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Psychosis in Nochixtlán, Oaxaca
PSYCHOSIS IN NOCHIXTLÁN AFTER THE BRUTAL EVICTION, THE MAYOR ELECT DENOUNCES
NOCHIXTLAN, OAXACA, June 19, 2016.- CNTE teachers supported by citizens were attacked by Federal Police that sought to remove a highway blockade that the teachers had maintained for days as part of their fight against the Education Reform. 12 people are now reported dead.
PHOTO: ARTURO PEREZ ALFONSO /CUARTOSCURO.COM
By: Gabriela Romero Sánchez
Almost one week after the eviction of the Section 22 teachers belonging to the National Coordinator of Education Workers (CNTE) by the Federal Police, residents of Nochixtlán, Oaxaca, are afraid to go into the streets and afraid of being repressed again upon being considered unstable and rebel people by the federal government, narrates the municipal president elect of Nochixtlán, Rubén Alcides.
“On Thursday, a helicopter without registration letters to identify it, started to fly very low, and that motivated people going about their daily activities to run and hide,” he said.
He comments that there are still people with bullet wounds that go to private doctors offices for medical attention. “No one wants to say their name, because they think that the federal government will come to capture them for having participated in the protest.”
Alcides and a group of nine neighbors from the municipal capital resorted to federal Deputy Jesús Valencia to look for support from different bodies, among them the Government of Mexico City (now a state), for the reconstruction of their town, since, they assure, not any rapprochement exists on the part of the federal government.
“We’re talking about people that are experiencing a tremendous psychosis, who have bullet wounds,” he describes.
He describes that the eviction from the federal highway began around 6 o’clock in the morning and that a group of teachers and parents were there, “let’s say a reduced number,” but it was also market day, therefore upon initiating the operation many people came out to support a friend or parent.
They refute the version of the authorities that assert that members of the federal police were not carrying arms: “They were indeed armed. It was a totally unequal attack, underhanded and above all disproportionate,” the municipal president elect summarizes.
Alcides denies that the local priest had incited violence; to the contrary, he asserts, he gave space in his parish church for attending to the injured without importance to whether they were civilians or federal police; while at the hospital only the police were received.
A doctor in the group, who also aided in the parish that day and asked for anonymity out of fear, intervenes: “There was no surgical material for attending to the injured, around 30 people went there, of which at least 10 had bullet wounds. How can they say that they were rubber bullets when they had entry and exit orifices in their thorax and in their arms or legs!”
He indicates that around 10 o’clock in the morning they asked permission to use the two ambulances that exist in Nochixtlán, without obtaining an answer. “People started to get angry over that, they wanted to move the injured to a hospital; then, they set fire to the municipal presidency to get them out.”
The tension increased, he said, when they heard that there was one death. “People came out of their houses to support their sons, brothers, fathers. They were saying: ‘they are killing us!’”
He rejects that there were individuals unrelated to the community in the town, “we see each other every day; some of them go to my doctor’s office.”
Alcides points out that upon assuming the office he will receive a destroyed town, with the municipal palace (City Hall) and the Civilian Registry burned, without services. Above all “with intense pain in the population that feels hatred towards the federal and state governments. They arrested 19 people from the town when they were digging a tomb for a relative, their crime was carrying a pick and shovel.”
The municipal president elect urges the competent authorities to indemnify the families of the people that died: “it’s people that live in extreme poverty.” He asks for resources for the reconstruction of the damaged public buildings: “we are without legal identity, they don’t issue birth and death records.” And he asked to activate job sources.
In the afternoon the Secretary of Mobility, Héctor Serrano Cortés, attended to the group of people on behalf of the Mexico City Government. After listening to them he offered to support them with medications and food.
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Originally Published in Spanish by La Jornada
Saturday, June 25, 2016
http://www.jornada.unam.mx/2016/06/25/politica/007n1pol
Re-published in English by the Chiapas Support Committee
EZLN: Hour of the Police 4
FROM THE SPOILERS NOTEBOOK OF THE CAT-DOG
The sign reads Nuñooo!! The teachers are not alone. A phoyo from demonstrations in Tuxtla Gutiérrez,Chiapas.
June 2016
– This is the question. What would the most appropriate metaphor be for the sad and gray overseer police aspirant?
Aurelio Donald Nuño Trump? [1]
Aurelio Ramsey Nuño Bolton?
We believe, in accordance with his thirst for blood and his cowardice, he would prefer the second. And, just like in the television series “Game of Thrones,” Ramsey Bolton is devoured by the dogs that he used before for attacking others; the paid media that Nuño has used to slander, threaten and attack the teachers in resistance and the communities and solidarity organizations, will be preying on him when he falls.
Could it be said the same way tomorrow?
“Your words will disappear.
Your house will disappear.
Your name will disappear.
All memory of you will disappear.”
To you and the entire system that you serve.
Time will tell.
Wow-Meow
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[1] Aurelio Nuño is the name of Mexico’s Secretary of Public Education
Originally Published in Spanish by Enlace Zapatista
Thursday, June 23, 2016
EZLN and CNI: From the Tempest
Federal Police opened fire on protesting teachers on June 19 in Nochixtlán, Oaxaca. There are at least 8 dead, around 100 injured (including both police and civilians) and many more arrested.
Joint Comunicado of the National Indigenous Congress and the EZLN about the cowardly police attack against the National Coordinator of Education Workers and the Indigenous community of Nochixtlán, Oaxaca
June 20, 2016
To the People of Mexico:
To the Peoples of the World:
Faced with the cowardly repressive attack that the teachers and the community suffered in Nochixtlán, Oaxaca, -with which the Mexican State reminds us that this is a war against everyone-; the peoples, nations and tribes that make up the National Indigenous Congress and the Zapatista Nacional Liberation Army, we say to all the dignified teachers that you are not alone; that we know that right and truth are on your side; that the collective dignity with which your resistance speaks is unbreakable and that it is the principal weapon of those of us below.
We repudiate the repressive escalation with which they seek to impose on the whole country the capitalist neoliberal reform that they call “educational,” principally in the states of Oaxaca, Chiapas, Guerrero and Michoacán. With threats, persecution, blows, unjust incarceration and now murders they want to bend the dignity of the teachers in rebellion.
We call to our peoples and to civil society in general to be with the teachers that resist at all times, to recognize them, because the violence to dispossess them of basic labor rights for the purpose of making education private, is a reflection of the violence with which they are evicting the native peoples, the campesino and urban peoples.
Those in power that are consumed with passion decided that education, health, the indigenous and campesino territories, and even peace and security, are merchandise for those who are able to pay for it; that rights are not rights but rather products and services that are snatched away, dispossessed, destroyed, are negotiated according to what big capital dictates. And they seek to impose this aberration in a bloody way; murdering and disappearing our compañeros, sending our spokespersons to high security prisons, making torture shameless governmental marketing and, with help from the paid communications media, equating the bravest of Mexican society, in other words those who fight, don’t surrender, don’t sell out and don’t give up, with the criminals.
We demand the cessation of the repression against the teachers in struggle and immediate and unconditional liberation of ALL political prisoners.
We invite all the peoples of the fields and the cities to be attentive and in solidarity with the teachers’ struggle, to organize autonomously to be informed and alert before this storm that falls upon everyone, knowing that a storm, besides tempest and chaos, also fertilizes the land from which a new world is always born.
From the mountains, fields, valleys, canyons and barrios of the native peoples, nations and tribes of Mexico
Never more a Mexico Without Us!
National Indigenous Congress – Zapatista National Liberation Army Mexico, June 20, 2016
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Originally Published in Spanish by Enlace Zapatista
http://enlacezapatista.ezln.org.mx/2016/06/20/desde-la-tempestad/
EZLN: the government of Chiapas is losing the media war against the CNTE
Parachicos march in support of the teachers. Photo: Eduardo Miranda.
By: Isaín Mandujano
TUXTLA GUTIÉRREZ, Chiapas
The Zapatista National Liberation Army (EZLN) said today that the mobilization y protest actions of the peoples, communities, organizations and activists in Chiapas, the government is losing the media war against the teachers’ movement that impugns the education reform.
“We don’t know about the rest of the country, but at least in Chiapas, those above are losing the media war. We have seen entire families, in rural and urban surroundings, supporting the teachers,” the EZLN asserts in a public comunicado.
And it’s not referring to support of the type “this fist is seen,” “the people united, will never be defeated,” and the slogans that despite distances in calendars and geographies, continue being the same –says the guerrilla group– “because underneath continues being the fundamental principle of solidarity.” If in previous mobilizations of the rebel teachers the “citizenry” appeared fed up and disturbed, it continued, now things have changed.
“There are more families all the time that aid the teachers, support their travels and marches, are anguished when they are son, offer them food, drinks and shelter. They are families that, according to the taxonomy of the electoral left, would be ‘stupefied’ by television, ‘eat sandwiches,’ ‘are alienated,’ ‘are driven in’ and ‘have no conscience.’ But apparently, ‘the enormous media campaign’ against the teachers that resist, has failed,” the writing points out.
It adds that now the resistance movement against the education reform has been converted into a mirror for more and more people-people all the time, in other words, not people of the social and political organizations, but rather common people.
“As if it had awakened a collective feeling of urgency before the tragedy that is coming. As if each blow with a club, each gas canister, each rubber bullet, each arrest warrant, were eloquent slogans: ‘today they attacked her or him; tomorrow I will go after you. Perhaps because of that, behind each teacher are entire families that sympathize with their cause and with their fight.
“Why? Why does a movement that has been ferociously attacked on all fronts continue growing? Why, if they are ’vandals,’ ‘loafers,’ ‘terrorists,’ ‘corrupt,’ ‘opponents-of-progress,’ do many people from below, not a few in the middle, and even some of those above, salute, though that may be at times in silence, the teachers that defend what any person would defend,” the armed group that rose up in arms on January 1, 1994 points out.
Later it lets loose against the media, in particular against the Chiapas newspaper “Cuarto Poder,” which it labels as being a media nostalgic for the epoch of fincas (estates) and Lords of the manor.
“Reality is a lie,” the EZLN points out, ought to be the title of its note when “it denounced” the popular (cultural) fiesta as false that was celebrated last June 9 in the streets of Tuxtla Gutiérrez, in support of the teachers in resistance.
“Parachicos, danzantes, folk musicians, traditional dress, persons in wheel chairs, marimbas, drums, whistles and flutes, the best of Zoque are and thousands of people greeting the resistance, the subversive group relates.
And it emphasizes that the “success” of the media war against the CNTE gave an account that day of a handmade sign that prayed: “Gracias teacher, for teaching me to fight” and another one that pointed out: “I am not a teacher, but I am Chiapan and I am against the education reform.”
More than three years after promulgating the alleged “education reform,” the EZLN lashes out, “Señor (Aurelio) Nuño still cannot present any educational argument, be it even the minimum, in favor of his ‘personnel adjustment program.’
“Its arguments have been, up to now, the same as any overseer from the Porfirio Díaz epoch: hysterical cries, blows, threats, firings, incarcerations. The same ones that would use any sad and gray aspirant to the post-modern police,” it emphasizes.
And it stirs things up
“They already beat them, gassed them, incarcerated them, threatened them, fired them unjustly, slandered them and ordered a de facto state of emergency in Mexico City. What’s next? Do they disappear them? Do they murder them? Seriously? Will the ‘education’ reform be born in the blood and dead bodies of teachers? Are they going to substitute the teachers’ occupations with police and military occupations; blockades of protest with blockades of tanks and bayonets?”
Later it refers to the Secretary of Education, as a “terrorist” for taking hostages, “that and nothing else is what the arrest is of members of the CNTE’s leadership.” In any kind of terrorism –whether that of the State or that of its fundamentalist mirrors—the EZLN points out, that (hostage taking) is a resource to force a dialogue and negotiation.
“We don’t know if up there above they have realized it or not, but it turns out that the other part (the teachers) is the one that seeks dialogue and negotiation. ¿Or is the SEP now affiliated with ISIS and takes hostages just to sow terror,” the armed group ironizes.
The Zapatistas point out in their comunicado that they don’t know much about the communications media, “but in our humble opinion, it’s bad business to place at the front of the media campaign about a shameless privatization, a sad and gray overseer that wants to be a police agent,” they say in reference to Nuño.
“Initiating the children into the first steps of science and art, that is what the teachers do,” the comunicado concludes.
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Originally Published in Spanish by Proceso
Friday, June 17, 2016
Re-Published with English interpretation by the Chiapas Support Committee
Capital police stop Chiapas teachers for 7 hours
Outside of the La Ciudadela Market.
By: Laura Poy Solano
Yesterday, hundreds of dissident teachers from Sections 7 and 40 in Chiapas joined the La Ciudadela [1] occupation, after members of the Capital’s Secretariat of Public Security detained and encapsulated them for almost seven hours. Police impeded the advance of more than 30 buses coming from Tuxtla Gutiérrez, which were finally able to continue on their way, but guarded by the police.
Teachers from the Selva-Ocosingo region denounced that after their arrival in the capital at 5:30 am, “two patrols closed our passage by lowering the La Concordia Bridge, over the Ignacio Zaragoza freeway, and in minutes the police “encapsulated” us. For hours they didn’t even want to let us get out of the buses. Their only argument for detaining us was that we were going to cause harm to third parties.”
They pointed out that members of the capital police even boarded some of the buses “to inspect them,” but their access was impeded in others.
“We asked them to show the court order to search us. We are teachers, not criminals,” they asserted, after reiterating that: “at every moment we expressed that it was about a peaceful demonstration and that our destination was the La Ciudadela occupation,” because they announced that they would participate in the mass march convoked by the National Coordinator Nacional of Education Workers (CNTE) this Friday.
Beatriz Díaz Pérez, a member of the Chiapas teachers’ leadership, explained that faced with the refusal of the police to let the caravan advance towards the occupation in La Ciudadela, at a little after 11 o’clock in the morning it was determined to hold a march of the “tired feet” (at a slow pace) towards their destination in the capital’s center.
However, she indicated that: “we only advanced a few meters when they blocked our way once again. There was some pushing and shoving because they led us to the sidewalk so that we couldn’t march through the Ignacio Zaragoza freeway. There was a new negotiation, and at the end they let us pass, but guarded by the capital police.”
An artesanía booth inside the La Ciudadela Market.
Tired, loaded down with suitcases, boxes, blankets, tarps and tents, hundreds of dissident teachers, parents and teachers college students arrived at La Ciudadela Plaza a little after 1:30 pm.
Minutes later, the teachers started to organize themselves by region for the purpose of determining the location of the tents. Teachers from the Jungle, Center, Southern Border, Highlands, Sierra Madre, Maya, Valley, Costa Grande, Costa Chica, Frailesca, Cuxtepeques, Sierra Norte, Lagos, Zoque, Bachajón, Cañera and Cafetalera Zones, among others, organized themselves to occupy the sidewalk outside the artesanía market.
Meanwhile, dissident teachers from Guerrero and Michoacán made a human wall in front of the Senate, without obstructing vehicle traffic, to demand dialogue table with the federal government federal and freedom for all “political prisoners.”
With signs and banners, dozens of teachers delivered flyers and shouted slogans.
[1] La Ciudadela, or The Citadel in English, is an indoor artisans’ market in Mexico City with booths displaying traditional crafts and folk art.
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Originally Published in Spanish by La Jornada
Friday, June 17, 2016
http://www.jornada.unam.mx/2016/06/17/politica/011n1pol
Re-Published with English interpretation by the Chiapas Support Committee
CNTE teachers leave Chiapas for Mexico City
Boarding the buses for Mexico City. Photo: Chiapas Paralelo
By: Angeles Mariscal
Aboard 32 buses and dozens of private automobiles, a first contingent of teachers from the National Coordinator Educación Workers (CNTE) departed today headed to Mexico City, where they will add themselves to the protest actions that have the objective of demanding that the federal government open a dialogue table about the education reform.
The departure of the contingent of teachers takes place upon completing one month from the start of the demonstrations of the CNTE teachers of the CNTE in Chiapas, which groups together members of Sections 7 and 40 of the National Union of Education Workers (SNTE).
In this month of protests that started with the installation of an encampment in the central plaza of the state capital, they have added the support of parents, students and university academics, social organizations, independent citizens and those who in the indigenous zone of Chiapas belong to the Diocese of San Cristóbal.
In the last two weeks, the Secretariat of Education in Chiapas has not announced the number of teachers that participate in the labor strike that started last May 15. The leaders of the CNTE, for their part, maintain that those on strike in Chiapas are 97 percent of the union members of Section 7 of the SNTE, and 90 percent of Section 40, which adds up to more than 60,000 teachers.
Sonia Rincón Chanona, state’s Secretary of Education, asserted last June 10 that upon completing one month of the strike, they run the risk of losing the 2015-2016 school cycle.
Nevertheless today the leader of the Coordinator, Pedro Gómez Bámaca, announced that in an agreement with the parents, at the time the strike started the teachers in the schools had completed 80 percent of the study program that the SEP frames.
“Before the movement erupted, we mounted the students’ qualifications on the platforms–a little more than 3 million taking courses in basic and middle school education media superior- and therefore the school cycle can be considered concluded in accordance with law and without affecting the students. If the Secretariat of Education invalidates the prior months’ work, that will be their responsibility,” he warned.
In a press conference, before thousands of teachers departed for Mexico City, the Coordinator’s leaders explained that the epicenter of the teachers’ mobilizations would be in the country’s capital. Parallel demonstrations will continue in Chiapas and the rest of the states.
“The agreement of the national assembly is that 20 percent of the mobilized teachers will concentrate in Mexico City. Chiapas will send 10,000. The first contingent leaves today and the rest in subsequent days,” Gómez Bámaca detailed.
Observers from the National Human Rights Commission (CNDH) accompany the teachers; the CNTE invited them to give an account of their events and demonstrations, in order to document the actions of the teachers and of the State forces.
“We want the national and international human rights organisms to document that we are not committing any action that violates the human rights of other people. We are exercising our right to demonstrate peacefully, and those who have committed abuses –among them the attack on teachers in the city of Comitán- are not us but rather individuals and organizations that have infiltrated with the clear intention of destabilizing,” he assured.
At the moment in which the buses of teachers were preparing to begin their journey, the demonstrators retained a person that said his name was Roberto García, and said he was assigned to the Municipal Police of the Chiapas capital.
Upon saying that to the teachers, this person, who was wearing civilian clothes was photographing and recording the demonstrators. The teachers took the retained man to the kiosk where the leadership gathered, and there the reporters asked him if he was really spying on the teachers. This person said yes he was, and that someone about whom he gave no references contracted him for that. The teachers delivered the person retained to visitors from the CNDH.
Regarding the announcement of the head of the SEP, Aurelio Nuño, about the audit that he was going to make of the list of names of teachers in the states, Gómez Bámaca said that the CNTE was disposed to any audit, including an audit of the union’s accounts.
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Originally Published in Spanish by Chiapas Paralelo
Wednesday, June 15, 2016
Re-Published with English interpretation by the Chiapas Support Committee
Zibechi: The New Venezuela
Cecosesola meeting. The cooperative functions non-hierarchically.
By: Raúl Zibechi
Systemic crises usually provoke long-term mutations that leave nothing in place. The crisis of Spanish domination over our continent converted it into a completely new reality. Societies that were established towards the second half of the 19th century had little to do with those existing in 1810, when the May Revolution in the district of Río de la Plata occurred.
Those critical periods also enable the birth of different social relations than the hegemonic ones that are one of the keystones of social change. Something new is not born during the mediocrity of stability, but rather in the midst of fierce storms when we are always capable of innovating, of working and creating.
Something similar is happening in Venezuela. Behind or beneath the political crisis, the offensive of the opposition and Washington, the government’s paralysis, the corruption that crosses the whole country from top to bottom, the scarcity and endless lines to buy food, another country exists. A productive country, in solidarity, where people don’t fight with each other in order to appropriate flour, sugar and corn for themselves, a country in which they are able to share what’s there.
An extensive and intensive tour through communities in the states of Lara and Trujillo, from the city of Barquisimeto to the Andes region permits confirming this reality. We’re talking about a broad network of 280 campesino families integrated into 15 cooperative organizations, besides 100 producers in the process of organization, who make up the Cooperative Central of Social Services of Lara (Cecosesola), which supply three urban markets with 700 tons of fruits and vegetables every week, at prices 30 percent below the market rate, since they elude the coyotes and middle men.
The direct visit to five rural cooperatives, some with more than 20 years and others in the process of formation, permits comprehending that campesino cooperation has an extraordinary strength. A simple cooperative with 14 producers in Trujillo, 2,500 meters (roughly 8,200 feet) above sea level, achieved buying three trucks, constructing a warehouse, the campesino house and a dormitory, basically producing potatoes and carrots manually, without tractors because their lands are sloping. A small miracle is called family and community work, because all the cooperatives have common lands that everyone cultivates.
Work and debate to correct errors, what we used to call self-criticism and was forgotten in some black hole of the masculine/militant ego. The 3,000 annual meetings that the 1,300 workers associated with the Cecosesola hold, open to the community, are extensive, harsh and frontal, in which personal deviations that harm the collective are not hidden. As we say in the South, they don’t go halfway; they go straight without anesthesia or diplomacy, which doesn’t damage but rather consolidates the atmosphere of partnership.
The network of 50 community organizations (15 rural and 35 urban) supplies more than 80,000 people per week in three markets for family consumption, which have 300 booths simultaneously. In these times of scarcity, they supply half of the fresh foods for a city of one million inhabitants, because of which lines of up to 8,000 people form in the central market, the most crowded of all, since the government closed some of the markets due to a lack of products.
The rural cooperatives produce fruits and vegetables; the urban community production units elaborate pastas, honey, salsas, sweets and articles for hygiene and for the home. In total, there are 20,000 associates from the popular sectors of Barquisimeto that are directly involved in the network.
The savings in production, markets and collections permitted them to construct the Integral Community Health Center, which cost 3 million dollars, has 20 bed and two operating rooms where they perform 1700 surgeries annually at half the price of the private clinics, managed by almost 200 people horizontally and in assembly. Besides, they have a cooperative fund (a sort of popular bank) for financing harvests, buying vehicles, medical needs and other family needs.
Everything, absolutely everything, they got through their own work and community support. They did not receive one single bolivar (the Venezuelan dollar) from the State throughout more than 40 years. How did they do it? Some documents elaborated by the network explain it in two concepts: ethics and community cooperation.
It’s not that there are no problems. There are many, with cases of individual profit, like everywhere. The document Ethics and revolution, distributed last March, says: “In our country a new private property modality is hastily being imposed, with each one attempting to seize the space that one fancies according to his or her convenience.” They are intransigent about that. It’s the same spirit that leads them to set prices without paying attention to market prices, but rather according to agreements between producers, making agreements by consensus, eliminating voting, perceiving all the same production needs and working to dismantle the hierarchies of internal power.
The guide it not the program, nor is it the relationship between tactics/strategy, but rather it’s the ethics. “Is there revolution without ethics,” the quoted document ends. History tells us that the popular sectors can overthrow the dominant classes, as has happened in half the world since 1917. What has not been demonstrated is that we are able to establish ways of life different from capitalism.
The Cecosesola workers can take from “their” markets the same amount of products as the rest of the community. If there is a kilo of wheat per person, it’s for everyone equally, whether they form part of the network or not. That is ethics. The scarcity is for everyone, without privileges.
That is the new Venezuela, where ethics guide. Although they are surrounded with meanness, they follow their path. Wasn’t that the revolutionary spirit?
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Originally Published in Spanish by La Jornada
Friday, June 10, 2016
http://www.jornada.unam.mx/2016/06/10/opinion/016a2pol
Re-Published with English interpretation by the Chiapas Support Committee
Chiapas cultural march to support the teachers
The Parachicos, traditional dancers from Chiapa de Corzo municipality.
By: Isaín Mandujano
The music of the marimba, drums and whistles, baskets full of food, thousands of traditional folkloric dancers dressed as Parachicos, Chiapanecas, Tuxtla Zoques and other traditional clothing of the state characterized the cultural march in support of the teachers’ movement against the education reform this afternoon.
To the cry of “maestro, aguanta, el pueblo se levanta” (teacher, endure, the people are rising up), men, women and children began a march that had the flavor of a fiesta but at the same time one of protest, because they were carrying signs against the government of Enrique Peña Nieto and his education reform, and also against Governor Manuel Velasco Coello.
The parents got out their traditional garb that they only wear for the feast of the patron saint and for the first time they used it to support a political and social movement in Chiapas that the teachers of the National Coordinator of Education Workers (CNTE) have headed for 26 days.
“The teacher fighting, is also learning,” some signs said that the dancers were carrying in one hand and the chinchín (a noisemaker or rattle) in the other.
Rubicel Gómez Nigenda, the sponsor of the Parachicos of Chiapa de Corzo called for a cultural march in support of the teachers. He asked everyone to wear white or get out their traditional dress to come out in support of the teachers, but above all to bring baskets with food so that the teachers can continue their movement. The Parachicos are traditional folkloric dancers (danzantes) from the Chiapas municipality of Chiapa de Corzo. They perform at the municipality’s annual fiesta in January.
In addition to the dancers from Chiapa de Corzo, there were dancers from Tuxtla, Suchiapa, Ocozocoautla, San Fernando, Cintalapa and many other municipios that came to the march in order to show their support for the striking teachers.
Upon reaching the central plaza, thousands of teachers applauded the dancers, as well as the men and women dressed in white that accompanied the cultural march. After the meeting there was a series of cultural events from poetry, dance and even singing.
The CNTE’s leaders thanked the thousands of folkloric dancers for their support and pointed out that thanks to these demonstrations of support they will continue their struggle until seeing the education reform fall.
Several Chiapas sites have amazing photos of this march. See:
And: http://www.pozol.org/?p=12485
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Originally Published in Spanish by Chiapas Paralelo
Thursday, June 9, 2016
Re-Published with English interpretation and edited by the Chiapas Support Committee
Chiapas People of Faith march in support of the teachers
IF THE REPRESSION CONTINUES, “ALL THE PEOPLE OF GOD WILL RISE UP,” THE BELIEVING PEOPLE WARN
Religious leaders from the region of Los Bosques, at the front of the Pueblo Creyente (Believing People)
By Isaín Mandujano
This Wednesday (June 8), thousands of indigenous Tsotils from different communities in the municipios of Simojovel, El Bosque, Huitiupán, Amatán and Pueblo Nuevo Solistahuacán, carried out a procession in the state capital in order to demonstrate their support for the teachers’ movement in Chiapas against the education reform.
Headed by the parish priest of the Church of Simojovel, Marcelo Pérez Pérez, the men, women and children that left their communities and went down from Los Altos of Chiapas and started a pilgrimage from the east side of Tuxtla and walked several kilometers to the central plaza where the teachers of the National Coordinator of Education Workers (CNTE) have their encampments.
With the music of drums and whistles, with the banner of the Virgin of Guadalupe in the hands of Father Marcelo Pérez Pérez and with the Mexican flag that an indigenous woman at his side carried, the indigenous left their communities in the early morning hours to reach this city and realize the procession in the midst of a human wall of teachers that welcomed them with applause and signs on which they thanked them for the support.
Along their route the teachers like neighbors in houses in the city’s center were giving fresh water and sandwiches to the indigenous. Some teachers were in tears with emotion as the march passed.
Upon reaching the central plaza, CNTE leaders Alberto Mirón and Pedro Gómez Bámaca received the Believing People and thanked the more than 4,000 indigenous that came from from the region also called Los Bosques for this gesture.
Father Blas Alvarado from the parish of Pueblo Nuevo Solistahuacán and Father Gustavo Andrade from the Venustiano Carranza parish were with Father Marcelo Pérez Pérez.
In the message read to the teachers, Father Marcelo Pérez Pérez asked the federal government, President Enrique Peña Nieto and Aurelio Nuño for: “no more repression because that generates revolution.”
“If you continue sending police to repress the people, we will come again to march not only with representatives of the church communities, but that would animate us and we will rise up all the people of God,” he said in the letter he read.
He demanded that a real and dignified dialogue be established between the teachers and the federal government, with the mediation of some of society’s groupings that enjoy a moral authority.
They came here as a church, not to generate violence, but rather they came in peace and to demand peace, but a peace founded on truth, justice, freedom and love as Papa John XXIII expresses.
“We say “No” to the mass firing of the teachers, because this is doing violence to their labor rights, for which they have been fighting for so many years. We demand that the deputies don’t approve laws that generate institutionalized violence. Now, the deputies have a crisis of credibility and of being representatives of the people, because they are not passing laws under the true principles and needs of the people, but rather under the stimulus of money that the President of the Republic gives them to approve what he wants, and the legal initiatives that he sends to the Congress is under the interests of foreign investors, which is therefore treason to the Homeland,” he indicated.
The priest sent a message to the police forces: “You come from simple families, you are also poor, you are human, each teacher that you hit with your clubs, with rubber bullets, hurt with tear gas, you are hurting your brothers, because all of us are children of God, you are not obliged to obey an order to repress that you receive from your superiors.”
“The teachers are not criminals, they are not kidnappers, drug traffickers, murderers or traitors to the country; we see that the government sends them to repress innocents, but traffickers of arms and drugs are the real criminals and you don’t say anything to them, although you find the drugs and arms; the government responds to them with stopping criminal action. A concrete case if the Gómez Family of Simojovel, who have stolen so much from the people,” he added.
“Police brothers, you have relatives in the teaching profession, you received classes thanks to the teachers, you have your job because of the studies that you got from teachers. Police brothers, you are protectors not repressors” he emphasized.
“And if the repression doesn’t stop, Pope Francisco tells us: “A Christian, if he is not revolutionary, at this time, he is not Christian! He must be a revolutionary for grace,” he concluded.
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Originally Published in Spanish by Chiapas Paralelo
Thursday, June 9, 2016
Re-Published with English interpretation by the Chiapas Support Committee
Beyond Chenalhó
Members of Las Abejas of Acteal, December 22, 2014.
By: Rafael Landerreche*
What’s happening in Chenalhó (I use the present because the fire has not been put out) must be examined beyond the obvious dimension of post-electoral conflicts or of the undeniable but partial component of gender. But to get to the bottom of the issue it’s necessary to go back in history to something that’s not about this moment nor exclusive to Chiapas, but that, nevertheless, is the deep root of what happens here and now.
The big lesson of the last century for the Mexican political class was that in order to maintain themselves in power it was necessary to make concessions to the people; not isolated and circumstantial, but rather, so to speak, of a permanent and structural character. That was the social policy of the “governments that emanated from the revolution,” which permitted the PRI to stay in power for 70 uninterrupted years of relative social stability. We all know of course the vices that accompanied and corrupted this social policy: a lack of democracy, paternalism, corporatism, electoral patronage, application of an economic model that was incompatible with those demands, corruption, etcetera. The system had its clear limits and anyone who would attempt to exceed them would abide the worst consequences (Tlatelolco is not forgotten). However, that social dimension was real and one of the proofs of that is the void that appears now that it’s dismantling.
The new generations of the political class formed in the rarified heights of neoliberalism, didn’t know or didn’t want to see the difference between social policy and the vices that were parasitic to it. They placed everything indistinctly into the same bag, put the ambiguous label of “populism” on it and threw it in the trash. It’s like the saying that they threw the baby out with the bathwater, but we could modify the image saying that in this case they threw out the baby and were left with the dirty water, because the social and nationalist policies have gone away, but the corruption, vote buying and lack of democracy continue. For a sample, the button of the SNTE: what has been fought is every attempt at political independence –including its independence from the teacher Elba Esther– what has been maintained is the absolute political, bureaucratic and electoral manipulation.
Upon disavowing the great lesson of the 20th Century, to which it owed its stay in power, the new political class was sustained by just three props, rigid but not solid: media manipulation, colossal vote buying but in drips (in the end, vote buying on scales that reduce to insignificance the old practice of a sandwich and a soft drink) and brute force, as a last resort, the Army. In places like Chiapas, with high social marginalization and very incipient political awareness (lights that aim in the opposite direction like the work of the Diocese of San Cristóbal and the lightening of Zapatismo should not impede seeing this sad generalized reality), the media manipulation assumes tragic-comical characteristics of the daily exaltation of a governor in a permanent campaign, the vote buying with government supports and programs has the subtle efficiency of a steamroller and the Army and other forms of repression are always around the corner.
One must add to this a fact that is more specific to Chiapas. It turns out that the governor and a sector of the political class that accompanies him, with an incredible blindness, the product of unmeasured ambition for power (that hubris about which Javier Sicilia speaks so much, which inevitably brings about its nemesis) decided to throw over the edge not only the social policies of the old PRI, but even the very cover and party name, ignoring that, if there was anywhere it had taken root and they had to thank for their stay in power it was among the indigenous communities of Chiapas. They shook the hand of the Green Party, which was born to be on the stage with others, and they converted it into the center of their political project. So, nothing else than their pistols imposed the Green candidates on communities of the old PRI roots. Chenalhó it nothing else that the last of a long list: Chamula, San Andrés, Oxchuc, Chanal, Altamirano and many more. Practically all the post-electoral conflicts that have devastated Chiapas since last year’s elections are like that, the creation and exclusive responsibility of those that now suffer their consequences. In the case of Chenalhó it is complicated by a combination with the survival of the paramilitaries responsible for the Acteal Massacre, but that merits a separate analysis.
Division in the communities and destruction of the social fabric is now, unfortunately, an old and sad story in Chiapas, the fruit in good measure (although not exclusively) of the counterinsurgency plans for confronting the Zapatista insurgency. But with these actions, the political class has taken division to the interior of its own support bases and has given a new twist to the destruction of the social fabric. The confrontation in Chenalhó has nothing to do with independent forces in the municipio, the Zapatistas, Las Abejas, not even with the relative of so-called opposition parties. They are simply the old governing sectors, arbitrarily divided by their own state bosses into PRIístas and Greens, who dispute the municipal budget booty, period. But they are taking the whole municipio between the legs (not to speak of the old Secretary of Government and now leader of the Congress). Las Abejas members of the Colonia Puebla are now displaced from their community again (for the third time since 1997) and two people, including a female minor, died there in the crossfire between PRIístas and Greens (for sure, neither the deaths or the displaced angered the authorities as much as the teachers haircuts). Even the Zapatista communities, clearly foreign to all the party fights, feel worried about a violence that could be directed against them at any moment.
At first blush this situation is a product of the blindness and incredible political insensitivity of the ruling class, more than of a deliberate plan to create greater destabilization; the fate run by the leader of the (Chiapas) Congress, would seem to corroborate it: they have not even been capable of protecting themselves. But, who knows? Chiapas is the site and destination of important megaprojects and we know about the increasing pressures throughout Latin America to bring about transnational projects, cost what it may. A churning river is an advantage for fishermen. And the third prop; will it be the Army like they claimed with Ayotzinapa, right there, watching?
*Advisor to alternative education projects on Chenalhó.
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Originally Published in Spanish by La Jornada
Tuesday, June 7, 2016
Re-Published with English interpretation by the Chiapas Support Committee
Chiapas Support Committee 