Chiapas Support Committee
Home of the Compañero Manuel blog on zapatistas & mexico
Zibechi: It can be done: those below as subjects
Marcha de la Gorra / Cap March, November 2014
By: Raúl Zibechi
When those most below, the poor youths (men and women) of the peripheries, the forever nobodies, take the reins of their lives and also do it collectively, it’s because something very profound is changing. A new world begins to sprout when the intellectual, the leader, the strategist (masculine), dissolves before the collective power that announces a strong political, social and cultural wind.
On Friday, November 19, a crowd of more than 20, 000 people walked the tenth Cap March, in Córdoba (Argentina). You had to see and above all feel those dancing youths, singing, shouting at the head of the march, those that day-by-day are beaten, murdered and disappeared by provincial police, one of the country’s most lethal. It’s a march that began in 2007 demanding the repeal of the Code of Faults, today disguised in the Code of Coexistence, which equates faults with criminal offenses, a legal trap of the provincial power to pursue “dangerous” youths; in other words, the poor that live on the peripheries.
A police State exists in Córdoba functional for a militarized capitalism that has in soy extractivism and urban real estate speculation its nucleuses of capital accumulation. Those that don’t consume are intrusive; they don’t exist either to the power or to the media, they are to blame for the “insecurity” and, as Giorgio Agamben points out, they can be murdered without it being considered a crime. The Code of Faults approved in 1994 is the legal gear piece.
Last year, 73,000 people were arrested, the majority for “wearing a face,” in other words, for their aspect, for being youths with darker skin, wearing caps and clothing “suspicious” to the police. Some 200 young men are arrested every day. Since 2011, more than 150 were murdered and several thousand beaten and injured. The legal figure that the police use is the merodeo (marauding), which can be confused with strolling, walking or circulating. Eighty percent of the young men between 18 and 25 were arrested at some time.
The worst thing is that the code grants the police the power to arrest, instruct and judge at any point of the processing of the act. Impunity is the most adequate word. They don’t permit them to leave the peripheries. The police systematically detain them on the bridges and at the exits from the barrios and pursue them each time that they return to their homes.
Huayna synthesizes the definition of a police State; it’s a member of the Federation of Grass Roots Organizations, in Barranca de Yaco, a peripheral barrio with precarious houses put up over a garbage dump. “We call an ambulance and the police come. We call the firefighters and the police come. It’s the only service the State has for us.”
Those young men that head the march with portraits of their murdered friends, like Güere Pellico, 18, shot in the back when he was returning home on a motorcycle, have traveled a long road. Now they are capable of editing a memorable text, like the Open letter to the police State, the proclamation that was read at the end of the walk.
I do not seek to shed light on public action that, finally, is similar to those that champion those below throughout the world. The central point was how poor youths are converted into subjects.
Since the 1997-2002 cycle of protests, whose peak was the uprising of December 19 and 20, 2001, dozens of university students and professionals (the majority women) work in poor barrios creating community theater, street music, magazine and radio workshops with a basis in popular education. Towards 2007, the community psychologist Lucrecia Cuello relates, the young people of the barrios began to meet in large assemblies of up to 300 members. They produced a formidable act there.
“They told us about the decisions they wanted to make, that they wanted to go out into the street and not only make workshops. They told the technicians to separate to one side and that they would call us back later,” Cuello explains. They separated and waited. But, above all, they understood that their academic work logic reproduced “the colonial tutelage over the poor that continues being inferior in relation to the NGO’s and the leftist parties.” The Youth Collective of Youths for Our Rights that called the Cap Marches was born from those meetings.
With time and permanence in the territories, a fistful of professional women accompanied the youths that “overthrew popular education thanks to the meeting that they held, which was determinative for breaking with the technician and the militant that go into the territory.” We’re talking about an explanation similar to that which Huayna and other militants of the ten-long social organizations that work in the peripheries offer. “Us for us,” would be the synthesis, although more and more all the time one must use the feminine, since they started working hard in recent years.
There, in a nutshell, is the story of standing up that made the Cap March possible, from the double vision of the peripheries and of the “technicians.” Questions abound. Are we in conditions of thinking and sensing that the poorest can be subjects? What do we militants say? Do we accept placing ourselves to one side to “simply” accompany the subjects from below? Do we really sense that they can change the world without a political or intellectual vanguard?
Having reached his point, what is the role of militants, or whatever we call that life attitude? The first, comprehending with the skin, making ours the collective pain. The second, accompanying a process without leading it. The third, renegotiating by being accepted as one more. The fourth, saying what we think when they may ask us about it and keeping silent the rest of the time; policies of ethics and humility. The opposite will limit our revolution to reproducing colonialism and racism.
——————————————————-
Originally Published in Spanish by La Jornada
Friday, November 25, 2016
http://www.jornada.unam.mx/2016/11/25/opinion/024a2pol
Re-Published with English interpretation by the Chiapas Support Committee
Donald Trump names three extremists to his future cabinet
[Admin Note: The Mexican press is worried and anxious about Trump’s election, to put it mildly! Here’s a little taste of what they’re saying.]
_ .. _
Donald Trump names three extremists to his future cabinet: Jeff Sessions, Attorney General; Mike Pompeo, CIA Director, and Michael Flynn, national security advisor
A wall with messages about the election of Trump as president of the United States in a hall of the Union Square Metro in New York. Photo: David Brooks
By: David Brooks, Correspondent
New York
President-elect Donald Trump confirmed some of the worst fears of the defenders of rights and civil liberties here and around the world upon naming three extremists to his future cabinet: Senator Jeff Sessions as Attorney General, who at the same time functions as head of the Justice Department; Representative Mike Pompeo as head of the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA), and General Michael T. Flynn as National Security Advisor.
Sessions, an Alabama senator for 20 years, was the first legislator of the high chamber to support Trump’s candidacy. He is considered the high chamber’s most anti-immigrant legislator and has a long racist history. One of the architects of the anti-immigrant positions of the Trump campaign, Sessions has headed the opposition to almost all immigration reform legislation in the Senate for two decades.
Although the Trump team dared to present him as a champion of civil rights and someone that is “universally respected in both parties,” the Senate denied Sessions confirmation 30 years ago, when Ronald Reagan nominated him for a federal judgeship for his racist comments and positions.
In his statements to the Senate on that then he referred to respected Afro-American civil rights organizations, among them the oldest one, the NAACP, as “anti-American” and “inspired by communism.”
Today, the president of the NAACP’s Legal Defense Fund, Sherrilyn Ifill, stated that Sessions has a history of decades of “opposition to civil rights and equality. It’s unimaginable that he could be serving as the chief official in charge of compliance with the law and the civil rights of this nation.” The American Civil Liberties Union denounced the naming. It remembered that he has fought against the positions on gay rights, the death penalty, abortion rights and presidential authority during his entire stay in the Senate. Others remember that he has justified torture and other illegal methods in the “war against terrorism.”
Sessions will receive Justice Department keys from Loretta Lynch, the current attorney general, who is Afro-American, a civil rights defender and an heir to the changes forged by the civil rights movement, which the senator has opposed.
General Flynn was director of the Defense Intelligence Agency (DIA) until President Barack Obama terminated him in 2014. He retired only to suddenly amaze his colleagues at the highest levels upon appearing together with Vladimir Putin at an anniversary celebration for the television network Russia Today, where he was supposedly paid for giving a speech.
He was added to the Trump campaign while he continued expressing ideas that “radical Islamic terrorism” represents an existential threat against the United States and justified that: “the fear of Muslims is rational.” He has referred to the Muslim faith as “a cancer.”
Meanwhile, he promotes the idea adopted by Trump that it is the principal threat and we must cooperate with others, above all Russia, in this common front. He proposes with Trump the idea of reducing and controlling the flow of Muslim migrants and establishing a registry of all Muslims, including U.S, citizens, in the country.
Basic rights organizations, like Human Rights Watch and others, affirm that Flynn has shown little respect for the Geneva Conventions and norms against practices like torture.
Pompeo is the federal representative from Kansas and former Army official. The Koch brothers –billionaires that have armed the country’s most powerful ultra-conservative political force and did not support Trump– financed and promoted his (Pompeo’s) political career. He is a ferocious opponent of the Iran nuclear agreement and was among the most prominent critics of Clinton when she was Secretary of State, above all in the interminable investigation into the incident in Bengazi, Libya, where, it was suspected, there was some kind of a cover up of the facts.
Pompeo has aggressively defended mass espionage programs in house as well as overseas, and opposes the limits that have been implemented on them. He is also a defender of the concentration camp at Guantánamo and of the torture programs. He has called the CIA torturers “heroes.”
Ultra-conservative organizations and figures, including white supremacists like David Duke, former head of the Ku Klux Klan, among others, celebrated the three nominations. Meanwhile, organizations that defend immigrant rights, other rights and civil liberties of different sectors continued condemning what they consider a government that could achieve reversing decades of legislative achievements.
The interviews and meetings continue today for constituting the rest of the cabinet and other Executive Power positions (there are approximately some 4,000 total) inside of Trump Tower Fifth Avenue.
Saturday, the president-elect will move to one of his golf clubs in New Jersey, where he has programed a meeting with Mitt Romney, former Republican presidential candidate in 2102, who headed the anti-Trump movement in the party during the past year. It is speculated that perhaps he might offer him the position of Secretary of State, but others say that it’s only a meeting to repair relations.
Meanwhile, some 25 blocks to the north of Trump Tower, residents of three luxury buildings decided to physically take down the name Trump from the properties (part of his business is to rent his name –the buildings don’t belong to him), and on Wednesday two employees happily removed the golden letter for letter of the surname of the president- elect, the result of a request from the residents, embarrassed by Trump throughout the campaign.
In the opposite direction, more than 40 blocks to the south of Trump Tower, inside of the Union Square Metro Station, some walls are covered over with post-it messages about what people are feeling after Trump’s win. Pencils and notes to attach are available for those that wish to add more, in what some call a “social therapy” program. The overwhelming majority of the messages son expressions of anger, protest, sadness and lament in various languages, in what is a species of the wall of tears.
—————————————————————-
Originally Published in Spanish by La Jornada
Saturday, November 19, 2016
http://www.jornada.unam.mx/2016/11/19/mundo/024n1mun
Re-Published with English interpretation by the Chiapas Support Committee
A talk on Indigenous Struggles for Autonomy & Rights in Chiapas
En español con interpretación al inglés (ver abajo)
Walking together:
INDIGENOUS STRUGGLES FOR AUTONOMY & RIGHTS
IN CHIAPAS & OTHER STRUGGLES
Invites you to a talk with
Luisella Preciado
from the Fray Bartolomé de Las Casas Human Rights Center, Chiapas
nd Omni Commons
Caminando Juntos
Lucha por Autonomía y Derechos de los Pueblos Indígenas en Chiapas, México y otras luchas
Domingo, 4 de diciembre, 2016 | 7:00-9:00 p.m.
Oakland Omni Commons | 4799 Shattuck Ave Oakland, CA 94609
** La asistencia es libre y abierto a todas personas **
Luisella Preciado es defensor de los derechos humanos y abogado con el centro de derechos humanos FrayBa en Chiapas, Mexico. Allí, ella acompaña a los pueblos indígenas luchando por sus derechos como comunidades autónomas.
En su trabajo diario Luisella Preciado escucha y documenta los testimonios de personas defendiendo sus derechos convirtiéndose en sujetos de su propia historia. Es con estos sujetos potentes que analizan los eventos dentro del contexto político para presiónar gobiernos y a la sociedad para respetar a los pueblos originarios de México.
Luisella Preciado hablará sobre las luchas indígenas por la autonomía y sus derechos en Chiapas, México y otras luchas.
Co-patrocinado por
Galeano: Don’t get confused, the EZLN doesn’t bet on the electoral path to reach power
GALEANO; DON’T GET CONFUSED, THE EZLN DOESN’T BET ON THE ELECTORAL PATH TO REACH POWER, MUCH LESS BY MEANS OF ARMS
Sup Galeano of the EZLN. Photo: Chiapas Paralelo
By: Isaín Mandujano
At 33 years from the foundation of the National Liberation Forces (Fuerzas de Liberación Nacional, FLN) in the Lacandón Jungle, the seed from what would later be the Zapatista Nation Liberation Army (EZLN), Subcomandante Galeano clarified today that he doesn’t struggle for taking power and one more time clarified that the independent indigenous woman candidate in 2018 is a proposal that the armed group made to the National Indigenous Congress (CNI) that made it theirs and will impel it.
And that it doesn’t matter if they win la presidency of the Republic or not, “what matters is the challenge, the irreverence, the refusal to submit, the total break with the image of the indigenous as an object of alms and pity.”
Faced with the polemic unleashed, Subcomandante Galeano clarified that the indigenous woman postulated will not be from the EZLN’s ranks, and that nobody supplants the initials of the armed group for that of the CNI because the EZLN continues firm in its word of not betting on the electoral path, that it will not convert into a political party and that it will not seek to attain power through the armed path, because they took to arms to make use of them and not to become enslaved with them.
On November 17, 1983, that first armed group arrived, headed by Fernando Yañez, alias Comandante Germán, who in the heart of the Jungle planted the first seed of what would be the EZLN, was called the FLN, an organization persecuted and repressed since the seventies in different parts of the country. It had a Marxist-Leninist cut with views of achieving power and installing socialism.
In recent weeks, the EZLN as a member of the CNI caused a polemic, because they proposed a consultation to postulate an indigenous woman as an independent candidate in the 2018 presidential elections, a theme that has provoked the most hostile reactions in the Mexican political class, the media and Mexican analysts.
In his missive, “A history to try to understand,” Galeano made clear that they were the ones that made that proposal last October 13 to the CNI, a conglomerate of indigenous peoples from different regions of the country. That occurred within the framework of the 20th anniversary of that national body, but not in a way that they will have active participation in concretizing that candidacy.
“No, not the EZLN as an organization, nor any of its members, are going to participate for a “popular election position” in the 2018 electoral process. No, the EZLN is not going to convert into a political party. No, the EZLN is not going to present a Zapatista indigenous woman as a candidate to the presidency of the Republic in the year 2018. No, the EZLN “has not taken a turn” of any degrees that may be, nor will it continue its fight through the institutional electoral path,” Galeano said.
Then the EZLN is not going to postulate an indigenous Zapatista woman for president of the Republic? They are not going to participate directly in the 2018 elections? To answer that question, he responds with a “No.”
“Why not; because of the arms?
No. Those who think that are roundly wrong because: the Zapatistas took up arms to be useful to us, not to be enslaved by them.
Then, because the institutional electoral political system is corrupt, inequitable, fraudulent and illegitimate?
No. Even if it were transparent, equitable, just and legitimate, the Zapatista men and women would not participate to attain and exercise Power from a post, a position or an institutional appointment.
But, in determined circumstances, for strategic questions and/or tactics, would you not participate directly to exercise a position?
No. Although “the masses” may demand us; although the “historic juncture” may need our “participation;” although “the Homeland,” “the Nation,” “the People,” “the Proletariat,” (ok, that’s very out of style now) may demand it, or any concrete or abstract concept (behind which is hidden, or not, personal, family or group or class ambition) that is hoisted as a pretext; although the juncture, the confluence of the stars, the prophesies, the stock exchange index, the manual of historic materialism, the Popol Vuh, the polls, the esotericism, “the concrete analysis of concrete reality” and the convenient etcetera.
Why?
Because the EZLN does not struggle to take Power.
Galeano said that the postulation of the indigenous woman as an independent candidate is no longer in the EZLN’s hands,
Therefore he asked that they stop awarding it to the armed group, because they are only part of that big organism of the country’s indigenous peoples.
Insisted that no one from the EZLN seeks a position of popular election and that the independent indigenous woman candidate will not come from their ranks.
“No insurgent, male or female, be it of the command or of the troops; nor any comandanta or comandante of the CCRI can even be authorities in the community, nor in an autonomous municipio, nor in the different autonomous organizational bodies. They cannot be members of the autonomous councils, nor of the good government juntas, nor of the commissions, nor any of the responsibilities that the assembly designates, created or to be created in the construction of our autonomy; in other words, of our freedom,” Galeano explained.
“Our work, our task as the EZLN is to serve our communities, to accompany them, support them and not command them. Supporting them, yes. Sometimes we achieve it. And yes, certainly, sometimes we obstruct, but then the Zapatista peoples give us a slap (or several, accordingly) so that we can correct ourselves,” he clarified.
When the EZLN made the proposal to the bosom of the CNI, they told them: “that it doesn’t matter if they win the presidency of the Republic or not, what was going to be important was the challenge, the irreverence, the refusal to submit, the total break with the image of the indigenous as the object of alms and pity –an image so settled in law and, who I should say, also in the institutional left of “real change” and its organic intellectuals addicted to the opium of the social networks-, that their daring would move the entire political system and that it would have echoes of hope not in one, but in many of the Mexicos of below… and of the world.”
He said that it is not sought that an indigenous woman from the CNI is president, but rather that what is desired is to carry a message of struggle and organization to the poor in the countryside and the city of Mexico and of the world.
“It’s not that we take into account that, if we get together the signatures or win the election, it goes well, but rather that it goes well if we can talk and listen to those who nobody talks or listens to. That’s where we’re going to see if it goes well or not, if a lot of people are going to find the strength and hope to get organized, to resist and rebel,” Galeano said.
En español: UNA HISTORIA PARA TRATAR DE ENTENDER
————————————————————
Originally Published in Spanish by Chiapas Paralelo
Thursday, November 17, 2016
Re-Published with English interpretation by the Chiapas Support Committee
Chiapas Indigenous initiate a 12-day march against mega-projects
Indigenous initiate a march against mega-projects in Chiapas.
TUXTLA GUTIÉRREZ, Chiapas, (apro)
By: Isaín Mandujano
More than a thousand indigenous Choles, Tzeltales and Tzotziles, left this Tuesday morning for Salto de Agua, in a pilgrimage that will tour 11 municipalities (municipios) to denounce and protest against the mega-projects that threaten their lands and the life of their communities.
Throughout 12 days, the indigenous will be added to in each one of the municipios through which the march will travel until arriving in San Cristóbal de Las Casas. Today, they left Salto de Agua for Tumbalá where a traditional celebration will be held. They will spend Wednesday night in Yajalón, where they will hold the forum “The Original Peoples’ Fight” from the experience of Pueblo Creyente of Simojovel.
On Thursday they will be in Chilón, where they will participate in the forum “The fight for the defense of water.” On Friday, the caravan will depart for Ocosingo, where the forum “Care of Mother Earth” will be held. On Saturday, they will be in Altamirano where they will hold the forum “Alcoholism in the indigenous communities.” On Sunday, November 20, the marchers will spend the night in Oxchuc where they will hold the forum “Community Governments.”
On Monday the 21st, they will be in Cancuc, where a traditional indigenous ceremony will be celebrated. On Tuesday the 22nd they will arrive in Tenejapa, where the auxiliary bishop of the San Cristóbal de Las Casas Diocese, Enrique Díaz Díaz, will head a traditional religious ceremony. On Wednesday the 23rd they will be in Huixtán to celebrate the forum “Government projects in the indigenous communities.”
On November the 24th, they will arrive in La Candelaria, a rural community within the municipio of San Cristóbal de Las Casas, where they will celebrate another traditional indigenous ceremony and dialogue about the situations that threaten their community life. On Friday the 25th, they will finally arrive in the central plaza of San Cristóbal de Las Casas, where the gathering of thousands of marchers that have added themselves to movement is expected.
The Movement in Defense of Life and Territory (Modevite) called for this march and pilgrimage, composed of 10 parishes of 11 municipios. Since four years ago, the Pueblo Creyente of the Diocese of San Cristóbal has organized in defense of their territory. They have achieved stopping the construction of the Palenque-San Cristóbal superhighway, which would have crossed through their territory. Their objective now is to decide the use and destiny of their territory, principally in the face of threats from the extractive industry and the mega-projects.
“We know our rights as original peoples. We seek to unify our voices and our efforts against the ambition of the impresarios and the government that covet our natural resources,” says Father Marcelo Pérez Pérez.
“We are in a strategic place for the mega-projects. This territory is one the objectives of extractivism,” he added.
For example, Father Marcelo says, in the Tulijá (River) Valley they plan to construct an artificial lake that will flood 396 square kilometers of forests and indigenous lands. The lake would have the capacity of 24 billion 540 million cubic meters, which contemplates the construction of “modern industrial, small farming and aquifer population centers” on the sides of the dam.”
“We don’t want projects that only benefit some, we don’t want projects without consulting us, we don’t want improvements for the rich while the poor continue in the same condition,” the another indigenous Ch’ol speaker said today before departing for Tumbalá.
“We seek to organize the peoples to construct our autonomy; that our right as original peoples to the life that we want is recognized. We need to join our voices in defense of our forests, our rivers. We demand that the governments stop the extractive industry and the mega-projects that are being imposed without consulting us,” Father Marcelo Pérez Pérez stated.
—————————————————————–
Originally Published in Spanish by Proceso.com.mx
Tuesday, November 15, 2016
Re-published with English interpretation by the Chiapas Support Committee
It’s not the decision of one person
For the racists:
Well, we’ve been reading and listening to everything you’ve been saying and writing.
We’ve seen all of your mockery, your scorn and racism that you can no longer hide.
I believe that the compañeros and especially the compañeras of the National Indigenous Congress [CNI] are also reading and listening to what you say.
It’s clear that the CNI was right about what they thought and what they told us, that there is a lot of racism in society.
I imagine you amuse and applaud each other over what a good joke you made with your leftist mockery about the EZLN’s “candigata.”[1]
You celebrate your machismo making fun of indigenous women.
You say that we ‘fucking Indians’ let ourselves be manipulated, are unable to think for ourselves, and go like sheep wherever the shepherd points.
But I think when you say this you are actually looking in the mirror.
That’s what you turned out to be: shameless macho racists.
You all talk so much about the racism of the exploitive class and don’t realize you have taken on that racism in body and soul, in your form of thinking, your way of talking, your perspective on life.
Your individualism and egoism doesn’t let you see anything else or any other way, as if you could save yourselves by yourselves, or as if you yourselves could save any other living being.
You don’t realize that you are stuck in your individualism, closed off in your own lives, unable to see that the little that is left is almost gone.
We tell you first to learn to read, then read carefully and then learn to understand what you have read because those who have written in newspapers and social networks are pathetic.
Supposedly some of you have doctorates or honorary doctorates or whatever you call it but it turns out that you don’t know how to read or write; you haven’t understood anything.
Or perhaps you do understand, but you like to create a lie, make it grow, dress it as the truth, repeat it and shout it and spread it around so people don’t realize it’s a lie; or maybe you just don’t know how to read or write.
Thus you mock the decision of the National Indigenous Congress which has gone out to consult the thousands of people in their communities, tribes, nations, and barrios that will decide if they are or are not in agreement [with the proposal].
You make fun of the fact that the National Indigenous Congress functions like that, consulting before making a decision, because you all just do whatever your shepherd tells you, even if it is stupid nonsense.
You claim to be thinkers, critical ones, but you remain silent when your shepherd comes out with his idiocies, because you are just as racist and disparaging as he is.
The National Indigenous Congress is consulting on whether their people will name an Indigenous Governing Council to govern our country of Mexico, a Council to be represented by an indigenous woman, delegate of the CNI, who would be candidate for the presidency of Mexico in the 2018 elections.
This is what was announced the morning of October 14, 2016.
That is what was written in the text; it is clear and it is in Spanish so that you all can understand it.
The text does not say that the EZLN is going to consult its bases of support as to whether they want to run an independent candidate for the EZLN, an indigenous woman who is a Zapatista base of support, and that they will also consult the National Indigenous Congress about whether they agree with this proposal.
It says nothing of the sort, but you all are lazy and ignorant and don’t want to read or pay attention, so you just swallow what is sold by the paid media.
You purport to be so studious, with so much advanced technology, and you don’t even bother to read. You just grab something from what the paid media puts out and then write about it.
You don’t read the text from its original site, nor what it actually says, but rather become a bunch of gossips that don’t even know how to say “National Indigenous Congress,” substituting instead “National Indigenist Congress” or “National Indigenous Council.”
What a shame that professional writers get paid to be ignorant.
How can you ask that people read or listen to you if you don’t read or listen yourselves?
Or is that you quite simply can’t be bothered to read it?
How can you ask to be respected when you don’t know how to show respect?
How can you expect to be understood if you don’t even understand how we make decisions communally? The results of this decision aren’t even in yet and already you have begun with your insults, lack of respect, mockery, and racism.
What a shame that you are so full of yourselves as lawyers, professionals, university professors, and researchers with awards and titles.
What a shame, because you say you are all these things but you don’t know how to read or write.
And it isn’t that you don’t have the means, because you are well stocked with cellphones, tablets, computers, and everything else, but apparently you have these things for mere fashion and not for their usefulness. You have them only to show off who has the newest modern models.
But one thing is for sure, you do use these things to publish every racist and disparaging stupidity that occurs to you.
You mock us because there are only a few of us; there’s no need to concern oneself with the Zapatistas, you say.
You say that we Zapatistas are off in our mountains and don’t know anything about the world, that we are ignorant and backward, that we don’t know how politics works, professional politics, things that only educated people from the city know about.
It’s true; there are only a few of us. Just some thousands of organized people, true.
We are only 23 years old and haven’t gotten far, just a few Zapatista Autonomous Municipalities in Rebellion where we have told the bad government to fuck off like true teachers of disobedience to the bad system and the bad government.
A few Autonomous Municipalities with health care services where one can access free surgery thanks to the support of conscientious doctor comrades who lend a hand.
With a few autonomous schools where one can truly learn to read and write.
With a few radio broadcasters, a few laboratory specialists, a few compañeras who operate the ultrasound equipment, a few dentists.
Where the people rule and the government obeys.
Ah, and one thing for sure: a few hundred thousand rages against the capitalist system in which we live and die.
There’s that, as well as everything we still plan to do, because we have no plans to stop.
Now then, could you tell us what you have done over the last 23 years?
And not that business of sniffing around for some crumbs or for somebody to throw you a bone, that is, a job or a title.
Because what we are doing here is a true demonstration of how to destroy the bad system, what must be destroyed and what must be created, a decision made by thousands and not just a handful of people in an office or on the order of one individual.
While you all in many cases have spent years talking and arguing without even creating a mirror so that you can see what it is that you are constructing.
Because what counts is when you can actually see what you have been talking about, not just hear empty words. What counts is not what just person one has decided, but what has been the decision of thousands.
-*-
How should one behave as a writer?
As a commentator or journalist?
Or as a seeker of a cabinet position or job appointment?
I think the answer would be not to criticize when you don’t know the actual situation, because you don’t live with those you are talking about.
It would be to inform yourselves honestly, scientifically, not repeat robotically what you have heard, or poorly read, or what the paid media have said.
It would be to not make fun of the people you are talking about and then later refuse to acknowledge what you said, or insist that wasn’t what you meant and that you have been misunderstood. When you do that it is clear that in addition to being ignorant, you are cowardly.
The answer would be not to assume you know everything if you do not live with the people you are talking about, nor study, nor read carefully, nor experience any of the things they experience.
What’s more, how can you be so smug if you have nothing to show for it?
You can’t even see your own shadow.
You have nothing to show for yourselves that is visible and tangible.
Because a slew of words is not the same as a visible deed, a practice composed of thousands of visions and thoughts.
So why do you mock and scorn?
-*-
Ladies and gentlemen, to those who think so highly of themselves for having some organizational leadership position or who are so boastful of their degrees, we want to say:
As indigenous people of the Zapatista Army for National Liberation, we feel pity, sadness, and rage because you mock and disrespect us as indigenous people.
But despite this, we will struggle and fight for you too, for this Mexico in which we live.
We have more than 500 years of experience with the poor lives that the rich have inflicted on us, and for more than 500 years we have known how we want a good life to be.
And you?
How many five hundreds of years do you have that you can come mock and scorn us?
We have decided, along with our compañeras and compañeros of the National Indigenous Congress, to consult our communities as to if they are in agreement or not with creating an Indigenous Governing Council that governs all of Mexico, not just the indigenous, and that this Council participates in the 2018 elections through an indigenous woman delegate of the CNI as its representative.
We still don’t have the final decision as to yes or no.
We don’t even know what the decision will be, and look how much the Native peoples, especially Native women, have been mocked and disparaged.
That means that those who attack us are not just those who exploit us. Rather, those who have tried to step on and over us with their critiques include the political parties, even the ones who claim to be on the left, the supposedly great intellectuals, professionals, researchers, commentators, writers, journalists, and university professors.
Who is missing?
Whoever else feels interpolated can add themselves to this list of frauds.
Now even those smug people who treated us like children want to order us around. Let’s hope that someday their work is seen and put up for comparison. Let’s hope someday they tell the truth about why they left.
Let’s see, derisive and disdainful ladies and gentlemen: how many autonomous municipalities have you organized?
In how many of the places where you live do the people rule and the government obeys?
Where in your world are women, children, and the elderly respected?
Where is help given to those who have nothing?
Where do you have freedom, freedom according to you, to go out into the street or countryside without fear that you will be kidnapped, disappeared, raped, murdered?
Where do you have a government that isn’t full of criminals and prisons that aren’t full of innocents?
Did you do the math?
Now respond: why do you turn against the indigenous and treat them as if they have no brains and don’t know what they are doing?
Why, if we aren’t even messing with you?
We don’t even mention you and yet you accuse us of getting paid by the bad government to fuck you over, you accuse us of working for capitalism.
Nobody pays us to be what we are and we don’t work for anybody.
Because no one rules over us.
Perhaps that is why you attack us and disrespect us, because you are in fact ruled over and told what to think, say, and do.
You don’t like freedom because you like to be a slave.
As Zapatistas, we may do things well or we may do them badly, but we do them ourselves.
We don’t do what others, outside of us, tell us to do.
You should study and learn that what’s fucking you over is called “capitalism” and not “the indigenous.”
It is fruitless for you to attack and mock us, because one day we will see each other, we will have to.
Who will obligate us to do so?
The system.
Learn this and stop throwing tantrums and fits because to struggle for the world is not a game.
-*-
Ladies and Gentlemen who are intellectuals:
How is it that you don’t realize that the capitalists change their ways of thinking, exploiting, stealing, repressing, and disrespecting?
You are supposed to be profound thinkers but you are more like dry old trees that won’t bear any more fruit no matter how long you wait.
Now the land even where you live is contaminated, which is what capitalism is doing to it, and you continue to see and think the same things as if your heads had become deformed in the same process and there was no other way to exercise thought.
Leave your rooms, get up out of your chair, walk, lift your heads, looks for your eyeglasses so that you can see further and better.
Now imagine all of the possibilities of the combinations of what you have seen, and you’ll see that you get new ideas, not the same ones repeating over and over.
And if you didn’t manage to see anything, well then your eyes must be done for.
-*-
So now it seems that you want to tell us what SupGaleano should or shouldn’t do.
SupGaleano, just like the rest of the insurgent troops, does what I tell him.
And I do what the people tell me.
In that regard, it is up to me to tell SupGaleano to do what I say because I do what our people say.
If I tell him not to respond [to something someone has said or written], he doesn’t respond, because it isn’t worth the time.
And if I tell him to respond, he has to even if he doesn’t want to, and he has to respond clearly because he must help others understand.
If I tell him to give interviews, he has to give them, even if he doesn’t want to. I can tell him to give everyone an interview or only some people, and he has to do as I say. If I tell him only with the free media, that’s what he does. If I say the paid media also, that’s what he does.
For those who don’t want to understand this, what they will have to do is very simple:
First they will need to be subjected to death, destruction, and humiliation for more than 500 years.
Then they must organize for 10 years, preparing themselves to rise up as we did January 1, 1994.
Then they will have to resist for many years, without selling out, without giving up, without giving in. Who knows if they can do it, because it’s one thing to write and another thing to do, that’s why we say theory is one thing and practice is another. This is what teaches you and gives you another vision without losing sight of your principles.
But we’ll see if we don’t get bored waiting for them.
We’ll see if we’re even alive then because what the capitalist beast will do in the meantime is so fucked.
Either they realize their lack of or limited vision or it will lead them down the system’s path toward death, and then there really is no remedy, and no one will even remember the tragic history that they played out.
So can it all be blamed on SupGaleano, who manipulates us and takes us down the wrong path? It’s laughable how now you say “Galeano/Marcos.”
You were so in love with SupMarcos that you came to take photos with him and get his autograph; I know because I was there off to the side.
Also off to the side was the maestro Galeano, whose name you did not even ask.
Then later you so hated SupMarcos because he didn’t obey you, but rather obeyed us.
Well he’s dead now.
Stop acting like his abandoned widows.
He’s dead; get over it!
Now there is a Sup Galeano because that’s what we decided. And we put him out there so that you would attack and criticize him and thus reveal who you really are. It doesn’t matter what you say, not even the death threats. It doesn’t matter because that is what we trained him for, that is what we prepared him for and that is his work. And he can take it, not like you all who, after any little thing somebody says to you, cry that the world doesn’t understand you.
If we decide that he dies again, then he dies again.
And if you don’t like the way we do things, oh well. As if we were here to make you happy.
We are here for the people below and to the left, those who struggle, who think, who organize, and who resist and rebel.
We respect those people and they respect us because they know we are equals.
And we are with these people not only in Mexico, but also all over the world.
So stop fooling the people in the schools where you give classes. You know nothing.
And the reason that you don’t know anything is because you lack both humility and honesty. You lost both among all of those papers and desks and medals and honors and other bullshit.
If in the end you understand and organize, well then we’ll see if you find yourselves another Subcomandante Insurgente Pedro, or another SupMarcos, because we haven’t found another yet.
But perhaps you will have better luck in finding them.
-*-
In the meantime, shut up and listen, read, and learn from the organized peoples, tribes, nations, and barrios of the National Indigenous Congress.
They are our families, and it is their turn to teach us, to show us the way.
It is our job as Zapatistas to learn from them.
Hopefully we all manage to do this, and the world will be more just, more democratic, and freer.
The cadaver of the capitalist Hydra lies beneath the bare feet of the Native peoples.
Not injured, but dead.
Thus we will have to make everything anew, but this time right, without an above or a below, without disrespect, without exploitation, without repression, without displacement.
That world will also be for you, you who are racist and disdainful of what you do not understand.
Because you do not yet understand that you don’t understand.
You don’t understand that you know nothing.
What is going to come out of this is not the decision of one person, but of a collective.
-*-
Later we are going to tell the Sixth what happened.
We didn’t tell them before because the National Indigenous Congress asked us to wait until they arrived safely to their communities and began the consultation. They asked us to be their guardian and wait and take the critique and scorn that would have been aimed at them.
So we waited and took it, and now all those we expected have popped up.
The National Indigenous Congress has heard them and read them; they know.
They know where the scorn and the racism comes from.
They know what the professional politicians think.
They know what the Ruler thinks.
They know what those who think they are saviors think.
The CNI’s skin is healthy.
Ours is wounded, but we are used to it and we scar over quickly.
-*-
The CNI is clear in its thinking.
Now we must wait for their decision and support it.
We know that the path that they choose for all of us Native peoples, tribes, nations, and barrios will be born of pain and rage.
It will be born of resistance and rebellion.
It will come not from an individual, not from a person.
It will be born of the collective, as indeed those of us who are what we are, are born.
From the mountains of the Mexican Southeast
Subcomandante Insurgente Moisés
Mexico, November 2016
[1] Candigato Morris is a cat that several residents of Veracruz ran for mayor of Xalapa, the state’s capital, to give voters a chance to protest alleged corruption going on at the polls. Candigato Morris became a popular character and even has a Facebook page. As used above, “candigata” is simply the feminine form of the word.
En español: http://enlacezapatista.ezln.org.mx/2016/11/11/no-es-decision-de-una-persona/
Latin America and the triumph of Trump
California protests over Donald Trump’s election. Photo: AP
By: Raúl Zibechi
For those who had any doubts that a new right has been born, Donald Trump’s triumph should convince them of the contrary. The new right has wide popular support, especially among workers and the middle classes beaten by the 2008 crisis and the effects of globalization, as already happened in England with the Brexit vote. We are facing a new world where this macho and racist right collects the rage of the millions that the system harmed. A right that’s nostalgic for a past that won’t come back, in a period of imperial decadence and the capitalist world-system.
What the United States elections revealed is the internal fracture that society experiences, the impoverishment of the majority and the obscene enrichment of the 1%. But the elections also revealed the shameful role of the communications media, starting with the “respectable” New York Times and Wall Street Journal that had no scruples in headlining that Trump was the candidate of Vladimir Putin. Robert Parry (the investigative journalist that uncovered the Iran-Contra scandal) asserts that the formerly respectable Times “has lost its journalistic way, becoming a propaganda and apologetic platform for the powerful.”
The campaign also revealed the fracture of institutions as vital to the 1% as the Federal Bureau of Investigations (FBI), which was internally broken by pressures from Hillary Clinton so that it would not investigate her emails. Wall Street, the military-industrial complex, the international architecture the United States forged since 1945 and the 1% lost with Trump; they bet strongly on Clinton. Now they surround the winner to condition him, something that’s not going to cost them much because they belong to the same class and defend the same interests.
It’s probable that Blacks and Latinos suffer most with a Trump government. But, are they doing well now? Under the Barack Obama administrations African American deaths at the hands of the police increased exponentially, the income gap among Latinos and African Americans as compared to whites grew as a consequence of the 2008 crisis.
In 2013 white income was 13 times greater that that of African Americans and 10 times that of Latinos, while in 2004 it was seven times higher than the former and nine times higher than the latter. (El País)
The situation of immigrants will improve if they strengthen their organizations, extend them and mobilize against the 1%, but not because of what the White House decides. The Democrats’ policy consisted of coopting small elites from the racial minorities to use against the Black and Latino majorities, and to exhibit them as electoral trophies. They did the same thing with respect to women: feminism for white women from the high middle classes.
But it’s not the racism or the machismo that irritated the 1%, but rather Trump’s proposals regarding the financial sector and international policy. He proposed to increase taxes on high-risk fund managers, the new rich submissive to Wall Street. He defends an alliance with Russia to fight the Islamic State and sponsor negotiated exits in the Middle East. In the face of brazen interventionism, he proposes to concentrate on domestic problems. Another thing is if they’ll let him, since the 1% can collapse without a war.
From Latin America, Trump’s win can be understood as a moment of uncertainty in imperial politics towards the region. We must not venture a prognosis. Remember when Bergoglio was anointed Francisco I (Pope Francis), and many assured that he would make a reactionary pope? Under the Obama administration (initiated in 2009) there were State coups in Honduras and Paraguay, the illegitimate removal of Dilma Rouseff in Brazil, the right-wing insurrection in Venezuela, and the deepening of the drug war in Mexico, initiated by his predecessor George W. Bush. What’s worse is he couldn’t leave us with a “progressive” in the White House.
For the Latin America of those below things can change, in several senses.
In the first place, Trump’s macho and racist discourse can encourage the new rights and facilitate the deepening of femicides and the genocide of the Indian and Black peoples. Violence against the peoples, the principal characteristic of the Fourth World War/Accumulation by Dispossession, can encounter fewer institutional obstacles (even less!), greater social legitimation and the silence of the monopoly media. It’s not a new tendency, but rather more of the same, which in and of itself is grave. It will be more difficult to count on institutional umbrellas for protection and, for the same reason, the repressors will see themselves with freer hands to beat up on us.
The second tendency is that the system loses legitimacy when tendencies like those that Trump embodies are discharged. This process is already being profiled, but now a leap forward is produced with the loss of popular credibility in State institutions, which is one of the questions that the elites of the world most fear.
The third question is the division between the dominant classes, a global tendency that must be analyzed in greater depth, but that has destabilizing effects for the system and, thus, for domination. Basically, there are those who gamble everything on the war against the peoples and others that think that it’s better to cede something so as to not lose everything. It’s good news that those above are divided, because the domination will be unstable.
Finally, those below are going to have it worse. Instability and chaos are structural and not time-related tendencies in this period. It’s painful, but it’s the condition necessary to be able to change the world. We will suffer more repression; we will be in danger of being incarcerated, disappeared or murdered. A lot of suffering is seen on the horizon. Capitalism falls apart and the shambles can bury us. The other side is that many will stop believing that the only way to change the world is to vote every four or six years.
———————————————————–
Originally Published in Spanish by La Jornada
Friday, November 11, 2016
http://www.jornada.unam.mx/2016/11/11/opinion/020a1pol
Re-Published with English interpretation by the Chiapas Support Committee
And it trembled repeatedly…!
PHOTO /BERNARDO DE NIZ
By: Gilberto López y Rivas
With the date of October 14 of this year, the National Indigenous Congress [CNI] and the Zapatista National Liberation Army [EZLN] made public an historic document with the prophetic title of: “May the earth tremble repeatedly at its core” upon concluding the 5th National Indigenous Congress, which took place at the Cideci-Unitierra, Chiapas. The text is not the product of the occurrence of one person or minority group, but rather the result of six days of extenuating and prolonged work sessions, carried out based on the well-known method of the pueblos original peoples of debating until achieving consensus.
They celebrated life in the meeting, at the same time that the worsening of the dispossession and repression was denounced “that they have not stopped in 524 years in which the powerful started a war that has as it’s purpose exterminating those of the land that we are and that as their children have not permitted its destruction and death to benefit the capitalist ambition that knows no end, other than self destruction. Resistance for continuing to construct life now becomes word, learning and agreements.”
It was emphasized that the peoples are constructing every day in the resistances versus capitalism’s offensive that becomes more aggressive all the time, which has been converted –as was reiterated in the 2015 seminar Critical thought versus the capitalist hydra– into a civilizational threat, “not only for indigenous peoples and campesinos, but rather for the peoples of the cities that must also create dignified and rebellious ways for not being murdered, dispossessed, contaminated, sickened, kidnapped or disappeared. From our community assemblies we have decided, exercised and constructed our destiny since time immemorial, because of which maintaining our forms of organization and defense of our collective life is possible only from rebellion in the face of the bad governments, their corporations and their organized crime.”
It’s not about a so-called ethnocentrism, self-centered on indigenous peoples, but rather, to the contrary, it’s about an exhortation that, starting with a secular form of struggle, rooted in big historic events with a strong indigenous presence –like the wars for Independence and Reform, the fight against foreign invasions, the Revolution against the dictatorship of Porfirio Díaz–, calls upon all of us to organize collectively in rebellion against the bad government that has delivered the homeland to the corporations and crime.
It denounces –in detail and with multiple testimonies and documented evidence– the process of re-colonization that the different Native peoples, nations and tribes represented at the 5th Congress are suffering in a particularly aggravated way: invasion of forests, sacred communal lands and territories; imposition of highway and super-highway mega-projects, pipelines, aqueducts and thermo-electric dams, an interurban train, airports and shopping centers; the plunder and privatization of natural springs and other natural resources; affectation of lands and territories because of mining, tourist projects, planting of transgenic soy and African palm, besides livestock brokers; commercialization of ancestral knowledge; contamination of rivers through fracking and imposition of bills for environmental services, carbon capture and ecotourism; all of that, accompanied de la criminalization of struggle and resistance, assassination, incarceration and the forced disappearance of activists; buying consciences, fragmentation of communities, disintegration of the community fabric and contriving of communal assemblies, that “engineering of conflicts” that corporations know well; relentless pursuit from drug trafficking with the complicity of all the government bodies, armed forces and security apparatuses; murders of youth and women and rapes of women; aerial fumigations that produce illnesses; attacks from paramilitary groups and harassment of community authorities. Faced with this storm provoked by new forms of capitalist globalization, participants in the 5th Congress recognize that confronting it is only possible collectively, from anti-capitalism and from decision-making bodies constructed from below: “That is the power from below that has kept us alive, and it is why commemorating resistance and rebellion is also ratifying our decision to continue alive constructing hope for a future possible only over the ruins of capitalism.”
For these considerations that, as is observed, are transcendent and profound, the fifth National Indigenous Congress “decided to initiate a consultation in every one of our towns to dismantle from below the power that those above impose on us and that offers us a panorama of death, violence, dispossession and destruction […] we declare ourselves to be in permanent assembly and we will consult in each one of our geographies, territories and directions about the agreement of this 5th CNI to name an indigenous government council whose word an indigenous woman will materialized, a delegate from the CNI, as an independent candidate that will contend 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.”
And, effectively, as was foreseeable, the political class trembled repeatedly… and they didn’t expect the marked reactions of secular racism from those creole-mestizo mentalities that couldn’t conceive of the indigenous thinking for themselves, as well as the ideological-political monologue of a “partyocracy” that considers “unity on the left” with arguments like the “least bad,” or “democratic alternating,” the monopoly of “national and popular representation,” and that has not issued any pronouncement against the real, open and shadow powers that have led Mexico to a humanitarian emergency and, above all, that is not capable of respecting the collective decisions, now in consultation, of the country’s most exploited, discriminated and oppressed sectors.
Welcome to this initiative that makes you think, act and even polemicize, beyond singular thoughts, personalities and preconceived ideas.
————————————————————
Originally Published in Spanish by La Jornada
Friday, November 4, 2016
http://www.jornada.unam.mx/2016/11/04/opinion/018a1pol
Re-Published with English interpretation by the Chiapas Support Committee
Joint CNI-EZLN communiqué on Santa María Ostula
JOINT COMUNICADO OF THE CNI AND THE EZLN IN SOLIDARITY WITH THE INDIGENOUS COMMUNITY OF SANTA MARÍA OSTULA, MICHOACÁN
Don’t shoot! We’re children!
November 4, 2016
To the Nahua community of de Santa María Ostula, Michoacán:
To the peoples of the world:
To National and International Civil Society:
To the free communications media:
The peoples, nations and tribes that are the National Indigenous Congress and the Zapatista National Liberation Army demonstrate our profound repudiation of the actions that the bad governments and the criminal gangs carry out in unison against the indigenous Nahua community of Santa María Ostula, municipio of Aquila, Michoacán, to try to kill their dignified and historic struggle.
The governments were not only accomplices of the May 25, 2015 attack on Cemeí Verdía, but it also freed the guilty Juan Hernández Ramírez (then Aquila’s municipal president) and José Antioco Calvillo. It incarcerated Cemeí Verdía with invented charges and murdered the child Hidelberto Reyes García.
The bad governments now seek to arrest Comandante Germán Ramírez, fabricating crimes and guilt to those who fight and defend the land and their families. Meanwhile, at the same time, members of the Caballeros Templarios (Knights Templar) Cartel regroup and are now re-organized and strongly armed to the east of the municipio of Aquila.
The crime of the comuneros, community police of Ostula and the self- defense groups of the coastal sierra of Michoacán, has been not accepting the death and terror that the bad governments and the organized crime in the region offer as the only option. On the other hand, with its resistance and rebellion Ostula has not only has taught us the dignity of an organized people, but it has also demonstrated to the world that it’s possible to construct peace and justice in the midst of the destruction in which the capitalists have submerged this country.
We denounce this new attack on the indigenous community of Ostula and we place responsibility for this aggression in the hands of bad governments, Enrique Peña Nieto and Silvano Aureoles, accomplices of the Templario leaders El Tena, El Tuco, Chuy Playas and on Federico González (Lico), who the community has pointed out on numerous occasions as the one responsible for the assassination of 34 comuneros and the disappearance of 6. We place responsibility on them for the blood that they want to see run in order to protect their capitalist businesses, for protecting instead of looking for and arresting the Templario leaders, for guarantying impunity to the military killers of Hidelberto, and little boy, for seeking at all cost to dispossess communal lands and natural resources, for seeking to kill that hope for this country that is named Santa María Ostula.
We express our respect and solidarity with the mobilizations of the community to which we say that in the collective heart of the National Indigenous Congress shines an intense light fed by the dignity of Ostula and we call to the Native peoples and civil society of Mexico and the world, to the national and international Sixth, and to the honest communications media to be attentive and in solidarity.
November 2016
For the Holistic Reconstitution of Our Peoples
Never More a Mexico Without Us
National Indigenous Congress
Zapatista National Liberation Army
Originally Published in Spanish by Enlace Zapatista
Re-Published with English interpretation by the Chiapas Support Committee
CNI, all flying together
“Our fight is not for power, our fight is for saving Mexico.”
By: Luis Hernández Navarro
Wine consumption in Mexico has increased in the last 10 years. Its consumers have increased significantly. Wine has stopped being a beverage for executives with high acquisitive power, and more women and young people ingest it all the time.
But behind some of the glasses of wine that are tasted in the country there is a bitter history of dispossession. Around 30 percent of the national production comes from Baja California. And there, LA Cetto winery, one of the country’s most important, dispossessed and invaded lands belonging to the Kiliwa people and seeks to appropriate national lands that are not theirs.
The Kiliwas are one of the five original peoples of what is now Baja California. The LA Cetto Company seeks to be awarded national lands in possession of the indigenous. The winegrowers count on the complicity of the Agrarian Prosecutor’s office, which on two occasions has lost the records that give rights to the Native residents.
According to what the Kiliwa chief Elías Espinoza Álvarez denounced, “it’s the agrarian authorities that exercise pressure on the indigenous to give in to the impresarios and accept unjust and inequitable conditions in contracts.”
As if that were not enough, the National Water Commission (Conagua) offers that company preferential treatment, because it granted authorization to perforate a well of water for human consumption, while it denied authorization to the indigenous. Even more, LA Cetto closed the right of way that residents have always used.
Something similar happens with fruits and vegetables for export cultivated with indigenous manual labor in Michoacán, Sinaloa and Baja California. A long memorial of offenses is hidden behind the strawberries, blueberries, blackberries, raspberries, arugula, radicchio, escarole and endive, as well as the different varieties of tomato that are used as ingredients for elaborating succulent plates.
The names of the companies and impresarios that harvest the wealth from those delicacies are well known. That is the case of the Secretary of Rural Development of Guanajuato (until a little while ago), Javier Usabiaga, nicknamed the Garlic King (Rey del ajo). It’s also the case with the transnational Driscolls, intermittently in check because of the boycotts that are called against it.
The indigenous day laborers that plant these gastronomic riches suffer a kindred exploitation to what their ancestors experienced in the Porfiriato. Starvation wages and interminable workdays are the rule. They lack paid vacations, social security and days of rest. Instead of going to school, their little children work the fields with them. They are usually housed in barracks or in modest houses that lack basic services. Safe drinking water is a luxury.
But the savage exploitation that those Indians suffer passes unnoticed in Mexican society. It’s normal. Occasionally, as happened with the strike of the San Quintín agricultural workers, the world enters their existence. From time to time it is announced that the Rarámuris or the Mixtecos live in conditions of slavery on ranches of Jalisco, Colima or Ensenada. Nevertheless, they are usually as imperceptible as Garabombo, the famous Manuel Escorza character.
Just as happens with the wine or with the blackberries, it’s not unusual that behind a cup of coffee is found a history of dispossession against the original peoples. Seventy percent of coffee growers in Mexico are indigenous, the majority of which have small pieces of land no more than two hectares (about 5 acres). Coffee growing is their way of life and the spinal column of their subsistence. But the transnational companies, colluded with the government, want these producers to abandon their activity or plant very low-quality varieties of coffee.
Recently, Cirilo Elotlán and Fernando Celis, of the National Coordinator of Coffee Growing Organizations, denounced that besides little support to the coffee growers, the government and the corporations want the producers to become discouraged and to stop growing, with the intention that the companies monopolize all of the production and market.
“We have had –they advised– an infinity of threats from the big traders, because what they demand first now is to increase production, sacrificing the labor of the producers, ours fields and biodiversity, at the expense of the interests of transnational corporations.”
The combined action of blight and corporate voracity are leveling the old coffee fields. Until a short time ago coffee plantations were protected by the shade of chalahuites and citrus trees, ixpepeles and banana trees, gourds and jinicuiles. Today, they are barely ghosts of what they were.
Among others, those big companies are basically two: Nestlé and Coca-Cola. More that coffee, Nestlé sells artificial flavorings and it promotes the substitution of Arabica with robust, a low quality variety that it needs for its mixes. Coca-Cola, through the brand name Andatti that it sells in 10,000 Oxxo stores, has flooded the market with junk coffee.
In the 3rd Forum of the original peoples of the Sierra Tarahumara in defense of their territories, Rarámuris and Odamis recognized that their basic problems are the dispossession of their territories, the exploitation of their natural reserves and the intervention of local and transnational companies. They agreed that it’s necessary “to all fly together (all the indigenous peoples) to have greater strength.” Their conclusions are similar to those the Kiliwas have reached, or the agricultural workers, or the small coffee producers or hundreds of communities throughout the country.
Made invisible by the power, the organized original peoples with the National Indigenous Congress (CNI) and the EZLN now discuss whether they will promote the candidacy of an indigenous woman for the Presidency in 2018; a candidacy that obliges Mexican society to turn around to look at them; a candidacy that will talk not only about poverty and inequality, but also about exploitation, dispossession and discrimination; and a candidacy that permits them to all fly together in order to have more power.
———————————————————–
Originally Published in Spanish by La Jornada
Tuesday, November 1, 2016
http://www.jornada.unam.mx/2016/11/01/opinion/016a1pol
Re-Published with English interpretation by the Chiapas Support Committee
Chiapas Support Committee 