Chiapas Support Committee
Home of the Compañero Manuel blog on zapatistas & mexico
¡Celebrate the EZLN’s 33 years of beautiful struggle for justice!
FIGHT FOR AUTONOMY
a celebration of the founding of the EZLN
The Chiapas Support Committee invites you to a film night to celebrate and reflect on the 33rd anniversary of the founding of the EZLN, Ejército Zapatista de Liberación Nacional (Zapatista Army of National Liberation). This will be a fundraiser to support the Zapatistas’ secondary schools.
Thursday, November 17, 2016, 6:30 p.m.–9:30 pm
At the Omni Oakland Commons
4799 Shattuck Ave | Oakland CA 94609
Donation requested: $5.00-$10.00
No one turned away for lack of funds.
SPEAKERS
We will have a speaker on the struggle for water justice in Standing Rock.
An update on the recent Zapatista developments in Mexico after the film-viewing.
FILM: The Sixth Sun
The Sixth Sun is a compilation video of the early years of the Zapatista uprising in Mexico.
Director Saul Landau and famed cinematographer Haskell Wexler assembled a great mixture of original and borrowed footage to tell the unforeseen January 1, 1994 indigenous-led Zapatista uprising in Chiapas, Mexico.
The Sixth Sun is in English and Spanish with English subtitles and runs 56 mins.Sponsored by the Chiapas Support Committee
READ THE LATEST FROM THE ZAPATISTAS:
CNI-EZLN announce consultation with indigenous peoples on forming council of government and having an indigenous woman represent them in the Mexican 2018 presidential elections!
CNI-EZLN support Yaqui resistance
JOINT COMMUNIQUE FROM THE CNI AND THE EZLN SUPPORTING THE DIGNIFIED RESISTANCE OF THE YAQUI TRIBE
Photo of the conflict in Bácum, in which at least 12 vehicles were burned, taken by Cristina Gómez Lina, author of the article below the joint communiqué.
October 2016
To the Yaqui Tribe,
To the peoples and governments of the world,
As the original peoples who make up the National Indigenous Congress and the Zapatista communities, we send our simple words in solidarity with the Yaqui Tribe, its traditional government, and its troops. We are with you in these difficult moments after the confrontations this past October 21 in Lomas de Bácum.
We condemn the conflict and discord that are planted and promoted in the communities by the bad governments and their overseers, national and international corporations, who want to take control over the gas, water, and minerals of Yaqui territory. To this end, the powerful sow division as a tool to impose death and destruction in our territories. For them, we are merely a path to more power and more money.
As the peoples, nations, and tribes of the National Indigenous Congress and the Zapatista peoples, we salute the Yaqui Tribe’s defense of their territory. We call for unity in the face of a common enemy that aims to take everything that we as peoples have and that makes possible our collective organization, our history, our language, and our life.
In the various geographies of resistance of the original peoples of this country, the bad governments are using our own people to generate violence among us in order to guarantee their ability to impose extractive death projects, structural reforms, the destruction of communitarian organization, and terror among those who struggle. For those who struggle, in contrast to the capitalists, the life and future of the people is everything.
We call on national and international civil society, on the original peoples, on the national and international Sixth, and on the free media to be attentive and demand the respect deserved by the indigenous peoples in their autonomous organization and self-determination.
October 2016
For the Full Reconstitution of Our Peoples
Never Again a Mexico Without Us
National Indigenous Congress
Zapatista National Liberation Army
..__..
One dead and 8 injured in a fight between residents of Sonora
By: Cristina Gómez Lima, correspondent
Hermosillo, Sonora. One dead, eight injured and twelve vehicles burned was the result of a confrontation between residents of the Lomas de Bácum and Lomas de Guamúchil communities, who disagree over construction of the Northwest gas pipeline, which is projected to cross territory that the Yaqui tribe inhabits in southern Sonora.
The Secretary of state Public Security, Adolfo García Morales reported that municipal, state and federal agents cordoned off the zone of the confrontations, as well as members of the Secretariat of National Defense, who activated the code red in the southern community of Sonora.
“Armored vehicles entered conflict zone and through loudspeakers they ordered them to put down their weapons, we are going to be very alert in order to avoid new confrontations now that the security bodies are there, as well as the Mexican Army and the Federal Police,” García Morales stated.
For their part, leaders of the Lomas de Bácum Tribe assured that there were two confrontations, one after the arrival of members of the Army; in their numbers they count 7 indigenous Yaquis dead, 30 injured and their governor José Bacaumea and their secretary Martín Valencia disappeared.
The TransCanada Corporation is in charge of the project.
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Originally Published in Spanish by La Jornada
Friday, October 21, 2016
The EZLN, the CNI and the elections
Amado Avendaño (holding pen and paper) with Marcos back in the day.
By: Luis Hernández Navarro
The EZLN and the CNI agreed to consult, with peoples and communities, about the postulation of an indigenous woman as a candidate to the Presidency of the Republic in the 2018 elections. The decision has raised an enormous polemic. Some see in the decision a 180-degree turn in their line of action; others see their entry into politics. Some others see a maneuver in the formation of an anti-Andrés Manuel López Obrador coalition.
These three opinions are, besides being wrong, bigoted. They are based on disinformation and on an analytical scheme that has as its point of departure: whoever is not with me, is against me. These points of view are ignorant of the history and the political trajectory, of the EZLN as well as the indigenous organizations that make up part of the CNI.
Ever since the EZLN emerged in public life it has not been a force for abstention. It has not called for abstention or electoral boycott, but rather for organizing and struggling. And, at least in one occasion, promoted the vote for a candidate.
In the presidential elections of August 21, 1994, it called to vote against the PRI, as part of its struggle contra the State party system and presidentialism. Moreover, on May 15 of that year, in Guadalupe Tepeyac, the Zapatista bases and Subcomandante Marcos received the PRD’s candidate, Cuauhtémoc Cárdenas, and his retinue. The rebels greeted them and recognized that the then candidate had listened to them with attention and respect. In passing, they criticized the sol Azteca (the PRD’s symbol).
A few days later, through the Second Declaration of the Lacandón Jungle, they convoked “a Democratic National Convention from which emanates a provisional or transition government, be it by means of the federal Executive’s resignation or through the electoral path.” This process –they pointed out then– would have to flow into the writing of a new Magna Carta and in the realization of new elections.
A little while later, the EZLN added themselves to the postulation of the journalist Amado Avendaño as the candidate of civil society to the governorship of Chiapas. And, following the electoral fraud that aborted his triumph, it recognized him as “governor in rebellion” and treated him as such.
At the end of 2005 the Zapatistas called for organizing a big national movement to transform social relations, to elaborate a national program of struggle and to create a new political constitution. Within this framework, they impelled the other campaign, an initiative of popular politics from below and to the left, independent of the political parties with registry, of an anticapitalist cut.
Although The Other Campaign never called to abstain or boycott the elections, it harshly criticized the candidates of the three principal political parties, including Andrés Manuel López Obrador. Close now to the elections of July 2, 2006, the repression happened in San Salvador Atenco (May 3 and 4 of that year) that changed the dynamic of this political initiative, in an event at the Revolution Cinema of Mexico City, Subcomandante Marcos personally opposed questioning those who were thinking about voting. “He that wants to vote, then vote,” he said there.
They want to blame the Zapatistas for the final result of the 2006 elections and even for the fraud that snatched victory at the ballot box from Andrés Manuel López Obrador. A few days ago, the leader of Morena denounced that in those days, the EZLN and the progressive Church were oriented to not voting for him (a thing that never happened), indirectly helping to steal the elections. Since then, the debate has been bitter and intense. It has not stopped being so despite more than 10 years having passed.
For years, the Zapatistas’ did not vary, as Subcomandante Moisés said in the comunicado titled “About elections: organize,” dated April 2015. He warns: “In these days, as each time that there is that thing they call the ‘electoral process,’ we hear and see that they come out saying that the EZLN calls for abstention, in other words that the EZLN says not to vote. They say that and other stupidities.”
Further ahead he clarifies the rebel posture on that year’s electoral conjuncture: “As the Zapatistas that we are we don’t call to vote or not vote. As the Zapatistas that we are what we do, each one that can, is to tell the people to organize themselves to resist, to fight, in order to have what one needs.”
The recent joint document of the EZLN and the CNI, “May the earth tremble violently at its core,” represents a change of position for the rebels, but not a 180-degree change, because they have never been abstentionists.
There (in the joint comunicado) they call for entering into a new form of action, which has as its central axis direct participation in the electoral conjuncture as a form of resistance, organization and struggle. It’s about placing the Indigenous and their problems at the center of the national political agenda, about making the aggressions against the original peoples visible.
On constructing the power of those below. The decision doesn’t mean the EZLN’s entry into the political fight. The Zapatistas have always been there. They have never stopped making politics since they irrupted into public life rising up in arms in 1994. One may or may not be in agreement with the politics they have made, but reducing political participation to electoral action in a conjuncture is foolishness.
The same can be said of the organizations that make up the CNI. The mobilization of the Purépechas of Cherán (a key experience in the new course of the indigenous struggle) for the recognition of their self-government and autonomy is essentially political; as is the experience of the Nahua self-defense of Ostula, or the Otomí Xochicuautla community’s defense of its territory and natural resources.
Nobody has the monopoly on political representation of the Mexican left. That representation is earned in day-by-day struggle. Accusing the Zapatistas and the CNI of pandering to the government because they seek to participate electorally in 2018, on the margin of the political parties, is an example of dominance and intolerance. At the end of the day, it will be Mexican society in general and the Indian peoples in particular, that will decide if this path is useful for transforming the country or not.
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Originally Published in Spanish by La Jornada
Tuesday, October 18, 2016
http://www.jornada.unam.mx/2016/10/18/opinion/017a2pol
Re-Published with English interpretation by the Chiapas Support Committee
Questions without answers, answers without questions
Galeano at the Fifth National Indigenous Congress
QUESTIONS WITHOUT ANSWERS, ANSWERS WITHOUT QUESTIONS, COUNCILS and COUNSEL. (Pages from the Notebook of the Cat-Dog)
October 20, 2016
To Whom It May Concern:
Questions without answers:
—So what about the women murdered for the grave crime of being women? Will the fact that they have demanded that the attacks stop and, with their blood, raised the topic not just on the national agenda but the global one, make them the object of mockery, disdain, and accusations that they are playing to the right? Because they aren’t dying, they are being killed. What if they refuse to accept that this is a problem that can be solved by addressing corruption? And if they dare to say that the origin of this murderous hate is located in the system itself? What if they come up with the crazy idea to sideline men with regard to the most vital decisions (yes, as in questions of life of death)? And what if they decide to take their destiny into their own hands? Would any part of that, or all of it, be a governmental maneuver to avoid… etcetera?
—What about the others (loas otroas)? Must they wait for the political class to turn its haughty gaze on one of the most vilified peoples below? Must they resign themselves to be knocked off until the murder rate finally gets high enough to attract attention? And what if they organize themselves and demand respect, if they decide they’ve had enough of the fact that being disrespected means being killed? Would they be told that their problems are not a priority, that their position is not generally politically correct and is in fact counterproductive with regard to the electoral race, and that their demands should unite and not detract?
—The parish priests, nuns, and laypeople of the progressive church see and feel firsthand, without intermediaries, the pain, angst, and desperation of migrants, the families of the disappeared, and entire peoples under attack, as well as the rage concerning impunity and the frustration of suffering injustice which has been made law with pomp and circumstance. Are they trying to use this pain to their own benefit? What would they gain by making those cries theirs, by identifying themselves with that rage? And if from that perspective, formed not just in the face of threats of all kinds but at the risk of their own earthly lives, they claim openly and reflectively that the solutions offered on the horizon are not sufficient, are they thus opposed—being who they are and accountable to what they are—to a real change?
—If the mere possibility of an indigenous woman existing as a citizen (with all of its rights and obligations) has the effect of causing “the earth to tremble at its core,” what would happen if her ear and her word traveled through all of Mexico below?
—You who are reading this: would you be bothered by watching and listening to a debate between la Calderona [i] from above, with her “traditional” luxury brand clothing, and a woman below, of indigenous blood, culture, language, and history? Would you be more interested in hearing what la Calderona promises or what the indigenous woman proposes? Wouldn’t you want to see this clash of two worlds? Imagine, on the one side, a woman from above, born and raised with every luxury, educated to feel superior in race and color, complicit and promised heiress of a psychopathic enthusiast of alcohol and blood, [ii] representative of an elite that is steering the Nation toward total destruction, and chosen by the Ruler [the US government] to be its spokesperson. Imagine on the other hand a woman who, like many, made her way working and struggling every day, every hour, and everywhere, not only against a system that oppresses her as indigenous, as poor, and as a worker, but also as a woman who has faced a system reproduced in the image and likeness of the brains of men, and not just a few women. Wouldn’t she, with everything against her, today, without yet knowing it, have to now aspire to represent not only herself, her collective, or her original people, tribe, nation, or barrio, but also millions of women who are distinct in their language, color, and race but equal in their pain and rage? Would this not be a situation in which on one side would appear a white criolla woman, the symbol of oppression, mockery, scorn, impunity, and shamelessness, and on the other a woman who would have to lift her indigenous spirit above the racism that permeates every level of social strata? Isn’t it true that, almost without knowing it, you would cease to be a spectator and desire, from the deepest part of you, that the victor of this debate, after a good battle, would be the one who had everything against her? Would you not applaud that, in the name of this indigenous woman, it was truth that won and not the power of money?
—Are you worried that the indigenous woman won’t speak Spanish well, but not worried that the current head of the federal executive branch doesn’t know how to speak at all?
—How solid can the Mexican political system be, and how well-founded and reliable the tactics and strategies of the political parties, if, when someone says publicly that they are thinking about something, that they are going to ask their peers what they think of what they are thinking, the entire political party system becomes hysterical?
—To what degree does the proposal that an indigenous governing council (concejo with a “c”); [iii] that is, a collective and not an individual, be in charge of the federal executive bolster-presidential-rule-become-complicit-in-the-electoral-farce-contribute-to-reinforcing-bourgeois-democracy-play-to-the-oligarchy-and-to-Yankee-Chinese-Russian-Judeoislamic-millenarian -imperialism-in-addition-to-betraying-the-highest-principles-of-the-global-proletarian-revolution?
—Should we follow the inertia of the political class, “thinking” heads and acrobats of all kinds, and respond to the unfounded criticism—as well as well-founded critiques that challenge us and provoke thought—with dismissals that, in addition to being lazy, are boring (like peñabots, paniaguados, pejezombis, perderistas, [iv] and etceterists)?
-*-
—A million-dollar idea (or an effort to raise money to collect signatures and for the campaign—oh, oh, looks like they’re serious): an application that self-censors on twitter when one writes something stupid. Handy, because the screen shots are unforgiving. What? That’s already occurred to you? Well, get to it, because when the CNI authorizes us to explain, erasing those tweets will be useless.
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Rankings for the first week:
Finalist for the best meme: El Deforma [v] (not really much of a prize for them, because El Deforma is like the Barcelona F.C. of memes).
Finalist for the best tweet on a well-founded suspicion: “What seems most suspicious to me is that the #EZLN always becomes fashionable in the winter and then the fucking skimasks get really expensive.”
Finalist for the best series of tweets on the topic: “Hey listen, with regard to all this, do the Zapatistas even use Twitter?/ I’m asking because we’re here scolding them, mocking them, ridiculing them, telling them, ordering them what they should and shouldn’t do/ and if they aren’t even paying attention/ if they aren’t hearing us, then it’s like/ masturbating while watching, aroused, a box of cereal, you know/ heads up, don’t forget to erase this series of tweets/. Warning! Your Twitter account has suffered an attack by a screen shot.
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Listen, a bit of well-intentioned counsel (consejo with an ‘s’): a lesson in reading comprehension wouldn’t hurt you. And speaking of letters, a composition lesson wouldn’t be a bad idea either… providing it is one with a limited horizon of the 140 characters.
—A non-Confucian maxim: “although it may seem unbelievable, it seems there is not just one but many worlds outside of social networks.”
Defensa Zapatista, Chicharito Hernández, and Lionel Messi.
I don’t know how the hell the ball ended up in my tent, but the thing is that behind it came a little girl about… how old? I estimate between 8 and 10; in the communities that could be years or decades. It’s not the first time that the irreverent and happy tone of Zapatista childhood erupts in the solitary room where I at times stay, so I didn’t pay too much attention and continued reviewing and reading the storm across social networks and free and paid media. I wouldn’t even have noticed the little girl’s presence if she hadn’t said, in a knowing voice, “it’s like the thing with Chicharito and Messi.” I realized that the little girl was looking over my shoulder at the screen of my laptop. Remembering that old maxim that the best offense is defense, I asked her: “And you, who are you? I don’t know you.” The little girl responded, “my name is Defensa Zapatista,” as if stating the obvious, as if she had said “energy equals mass times the speed of light squared.” Pointing to the screen she added, “Chicharito doesn’t play for Barcelona and Messi doesn’t play for the Chiapas Jaguars.” I turned back around to see if I had switched hashtags without realizing it, but no, the header still read #ezln. What occurs in the head of a little Zapatista girl is not so much a world but rather a Big Bang in continual expansion. Nevertheless, I asked her, “And what the hell does that have to do with anything.” The little girl answered with a face that says, “You know nothing, Jon Snow.”
“It’s like they’re criticizing Chicharito for not scoring goals for Barcelona and Messi for not doing anything to help the Jaguars. Some say that Chicharito is going to recover; others say he’s done. Some say that Messi is sad because his home country doesn’t support him; others say it’s that his shoe is too tight and if he changes it he’s going to shoot well again.
But the thing is Chicharito doesn’t play for Barcelona, nor Messi for the Jaguars. Meaning, they’re getting all worked up over nothing.”
I was evaluating the change in paradigm underlying Defensa Zapatista’s line of reasoning when she started in again: “Hey Sup, why don’t we organize a soccer game for when those who are like us show up here? Well, we haven’t actually finished putting together our team and sometimes Pedrito, the little jerk, thinks he’s really tough, and the cat-dog barely obeys orders, and the one-eyed horse falls asleep a lot, and the other players, well sometimes they come and sometimes they go. But look, I already thought about what song we should play we win the final. Do you know the tune? What would you know, you’re the sup!” I advise you to study the sciences and the arts, so that you can see clearly that the problem is that Chicharito doesn’t play for Barcelona, and Messi doesn’t play for the Jaguars, and so you shouldn’t worry, to hell with the lot of them. I have to go now because the team isn’t complete yet and what if we’re up to play for, like they say, the inauguration.”
Already at the door, the little girl turned around and said: “Hey Sup, if my moms comes and asks if you saw me, you just tell her clearly that Chicharito doesn’t play for Barcelona and Messi doesn’t play for the Jaguars. I mean don’t tell lies, because mothers always know when you’re lying. So what you have to do is change the game, pretend you’re headed one way, but really you’re going in another. I can explain that to you later, but study first, because if you are going to go to the autonomous school they are going to make fun of you, and Pedrito will be the worst, because the little jerk is bragging that he finished grade school. But he’ll see that I’m going to finish too and then get outta here, to hell with him. About the team, don’t worry, there will be more of us. Sometimes it takes a while, but there will be more of us.” The little girl left.
SubMoy showed up and asked me, “Do you have the text with the explanation ready?”
“No, but Chicharito doesn’t play for Barcelona, nor Messi for the Jaguars,” I answered, following Defensa Zapatista’s advice.
SubMoy looked at me and took out his radio, giving the order, “send someone from the health commission with an injection.”
I ran, what else could I do?
Woof-Meow
SupGaleano
[i] A reference to Margarita Zavala, the wife of ex-president Felipe Calderón (2006-2012) and likely PAN candidate for the presidency in 2018.
[ii] A reference to her husband, ex-president Felipe Calderón (2006-2012).
[iii] Concejo with a “c” means council, often referring to some level of governing council. Consejo with an “s” means advice or counsel, or is used to refer to an entity like a board of directors.
[iv] Derogatory terms used to discredit supporters of the various institutional political parties.
[v] A reference to the Mexican national newspaper Reforma.
CNI, EZLN and the power from below
Zapatistas at the Fifth National Indigenous Congress.
By: Neil Harvey*
The recent comunicado from the National Indigenous Congress (CNI) and the Zapatista National Liberation Army (EZLN), “May the earth tremble at its core,” published on enlacezapatista.org, has the virtue of placing at the center of attention the defense of land, forests, water, and everything that is threatened by the development megaprojects and the dispossession of the commons. It also represents a call to society as a whole to organize for supporting a new political initiative that would be expressed in the independent candidacy of an indigenous woman, a CNI delegate, in the 2018 presidential elections.
The comunicado was issued at the end of the 5th National Indigenous Congress, held in Cideci-Unitierra, San Cristóbal de Las Casas, Chiapas, on the 20th anniversary of the CNI and on one more anniversary of the resistance of the indigenous peoples throughout more than five centuries. The CNI continues being an expression of hope for a new nation, despite the government’s refusal to implement the San Andrés Accords signed in 1996. The resistance struggles against the economic model continue, with the arduous construction and defense of their own spaces that now form the basis of this new group of the CNI and the EZLN.
Although this proposal will be based on these experiences of struggle, it will not be limited only to ethnic demands, but it will also include civil society in general. What’s new is that it proposes another view of national politics; in other words, it represents an invitation to re-think the nation from the experiences of dispossession and repression lived by the indigenous peoples in the countryside and in the city. It’s not about something external or additional to the nation’s defense, but rather that it forms the central part of that. Nor is it about seeking power, but rather of constructing one more solid, articulated and national defense against the megaprojects and dispossessions all over the country. Finally, what it seeks is to reaffirm the value of life, as the Zapatistas declared in January 1994, when they rose up to not die in abandonment.
The proposal not only assures that there will be an indigenous woman as an independent candidate in the presidential elections, but it also seeks to give a new political form to ancestral demands and the new ones that were expressed in the last Congress. As the same comunicado points out, it’s “the power from below that has kept us alive.”
The method of selecting the independent candidate is based on the organization of this “power from below.” The CNI and the EZLN have declared themselves in permanent assembly with the proposal to take the agreement of the 5th Congress to consultation “in each one of our geographies, territories and directions” to name an indigenous government council. From that council will emerge the proposal that will declare an indigenous woman as a candidate for the Presidency of the country.
The proposal is also different from other experiences in Latin America where indigenous peoples have not always had favorable results when they decide to participate in the electoral ambit in alliance with political parties. In Ecuador, for example, in the middle of the “90s, the Coordinator of Indigenous Nationalities of Ecuador (Conaie) decided to participate in the elections, taking advantage of a 1994 electoral reform that permitted candidacies of independent organizations and removed a law that obliged registering members in at least 10 provinces and registering candidates in 12 provinces. In that new context, the Conaie decided to form the party of the Movement of Plurinational Unity Pachakutik, or the MUPP, which participated in alliances with other parties to remove corrupt presidents, attaining spaces in the government headed by Lucio Gutiérrez in 2002. Nevertheless, Pachakutik remained marginalized when that same government, once elected, decided to adopt austerity policies and other unpopular measures that derived into the resignation or removal of the Pachakutik representatives. Such a situation also negatively impacted that same indigenous movement and led to a re-evaluation of the importance of local and community organization versus alliances with candidates of national parties, which tend to impose their own agenda, as has happened in the case of the government of Rafael Correa. Something similar has occurred in Bolivia, where the emergence of the Movement towards Socialism (MAS) as a political party, based in great part on the indigenous mobilizations, has led to contradictions and tensions between the momentum the MAS governments have given to the extractivist economy and the resistances to said model because of its damaging effects for self-management and the environment in indigenous territories.
In the case of Mexico, the CNI and EZLN’s proposal is not about forming a party or allying with political parties, but rather creating an “indigenous government council” and, from there, promoting its proposals through an indigenous woman, a delegate of the CNI, as an independent candidate in 2018. It’s an initiative that seeks to assure that the relationship between the peoples that compose said council and its candidate is stricter and less inclined to cooptation. It’s a different way of confronting the political dilemma of how a popular movement can gain a national presence without losing the relationship with the social bases that support it. Also, as is to be expected, the proposal of the CNI and the EZLN is going to compete with that of other candidates and parties, which could derive into mutual disqualifications, or into a necessary debate about the country’s direction and the role of the indigenous communities, barrios and towns in the process of defining that direction. We still don’t know the reception this proposal will have. For the moment, it’s necessary to recognize that it’s an idea that guaranties that the problems of dispossession, impunity, violence and repression expressed by the CNI and the EZLN will be inescapable in the national debates and, for that very fact, the proposal constitutes an opportune and welcome contribution.
*Professor-researcher, New Mexico State University
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Originally Published in Spanish by La Jornada
Monday, October 17, 2016
http://www.jornada.unam.mx/2016/10/17/opinion/020a2pol
Re-Published with English interpretation by the Chiapas Support Committee
CNI-EZLN: May the earth tremble at its core
MAY THE EARTH TREMBLE AT ITS CORE
To the peoples of the world
To the free means of communication
To the National and International Sixth [la Sexta Nacional e Internacional]
Brought together by the commemoration of the 20th anniversary of the Congreso Nacional Indígena (CNI, Indigenous National Congress) and by the living resistance of the peoples, nations and tribes of this country Mexico, by the languages Amuzgo, Binni-zaá, Chinanteco, Chol, Chontal from Oaxaca, Coca, Náyeri, Cuicateco, Kumiai, Lacandón, Matlazinca, Maya, Mayo, Mazahua, Mazateco, Mixe, Mixteco, Nahua, Ñahñu, Ñathô, Popoluca, Purépecha, Rarámuri, Tlapaneco, Tojolabal, Totonaco, Triqui, Tzeltal, Tsotsil, Wixárika, Yaqui, Zoque, Chontal from Tabasco and our brother Aymara, Catalán, Mam, Nasa, Quiché and Tacaná — we say firmly that our struggle is from below and to the left, that we are anti-capitalists and that the time of the peoples has arrived, to make this country vibrate with the ancestral heart beat of our mother earth.
This is how we have come together to celebrate life at the Fifth Congress of the Congreso Nacional Indígena that took place from October 9-14, 2016, at the CIDECI-UNITIERRA, Chiapas, where we once again become aware of the intensification of dispossession and repression that has not stopped in 524 years since the powerful unleashed a war whose goal is to exterminate those of us who are of the earth and as her offspring we will not allow her destruction and death to benefit capitalist ambition which knows no end but destruction itself. The resistance that we must continue building life today becomes word, learning and agreements.
In our lands we build ourselves every day in the resistances to stop the capitalist storm and offensive that does not stop but becomes every day more aggressive and has converted itself into a threat to civilization not only for the indigenous peoples but for the peoples in the cities that should also create dignified and rebellious ways so that they are not assassinated, dispossessed, poisoned, sickened, enslaved, kidnapped or disappeared. Within our community assemblies we have decided, exercised and built our destiny since time immemorial, so that keeping our forms of organization and defense is only possible with rebellion against the bad governments, their companies and their organized crime.
We denounce that:
- The Coca people, Jalisco, the businessman Guillermo Moreno Ibarra invaded 12 hectares of forest in the place known as El Pandillo in conspiracy with the agrarian institutions, using the criminalization of those who struggle, which led to 10 community members being subjected to four years of trials. The bad government is invading the island of Mezcala that is communal sacred land, while at the same time the government through state indigenous legislation un-recognizes Coca people with the objective of erasing them from history.
- The Otomí Ñhañu, Ñathö, Hui hú, and Matlatzinca peoples in the states of Mexico and Michoacán are being assaulted through the imposition of a mega-construction project building a private highway in Toluca–Naucalpan and a suburban train-line, destroying houses and sacred sites, they buy people’s minds and tamper with community assemblies using police presence, besides the double-dealing census of community members who usurp the voice of an entire people, the privatization and dispossession of water and territory in the volcano of Xinantécatl, known as the Toluca Snowcap [Nevado de Toluca], which the bad governments themselves take away the protection that they themselves gave it to give it to tourist businesses. We know that behind every one of these projects there is interest in plundering the water and life in the region. In the area of Michoacán they deny the Otomí people their identity while a group of police have entered the region to guard the mountain forests to stop indigenous people from going up and cutting wood.
- The original peoples residing in Mexico City are thrown off their lands, which they have won to earn a living working, robbing their merchandize and using police force. They are despised and repressed for wearing their traditional clothes and speaking their language, in addition to being criminalized accused of selling drugs.
- The territory of the Chontal people of Oaxaca is invaded by mining concessions that dismantle the commons, which will affect five communities, their people and natural resources.
- On the land of the Maya people on the peninsula of Campeche, Yucatán and Quintana Roo there is a plundering of lands to plant transgenic soy and African palm trees, the contamination of aquifers by agrochemicals, the building of wind farms, solar farms, the development of eco-tourism and real estate companies. Likewise they are in resistance against the high electricity rates that has brought down upon them harassment and arrest warrants. In Calakmul, Campeche five communities are dispossessed by the imposition of protected nature zones, payment for environmental services and the capturing of carbon in Candelaria, Campeche the struggle for the certainty of land tenure persists. In the three states a strong criminalization is taking place against those who defend the land and natural resources.
- The Maya people of Chiapas, Tzotzil, Tzeltal, Tojolabal, Chol and Lacandón, continue suffering the plundering of their territories with the privatization of natural resources, which has brought imprisonment and murder against those who defend the right to remain on their territory, they face discrimination and are constantly repressed when they defend themselves and organize to continue constructing their autonomy, increasing human rights violations carried out by police forces. There are internal campaigns to fragment and divide organizations, as well as the murder of compañeros that have defended their territory and natural resources in San Sebastián Bachajón. The evil governments continue trying to destroy the EZLN base of support communities and cloud the hope that emanates from them and that offers a light to the whole world.
- The Mazateco people of Oaxaca have been invaded by private property holders, who exploit the territory and culture for tourism, such as naming Huautla de Jiménez “Magical Pueblo” to legalize the plunder and commercialization of ancestral knowledge, accompanied by mining concessions and the exploration of existing caves by foreign speleologists. They impose this through an increasing harassment by drug traffickers and the militarization of the territory. The femicides and rape of women in the region are increasing always with the remiss complicity of the evil governments.
- The Nahua and Totonaca peoples of Veracruz and Puebla are faced with aerial fumigations that make our people suffer illnesses. There is the exploration and exploitation of mining and hydrocarbons through fracking and there are eight basins endangered by the new projects that are poisoning the rivers.
- The Nahua and Popoluca peoples of the south of Veracruz face the siege of organized crime and suffer the risks of being territorially destroyed and disappearance as a people as a result of the threat of mining. Wind farms and, over all, the exploitation of hydrocarbons through fracking.
- The Nahua people, who live in the states of Puebla, Tlaxcala, Veracruz, Morelos, State of México, Jalisco, Guerrero, Michoacán, San Luis Potosí and Mexico City, face a constant struggle to contain the advance of the so-called Morelos Integral Project, which encompasses gas pipelines, aqueducts and thermoelectricity. The evil governments desiring to end the resistance and communication of the peoples attempts to take away the community radio of Amiltzingo, Morelos. Likewise, the construction of the New Airport of Mexico City and complementary works threaten the lands surrounding Texcoco lake and the Basin of the Valley of Mexico, principally Atenco, Texcoco and Chimalhuacán. While the Nahua people in Michoacán face the pillage of their natural resources and minerals by hired assassins accompanied by the police or army and the militarization and paramilitarization of their teritories. Their attempt to stop this war has cost the murder, persecution, jailing and harassment of community leaders.
- The Zoque people of Oaxaca and Chiapas face the invasion of mining concessions and supposedly private property holders on their communal land in the region of Chimalapas; as well as three hydroelectric plants and the extraction of hydrocarbons through fracking. There are livestock herders and as a consequence excessive clear-cutting of forests to create pastures; they are also creating transgenic seeds. At the same time there are Zoque migrants in various states of the country reconstituting their collective organization.
- The Amuzgo people of Guerrero face the plunder of the San Pedro River’s water for use in residential areas and to supply the city of Ometepec. Their community radio has also been subject to constant persecution and harassment.
- The Rarámuri people of Chihuahua suffers the loss of agricultural lands due to the construction of highways, the Creel airport and the gas pipeline that is coming from the United States to Chihuahua, besides the existence of Japanese mining and dams and tourism.
- The Wixárika people of Jalisco, Nayarit and Durango face the destruction and privatization of their sacred sites which they depend on for their social, political and familial ties, the dispossession of their community lands in favor of bosses [caciques], using the lack of defined boundaries between states of the Republic and campaigns orchestrated by the evil governments.
- The Kumiai people of Baja California continue struggling for the reconstitution of their ancestral lands, against invasions by individuals, the privatization of their sacred sites and the invasion of their territories by gas pipelines and highways.
- The Purépecha people of Michoacán have the problem of deforestation, exercised through complicity among the bad governments with narco-military groups that pillage the forests and the wood. For them, the organization from below of communities is an obstacle to their plunder.
- In the Triqui people of Oaxaca the presence of political parties, mining companies, paramilitaries and evil governments fuel the disintegration of community relationships for the plunder of natural resources.
- The Chinanteco people of Oaxaca’s forms of community organization are destroyed by land distribution, the imposition of fees for environmental services, the capture of carbon and ecotourism. The projection of a four-lane highway crosses and divides the territory. In the Cajono and Usila rivers the bad governments are planning three dams that will affect the Chinanteco and Zapoteco peoples. There are mining concessions and oil drilling explorations.
- The Náyeri people of Nayarit face the invasion and destruction of their sacred lands in the site called Muxa Tena on the San Pedro River through the Las Cruces hydroelectric project.
- The Yaqui people of Sonora maintains a sacred struggle against the gas pipeline that crosses its territory and in defense of the waters of the Yaqui river that the bad governments decided to take to the city of Hermosillo, Sonora, going against court rulings and international resources that have shown legal and legitimate reason, using criminalization and harassment of authorities and spokespersons of the Yaqui tribe.
- The Binizzá and Ikoot peoples organize and speak out to stop the advance of wind farm, mining, hydroelectric, dams, gas pipelines projects and especially in the zone called the Special Economic Zone of the Isthmus of Tehuantepec and the infrastructure that threatens the territory and autonomy of the peoples of the isthmus of Tehuantepec, who have been labeled as the Talibans of the environment and the Talibans of indigenous rights in the words uttered by the Mexican Association of Energy [Asociación Mexicana de Energía], referring to the Asamblea Popular del Pueblo Juchiteco [Popular Assembly of the Juchiteco People].
- The Mixteco people of Oaxaca suffers the plunder of its agriculture lands, affecting their uses and customs through threats. Deaths and jailings that seek to silence the voices of those who rebel, with the bad governments promoting armed paramilitary groups, as in the case of San Juan Mixtepec, Oaxaca.
- The Mixteco, Tlapaneco and Nahua peoples of the mountain and coast of Guerrero face the imposition of mining mega-projects supported by drug-traffickers, their paramilitaries, and the bad governments, who dispute over the territories of the original peoples.
- The bad Mexican government continues lying and trying to hide its decomposition and absolute responsibility in the forced disappearance of the 43 students from the rural teachers’ school “Raúl Isidro Burgos” in Ayotzinapa, Guerrero.
- The State maintains kidnapped the compañeros Pedro Sánchez Berriozábal, Rómulo Arias Míreles, Teófilo Pérez González, Dominga González Martínez, Lorenzo Sánchez Berriozábal y Marco Antonio Pérez González from the Nahua community of San Pedro Tlanixco in the State of México, the zapoteco compañero from the Loxicha Álvaro Sebastián region, the compañeros Emilio Jiménez Gómez and Esteban Gómez Jiménez prisoners from the community of Bachajón, Chiapas, the compañeros Pablo López Álvarez and maintaining in exile Raúl Gatica García and Juan Nicolás López from the Consejo Indígena y Popular [Indigenous and Popular Council] of Oaxaca Ricardo Flores Magón. Recently a judge imposed a 33 year prison sentence on compañero Luis Fernando Sotelo for demanding the presentation with life of the 43 disappeared students of Ayotzinapa, the compañeros Samuel Ramírez Gálvez, Gonzalo Molina González and Arturo Campos Herrera from the Coordinadora Regional de Autoridades Comunitarias—PC [Regional Coordinator of Community Authorities—PC]. Likewise, hundreds of indigenous and non-indigenous prisoners are held throughout the country for defending their territories and demanding justice.
- The Mayo people’s ancestral territory is being threatened with road-building projects to link Topolobampo with the state of Texas, United States; at the same time that ambitious touristic projects are being planned for the Barranca del Cobre [Copper Canyon].
- The Dakota nation is seeing how it’s sacred lands are being invaded and destroyed by gas and oil pipelines, which is why it is maintaining a permanent encampment to protect what is theirs.
For all that we have said above, we reiterate that the care of life and dignity, that is to say resistance and rebellion from below and to the left, is our obligation to which we can only respond to in a collective way. Rebellion, well, we construct it from our small assemblies in places that conjoin onto large community, ejidal [community-owned land] assemblies, in good government councils and in agreements as peoples which unite us under one identity. In the sharing, learning and constructing of who we are as the Congreso Nacional Indígena we see and feel ourselves in our suffering, discontent and in our ancestral grounds.
To defend who we are, our walking and learning has been consolidated in collective spaces to make decisions, using national and international legal resources, acts of peaceful civil resistance, pushing aside political parties that have only generated death, corruption and buying of dignities, we have made alliances with diverse sectors of civil society, creating our own means of communication, community and self-defense police, popular assemblies and councils, the exercise and defense of traditional medicine, the exercise and defense of traditional and ecological agriculture, our own rituals and ceremonies to pay mother earth and continue walking with her and in her, the planting and defense of native seeds, forums, campaigns to promote cultural and political activities.
That is the power from below that has kept us alive and that’s why to commemorate resistance and rebellion is also to ratify our decision to continue living building the hope of a possible future over the ruins of capitalism.
Considering that the offensive against the peoples will not cease but they will attempt to continue increasing it until they have finished with the last traces of who we are as peoples from the countryside and the city, as carriers of profound discontent that also blossom in new, diverse and creative forms of resistance and rebellions in this Fifth Congreso Nacional Indígena it is why we have determined to initiate a consultation with every one of our peoples to take down from below the power that is imposed on us from above and that offers us a panorama of death, violence, plunder and destruction.
Given the above, we declare ourselves in permanent assembly and we will consult in each of our geographies, territories and directions the agreement of this Fifth CNI to name an indigenous council of government whose word will be materialized by an indigenous woman, a CNI delegate who will contend as an independent candidate in the name of the Congreso Nacional Indígena and Ejército Zapatista de Liberación Nacional in the electoral process of the year 2018 for the presidency of this country.
We ratify that our struggle is not for power, we do not look for it; but that we will call on the original peoples and civil society to organize ourselves to stop the destruction, strengthen ourselves in resistances and rebellions, which is to say in defense of the life of every person, family, collective, community or neighborhood. Of building peace and justice by rethreading ourselves from below, from where we are who are.
It is the time of rebel dignity, of building a new nation and by and for everyone, of strengthening power from below and to the anti-capitalist left, of those guilty of causing the suffering of the peoples of this multi-color Mexico.
Finally, we announce the creation of the official page of the CNI at the address www.congresonacionalindigena.org
From CIDECI-UNITIERRA, Chiapas, October 2016
For the integral reconstitution of our peoples
Never again a Mexico without us
Congreso Nacional Indígena [CNI, Indigenous National Congress]
Ejército Zapatista de Liberación Nacional [EZLN, Zapatista National Liberation Army]
EZLN Communique on the CNI’s 5th Congress
Words of the General Command of the Ejército Zapatista de Liberación Nacinal at the opening of the fifth Congress of the Congreso Nacional Indígena, in the CIDECI* of San Cristóbal de Las Casas, Chiapas, October 11, 2016
EJÉRCITO ZAPATISTA DE LIBERACIÓN NACIONAL | MEXICO
October 11, 2016.
Compañeros & compañeras of the Congreso Nacional Indígena (CNI, Indigenous National Congress),
Sister people Wirrarikarri,
Sister people Nahua,
Sister people Purépecha,
Sister people Raramuri,
Sister people Cora,
Sister people Mayo Yoreme,
Sister people Tribu Yaqui,
Sister people Popoluca,
Sister people Mixteco,
Sister people Ñahñú, Ñatho,
Sister people Coca,
Sister people Totonaco,
Sister people Mazahua,
Sister people Maya,
Sister people Zoque,
Sister people Tzotzil,
Sister people Tzeltal,
Sister people Chol,
Sister people Tojolabal,
Sister people Mame,
Sister people Binni Zaá
Sister people Chontal.
Sister people Chinanteco,
Sister people Kumiai,
Sister people Cuicateco,
Sister people Matlazinca,
Sister people Mazateco,
Sister people Mee-paa,
Sister people Mixe,
Sister people Nasaquue/Nasa,
Sister people Amuzgo,
Sister people Triqui,
The peoples, nations, tribes and barrios of the original peoples who have as their home the Congreso Nacional Indígena (CNI, Indigenous National Congress):
Compañeros & compañeras of the Sexta Nacional e Internacional (National and International Sixth):
Compañeras & compañeros of the Zapatista delegation at the Fifth Congress of the CNI:
Please receive from @ll of us a sincere greeting from the men, women, children and elders who share the name of the Ejército Zapatista de Liberación Nacional (EZLN, Zapatista Army of National Liberation).
And with our greeting, please receive our respect, our admiration, our sincere love and without deceit.
First, we want to appreciate our compañeras and compañeros at CIDECI-UNITIERRA that, now as in other times, in these days offer us shelter, food and space for our listening and our word.
Compañeras, compañeros, compañeroas:
Brothers and sisters:
In these days it’s been 20 years since a light was born in the hands of the original peoples of this land called México. That light which was called and is called Congreso Nacional Indígena.
We had the honor of being present at its birth through our unforgettable compañera comandanta Ramona, where together, peoples, nations, tribes and barrios of the original peoples lit that light.
Light of organization, struggle and work and of a long road of fighting with resistence and rebellion.
During these 20 years of struggle against the evil capitalist system and its rulers, all we have received has been disdain, repression, plunder and exploitation, jailings, assassinations and disappearances, lies and manipulation.
And in this anniversary we celebrate with our sister and compañera word, as Zapatistas that we are, we want to raise up in our memory those no longer with us and who we need:
Our deceased Comandanta Ramona, the Tata Grande [revered elder] Juan Chávez, our honorary Insurgent Major Félix Serdán, compañero Ramiro Taboada, brother Efrén Capíz and the names of those whose absence today and always hurts us: the indigenous women, the indigenous youth, the original people adults and elders, our greatest men and women sages, indigenous migrants, all our disappeared, assassinated, mistreated, humiliated, prostituted, forgotten, subjected to derision, ridicule and contempt.
And with them, let us raise up to memory the injustice and impunity that, as State policy, has become the name and face of the 47 missing of Ayotzinapa.
That they sit with us women, men, all those harms, all those rages that now bring us together and that provoke us to think of doing something for those who are not present and for those who are in their stead.
That they speak through our lips; that they hear through our hearts.
That they live in our collective being.
That they know that they are accompanied by our thoughts and our action, that they feel that they are not alone.
Compañeras, compañeros, brothers, sisters:
We said 20 years ago: Nothing new will come and be born in this capitalist system for the good of us original peoples in Mexico and around the world.
Those capitalists will never look for or think a road of change for a better life for us original peoples, nations, tribes and barrios.
With the capitalist system in which we live nothing good will come for us the poor people of the countryside and the city.
In them nothing we need will be born, what we the original peoples of Mexico and world want.
We don’t expect anything from them, only injustice, exploitation and so much maliciousness against us the poor of the world.
There will be nothing for us of what we want and of what we need, in the parties that exist, nor in the so-called new ones that will come, because they are the same ones who jump from one party to another.
There were many things we saw and thought 20 years ago.
Because we have already lived this with the deaths and desperation of more than 500 years.
What this shows us or tells us is that we expect nothing from this evil system and its evil rulers, our history tells us and shows us this in the life that our grandparents, great-grandparents and great-great-grandparents lived.
That’s why 20 years ago we said that we have to construct our own path, our own destiny, where there is liberty, justice and democracy.
Because there is isn’t even one small bit for us to trust in this capitalist system in which we live.
We got to know each other through dialogue, the dialogue demanded by the people of Mexico that we dialogue with the evil system made government, which did not keep its word.
It was the evil system that showed us to not trust its words, which we have already seen for more than 500 years that it does not keep.
But our dialogue among us the original barrios, tribes, nations and peoples, did serve us, that is why we are now here as the Congreso Nacional Indígena.
To speak among ourselves the original peoples was and is very necessary today more than ever, because now the destruction carried out by capitalists against mother earth is understood and that means that we too will be destroyed, because in her we live.
To dialogue among ourselves is good for us, it helps us understand, it helps orient us on many things in the mind of our life, but only by working does it give fruit, if we do not work it there is no fruit, work is with the peoples, the fruit are peoples that works organizing itself, and struggle, striving, sacrificing itself once and as many times as is needed.
If we don’t do that work, who will?
No one will come, we know that well.
That is how we say it. There are many things we know and say; we say, for example. “To fight among ourselves does not serve us.” Another one. “Divided we have no strength.”
It is time that we not only stay at only knowing and to say it, because it is now time to see what is real in our life: injustice, misery, inequality.
Life wants us to organize ourselves to achieve what is given by us by understanding what we say; or to put into practice the steps to go correcting and improving where we were wrong.
Compañeros, compañeras of the Congreso Nacional Indígena, during these days some 20 years ago we raised our head with our body and soul and we said organize ourselves and work struggling.
Today we believe that is why precisely we are here for that, to see one another, to listen to each other, in what we have done, how we have made it. What we still need to do and how we are going to do it. Where we failed and how we are going to correct and improve.
Today more than ever we need to be united, the countryside and the city.
Our trenches of struggle, work and organization is where we live in each people and then in each nation, in each tribe, in each barrio, as original peoples.
Compañeras, compañeros, compañeroas of the National and International Sixth, we believe that our trench is the same, our trench of struggle, work and organization is where you live, in each barrio, in each school, factory, in each hospital and likewise in each city, county and state and so forth.
This can only be achieved by working and organizing yourselves, there where the how will be born, the what is to be done according to the situation in which we each live.
Compañeros and compañeras of the Congreso Nacional Indígena, today more than ever we need to continue the struggle that our ancestors carried out. Resistance and Rebellion, but now for a real change that we the poor of the countryside and the city need.
We ourselves need to build the world that we want.
Compañeras and compañeros of the Sixth in México and the world.
We who are exploited need to be together countryside and city and construct the world that we want.
We believe that our efforts should be dedicated to this, our sacrifices in work and organizing, to be able to know what to do during the necessary moment.
TODAY WE DO NOT HAVE ANOTHER WAY, other than to strap ourselves in, organizing us ourselves the original peoples in the countryside and the city.
Especially we the original barrios, tribes, nations and peoples, no longer have anywhere to seek refuge. We are attacked in the countryside and in the city; no one will have where to seek refuge.
Today we need to lift up our eyes among ourselves the exploited and organize ourselves, work and struggle to be organized together city and countryside.
Because in truth we the original peoples in the countryside and those in the city are witnesses that in the capitalist system there is nothing good or small for a better life for the original peoples and for those in the city.
Today in truth they want to destroy us finishing us off in their slavery capitalism and at the same time, finish destroying our mother earth and the natural world.
Today we need to study listening, seeing, learning sharing and practicing, where and how the evil is and where and how the good is, this should be born from us.
How we emerged from the evil and how we entered to make the good.
Study our past history, to not repeat the evil, but to correct and improve.
As powerful as the exploiters are, nothing can defeat an organized people.
Therefore compañeras and compañeros of the Congreso Nacional Indígena, compañeros, compañeras and compañeroas of the Sixth of Mexico and the world, brothers and sisters of Mexico and the world from below and to the left, get to organizing and struggling so that there is a better world, with intelligence and wisdom we will go working and building it.
Original peoples of the world, scientists of the world and artists of the world, if we organize we can save the world and build another more better world, for this we should be better strugglers.
While we look for each other and speak to each other compañeras and compañeros of the Congreso Nacional Indígena, it is our turn to be the example for the families of Mexico and the world, that there will be no one who will struggle to free is, other than we ourselves. We have to show the way.
-*-
Compañeras, compañeros, compañeroas, brothers, sisters:
That those who want to listen, listen.
That those who want to understand, understand.
Because it is time that these lands once again be seeded with the steps of the original peoples.
Now is the time that these skies become cloudy with all the colors of us who are the color of the earth.
Now is the time that the collective heart that we are, become greater still. That the struggle be home, comfort and cheer for those who feel alone and without a way out.
Now is the time of our peoples, our nations, our tribes, our barrios.
Now is the time to remind the Bossy One, his foremen and overseers, of who gave birth to this Nation, of who runs the machinery, of who grows the food of the land, of who raises up the buildings, of who opens up the roads, of who sustains the sciences and the arts, of who imagines and struggles a world so big where there will always be a place to find food, shelter and hope.
Listen well, understand this well:
Now is the time of the Congreso Nacional Indígena.
That at the core of its steps the earth trembles.
That in its dream cynicism and apathy are defeated.
That in its word the voice of those who do not have a voice rise up.
That in its look darkness is illuminated.
That in its listening the suffering of those who think they are alone find a home.
That in its heart desperation finds comfort and hope.
That with its defiance the world become astonished again.
-*-
Thank you Congreso Nacional Indígena.
Thank you for your example.
Thank you for not selling out.
Thank you for not surrendering.
Thank you for not wavering.
Thank you for your path brother, for your attentive ear, for your generous word.
And we say it clearly, our struggle is for life.
That’s what we live for, that’s what we die for, and that’s why we say
¡Long live the original barrios, tribes, nations and peoples of Mexico and the world!
¡That the color of the earth that once again becomes illuminated!
¡That the eyes and the paces of the Congreso Indígena Nacional once again rise up and of those who are in it and with it!
Thank you for your listening, your word, your heart.
From CIDECI-UNITIERRA, Chiapas, Mexico.
In the name of the elders, the children, the women and men of the Ejército Zapatista de Liberación Nacional,
Subcomandante Insurgente Moisés.
On the 11th day of the month of October in the year 2016.
________________________________________
Translated by the Chiapas Support Committee.
The original communiqué in Spanish is available at:
* The CIDECI-UNITIERRA is the Spanish acronym for the Holistic Center for Indigenous Training-University of the Earth.
EZLN and CNI delegates call for closing ranks
By: Isaín Mandujano
TUXTLA GUTIERREZ, Chiapas, Mexico
This Tuesday some 500 delegates of the National Indigenous Congress (CNI) and the EZLN’s military commanders initiated the fifth national gathering where they will analyze the national political situation, because they warned that the scenario would not be better heading into 2018. Therefore, it is urgent to close ranks and organize before the assault that comes from those that “badly govern” the country.
Called to celebrate the 20th anniversary of the creation of the CNI, indigenous coming from all corners of Mexico arrived at the Holistic Center for Indigenous Training-University of the Earth (Cideci, its Spanish acronym) in San Cristóbal de las Casas to analyze the national political situation through which the country crosses and to prepare an action plan in a coordinated and articulated way.
The indigenous talked about the 2018 elections and ratified that the path of elections is no longer the path for achieving the change that the country needs. The speakers, one-by-one, gave details of the mega-projects that threaten the original peoples in their regions.
They also warned that the future holds nothing promising for the indigenous peoples of Mexico, because of which it’s urgent to achieve unity and organize before the assault of the powerful that “badly govern” this country.
At the soldiers’ table where Subcomandante Galeano, Subcomandante Moisés, Comandante Tacho and other members of the EZLN’s General Command were, the speakers talked about the need to instrument an action plan for being prepared “to face what’s coming.”
Access to the event was restricted to the press, where participants were rigorously registered to access the gathering that started last Sunday and was formally inaugurated today (Tuesday, October 11).
Moisés spoke in the name of the EZLN. He remembered the context and the necessity for creating the CNI 20 years ago, with the participation of the largest number of the original peoples of Mexico.
They also honored the now-deceased founders, among them Comandante Ramona, great father Juan Chávez, honorary insurgent major Félix Serdán, compañero Ramiro Taboada and brother Efrén Capiz.
“Talking among ourselves the original peoples was and is very necessary now more than ever, because the destruction that the capitalists do against Mother Earth is extensive now and that means that we will also be destroyed, because we live on her,” Moisés warned.
“Dialoguing with each other does us good, helps us understand, helps us to orient ourselves in many things about our life, but only working it bears fruit, if it isn’t worked it doesn’t bear fruit, the working is with the peoples, the fruit is the peoples that work organizing each other, and fighting, strengthen each other, sacrificing, as often as needed. If we don’t do that work, who is going to do it? We know very well that nobody will come,” he added.
“Today we believe that we are here precisely for that, to see each other, listen to each other, which is what we have done, how we have done it. What we lack is what to do and how we’re going to do it; where we fail and how we’re going to correct and improve,” said Moisés.
“Now more than ever we must be united, countryside and city. Our trench for struggle, work and organization, is where we live in each town and later in each nation, in each tribe, in each barrio, as original peoples,” he emphasized.
He also called for organization and unity in each town and each barrio, in each trench, because now more than ever it’s necessary to continue the fight “like our ancestors did, Resistance and Rebellion, but now for a change that the poor of the countryside and the city truly need. We need to construct among ourselves the world we want.”
Moisés continued: “We who are exploited need to be together in the countryside and in the city and to construct the world that we want. We think that in that we ought to dedicate our efforts, our sacrifices to working and organizing, to know what to do when necessary. Now nothing is left to us other than to bind together to get ourselves, the original peoples of the countryside and of the city, organized.”
Especially, he noted, the task is to realize among the barrios, tribes, nations and original peoples that they no longer have a place to take refuge, because they are attacked in the countryside and in the city.
“Today we must lift our eyes among ourselves the exploited to organize ourselves, work and fight for the city and the countryside to be organized together. Because in truth we native peoples of the countryside and the city are witnesses to the fact that in the capitalist system there is not any good or tiny thing for a better life for the original peoples or those in the city,” said the Zapatista military command.
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Originally Published in Spanish by Proceso.com
Wednesday, October 12, 2016
http://www.proceso.com.mx/458374/ezln-delegados-del-cni-llaman-a-cerrar-filas-cara-al-2018
Re-Published with English interpretation by the Chiapas Support Committee
Atenco women’s case will finally reach the Court
Patricia Torres, Ana María Velasco, Claudia Hernández, Yolanda Núñez, Italia Méndez, Norma Jiménez, Stephanie Brewer and Araceli Olivos during the press conference held at the Centro Pro. Photo: Jesús Villaseca
By: José Antonio Román
The Mexican government not only lied when it asserted that it was the one that proposed taking the case of the Atenco women to the Inter-American Court of Human Rights (Coridh, its initials in Spanish), but that it also “surprisingly advanced” to the Inter-American Commission on Human Rights (IACHR) making this decision public.
This case, which arrives at the Coridh after 10 years of impunity in the country, could represent the eighth sentence against the Mexican State, in which 11 women of San Salvador Atenco denounced sexual torture and other human rights violations by state of Mexico police and federal police in May 2006.
Stephanie Erin Brewer, lawyer for the victims and coordinator of the Miguel Agustín Pro Juárez Human Rights Center’s international area, explained that it was “very strange” to find out about the federal government taking the case to the Court rather than the IACHR taking it, as regularly happens in these cases.
But she also clarified that the State not only didn’t ask to send the case to the court, but rather “did everything possible to delay it, and avoid the case reaching that body,” as it has neither had reparation measures for the victims nor funds nor help actions, which have been repeatedly rejected.
‘‘There’s no dialogue either, as the government says. That dialogue is broken because of the repeated lack of fulfillment, the lack of advance and the absence of a showing of the will to reach a conclusion. No dialogue is underway: what is underway is a litigation,” the director from Centro Prodh clarified.
In a press conference that six of the 11 women complainants attended, accompanied by their legal advocates from the Centro Prodh and the collective for Justicia and International law (Cejil), it was pointed out that the case reaching the Coridh is a historic achievement in the search for truth and justice, which was impossible to access on the national level.
The lawyers Brewer and Marcia Aguiluz, from Cejil –connected via Internet from Costa Rica–, explained that since last December the IACHR adopted the background report that contains its conclusions about the case and that it gave reason to find that the complainants suffered unlawful and arbitrary detention, diverse acts of physical, psychological and sexual torture, a lack of due process and denial of justice, violations for which the Mexican State will have to respond.
A decade after the acts of May 3 and 4, 2006, [1] there is not one single firm criminal sentence and the criminal processes underway are limited to state protection and are developed starting with accusations against four dozen agents with a low rank, without touching the chain of command and other spheres and levels of responsibility. At the time that the acts occurred, the governor of the state of Mexico was Enrique Peña Nieto, now president.
And although the Coridh does not impose individual criminal responsibilities, in the background report it gives an account of the responsibility of some individuals, and mentions the necessity of investigating on two levels the responsibility of the governor of the state of Mexico. “The first is around the possible emission of statements that promised the independence and autonomy of the investigations, and the second is because of the absence of an in-depth investigation about the chain of command,” explained Santiago Aguirre, assistant director of the Centro Prodh.
[1] On May 3 and 4, 2006, state and federal police terrorized the town of San Salvador Atenco right after Subcomandante Marcos spoke at a rally in the town as part of the EZLN’s “Other Campaign.” 2 people died and approximately 150 were arrested and taken to jails.
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Originally Published in Spanish by La Jornada
Wednesday, October 5, 2016
http://www.jornada.unam.mx/2016/10/05/politica/003n1pol
Re-Published with English interpretation by the Chiapas Support Committee
Freedom for Luis Fernando Sotelo
LOS DE BAJO: EXEMPLARY PUNISHMENT
By: Gloria Muñoz Ramírez
Not content with lying about the whereabouts of the 43 normalistas from Ayotzinapa, the State incarcerates those who, like Luis Fernando Sotelo, [1] don’t keep quiet and go out in the streets to demand the truth. Two years of impunity about Ayotzinapa, not one intellectual author incarcerated and a sentence of 33 years and five months of prison for the 21-year old youth, accused of attacks on the “ways of communication” and against the public peace, and also of property damage in a legal process replete with irregularities.
Luis Fernando was also sentenced to pay a fine of $519, 815 pesos (around $26,000 dollars) and reparation of the damage, which rises to more than 8 million pesos. In this sentence, the collective Los Otros Abogadoz [2] warns, “one clearly observes the vengeance, hate and contempt that the head of Government (Miguel Ángel Mancera) has against students, above all the youths that think differently, that question and are opposed to the injustices and bad decisions of the current ruler.”
In November 2014, scarcely two months after the disappearance of the 43 normalistas, Luis Fernando was dressed in black, with short hair and a crest painted green. He was dressed up as a rebel when he was arrested and accused of burning the Metrobus station and a bus in University City. He was arrested together with another young man, Sergio Pérez Landeros, who the Metrobus driver and the agents implicated in the detention pointed out as authors of the fire. Sergio proved that he was at his school at the time of the acts and he was released. But Luis Fernando remained in prison and was sentenced this week. He is 21 years old and they sentenced him to stay in prison until he is 52. And yet the Public Ministry is in disagreement and is appealing for more years and more money.
The Los Otros Abogadoz collective considers that the Public Ministry fabricated the accusation, altered the facts and omitted evidence. The lawyers indicate that it’s “about finding Luis Fernando guilty to send an exemplary message and punishment to all those that decide to get organized and to protest: youths, students, teachers, indigenous, street venders, districts and all those that resist below and organize.”
On September 28, Luis Fernando and Abraham Cortés (prisoner in Reclusorio Norte) initiated an indefinite hunger strike in protest of the unjust sentence. A national and international campaign accompanies them demanding their freedom.
[1] Luis Fernando Sotelo is the young man referred to in the recent CNI & EZLN Communiqué Party to War and Resistance #44. He is an adherent to the EZLN’s 6th Declaration.
[2] Los Otros Abogadoz translates as The Other Lawyers. “The Other” seems to refer to the EZLN’s “Other Campaign,” which is no longer in existence; however, it also implies adherence to the Sixth Declaration of the Lacandón Jungle. The use of “z” instead of “s” to pluralize abogado (lawyer) also indicates adherence to the Sixth Declaration.
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Originally Published in Spanish by La Jornada
Saturday, October 1, 2016
http://www.jornada.unam.mx/2016/10/01/opinion/010o1pol
Re-Published with English interpretation by the Chiapas Support Committee
Chiapas Support Committee 