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Zibechi: A Left for Century XXI
Zapatista paraphernalia on display
By: Raúl Zibechi
In the ‘60s and ‘70s, those who joined the militancy often heard a phrase: “Being like Che.” An ethic was synthesized with that, a conduct, a mode of assuming the collective action the personage inspired that –with the delivery of his life– became the compass for a generation.
“Being like Che” was a motto that didn’t expect militants to follow point-by-point the example of someone who had become an inescapable reference. It was something else; not a model to follow, but rather an ethical inspiration that implied a series of renunciations in the image and resemblance of Che’s life.
Renouncing comforts, material benefits, including the power won in the revolution, being willing to risk your life, they are central values in the heritage that we call “Guevarismo.” For a good while, those were the axes around which a good part of the leftist militancy, at least in Latin America.
That left was defeated in a brief period that we can situate between the State coups of the 1970 and the fall of real socialism, a decade later. It didn’t come out of the big defeats unscathed. Just as the fall of the Paris Commune was a parting of waters, according to Georges Haupt, which led the lefts of that epoch to introduce new themes on their agendas (the party question moved to occupying a central place), the defeats of the Latin American revolutionary movements seem to have produced a fissure in the lefts at the start of the 21st Century.
It’s still very early to make a complete evaluation of that turn since we are at the beginning of it and without sufficient critical distance and, above all, self-criticism. However, we are able to advance some hypotheses that connect those defeats closely with the current conjuncture we experience.
The first is that we’re not talking about turning back the clock to repeat the old errors, of which there were many. Vanguardism was the most evident, accompanied by a serious volunteerism that impeded comprehending that the reality we sought to transform was very different than what we thought, which led to underestimating the power of the dominant classes and, above all, to believing that a revolutionary situation existed.
But vanguardism didn’t cede easily. It is solidly rooted in the culture of the lefts and although it was defeated in its guerrilla version, it seems to have mutated and remains alive as much in the so-called social movements as in the parties that pretend to know what the population wants without the need of listening to it. A large part of the governments and progressive leaders are good examples of the perseverance of a vanguardism without a proclaimed vanguard.
The second has a relationship to the method, armed struggle. The fact that the generation of the 60s and 70s had committed gross errors in the use and abuse of violence is not saying that we have to throw everything out. We remember that at least in Uruguay it was thought that: “action generates conscience,” thus granting an almost magical ability to the armed vanguard for generating action in the masses only with its activity, as if the people could act by mechanical reflexes without the need for organizing and preparing themselves.
The armed organizations also committed indefensible atrocities, using violence not only against their enemies, but often also against their own people and also against those compañeros that presented political differences with their organization. The assassinations of Roque Dalton and Comandanta Ana María, in El Salvador, are two of the gravest deeds inside the rebel camp.
However, that doesn’t mean that we don’t have to defend ourselves. We must not go to the opposite extreme of trusting in the system’s armed forces (as the Vice President of Bolivia points out), or strip the repressive forces of their class character. The examples of the EZLN, of the Mapuche people of Chile, of the Indigenous Nasa Guard in Colombia and of the Amazonian Indigenous of Bagua in Peru demonstrate that it’s necessary and possible to organize collective community defense.
The third question is the most political and also ethical. Within the legacy of Che and within the practice of that generation, power occupies a central place, something that we cannot deny, nor should we. But the conquest of power was for the benefit of the people; never, never for one’s own benefit, not even for the group or party that took state power.
There is an open discussion about this theme, in view of the negative balance of the exercise of power by the Soviet and Chinese parties, among others. But beyond the errors and horrors committed by the revolutionary powers in the 20th Century, even beyond whether or not it’s convenient to take State power in order to change the world, it’s necessary to remember power was considered a means for transforming society, never an end in itself.
There’s a lot of cloth to cut about this issue, in view of the brutal corruption encrusted in some progressive governments and parties (particularly in Brazil and Venezuela), questions that few now dare to deny.
The left that we need for the 21st Century cannot but help to have present the history of past revolutionary struggles. It’s necessary to incorporate that motto “being like Che,” but without falling into vanguardism. A good update of that spirit can be: “everything for everyone, nothing for us.” The same thing can be said of the “to govern obeying,” which seems like an important antidote to vanguardism.
There is something fundamental that would not be good to let escape. The type of militants that the 21st Century left needs must be modeled by the “will to sacrifice” (Benjamin). It is evident that the phrase sounds fatal in the current period, but we cannot obtain anything without doing away with that tremendous fantasy that it’s possible to change the world voting every five years [or four] and consuming the rest of the time.
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Originally Published in Spanish by La Jornada
Friday, January 22, 2016
Re-published with English interpretation by the Chiapas Support Committee
Mexico suffers an epidemic of disappearances
We went from indignation to ORGANIZATION.
By: José Antonio Román
An epidemic of disappearances exists in Mexico, fed by the government’s “incompetence, inertia and indolence,” which has been more worried about giving “entirely political responses” than about designing real and articulated efficient public policies for confronting that phenomenon, Amnesty International (AI).
Upon presenting the report Treated with indolence: the state’s response to disappearance in Mexico, the international human rights organization emphasized that almost half of the 27,600 people disappeared or not located, according to official numbers, have been reported during the administration of president Enrique Peña Nieto; 3,425 of them in 2015.
AI points out in the 52-page document that many cases derive from detentions by members of the Army or police, and the fact that Mexico lacks a registry of apprehensions “permit the authorities to deny all responsibility and wash their hands of it.”
It warns about the urgency with which the Mexican State recognizes the magnitude of the problem and fully assumes its duty to investigate all the cases of disappearance and enforced disappearances that occurred in the country, and of bringing those responsible before justice, adhering to due process guaranties, as well as assuring access to integral reparations for the harm to all the victims and their family members.
In the report, AI chose two emblematic cases that demonstrate various facets of the problem. One case is that reported in recent years in Ciudad Cuauhtémoc, Chihuahua, where 351 people have disappeared since 2007; 1,700 people have disappeared in the entire state.
The other case is that of the 43 students from the Raúl Isidro Burgos Rural Teachers College, of Ayotzinapa, Guerrero.
“In Mexico it doesn’t matter whether a disappearance is treated as a hidden situation or is a high profile case, the authorities seem incapable of giving a solid and institutional response that may lead to finding the truth and guarantying justice,” the report presented officially yesterday at the Memory and Tolerance Museum points out.
Amnesty International points out that the incompetence that affects the whole system and the total absence of will from state and federal authorities to investigate the disappearance of thousands of people and dutifully look for them feed a human rights crisis of epidemic proportions.
“The incessant wave of disappearances that has seized Chihuahua and the total lack of responsibility with which the investigation into the enforced disappearance of the 43 Ayotzinapa students is being managed show the Mexican authorities absolute disrespect for dignity and human rights,” asserted Erika Guevara-Rosas, director of Amnesty International’s program for the Americas.
It emphasized that in many cases of denounced disappearances the victim was last seen when members of the police or the Army detained him. Nevertheless, “the Mexican government lacks a detailed registry of detentions, which permits the authorities to deny all responsibility and wash their hands of the commission of enforced disappearances.”
As a result of an investigation, as well as interviews and testimonies from family members of the victims in the case of Ciudad Cuauhtémoc and that of Ayotzinapa, AI assures having established that in neither of them has the search for the disappeared been adequate and well planned.
In both situations, it adds, the authorities have been irresponsible in the way in which they manage the case information.
They also observed that the treatment that the authorities in charge of the investigation give the families is insufficient, hurtful and profoundly disinterested.
The report concludes with 21 recommendations for the Mexican State in the legislative ambit, the search for those disappeared and investigation of the facts, integral repair of the harm and other public policy matters.
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Originally Published in Spanish by La Jornada
Friday, January 15, 2016
Re-published with English interpretation by the Chiapas Support Committee
San Francisco Teopisca defends its land
AFTER 19 YEARS OF DEFENDING THEIR LAND, PROVOCATIONS CONTINUE AGAINST SAN FRANCISCO TEOPISCA, AN ADHERENT TO THE SIXTH
San Francisco Teopisca, Chiapas, Mexico.
“We place responsibility on the 3 levels of government for what can happen to any one of our compañeros for not giving priority to our land demands that we demand as campesinos. We also place responsibility on Señor Pedro Hernández Espinoza for any physical harm that any of our compañeros may suffer.” (Campesinos and campesinas of San Francisco, municipio of Teopisca, Chiapas México, January 10, 2016.)
To the EZLN
To the CNI (Congreso Nacional Indígena, National Indigenous Congress)
To the adherents to the Sixth Declaration of the Lacandón Jungle
To the alternative communications media
To the human rights defenders
To national and international society
We are a group of men and women adherents to the Sixth Declaration of the Lacandón Jungle since 2009, when we started in the struggle as the Other Campaign. Currently, we are part of Semilla Digna (Dignified Seed), which is a group formed by communities of the Sixth in Chiapas, belonging to the CNI. Our struggle is the defense of land and territory.
In 1995, we campesinos started to take steps with the state government of Chiapas to legalize the piece of land called “El Desengaño,” approximately 170 hectares (421 acres) owned by Pedro Hernández Espinoza. But the government never gave us a solution to our need for land. Much time passed and we saw that it was impossible that the government would attend to our request. We decided to occupy these lands because we have the legitimate right being the original peoples and the right to free determination as Convention 169 of the ILO points out.
We have been defending these lands for 19 years, organizing men and women and after several years we decided to formally work these lands. In 2012, we placed a banner on which it says that these lands are ours for the reasons mentioned on March 24, 2014. We placed various hand-painted signs (letreros) to declare and demand our legitimate right. On July 19, 2014, we declared ourselves to be in formal possession of “El Desengaño.”
On September 24, we campesinos once again pronounced that we would continue working it. We, the campesinos of this San Francisco group, have been looking for the most kind and peaceful way to dialogue with Señor Pedro Hernandez Espinoza. We have extended various invitations in various ways, but he never accepted or fulfilled any invitation we made. Now, Señor Hernández Espinoza animals are kept in a smaller space and we gave him 5 days to come and take them out, because we hold to our word that we don’t want the animals, WE WANT THE LAND.
We place responsibility on the 3 levels of government for what could happen to any of our compañeros because of not giving priority to our demands for the land that the campesinos urgently need. We also place responsibility on Señor Pedro Hernández Espinoza for any physical harm that any of our compañeros may suffer.
Sincerely,
Organized Group of Teopisca, Chiapas, Mexico
Adherents to the EZLN’s Sixth Declaration
Members of Dignified Seed, a space for struggle
Members of the National Indigenous Congress
NEVER MORE A MEXICO WITHOUT US
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Originally Published in Spanish by: Pozol Colectivo
Monday, January 11, 2016
Re-Published with English interpretation by the Chiapas Support Committee
Zibechi: From the Bagua Massacre to autonomous government
By: Raúl Zibechi
The formation of Peru’s first autonomous government, on Sunday, November 29 in Soledad community in the Río Santiago District, in the Amazon Province, is the fruit of a long history of frustrations and struggles. That day, 300 representatives from 85 Wampis communities installed their self-government as a way to defend 1.3 million hectares (3.2 million acres) of forests from the extractive multinationals.
They elected the first president of the autonomous territorial government and the 80 members of their parliament, which is to be installed in February. The newspaper Lucha Indígena (Indigenous Struggle), directed by Hugo Blanco, advanced the news in its July edition pointing out: “Appealing to autonomy as a way of solving problems is something novel in the country, but it is present in various indigenous nationalities of other countries. We hope that this will be the start of a new way of behaving from our social movements.”
The immediate background for the installation of the autonomous government was the Wampis Summit on Integral Territory and Autonomous Governance held last June 29-30 in Nueva Alegría community, where 120 representatives of the communities close to the Morona and Santiago Rivers met, in Northern Peru near the border with Ecuador. In that meeting they debated the internal situation of the Wampis people, approved the Autonomous Statute of Territorial Government of the Wampis Nation, designated a commission for the constitution of the government and presented the project of the biological corridor in their territory.
The nine-page document is the traditional text of the indigenous peoples, where below three pages of print appear another six replete with signatures, seals and even fingerprints that put the mark of approval on what was agreed, community by community, completing the ritual of big decisions. It’s a sample of the democracy of those below.
In the first part, the document titled “Act of Validation of the Autonomous Statute of Territorial Government of the Wampis Nation” analyzed the weaknesses in the communities and organizations. It emphasizes the threat that the presence of oil, mining and lumber companies represents to the people, and defends the union for “asserting our rights with the State and the private sector.” The Statute approved consists of 61 articles and three temporary articles whose contents were amplified during the debate, while others were left out.
Among the agreements figures the rejection of the entry of extractive companies without consultation, “not permitting that other indigenous organizations continue emerging since we are preparing to install our own government structure.” This exclusion is justified in the affirmation of sovereignty and self-determination in the face of State’s interference, international cooperation and the NGOs that usually promote the formation of organizations outside the control of the communities in order to weaken the indigenous nation’s project.
Finally, the meeting set the dates of November 28 and 29 for installing the autonomous government, as effectively was done.
The distant background implies going back to the decade of the 1970s when the Aguaruna-Huambisa Council, made up of Awajún and Wampis (names in the language of these warring communities), was formed around 1977. That signified a profound change in the history of the peoples. Representatives of the communities coming from the Cenepa, Nieva, Marañón and Santiago Rivers went to the first General Assembly.
It was the first occasion on which both peoples overcame their historic rivalry to confront external threats. Later would come a long period of resistances more or less open, more or less implicit, as so many native peoples of this continent have lived.
On June 5, 2009, a massacre took place against the Awajún and Wampi that had been mobilizing against decrees of the Alan García government that delivered their wealth within the framework of the FTA with the United States. The government sent the armed forces to dislodge a peaceful protest that lasted 57 days focused in the jungle regions of five departments (states): Amazonas, Cusco, Loreto, San Martín and Ucayali. Three MI-17 helicopters flew over the highway that joins the jungle with the Pacific at Devil’s Curve, which some five thousand Awajún and Wampis occupy. They launched tear gas at the crowd the (although other versions say that they also fired machine guns) while police attacked the blockade on land, firing their rifles.
Police officers take up positions against native people in Bagua province June 5, 2009. The death toll rose on Saturday after Peruvian security forces battled native Indians in clashes that highlighted opposition to exploration in the Amazon and could threaten Peru’s investor-friendly government. Nine police officers held hostage by the protesters were killed and another 22 were freed by troops in a rescue operation, National Police Chief Miguel Hidalgo told Peru’s RPP radio broadcaster. He said seven other hostages were missing. Picture taken June 5, 2009. REUTERS.
The Bagua population went out in the streets in support of the indigenous, setting state and local institutions of the officialist (pro-government) APRA party on fire. Dozens of indigenous were dead because of the soldiers and a still undetermined number were disappeared. Several police were dead because of the indigenous. The Prime Minister Yehude Simón, a former ally of the armed group MRTA (Tupac Amaru Revolutionary Movement), classified the indigenous demands as “whims.”
The decision to form their self-government can be a decisive step for Peru’s popular struggles. In the case of the Wampis it seems the corollary of a long path on which they comprehended that you can’t expect anything from those above.
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Originally Published in Spanish by Desinformemonos
Monday, December 7, 2015
Re-published with English interpretation by the Chiapas Support Committee
66 Police injured in Oxchuc, Chiapas confrontation
CONFRONTATION WITH RESIDENTS IN OXCHUC; THERE ARE 66 POLICE INJURED
By: Elio Henríquez, Correspondent
Before, during and after the confrontation with police in Oxchuc, Chiapas, dissidents burned three trucks belonging to the State Preventive Police, two small trucks of the “Trustworthy Police” and two buses belonging to commercial lines, besides damaging a tractor-trailer. Photo: La Jornada
San Cristóbal de las Casas, Chiapas
The assistant government secretary in the Los Altos zone of Chiapas, Edgar Rosales Acuña, reported that a confrontation between state and municipal security forces and residents of the municipio of Oxchuc that demand the dismissal of Mayor María Gloria Sánchez Gómez, of the Green Ecologist Party of Mexico (PVEM, its initials in Spanish), left 66 police injured, 15 houses vandalized and eight vehicles burned.
He said that the confrontation took place on Friday night when some 500 state police attempted to recover control of the municipal headquarters, situated 50 kilometers from this city (San Cristóbal de Las Casas), hours after the state police detained 38 opponents of the mayor, for the crime of rioting and for their alleged participation in the protests against Sánchez Gómez, who won the elections last July 19.
A dispute over power
The dispute for power in Oxchuc between the mayor and the local deputy, Cecilia López Sánchez, also of the PVEM, intensified with the burning of the city hall two days before the mayor would take possession of the office on last October 1, for the second time in less than 15 years.
For the last three months hundreds of Sánchez Gómez opponents have held marches and carried out roadblocks to demand her dismissal and the formation of a municipal council, with the argument that she divides the population and benefits from her position as mayor that her husband Norberto Sántiz López had.
After different proposals, state authorities called the dissidents to a meeting in this city last Friday to deal with the theme, but the 38 members of the commission were detained by the police.
Rosales Acuña explained that after the detention, which occurred after noon on Friday, hundreds of Oxchuc indigenous blocked the highway that communicates this city with Ocosingo and Palenque, at the place of the municipal headquarters. They took possession of a tractor-trailer and two buses and blocked a street to impede the passage of state police vehicles.
He added that at night more than 500 police entered the municipal capital, which derived into the confrontation with sticks, stones, machetes and other objects. “We have 66 injured, between state and municipal police that resisted the aggressors attack for more than three hours, after they found out that their leaders had been arrested,” he assured.
He reported that only eight of the agents were hospitalized, of which two are “delicate” and were moved to Tuxtla Gutiérrez. “They were injured with rockets, Molotov cocktails, sticks, stones and other objects.”
He expressed that before, during and after the confrontation, the dissidents set fire to three State Preventive Police trucks, two small trucks of the Trustworthy Police and two buses belonging to commercial lines, besides damaging a tractor-trailer.
He stated that they vandalized 15 houses, among them that of the municipal president and of the Indigenous Peace and Conciliation Judge, Rogelio Sántiz López, who together with two of his sons remained held this evening.
Tension in the municipio
“The situation remains tense in Oxchuc, although with less intensity than yesterday (Friday). Fortunately, we have no deaths and all the injuries are on our side because the police went armed only with clubs,” he specified.
He maintained that the opponents of the mayor “are a tactical group with military training that make patrols at determined times, that intimidate, deceive people, oblige them to go to the marches because if they don’t they fine them. They also threaten them with taking away (cutting off) their water, light and drainage. They are well-trained groups that are confronting the governmental apparatus.”
The opponents reported that the assistant secretary for human rights of the Chiapas Secretariat of Government, Mario Carlos Culebro Velasco, “deceived” them because upon initiating the Friday meeting he told members of the commission that: “two packets would be open for negotiation: the mayor’s dismissal and that of Deputy Cecilia López, (and) he offered to integrate some of us into the Oxchuc municipal government and into the state government.”
In a comunicado signed by Hilda Gómez and Reynaldo Sántiz, they added that: “Culebro Velasco asked if we wanted to eat some tamales, and therefore ordered his collaborators to serve them with coffee. He left the office at 12:25 PM and two minutes after the farce of showing friendliness, ministerial police agents entered and detained the commission’s 38 members.”
The dissidents insisted on the dismissal of María Gloria –who works out of her private home–, releasing the detainees and forming: “a plural and inclusive municipal council that will generate peace and will work for all of the communities in Oxchuc.”
Translator’s Note:
The day after this was published, the Altos (Highlands) teachers’ organization issued a statement about this situation, indicating the leftist teachers group may be involved, and a citizens’ group also issued a statement.
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Originally Published in Spanish by La Jornada
Sunday, January 10, 2016
Re-published with English interpretation by the Chiapas Support Committee
Zibechi: Movements facing the end of the democracies
By: Raúl Zibechi
In his first 2016 article, the winner of the Nobel Prize for Economics, Paul Krugman, analyzes the consequences of the domination of the oligarchy’s money in his country’s political system. Under the title “Privileges, pathology and power” (The New York Times, January 1, 2016), he maintains that: “the rich are, on the average, less likely to show empathy, with respect to the norms and laws, even more likely to be unfaithful, than those that occupy the lower rungs on the economic scale.”
It’s not just about a social and cultural condition, even less about a spiritual tendency. He centers his analysis on the answer to a key question: “What happens to a nation that grants greater political power all the time to the super rich?”
The answer is pearled from examples. Half of the contributions to all candidates in the first part of the 2016 electoral campaign come from less than 200 wealthy families. Those kinds of families have children whose behavior Krguman classifies as “spoiled egomaniacs” whose best example is the candidate that marches at the front of the Republican gang, Donald Trump. In his opinion, he could have been “a blowhard and a bully” in any place he occupies, because “his billions permit him to evade the controls that impede the majority of people from releasing their narcissistic tendencies.”
Another example: Sheldon Adelson, is a magnate of Las Vegas games of chance, accused of links to organized crime and the business of prostitution. To block his court proceedings, he bought Nevada’s largest newspaper, displaced the print version, told the reporters to start monitoring all activity of three judges of the court in charge of his case and allegedly started to “publish negative reports about the judges.” The multi-millionaire Adelson started to play an important role inside the Republican Party from his Las Vegas bastion, which he uses as an electoral platform.
Krugman talks about an oligarchy that has taken possession of politics. It can be said that this is nothing new and that there are only a few analysts that agree with that judgment. Paul Craig Roberts, former assistant secretary of the Treasury in the Ronald Reagan government, maintains that the collapse of the Soviet Union in 1991 provoked an explosion of arrogance in the United States elites that carried the neo-conservatives to control of the country’s foreign and domestic policy. The repeal of internal financial regulation and the tendency to lead the world towards nuclear war at the international level are some of the most ominous consequences of this systemic turn.
For the popular movements, the problem does not consist only in establishing that up there above they have lost direction, since they don’t have either contact with society or the least bit of interest in that society’s survival. Only money interests them, the non-stop accumulation of wealth, even at the price of the destruction of life. Our problem is what to do with an electoral system that has been converted into the political system’s only public rite that really exists. Although the majorities know that the elections are rigged, that fraud is systematic (before, during and after the emission of the vote), that although they get to elect the lesser of the evils (if one exists) nothing fundamental is going to change, there are many below that still believe their best path is to improve the current situation.
I think that the recent comunicado of the EZLN, on January 1, gives us some clues about how to get out of this involuntary situation that leads to the hegemonic political culture. The text that Subcomandante Moisés read in Oventic, emphasizes that the standard of living of the Zapatista communities is very superior to what they had 22 years ago, when the open rebellion started, and better than that of the communities related to the government. “Selling out to the bad government not only did not resolve their needs, but rather added more horrors. Where before there was hunger and poverty, now hunger and poverty continue, but there is also despair.”
While the party members have been converted “into groups of beggars that don’t work, they just wait for the next governmental program,” the Zapatistas are not only known for using the paliacate but because they know how to work the land and take care of their culture, because they study and they also respect women, for their dignity. The Zapatistas have “the clean and lofty view,” they consider the autonomous government as a service and govern collectively.
The Zapatistas don’t expect solutions to come from above; for 22 years, the comunicado says, “we have continued constructing another way of life” that includes self-government. I believe the key is here. Even the most renowned members of the system, like Krugman, recognize that everything is rotten up there above. We know that and it’s good to remember it.
But we still lack constructing that other way of living: being capable of governing ourselves. Above all, we still lack believing that we are capable of doing it and, therefore, starting to do it. The new political culture won’t come from books or from declarations: it emerges from collective work with others.
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Originally Published in Spanish by Desinformemonos
January 4, 2016
Re-Published with English interpretation by the Chiapas Support Committee
Ejido Tila occupies municipal headquarters
[Intro: The Ejido Tila continues to occupy the municipal building that its members partially destroyed and then occupied on Decembers 16, 2015. Ejido members occupy the building and the ejido publishes frequent updates (comunicados) on their website: http://laotraejidotila.blogspot.mx/ The comunicado below expresses solidarity with other adherents to the EZLN’s Sixth Declaration that are facing eviction or paramilitary attacks, thus giving an overview of what’s happening in Chiapas with adherents to the 6th.]
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Banner hanging on the facade of the Tila municipal headquarters, now reclaimed and occupied by members of the ejido and adherents to the EZLN’s Sixth Declaration.
AGAINST the GOVERNMENT’S PARAMILITARY ACTIONS TOWARDS LAS ABEJAS, RESPECT for SAN ISIDRO LOS LAURELES and A THANK YOU TO BACHAJÓN
Ejido Tila, Chiapas, Mexico January 02, 2016
To: Public Opinion
To: The national and international Mass communications media
To: The social organizations that fight for justice and dignity
To: The Network against Repression and for Solidarity
To: The adherents to the Sixth Declaration of the Lacandón Jungle
To: The Non-Governmental Human Rights defenders
To: The National Indigenous Congress (CNI)
To: The National and International Sixth Commission
Receive a cordial greeting from adherents to the (EZLN’s) Sixth Declaration of the Lacandón Jungle of the Ejido Tila, Chiapas Mexico and an embrace to all the organizations in solidarity with our struggle, a struggle that will be tireless because we must be in solidarity with each other against that capitalist monster that converts our lands into merchandise in order to gain more money and subject the poor to being even poorer. To the compañeros and compañeras of San Sebastián Bachajón: thank you for your solidarity with our struggle.
We demand that the state government not repress our compañeros and compañeras of San Isidro Los Laureles [1] in the municipality de Venustiano Carranza, Chiapas and from the Ejido Tila and all the corners we will continue demanding because it’s time to join forces, because we will not permit that they continue committing injustices towards the indigenous communities. The lands that our indigenous brothers of San Isidro Los Laureles reclaimed must be respected, just like they respected the belongings of the alleged owner that monopolizes large extensions of land.
Our brothers and sisters fear a possible eviction on the government’s part and from here we demand respect and that decisions to reclaim their lands that were in the possession of the large estate owners for a long time and that they have decided to reclaim be respected. Also, on December 16, 2015, the Ejido Tila recuperated its land and expelled the municipal authorities that wanted to expropriate 130 hectares of our land in order to convert them into private property. We will be demonstrating forcefully over anything that may happen to our brothers because the Ejido Tila is also on maximum alert for whatever counterinsurgency attack that the three levels of government are preparing for attacking the Ejido Tila and other Chiapas organizations with the use of paramilitaries whatever you call them.
We reproach the constant aggressions that our brothers and sisters of the organization Las Abejas of Acteal, Chenalhó, Chiapas have suffered that paramilitaries ambushed near Pantelhó municipality on December 29, 2015 [2] and as always all these aggressions have been kept in complete impunity as they have the support of the three levels government, therefore they continue murdering and harming our brothers and the municipal police don’t do anything because they are well coordinated from the three levels of government. Attorney General C. Raciel López Salazar denies that paramilitary groups exist and as always he comes out and tells us that it’s an intercommunity conflict. But from here we demand a stop to the attacks and harassment; and also that those responsible for these acts are punished. There are more social fighters and political prisoners in Mexico’s prisons than criminals, because the government utilizes them for hiding and stockpiling its Armed Forces.
We ask all the social organizations and non-governmental human rights defenders to be on alert for the wave of attacks on our brother and sister fighters and we will continue reporting how often they are and we will not tire.
Sincerely,
Tierra y Libertad
EJIDO TILA
President of the Ejido Commission
President of the Vigilance Council
(SEALS)
NEVER MORE A MEXICO WITHOUT US!
STOP THE REPRESSION AND ATTACKS AGAINST THE INDIGENOUS COMMUNITIES!
WE ARE ALL ABEJAS OF ACTEAL!
Ejido Tila Adherents to the Sixth
http://laotraejidotila.blogspot.mx/2016/01/contra-las-acciones-paramilitares-del.html
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[1] On December 20, 2015, Los Laureles community reclaimed (recuperated) approximately 407 acres of neighboring land formerly worked by their grandparents as serfs. Los Laureles community is a member of the Semilla Digna organization, which is an adherent to the Sixth Declaration of the Lacandón Jungle.
[2] On December 29, armed men wearing military clothing shot at 3 young brothers from a family belonging to Las Abejas of Acteal. No one was seriously injured, but one of the brothers sustained an injury to his foot. Las Abejas denounced that these armed men were dressed the same as those who murdered Manuel López Pérez 6 months ago in the same region of Pantelhó municipality.
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English interpretation, Intro and footnotes by the Chiapas Support Committee
Background article: http://compamanuel.com/2015/12/29/accuse-tila-mayor-of-reactivating-paramilitaries/
Esteva: Disputing politics
By: Gustavo Esteva
It will be a year of intense political dispute, in the midst of war. But the dispute among the politicians will be irrelevant. What will be important is disputing politics itself, reclaiming it.
On the surface, attention will be on the politicians. There will be advances of the 2018 presidential contest and elections for governors, municipal authorities and deputies in more than a third of the country. Electoral propaganda will conceal the void. The maximum distribution of the irrelevant will dissimulate the absence of a debate about what’s important, particularly about the ominous perspectives of environmental and social disaster that hover over us. All over the country it will continue becoming evident the distance between the discourse of the political and economic leaders and the real conditions of the population and the country.
In the world of politicians, nobody dares to recognize the state of things. They intensely dispute to win government positions, under the superstition that once in them they will be able to govern… and that they will do it for the common good. They are not able to recognize that they could only win soft jobs and privileges and a marginal influence on what happens, at the price of becoming accomplices of all kinds of corrupt acts and of the destruction of the natural and social life to which all governments are dedicated. It cannot be any other way. In today’s world, all the “governments” have to subordinate themselves to the logic of capitalism… and one cannot govern with capitalism, if by government we understand regular behaviors and events functioning for the common good.
There are many ways of dealing with the capitalist hydra. All the following adjectives fit: cruel, ingenuous, efficient, blind, incompetent, skillful, populist, fascist, xenophobic… But all, because of the very structure of the governments, as much the state apparatus as what continues to be called democracy, are subordinate to the logic of capitalism and therefore to its corrupting and destructive impetus. Few politicians dare to react before anticapitalist postures in the terms of the leader of Podemos, in Spain, who declared last June 25: “May you hold onto the red flag and leave us in peace. I want to win.” And that way he won what he won: the sacred right to complain. His position is not mere cynicism. It’s about a realistic attitude in the electoral game: in order to win it is indispensable to sell your soul, because once above it isn’t possible to hold on to it. It is pure demagogy to maintain that once in the government it will be possible to really be occupied with the common good and to preserve decency and an ethical sense.
Because of that the real dispute is in another place: it is the struggle to justify political activity, drawing away from the stench of the electoral fight and on the other hand occupying ourselves with resisting and constructing: resisting the dominant and destructive horror, more blind and aggressive all the time, and constructing the new world, a world that leaves behind the capitalist mode of production as well as its form of political existence, the “democratic despotism” that prevails in the nation-states and the international institutions.
Resistance and construction of the new, each time more inseparable, in practice demand being busy day after day, tirelessly, in homes, families, communities, collectives and organizations of all kinds, for dismantling capitalist social relations and the political relations that make them possible.
The dominant regime, with its two-faced politics and economics, now organizes an unprecedented devastating war against life in all its forms. It is not the will of a few politicians or capitalists that enrich themselves from it: it is an inertia in which they themselves are prisoners. Therefore it’s useless to pretend that the substitution of some (others) could stop that war. The only way to achieve that is to dismantle its basis for existence through the construction of political and economic autonomy.
The EZLN says well in its January first comunicado that: “a bloody night… extends over the world (…) It’s clear that the worst is coming (…) We must organize ourselves, prepare ourselves to fight, for changing this life, for creating another way of life, another way of governing ourselves, the peoples (…) There is nothing now to trust in capitalism (…) Now only the trust among ourselves remains… Therefore we must unite more, organize ourselves better for constructing our ship, our house, in other words, our autonomy, because it’s what is going to same us from the storm that approaches (…) It’s the time for reaffirming our conscience of struggle and for committing to continue forward, cost what it may and whatever happens (…) It is not the time to get discouraged or for getting tired, we ought to be firmer in our struggle.”
In the face of what is coming, the temptation to surrender, sell out and give up is great. It has many faces and justifications. There doesn’t seem to be any other option than to adapt to what exists… There is no other way, is said continuously. But there is! And that other plural way, difficult and uncomfortable but valiant and imaginative, that option of resistance and construction, appears each time more as the only form of surviving the general war that is currently unleashed against everything that’s alive and will be intensified this year to unprecedented levels. There is no place for optimism, but we begin the year full of hope. The voice of the EZLN is not marginal or isolated. It finds resonance in the entire world. At the end of the day, we are the most.
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Originally Published in Spanish by La Jornada
Monday, January 4, 2016
Re-published with English interpretation by the Chiapas Support Committee
EZLN’s Words on 22nd Anniversary
The EZLN’s Words on the 22nd Anniversary
of the beginning of the war against oblivion
January 1, 2016
Good evening, Good morning compañeros, compañeras of the Zapatista Army of National Liberation bases of support, militia-men and militia-women compañeros/as, insurgent-women and insurgent-men, local and regional persons in charge, the authorities of the three levels of the autonomous government, compañeros/as promoters in different areas of work, compañeros, compañeras of the National and International Sixth and to all present.
Compañeras and compañeros, today we are celebrating the 22nd anniversary of the start of the war against oblivion.
During more than 500 years we suffered the war of the powerful from different nations, languages, colors and beliefs waged to annihilate us.
They tried to kill us, whether it was killing our bodies, whether it was killing our ideas. But we resisted.
As original peoples, as guardians of mother earth, we resisted.
Not only here and not only those of us the color of the earth.
In all the corners of the world where people suffered before and who suffer now, there were and there are dignified and rebellious people that resisted, that resist against the death imposed from above.
On the first of January of 1994, 22 years ago, we made public the “ENOUGH!” that we prepared in dignified silence for a decade.
Quieting our sorrow this way we prepared the outburst cry of our sorrow.
Our word thus was of fire.
To awaken those asleep.
To raise up those who fell.
To enrage those who conformed and gave up.
To rebel history.
To obligate her to say what had been silenced.
To reveal the history of exploitations, assassinations, plunders, contempt and exclusion that hid behind the history from above.
That history of museums, statues, textbooks, monuments to the lie.
With the death of our people, with our blood, we shook up from its slumber the world resigned to defeat.
It was not just words. The blood of our fallen these 22 years joined those from the previous years, decades, centuries.
We had to choose and we chose life.
That’s why, then and now, we live to die.
As simple as our blood painting the streets and walls of the cities that despise us now like they did before, it was our word then.
And continues being:
The banner of our struggle was our 11 demands: land, work, nutritious food, health, education, dignified housing, independence, democracy, liberty, justice and peace.
These demands were the ones that made us rise up in arms because they were what the original peoples and the majority of the people in this country and in the world lacked.
In this way, we struggled against exploitation, marginalization, humiliation, contempt, obscurity, and for all the injustices we lived caused by the evil system.
Because for the rich and powerful we were only useful as slaves, so that they could become richer and we poorer every time.
After living for so long under this domination and plunder, we said:
¡ENOUGH! ¡AND HERE OUR PATIENCE RUNS OUT!
And we saw that we had no other path than to take up arms to kill or die for a just cause.
But we were not alone.
We are not alone now.
Throughout Mexico and the world dignity has taken the streets and demanded space for the word.
We understood then.
From that moment on our way of struggle changed and we were and are a listening ear and an open word, because we knew from the beginning that a just struggle of the people is for life and not for death.
But we have at one side our weapons, we won’t put them away, they will be with us till the end.
Because we saw that where our listening was an open heart, the Boss put his word of deception, his heart of ambition and lie.
We saw that the war from above continued.
Their plan and objective was and is to make war against us until they exterminate us. That’s why instead of resolving our just demands, he prepared and prepares, he made and makes war with his modern weaponry, organizes and finances paramilitary groups, he offers and distributes crumbs, taking advantage of the ignorance and poverty of some.
Those bossy ones from above are fools. They thought that those who were willing to listen were also willing to sell themselves out, to surrender, to waver.
They were mistaken then.
They are mistaken now.
Because we Zapatistas are very clear that we are not beggars or useless ones that wait about for someone else to solve everything.
We are peoples with dignity, with decision and consciousness to struggle for true liberty and justice for all, for heshes. Without regard to color, race, gender, belief, calendar, geography.
That’s why our struggle is not local, or regional, or even national. It is universal.
Because the injustices, the crimes, the plunderings, the contempt, the exploitations are universal.
But rebellion, rage, dignity, the desire to be better are also universal.
That’s why we understood that it was necessary to build our life ourselves, with autonomy.
In the midst of great threats, military and paramilitary harassment, and the constant provocations of the evil government, we began forming our own system of governance, our autonomy, with our own education, our own health, our own communication, our way of caring and working for our mother earth; our own politics as a people and our own ideology of how we want to live as a people, with another culture.
Where others wait for those from above to solve the problems of those below; we, Zapatista women and men, began to build our liberty by how we plant, how we build, how we grow, that is to say, from below.
But the bad government tries to destroy and end out struggle and resistance with a war that changes in intensity as it changes its deceptive politics, with their evil ideas, with their lies, using the means of communication to broadcast them and with the distribution of crumbs among the indigenous peoples where there are Zapatistas, to thus divide and buy consciousness, applying that way their counterinsurgency plan.
But the war that comes from above, compañeras, compañeros, sisters and brothers, is always the same: it only brings destruction and death.
They can change the ideas and the banners with which they arrive, but the war from above always destroys, always kills, never sows anything but terror and hopelessness.
In the middle of that war we have to walk towards what we want.
We could not sit down to wait for those to understand who do not understand or do not even want to understand.
We could not sit down to wait so that the criminal could disown himself and his history and convert himself, a repentant, into someone good.
We could not wait for a long and useless list of promises that would be forgotten a few minutes later.
We could not wait for the other, different but the same in pain and rage, to see us and seeing us see himself.
We did not know how to make.
There wasn’t nor is there a book, a manual or a doctrine that would tell us how to resist and, at the same time, build something new and better.
Maybe not perfect, maybe different, but always ours, of our peoples, of the women, men, children and elders that with their collective heart cover the black banner with the red star that has five points and the letters that not only names them but also names their commitment and destiny: E Z L N.
Then we searched in our ancestral history, in our collective heart, and with those who have stumbled, with faults and errors, we went building this that we are and which does not just keep us alive and resisting, but also raises us up dignified and rebels.
During these 22 years of struggle of resistance and rebellion, we continued building another form of life, governing ourselves as collective peoples that we are, based on the seven principles of rule by obeying, building a new system and another way of life like the original peoples.
One where the people rules and the government obeys.
And our simple heart sees that that is the healthiest way, because it is born and grows from the people, that is to say, it is the people who gives their opinion, discuss, think, analyze, propose and decide what is best for their benefit, following the example that our ancestors gave us.
As we will be explaining later, we see that abandonment and misery reign in the partisan communities, laziness and crime rules, community life is broken, mortally wounded.
Selling yourself to the evil government not only didn’t resolve your needs but added other horrors.
Where before there was hunger and poverty, they continue being but additionally there is hopelessness.
The partisan communities have converted into groups of beggars that do not work, they only wait for the next government aid program, or wait for the next election season.
And this will not appear in any report from the municipal, state or federal governments, but it is the truth that can be seen on the partisan communities: farmworkers that do not know how to work the land anymore, empty brick houses because neither the cement nor the metal sheets can be eaten, destroyed families, communities that only come together to receive government handouts.
In our communities maybe there are no cement houses, nor digital televisions or the latest model truck, but our people know how to work the land. What our people put on the table, the clothes we wear, the medicine that heals us, the knowledge that is learned, the life that happens is OURS, product of our work and of our knowledge. No one gives it to us.
We can say it without shame: the Zapatista communities are not only better off than they were 22 years ago. Their level of life is superior to those that have sold themselves out to the parties of all colors.
Before, to know who was a Zapatista you would look for a red bandanna or a ski-mask.
Now you only have to see if they know how to work the land; if they take care of their culture; if they study to learn science and technics; if they respect like the women we are; if they hold their head high and clear; if they see the autonomous rebel government positions as service and not as business; if when someone asks them something they don’t know, they answer “I don’t know… yet;” if when someone mocks them saying that the Zapatistas don’t exist, that they are just a few, she replies, “Don’t worry, we are going to be more, it won’t be long all of a sudden, but we will be more;” if they look far into calendars and geographies; if they know that tomorrow is planted today.
But yes, we recognize that we have much more to do; that we need to organize ourselves more and better.
That’s why we have to exert ourselves more to fulfill more and improve the work of governing ourselves, because here comes again the evil of evils: the evil capitalist system.
And we have to know how to confront it. We already have 32 years of experience of struggle of rebellion and resistance.
We are what we are.
We are the Zapatista Army of National Liberation.
We are even if they do not name us.
We are even if with silences and slanders they forget us.
We are even if they do not look at us.
We are in the steps, along the way, at the origin, in destiny.
And in what we are we see, we look, we hear sorrows and sufferings near and far in calendars and geographies.
And we looked before, and we look now.
A bloody night, more if it were possible, extends over the world.
The Bossy One not only insists on continuing to exploit, to repress, to despise and to plunder.
He is bent on destroying the entire world if that gives him profits, money, pay.
It is clear that the worst is coming for everyone, for heshes.
Because the multimillionaire rich of a few countries, continue with the objective of plundering all the natural wealth in all the world, everything that gives us life like water, land, forests, mountains, rivers, air; and everything beneath the soil: gold, oil, uranium, amber, sulfur, coal and other minerals. Because they do not consider earth as the source of life, but as a business and they convert everything into a commodity. And they convert commodities into money, and that’s how they want to completely destroy us.
The evil and the bad have a name, a history, an origin, a calendar, a geography: it is the capitalist system.
It doesn’t matter how they paint it, it doesn’t matter what they name it, doesn’t matter what religion they dress it in, it doesn’t matter what flag they raise.
It is the capitalist system.
It is the exploitation of humanity and the world she inhabits.
It holds in contempt everything that is different and that does not sell out, does not surrender, does not give up.
It is the one that persecutes, jails, assassinates.
It is the one that robs.
In front of him arise, are born, reproduce, grow and die saviors, leaders, bosses, candidates, governments, parties that offer solutions.
Just like another commodity, recipes are offered to solve problems,
Maybe some still believe that from above, where the problems come from, the solutions will come.
Maybe there are still some that believe in local, regional, national and world saviors.
Maybe there are still those that wait for someone to do what we are supposed to do ourselves.
That would be good, yes.
Everything easy, comfortable, effortless. Just raise your hand, cross out a ballot, fill out a form, applaud, yell out a slogan, join a political party, vote to throw out one and let another one enter.
Maybe, we say, we think, we Zapatista women and men that are what we are.
That would be good, but it isn’t.
Because what we have learned as the Zapatistas that we are and without anyone having taught us, if it hasn’t been from our own way, it is that no one, absolutely no one is coming to save us, to help us solve our problems, to relieve our pains, to gift us the justice that we need and that we deserve.
Only what we do ourselves, each one according to their calendar and their geography, according to their collective name, their thought and their action, their origin and destiny.
And we have also learned, as the Zapatistas that we are, that is only with organization that it is possible.
We learned that if one, he, she, heshe, becomes enraged, it is beautiful.
That if several, many, heshes become enraged then a light is turned on in a corner of the world and that light is able to illuminate for a few instances the entire face of the world.
But we also learned that if those enraged indignations organize… Ah! Then it is not a fleeting light that illuminates the earthly roads.
Then it is like a murmur, like a hum, like a temblor, that begins to sound lightly first, then stronger later.
As if this world were giving birth to another world, a better, a more just, a more democratic, a more free, a more human… or a humyn… or humanoa world.
That’s why today we began this part of our word with a word from before, but that continues being necessary, urgent, vital: we have to organize ourselves, prepare ourselves to struggle, to change this life, to create another form of life, another form of self-governance, for ourselves our peoples.
Because if we do not organize ourselves, we will become more enslaved.
There is nothing to left to trust in capitalism. Absolutely nothing. We have already lived hundreds of years in their system, we have already suffered the four wheels of the carriage of capitalism: exploitation, repression, plunder and contempt.
All that remains is trust among ourselves, men and women, where we do know how to build a new society, a new system of government, with the just and dignified life that we want.
Because now no one is safe from the storm of the capitalist hydra that destroys our lives.
Indigenous people, agriculture workers, workers, house wives, intellectuals, men and women workers in general, because there are many workers who struggle to survive every day, some with a boss and others without, but that fall into the same claws of capitalism.
Which is to say there is no salvation from capitalism.
No one is going to lead us, it us ourselves who will lead us, taking into account how we think about how we will resolve each situation.
Because if we think there is someone who will lead us, well we’ve seen how we were led during hundred of years before and within the capitalist system, that it did not serve us the fucking downtrodden. For them yes, because there yes, just sitting, they made money to live.
They told everyone “vote for me,” I am going to struggle so that there is no more exploitation and then when they get their post where they make money without sweating, automatically forget everything they said, they begin to create more exploitation, to sell what little is left of the wealth of our countries. Those traitors are useless, hypocrites, parasites, that are worthless.
That’s why, compañeros and compañeras, the struggle hasn’t ended, we are just beginning, we have been at it for just 32 years of which 22 have been public.
That’s why we should unite even more, organize ourselves even better, to build our ship, our house, that’s to say, our autonomy, because that it is what is going to save us from the great storm that nears, we have to strengthen our areas of work and our collective work.
We have no other choice than to unite and organize ourselves to struggle and defend ourselves from the great threat of the evil capitalist system, because the wickedness of criminal capitalism that threatens humanity will not respect anyone, it will sweep away everyone regardless of race, party, or religion because it has already demonstrated for years that they have misruled, threatened, persecuted, jailed, tortured, disappeared and assassinated our people in the countryside and in the city all over the world.
That’s why we say to you, compañeros, compañeras, girls and boys, youth and youth-heshes, you new generations are the future of our peoples, of our struggle and history, but you have understand that you have a task and a responsibility: follow the example of our first compañeros, of our elder compañeros, of our fathers and grandfathers and of everyone who started this struggle.
They, men and women, marked the path, now it’s our turn to follow and maintain that path, but this is only achieved by organizing ourselves in each generation and in generation, understand that and organize yourselves for that, and in that way go all the way to ends of our struggle.
Because you young people are important for our peoples, that’s why you should participate in all the levels of work that there are in our organization and in all the areas of work of our autonomy, and that it be the generations that continue guiding our own destiny with democracy, liberty and justice just like our first compañeras and compañeros are teaching us now.
Compañeras and compañeros, we are sure that we are going to achieve what we want, everything for everyone, that is liberty, because our struggle is now advancing little by little and the weapons of our struggle is our resistance, our rebellion and that for our true word there are no mountains or borders that can stop it, our true word will reach the ears and hearts of other brothers and sisters across the whole world.
It’s to say that we are more every day who understand the struggle against the gravest situation of injustice, in which we’re held, that the evil capitalist system causes in our country and in the world.
We are also clear that throughout our struggle there have been and there will be threats, repressions, persecutions, evictions, contradictions and harassment from the three levels of the evil governments, but we should be clear that the evil government hates us because we on a good path; and if it applauds us it’s because we deviating from our struggle.
We do not forget that we are the inheritors of more than 500 years of struggle and resistance. In our veins flow the blood of our ancestors, who bequeathed us their example of struggle and rebellion and to be the guardians of our mother earth because from her we were born, in her we live and in her we will die.
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Compañeras, compañeros Zapatistas:
Compañeros, compañeras, compañeroas of the Sixth:
Sisters and brothers:
This is our first word of the year that is beginning
More words will come, more thoughts.
Little by little we will be showing our view, our heart that we are.
Now we just want to end by saying that to honor and respect the blood of our fallen it is not enough to remember, miss, cry, or pray for them, but that we should follow their example and continue the work that they left us, make in practice the change that we want.
That’s why compañeros y compañeras for this important day it is the time to reaffirm our consciousness of struggle and of committing ourselves to continue going forward, whatever the cost and whatever happens, we will not allow the evil capitalist system to destroy what we have conquered and what little we have been able to build with our work and efforts during more than 22 years: ¡Our liberty!
Now is not the time to go backwards, to be discouraged or to be tired, we should be more firm in our struggle, firmly maintain the words and examples that were bequeathed to us by our first compañeros: of not surrendering, of not selling out and of not giving up.
¡DEMOCRACY!
¡LIBERTY!
¡JUSTICE!
From the mountains of the Mexican Southeast.
For the Indigenous Revolutionary Clandestine Committee – General Command of
Zapatista Army of National Liberations.
Subcomandante Insurgente Moisés. Subcomandante Insurgente Galeano.
Mexico, January first, 2016.
*
Translated by the Chiapas Support Committee, Oakland, CA.
The original was published in Spanish by Enlace Zapatista; click here to read the original in Spanish.
Zibechi: Domination and resistance in the favela
By: Raúl Zibechi
Pedestrians are the kings to whom cars must surrender. Perhaps it’s the biggest difference between the favela and the asphalt, something neither the media nor analysts of the system repair. The street is the paradise of the common people, of the little boys that play ball, of the little girls that jump and run, of the women that haul bags of food and the youths that open the way with their motorcycles making pirouettes between the cars and the teenagers, which they don’t seem to impress.
Timbau is one of the 16 favelas (shantytowns) of Maré, an enormous space adjacent to Guanabara Bay with 130,000 inhabitants, which northeastern migrants obtained from the sea meter-by-meter from their precarious stilt houses, which they started to build a century ago. Timbau is one of the few favelas north of the city (Rio de Janeiro) on the buttocks of a hill. It enjoys the privilege of overlooking the Bay and the hills. When the sun beats down it becomes hard to walk uphill and everything moves in slow motion.
If the favela is defined by what it doesn’t have, as the research centers usually do that prioritize “lacks,” one would have to begin by saying that there are no banks or supermarkets, nor those cathedrals of consumption called malls. It seems like a proletarian neighborhood of any industrial center at the beginning of the 20th Century, when “the workers lived differently than the rest, with different vital expectations, and in different places,” as Eric Hobsbawm reminds us (Historia del siglo XX, Crítica, p. 308).
In one of the alleyways, between a warehouse and a barbershop where the teenagers smooth their hair, a small business has a hand-painted sign that says Roça, which in Portuguese is the name for the family agricultural area. A small group of youths sell agro-ecology products and make artisan beer, demonstrating that it’s possible to work collectively and with self-management. It’s a space where groups come together from other favelas that resist the militarization and urban (real estate) speculation.
Maré was occupied militarily until a few months ago and the soldiers will surely return before the 2016 Olympic Games. The Army was there for 15 months, 3,000 soldiers with rifles and war tanks, but the Military Police relieved them at the beginning of July. The Military Police are one of the bodies that the popular sectors hate most, especially the young blacks. They are responsible for thousands of deaths every year.
A group of young men from the Occupy Alemão collective, a nearby favela occupied since 2010 by the military where Pacifying Police Units (UPP) and a cable car network have been installed, assert that: “the greatest contradiction that exists in Brazil is racism.” Occupy Alemão was born to resist police brutality with rock festivals, cine-debates, children’s games, graffiti workshops and an “economic blackness fair,” inspired in the solidarity tradition of the Quilombos (republics of fugitive slaves); they destine 20 percent of the sales to a fund to support the mothers of victims of the State in Río de Janeiro.
Police units in Maré during 2014
The fair is itinerant and proposes: “to defend political autonomy and strengthen the collective economy,” as they emphasize on their Facebook page. We’re dealing with an initiative of movements that are majority black in the areas of health, culture, education, cooking and audiovisual to spread Afro-Brazilian culture and promote self-development as a way of constructing autonomy.
One of the youths says that in the Alemão Complex there are five UPP and that one of them functions in a school, with its façade covered with bullet holes. He talks about the racism as a form of domination: “When they go to the doctor, white women are attended to on an average for 15 minutes, but black women barely three minutes.” Every word sounds like a hammer on stone. “We for Us,” is the slogan of Occupy Alemão, which has won a space among the gang of movements that were born after the Days of June 2013.
For what comes from outside, the details are disconcerting. The “tourism safari” in the favelas causes havoc. Green Jeeps like those that the soldiers use, with blonde tourists camera in hand, violating the daily life of the residents. From the Alemão cable car they can photograph them while they eat, dance or do their more intimate necessities. A panoptic as insulting as the la insensitivity of the market. They (the tourists) buy souvenir T-shirts that say, above the favela’s photo de la favela, “I was here,” although they may have flown ten meters above it. It’s sad to check out how the logic of the tourist and that of the military police is identical, although they use different weapons.
Night in the favela is noisy. The music sounds powerful, but nobody complains. Just as cars cede to pedestrians, the favela understands that silence can’t go against the rhythms. It seems rare and even disturbing to the foreigner that he can’t go to sleep. Nevertheless, it’s the worker logic of all times, according to Hobsbawm, where “life was, in its more pleasant aspects, a collective experience” (idem).
It’s probable that that culture of the collective explains the genocide that the favela residents suffer, in the vast majority black. A culture woven of social relations different than the hegemonic ones, as irreducible as the space where it has taken refuge, represents a latent threat to the dominant classes. In more than a century, no government was able to get along with the favelas that continue growing despite the violence of the State and the traffickers.
There are hundreds of youth collectives that resist: hip-hop collectives, collectives of black culture, against genocide, economic collectives and collectives of mothers of the murdered and disappeared. The impression is that they tend to multiply and it’s more difficult all the time to make them turn back from the bullet. In the next cycle of struggles, the women and youths from the favelas will be present, and the white lefts will have to decide whether to fight and die together with them or continue looking towards above.
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Originally Published in Spanish by La Jornada
Thursday, December 24, 2015
Re-published with English interpretation by Compamanuel.com
Chiapas Support Committee 