votes. The initial platform of the Indigenous Government Council and the strength of the indigenous woman’s voice that would set the struggle for life and against violence, dispossession and the destruction that it is submitting to the peoples.
It’s very probable that the Mexican State and its electoral political apparatuses are giving following up on the CNI-EZLN proposal and defining their strategy versus the same. Surely they are also making their evaluations, in other words, the convenience or not of granting registry to the independent candidate of the CNI-EZLN.
If the Mexican State and its apparatuses evaluate that giving registry to the independent candidate oxygenates the electoral contest obliging the political parties and their candidates to give quality and competition to their electoral offer so as to exceed previous contests and as a result increase voter turnout, the Mexican State would not hesitate in giving registry to the candidate of the CNI-EZLN.
In that scenario the CNI-EZLN would have the space to strengthen its presence in the country, to contribute to the cohesion and strengthening of the movements in resistance versus the “panorama of death, violence, dispossession and destruction.”
Nevertheless, it’s necessary to take into account that the scenarios are adverse to the objectives of the CNI and EZLN campaign around their independent candidate:
1. It’s very clear that it (the campaign) will travel through territories where the Capitalist Beast has planned or carried out investments in so-called mega-projects: highways, dams, mining and wind parks. (It will also travel) through territories under the control of Radical Companies dedicated to the cultivation, shipment and commercialization of drugs, and trafficking of undocumented persons. Both businesses have their own armed forces.
2. The presence of those Companies has fragmented the social fabric of the peoples and has done violence or confronted them not just a few times.
3. The national State at the service of Multinational Capital has used its armed forces not just a few times to undermine the resistance of the peoples that defend the land and territory.
In the logic of the Counterinsurgency Strategy that the Mexican State has designed for annihilating the EZLN and that others call the Integral Campaign of Exhaustion, the CNI and the rebels would be permitted to mobilize and carry out a preliminary campaign to raise one million signatures in 17 states in accordance with Law, a not so east job, and later… denying them registry and leaving the CNI and the EZLN navigating in a marginal campaign that can be exhausting and frustrating.
Anyway, on January 1, 2017, we will find out what the delegates resolved at the Second Stage of the 5th Nacional Indigenous Congress during December 30 and 31, 2016.
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Originally Published in Spanish by Chiapas Paralelo
Monday, December 26, 2016
Re-Published with English interpretation by the Chiapas Support Committee
Words of the EZLN at the Opening of “The Zapatistas and ConSciences for Humanity”
Words of the General Command of the EZLN in the name of the Zapatista women, men, children and elders at the opening of the Gathering “The Zapatistas and ConSciences for Humanity”
Good morning.
Compañeras, compañeros of Mexico and of the world:
Brothers and sisters of Mexico and of the world:
First and foremost, in the name of the compañeras and compañeros who are Bases of Support of the Zapatista Army for National Liberation, we thank all of the compañer@s of CIDECI who once again have provided us with these spaces so that we, Zapatista original peoples and scientists, can gather here as a way to begin to look and walk toward what must be done in this world we live in, which capitalism is destroying.
We also thank the compañeros who have worked on registration and coordination for this event.
We also thank the compañer@s from the transport support team.
We thank you in advance, compañeras and compañeros of the various teams and collectives for the shitload of work that you have done to make this gathering happen. Many thanks.
For we as Zapatista men and women, today begins our long walk in search of others with whom we think share the great responsibility to defend and save the world we live in – with the art of artists, the science of scientists, and the original peoples alongside those below from across the entire world.
A handful of some so-called “neoliberal capitalists” have decided to savagely destroy everything, caring nothing at all for this house that we live in.
This makes us Zapatistas think and ask ourselves:
Where are we poor people of the world going to live, because they, the rich, might just go and live on another planet?
What should we do now, as we see that they are destroying our house?
Or what happens if they take us to another planet to be their slaves?
After turning this over many times in our heads, we conclude that:
Below there are women and men who study science, who study scientifically, who do good science. But the wicked capitalists come along and use this science to do harm to the very people who discovered that science. What kind of harm?
They use science to make the rich richer.
The rich use it as they choose, for a destiny other than that for which it was created. They use it to kill and destroy.
Now it is getting worse for them up there, and that will be used even more harshly against us living beings and our mother earth.
That is how all of these bad things began and how they continue, bringing us to a very dire point today.
This is how things happened, and in the same way they use the artists who make art – capitalism uses everything to the detriment of society and for the good of capitalism. What was natural, nature and those who live within it, which is to say the originary peoples, will be destroyed along with Mother Nature.
Therefore, we believe, think, and imagine.
We can organize ourselves, work, struggle, and defend who we are – the foundation of this world – so that this world, the house in which we live, can’t be disappeared by the capitalists. Now is the time, brothers and sisters, compañer@s, compañeroas; no one is going to bring us salvation. It is up to us.
Begin to dream and you will see that we can only fight capitalism with good scientific science, the art of the artist, and the guardians of mother nature together with those below from across the world. This is our responsibility.
I don’t mean to say that we are the only ones who should struggle, not at all. But when we look around at how things are, we realize that all of the useful things that we have in our houses are a matter of science, in terms of where they came from, and all of the figures and figurines in our houses and rooms are the art of artists, and all of the materials for these things come from mother nature, where the original peoples live.
It is as if we are the “seeds” of all of this.
Let’s put it even more clearly.
Who figured out how to make today’s most modern cellphone? It’s the same for thousands of other products – they are used to benefit the rich, and not for the use science intended, nor for the people.
Who figured out how to make the images that are held within cellphones which are now manipulated on any whim?
Where did the materials that cellphones are made of come from? The same question goes for thousands of other goods.
Capitalism has converted science into something used for harm: something to feed its massive accumulation of wealth; something to manipulate at its every whim. It takes no responsibility for the destruction it has wrought with these actions.
We know what will happen.
One more point of clarity.
We are the lifeblood of the rich; we are the flesh and bone that make their lives possible, and the rest of the organs (in this body) are made up of the consumers; meanwhile, they live to do us harm in this capitalist system.
The origin of the evil the capitalist system wreaks on us is revealed.
Our survival, and the other construction of a new world, is in our hands.
Today we are here not to tell each other what to do, but to understand what our function is to capitalism in this world, and to see if what capitalism has us doing is any good for this world that we live in, human and living beings.
And if we discover that it is entirely bad, that the use capitalism makes of our sciences is harmful, then we have to take responsibility and decide what to do.
Before I finish compañeras and compañeros, sisters and brothers, today December 26, we do not forget that there are lives missing from our midst, the life of the 46 missing young people from Ayotzinapa, Guerrero.
Together with their families and friends who continue to search for them and who do not give up or sell out, we Zapatista men and women also demand truth and justice. To these mothers, fathers, sisters and brothers of the missing, we give our largest collective embrace.
So, welcome to this gathering, to this long walk of the other sciences during which there is no rest, because rest would mean that the other, new world is already built, and until it is built there will be no rest.
May your wisdom, scientists, encounter and embrace our desire to learn and to know about the worlds.
Many thanks.
From CIDECI-Unitierra, San Cristóbal de las Casas, Chiapas.
Subcomandante Insurgente Moisés.
Mexico, December 26, 2016
Program of activities for “The Zapatistas and ConSciences for Humanity”
Program of activities for the gathering “THE ZAPATISTAS and CONSCIENCES for HUMANITY.”
Where: CIDECI-Unitierra. San Cristóbal de Las Casas, Chiapas, Mexico.
When: From December 26, 2014, through January 4, 2017.
[Admin Reminder: The 2nd phase of the 5th CNI is on December 29, 30, 31 and January 1 in Oventik. The decision on the indigenous woman candidate is anticipated January 1.]
December 26
10:00 – 11:00. Inauguration. Words of Subcomandante Insurgente Moisés on behalf of the Zapatista women, men, children, and elders.
General Sessions. Participation by:
Biologist Adriana Raquel Aguilar Melo: “The Academy May Be Exclusionary, But Can Science Be A Common Good?”
Dr. Marco Antonio Sánchez Ramos: “Sisyphus and Science”
Dr. Tonatiuh Matos Chassin: “A Fundamental Law for the Progress of a Nation”
Physicist Eduardo Vizcaya Xilotl: “(Meta)Sciences, Utopias and Dystopias”
Professors Luis Malaret and Diane Rocheleau: “Ecology From Below”
Dr. Iván Alejandro Velasco-Dávalos: “Who Does Science Serve? A Collective Vision Regarding the Importance of the Joint Popularization of the Arts and the Sciences”
Alchemist SupGaleano: “Some Questions for the Sciences”
December 27
General Sessions. Participation by:
Physicist Alejo Stark: “The Role of the Sciences in the Transformation of the World”
Dr. Claudio Martínez Debat: “Biology and Biotechnology: Who Do They Serve?”
Doctoral Candidate Dr. Luis Fernando Santis Espinosa: “The Slavery of Science: The National Market for Natural Resources and Their Privatization”
Dr. Kristen Vogeler: “Thoughts on the Relation Between Science and Customs”
Dr. Mariana Benítez Keinrad: “Some Reflections on Science from the Cubicle of a Development Biologist”
Dr. Tatiana Fiordelisio: “The Sciences: A Raft For the Storm?”
Alchemist SupGaleano: “The Flower is to Blame”
Informational Talks. Participation by:
Dr. Jerome Leboeuf: “The Potential and Applications of Artificial Intelligence”
Dr. Marco Antonio Sánchez Ramos: “What Are the Stars Made Of?”
Dr. Patricia Ramos Morales: “What Are Mutagens and Where Are They Located?”
Dr. María Alejandra Jiménez Zúñiga: “Our Place In the Cosmos: What Astrophysics Tells Us”
Mathematician Florencia Cubría: “Connectivity In Graphs”
Master of Science, Verónica López Delgado: “Gravity and Magnetism: Determinate Forces In Our World.”
Biologist Felipe Gómez Noguez: “Pteridium, A Capitalist Fern”
Workshops. Participation by:
Atenea Martínez Dolores and Manuel Alejandro Lara, Engineers. Robotics Workshop for The Masked, I (only for Zapatista students)
December 28
General Sessions. Participation by:
Elfego Ruiz Gutiérrez, Master of Science: “Critical Reflections and Practices On the Scientific Endeavor For Life”
Dr. Gabriela Piccinelli Bocchi: “Science…and ConScience, What For?”
Dr. Igor Valencia Sánchez: “Bloodsucker Science: Free Access to Knowledge and Biohackers”
Dr. Jaime del Sagrado Corazón Morales Hernández: “Agroecology and the Sciences For Sustainability”
Dr. Carlos Román Zúñiga: “Astronomy: the Poetry of the Exact Sciences”
Dr. Yuri Nahmad Molinari: “Flaws and Benefits of Mexican Energy Reform”
Subcomandante Insurgente Moisés and Subcomandante Insurgente Galeano: “The Arts and the Sciences in the History of (neo) Zapatismo”
Informational Talks. Participation by:
Dr. Natalia Ismene Pavón Martínez: “Estrogen and Its Influence On the Heart”
Mathematician Eric López González: “Emotional Mathematics”
Biologist Adriana Raquel Aguilar Melo: “Come Together, Separate, and Come Together Again for ‘Buen Vivir’: The Case of Non-Human Primates”
Mathematician Elisa Rocha Cardozo: “How are Living Beings Distributed Spatially?”
Dr. Gabriel Ramos Fernández: “Complexity, Resilience, and Uncertainty: Socioecosystems and Biodiversity”
Dr. Lev Jardón Barbolla.
Workshops. Participation by:
Atenea Martínez Dolores and Manuel Alejandro Lara, Engineers. “Robotics Workshop for The Masked II” (only for Zapatista students)
December 29
General Sessions. Participation by:
Dr. Adolfo Olea Franco: “The Social Function of Science”
Engineer Fayez Mubarqui Guevara: “Feeling-thinking the Energy Crisis”
Dr. Octavio Valadez Blanco: “Scientists and Humanists as Participants in Social Struggle: Challenges in the Mexican Capitalocene”
Dr. Eva Jablonka: “Epigenetics: The Science that Connects”
Dr. Melina Gómez Bock: “The Obscurity of a Theoretical Physics”
Dr. Lev Jardón Borbolla: “The Storm in the Sciences and the Sciences in the Face of the Storm: It is Possible to Change the Relations of Production”
Alchemist SupGaleano: “The Cat-Dog and the Apocalypse”
Informational Talks. Participation by:
Dr. John Vandermeeer: “Ecological factors in Controlling Coffee Blight”
Dr. Carlos Román Zúñiga: “Gestation and Life of the Stars”
Engineers Iván Domenzain del Castillo Cerecer. “Frankensteins Also Sow Seeds”
Dr. Alejandro Vásquez Arzola: “Light and Its Enemies”
Dr. Claudio Martínez Debat: “Genetically Modified Vegetable Organisms in Uruguay”
Dr. Grodecz Alfredo Ramírez Ovando: “Geometry: A World Where Many Worlds Fit”
Workshops. Participation by:
Dr. Patricia Ramos Morales. Workshop: How Does a Scientist Work? (only for students)
December 30
General Sessions. Participation by:
Dr. Pablo González Casanova: “Capitalism and Ecology”
Dr. John Vandermeer: “Ecology As a Science and As a Component of Cosmovisions”
Dr. Ivette Perfecto: “Ecology As a Science and As a Component of Cosmovisions, II”
Jesús Vergara Huerta, Master of Science: “The Eruption of Free and Communitarian Science In the 21st Century”
Gibran Mubarqui Guevara, Engineer: “From Imposition to Communitarian: Remaking the Sciences”
Dr. Stuart Newman: “Social Uses of Science”
Subcomandante Insurgente Moisés: “Original Peoples and the Sciences in the Service of Life”
Informational Talks. Participation by:
Dr. Carlos Rodrigo Martínez Prieto: “Theory of the Origin of the Universe and Other Speculations”
Dr. Ivette Perfecto. “Ecological Complexity in the Coffee Farms of Chiapas”
Dr. Yuri Nahmad Molinari: “Harvesting the Sun”
David Franco Martínez, Master of Engineering: “Use of Renewable Energy Resources”
Physicist Alejo Stark: “Cosmos Without Borders: the Poetic Relational Logic of Physical Cosmology”
Medical Doctor Lilia Piélago García: “Palliative Cities: A Universal Right”
Dr. Emilio Molinari. “Another World is Possible, and We Are Looking for It”
Workshops. Participation by:
Karla María Castillo Espinoza, Master of Science: “What Do Fossils Tell Us About the Earth’s Past?” (only for Zapatista students)
January 2
General Sessions. Participation by:
Dr. Kristin Mercer: “The Effect of Money in Academic Research”
Dr. Gabriel Ramos Fernández: “Complexity and Uncertainty: Scientists and Decision Making”
Dr. Gertrudis Hortensia González Gómez: “Some Promises of Science, Or, How To Care For Our Health”
Alejandro Muñoz: “García in Nuevo León and the Free-Scientific-Technology Vision for the 21st Century”
Dr. Jérôme Leboeuf: “The Risks That Arise With Artificial Intelligence”
Dr. Valeria Souza Saldívar and Dr. Luis Eguiarte Fruns: “The Water Paradigm”
Alchemist SupGaleano: “Zapatista Alchemy”
Informational Talks. Participation by:
Dr. Ramón Carrillo Bastos: “Quantum Mechanics and Causality”
Dr. Mariana Peimbert:“Color Inheritance in Dogs”
Dr. Adolfo Olea: “Corn seed: From Indigenous Varieties to Hybrids and Genetically Modified Versions”
Dr. María Magdalena Tatter: “Application of Knowledges and Values in Pediatrics”
Physicist Alejandro Muñoz: “Nuclear Fusion in General as a Source of Clean Energy”
Dr. Luis Concha Loyola: “Using Magnetic Resonance Imaging to Understand the Human Brain”
Dr. Azucena de León Murillo: “Pearls of Neurological Disease”
Practicum. Participation by:
Dr. Gertrudis Hortensia González Gómez and Dr. Tatiana Fiordelisio C: “How We Study the Brain, the Muscles, and the Heart: Our Senses and Learning”
January 3
General Sessions. Participation by:
Dr. Alejandra Arafat Angulo Perkins: “The Path and the Practice of Science in Mexico”
Teacher Ernesto Hernández Daumas: “Food Production and Public Health”
Dr. Fabiola Méndez Arriaga: “The Destruction of the Environment in the Name of Capitalist-Health: Pharmaceuticals Contaminating the World”
Dr. Juan Manuel Malda Barrera: “Science and Dialogue Between Cultures”
Christian Abraham Enríquez Olguín, Engineer: “The Transitions Between Points of Epistemic Equilibrium”
Dr. Carlos Rodrigo Martínez Prieto: “Are Physics and the Natural Sciences a True Tool of Liberation for Communities and People?”
Subcomandante Insurgente Moisés and Subcomandante Insurgente Galeano: “What’s Next?”
Informational Talks. Participation by:
Biologist Jani Azucena Olvera Maldonado: “Pathogenic Bacterial Causes of Gastrointestinal Illness and Their Relation to Water Purification”
Karla Aguilar Lara, Master of Science: “There Is No Hope For Those Who Wait (Food Technology)”
Dr. Luis David Alcaraz: “Microorganisms, Their Genes, and Health”
Dr. Manuel Fernández Guasti: “Tlayohualchieliztli and Indigenous Knowledge”
Jesús Vergara Huerta, Master of Science: “Don’t Look Into Its Eyes: New, Non-invasive Techniques for Ecophysiological Study ”
Physicist Gustavo Magallanes Guijón: “Of Whales, Jaguars, and Microbes: Geocomputational Visualization of Biological Species from the Roof of the House the Size of the World”
Dr. Juan Manuel Malda Barrera: “Empathy and Evolution”
January 4
General Sessions. Participation by:
Dr. Celia Oliver and Dr. César Abarca: “Bioethical Reflections on the Inversion of Specialized Resources In Science, Art and Humanities, Employment, and Educational Spaces”
Hugo I. Cruz Rosas, Master of Science: “A Possible Place for Basic Science In the Process of Social Transformation”
Maria del Pilar Martínez Téllez, Master of Science: “The Sciences and the Capitalist Hydra”
Dr. Martha Patricia Mora Flores: “Two Ways to see Nature: The Capitalist Lens of Patriarchy and the Very Other Gaze Of the Communities”
Physicist Nelson Ravelo: “How Can Social Movements Appropriate the Construction of a Science and Technology In Line with Social Transformation?”
Dr. Steven Rose: “Science for Oppression or Science for Liberation?”
Informational Talks. Participation by:
José Manuel Serrano Serrano, Master of Science: “What Do Females Sing In Environments Where Males Predominate? The Case of Frogs and Toads”
Mariana Patricia Jácome Paz, Master of Science: “Social Effects of the Eruption of El Chichón Volcano, Chiapas”
Biologist Nolasca Valdés Navarrete: “The Monopolization of the Ocean… The Illusion Of Fishing?”
Closing: Zapatista students and Subcomandante Insurgente Moisés.
En español: http://enlacezapatista.ezln.org.mx/2016/12/24/17693/
Juan Villoro: Mexico is a gigantic necropolis after 10 years of the drug war
Mexican soldiers. Photo: Getty images.
By: Juan Paullier / BBC Mundo
December 19, 2016
Juan Villoro doesn’t hesitate. Witch hunts, great irresponsibility, and total failure.
Upon completing 10 years last December 11 from the start of the so-called War against Drug Trafficking in Mexico, the writer can only find dark words to define what this disastrous period has meant for the country.
There’s not even clarity about the impact in numbers. The dead as a consequence of this conflict could be around 150,000, the disappeared almost 30,000.
From religious cartels to thousands of displaced: 5 collateral effects of the War on Drugs in Mexico
“Mexico,” Villoro tells BBC Mundo in an interview, “has become a gigantic necropolis.”
The writer has no doubt about the negative result of the strategy of fighting the cartels that then president Felipe Calderón started in 2006.
“The State has lost total sovereignty, social inequality has increased, and the consumption of drugs has not gone down. It has then been a total failure because it has been understood that the only solution for fighting the problem of drug trafficking is military and the only thing that has come, it seems to me, is the proof that each bullet is a lost bullet,” he assures. Villoro, 60, admits that back then it was impossible to know what the president’s decision was going to imply for the country.
“None of us calculated the dimension that it was going to reach,” he explains, “the bloodbath in which we were going to insert ourselves because of the immense irresponsibility of President Felipe Calderón, who did not know completely the enemy that he was going to confront, and had no strategy in that regard.”
How and when did Mexico become so ferocious?
And in spite of the fact that the governmental focus has not yielded results, there is no sign from the group in power that it is looking for an alternative.
“The military strategy has been a disaster because there has not been a withdrawal of the violence, there has not been a decrease in the trafficking of drugs and it (the military strategy) has only contributed to accentuating the blood bath. There isn’t any evidence from a practical point of view that might endorse this strategy. If it hasn’t fulfilled its purpose, it’s time to change the focus, but that hasn’t been done.”
Although when Enrique Peña Nieto arrived in the presidency four years ago the discourse was different in the beginning; in practical terms and on the ground the situation has not changed.
“There were encouraging signs in the sense that he said that drug trafficking ought not be focused on as a national security problem but as one of public health,” Villoro asserts about the arrival of Peña Nieto, “(but) sufficient mechanisms were not created to be able to modify the strategy.”
Then followed a militarist inertia, he comments in the interview with the BBC, and he recognizes that the social reforms of this government stimulated illusion but were failing one by one and that the president lost credibility because of the Ayotzinapa case and the corruption scandals.
Some cry, others throw parties, others take “selfies”: it’s the harsh encounter of the families with the bone fragments of their disappeared family members.
One doesn’t have to take care of the bad ones, but rather of those that seem good
Villoro emphasizes a central moment of these ten years upon remembering Calderón’s statement about the existence of 7.5 million ninis in the country; in other words, youths that don’t work or study.
“Curiously, the very same president that gave that statistic didn’t do anything to confront the problem,” he says. “Evidently that kind of youth are the perfect culture for drug trafficking; they don’t become gunmen because they have a demoniacal calling. The best rational sensible offer that they face is that of entering drug trafficking.”
It’s the existence in the background of a more complex social problem that has not been attacked and that is not solved with soldiers in the streets attempting to capture drug cartel leaders. And it’s not just about complementing and diversifying a military strategy.
“As we could see in the Ayotzinapa case,” Villoro asserts, “the drug traffickers and the authorities are completely colluded (…) then attacking the drug traffickers means investigating the government.”
That is where one of the greatest challenges is found at the time of fighting the situation. And to introduce the theme remembers a sentence from the Mexican writer Elmer Mendoza: “One must not take care of the bad ones, but rather of those that seem good.”
By having too many interests at play, what’s lacking, he considers, is the political will to confront the problem.
Those who “seek to maintain an honorable facade and serve as a contact or as an associate with drug trafficking: those are the people that have a lot to lose if it becomes known that they have contact with organized crime, therefore they are the ones that most threaten the journalists, the ones that are in charge of protecting an apparently institutional society from organized crime.”
The zones of silence in the war on drugs in Mexico
“All societies of the world have corruption and all have a zone where the illicit becomes apparently licit (…) but the problem in Mexico is that this has reached an enormous scale, so then the range of impresarios, militaries, police and politicians colluded with organized crime is enormous, and then it’s very difficult to fight it and this is the sector that is the most dangerous for whoever tries to do it.”
And if here the magnitude of the phenomenon reached unimaginable heights in part it’s because of having the United States on the other side of the border.
“It’s important to understand that we are neighbors of the country that consumes the most drugs in the world and that sells the most arms in the world… that defines much of the Mexican situation.”
What Villoro doesn’t find much understanding of is the brutality of the violence.
“In some way the executioner feels more protected with this extreme annihilation,” he says, “but it’s a difficult phenomenon to explain and there would be nothing more grave than that this would begin to seem normal to us,” he considers.
Being an optimist belongs to the dissidence
Villoro emphasizes the need to set pessimism aside despite the fact that the atmosphere doesn’t help to see things another way.
“Optimism is a big challenge and is a radicalness. Being an optimist today belongs to the dissidence, belongs to the rebel (…) it would seem that there aren’t many possibilities to be optimistic but I believe that it’s worth it to think that things can be different,” he asserts.
He takes advantage of the issue of optimism to explain that Mexicans should not become resigned to having the country that they have today and he adds that Mexico, its reality, is schizophrenic.
]We’re talking about a rich country, despite the fact that almost half the population is poor, the tourism increases, the industries grow and there is a creative cultural atmosphere framed within a nation of “two speeds.”
And he illustrates this divergence with an example: the city of Guadalajara is the scene every year of the most important Spanish language book fair and at the same time he remembers that cadavers were found outside of that very same event.
He considers the roadmap that includes the State taking control again of the zones from which it has withdrawn and the drug traffickers acting at their own pace, as well as the legalization of some drugs.
“In a country where the State does not impart justice, it offers no labor options, guaranties no security, the drug trafficker is the one that by substitution fulfills those tasks and that is what is grave. There are of course ways of reclaiming the State’s presence, that is undeniable, it’s difficult but it can be done.”
And in that plan that he proposes he also warns of the need to integrate the society and that a part of it will be shaken by a dangerous indifference towards the horror that crosses the country.
Although the authorities have more responsibilities, he remembers a comment of the writer Cristina Rivera Garza about the people that practice a sort of “militant indifference, an apathy as a way of life so as not to assume the responsibility for doing something.”
“There is everything so that we are indignant and so that we take action, but at the same time it’s always more comfortable to do nothing. Then there is an apathy cultivated by broad sectors of the population and there are also sectors of the population dedicated to fomenting that apathy,” he points out.
“Many times the indignation stays in a tweet.(…) If we are going to change the world in that often underrated space that is reality, one must pass from criticism to transformation,” he thinks.
Villoro considers that if these ten years of the drug war have left any lesson it’s that this is the path that must be left behind.
“The only pedagogy has been that of error, we know that it should not be done, at least not in this way, and it’s the only good thing that we can get from these years”.
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Originally Published in Spanish by Desinformemonos
Monday, December 19, 2016
Re-Published with English interpretation by the Chiapas Support Committee
With the Zapatistas: Community, Solidarity & Love across Borders
December 2016
Dear Friends & Supporters of the Chiapas Support Committee:
We are asking you to join us in 2017 to continue supporting our work of education on Indigenous struggles in Mexico and organizing solidarity with the Zapatistas who continue building autonomous community and powerful connections for justice and rights. Click here to make your contribution!
Your support is critical to help us take on the emerging political era that promises difficult challenges to our communities.
The results of the U.S elections have had a devastating impact on many of our communities. The next four years of a Trump presidency promise greater attacks on civil rights, reproductive rights, environmental protections and cutback of social services for working people, especially our most vulnerable communities.
In 2016, which marked the 33rd year anniversary of the founding of the EZLN, members of the Chiapas Support Committee have spent time reflecting on the strengths of the Zapatista movement and how we in the U.S. can learn those lessons and their meaning for our daily lives here during this moment.
Two Zapatista practices we can strive for in our communities, both of which are grounded in principles of socially just community-making, are the commitment to standing up together to protect and support each other without being divisive, and to embody and practice loving each other to humanize each other’s experiences.
Community, solidarity and love
The Zapatista’s practice of community building has reinforced a powerful grassroots movement that has grown beyond Zapatista communities. These communities live in solidarity, resisting the extractive capitalist economic models that dehumanize and exploit us, preventing us from being more united at this critical moment.
Recognizing this need, the EZLN recently announced their decision with the Congreso Nacional Indígena (CNI, National Indigenous Congress) to carry out a consultation with all Indigenous peoples and their communities in Mexico to find out if they support forming an Indigenous government council and to run an indigenous woman as their presidential candidate in the 2018 elections.
The CNI-EZLN’s bold decision, taken at the CNI’s fifth congress held during October in Chiapas, sent shock waves throughout the Mexican political system, provoking racist anti-indigenous vitriol and raising the challenge to the wider social justice movements of how to struggle against the system itself in new ways.
The CNI-EZLN proposal is about lifting up the dire situation and oppression being imposed by the Mexican government and neoliberal capitalism on Indigenous people.
The Zapatistas stated that this decision represents their work to unite all Indigenous peoples and uplift Indigenous struggles for justice, autonomy and land, while exposing the ferocious Mexican governmental repression directed against Indigenous people and civil society.
Trumpocracy vs. Community
In the U.S, we are on the precipice of political crisis, fueled by the election of Donald Trump to the U.S. presidency.
Trump represents a sharp right turn promising to accelerate the neoliberal project of privatization and cutback of public services, drastic deregulation and re-regulation of labor, environmental and social protections, the transfer of investments, services and jobs to regions in the U.S. and abroad that will allow capitalists ever greater profits.
The election of Trump has triggered a wave of racist attacks against Muslims, Mexicans and other Latinos and police abuse of Black lives that continues to escalate.
Trump has promised draconian immigration round-ups and deportations; renegotiating NAFTA, the “free” trade pact between Canada, Mexico and the U.S., to give “American” workers and capitalists a better deal. To make good on these attacks, Trump has been nominating billionaires, racists and neoliberal ideologues to his cabinet and inner circle, a Trumpocracy based on white supremacy, an authoritarian neoliberal project and gutting the remaining social protections.
Trump’s agenda spells disaster for U.S. and Mexican workers and a deepening political and economic crisis especially in Mexico, which is still reeling from the narco-wars that have caused the deaths, disappearances and displacement of hundreds of thousands of Mexicans.
¡Show community, solidarity & love to the Zapatistas!
We must also prepare and change to take on this potentially devastating political storm. Our alternative is to build communities rooted in justice, solidarity and love that will defend and embrace its members and provide a space for dreaming a different world and resisting the onslaught that built up and created the emerging Trump regime.
In 2016, the Chiapas Support Committee:
- Sent economic support for the construction of dormitories for secondary (middle) school students in the La Garrucha zone
- Convened in July a parallel community-based cultural gathering, CompArte, bringing together poets, rappers, painters and other artists to share their work and words at the same time that the Zapatistas held CompArte in Mexico
- Celebrated the 33rd anniversary of the founding of the EZLN on November 17, hosting a key speaker sharing the struggles and vision of the water protectors at Standing Rock and showed a film to discuss the interconnections of struggles being led by Indigenous and non-indigenous movements and communities
- Hosted a speaker direct from Chiapas in December to share updates on Indigenous struggles for autonomy, land and other rights; and
- Continued publishing a print newsletter, a Facebook page and the Compañero Manuel blog, with thousands of readers, sharing information, updates and news from Mexico and the Zapatistas.
- You can make your contribution by clicking here.
In the midst of this period of political transition, turmoil and uncertainty, members of the Chiapas Support Committee believe that our movements for justice (rooted in Indigenous people’s struggles, communities of color, migrant workers and working people) remained firmly rooted in a solidarity that links struggles and communities across issues and borders.
Our commitment is to continue building solidarity with Indigenous struggles everywhere and strengthen our relations and support for the Zapatista communities while supporting and taking part in the struggles in our cities and neighborhoods for a more just and humane society.
The members of the Chiapas Support Committee are asking you to make a generous donation to continue strengthening the ties between our communities and the Zapatistas. Your contribution will go towards creating a more powerful grassroots justice and solidarity movement that is connected to key struggles and a deeply rooted movement for justice without borders.
Your donation will support the building of the Zapatista educational system, which strives to develop and include the pedagogical tools needed to deepen their vision of indigenous self-determination and liberation, anchored in their revolutionary principles.
Strengthen Community, Build Resistance in 2017!
The Chiapas Support Committee became a member of the Omni Commons (Omni) in Oakland and moved into a shared office space. The Omni is a thriving community of collectives dedicated to social justice that just purchased 22,000 square feet of space for community events and organizing.
Becoming a member of the Omni Commons has created more opportunities for the Chiapas Support Committee to bring you events like CompArte, along with films, educational workshops and guest speakers from Spain, Mexico and the United States.
In 2017 we hope to host more film nights showcasing media arts work from Mexico that has to be translated and subtitled. Your donation will help to make this possible. CSC is also planning to make CompArte an annual community justice and cultural gathering, as well as a big Dance Party on January 28th to fundraise for education projects in Zapatista communities.
The Chiapas Support Committee is asking you to make a generous donation to support the Zapatistas’ work to build autonomous communities in Chiapas, as well as to help support the education and organizing work we would like to launch in 2017. All donations are tax deductible if you itemize; we really appreciate your solidarity in supporting our all-volunteer collective.
For your convenience, you can make your contribution via PayPal by the going to our new website https://chiapas-support.org/home/donate/ or you can send a check payable to Chiapas Support Committee to P O Box 3421, Oakland, CA 94609.
We are also registered with Amazon Smile and The Network for Good.
We thank you for your continued interest in and support for the peoples of Chiapas and assure you that your support makes a critical difference in the lives of many and that we and the Zapatista communities will thank you from the bottom of our hearts.
For community, solidarity & love!
The Chiapas Support Committee Board
José Plascencia, Chair
Alicia Bravo
Francisco Díaz
Carolina Dutton
Todd Davies
Arnoldo García
Laura Rivas-Andrade
Mary Ann Tenuto-Sánchez
Chiapas Support Committee 