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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.
-*-
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
Accuse Tila mayor of reactivating paramilitaries
THEY ACCUSE THE MAYOR OF TILA OF REACTIVATING THE PAZ Y JUSTICIA PARAMILITARY GROUP
Members of the Tila ejido set county offices on fire.
From the Correspondents
Tuxtla Gutiérrez, Chiapas
Tila ejido owners, adherents of the Sixth Declaration of the Lacandón Jungle accused municipal president Edgar Leopoldo Gómez Gutiérrez of reactivating the paramilitary group Paz y Justicia (Peace and Justice) “in his service” and for “his ambition to control” the inhabitants of that Chol town.
In a comunicado, the president of the commission and the vigilance council of the Tila ejido place responsibility on Mateo Rey, from the Cruz Palenque community; Mateo Guzmán, of Agua Fría, and Don Pascual, of El Limar, for incentivizing the armed group’s activities.
The death or disappearance of 122 indigenous in Northern Chiapas and the displacement of more than 4 thousand indigenous Chols and Tzetzals in that region between 1995 and 2000 is attributed to Paz y Justicia.
The Fray Bartolomé de Las Casas Human Rights Center (Frayba), representative of the families of the victims, asserted that the paramilitary group’s actions responded to the Army’s low-intensity war against the Zapatista insurgency.
In November 1997, members of Paz y Justicia ambushed a pastoral caravan composed of the then Bishop of San Cristóbal de Las Casas, Samuel Ruiz García; the Bishop coadjutor, Raúl Vera, two catechists and the majordomo of the Señor of Tila Sanctuary, Manuel Pérez. Ruiz García and Vera López were not injured, but three others were.
“As of this date they have remained unpunished and they once again want to impose the (municipal) president by blood and fire; these people live from our taxes, they are aviators that get paid without working, and because of that the public works that the politicians promise are not finished in the communities, because part of the money is used for maintaining these shameful acts,” Tila’s ejido authorities exposed.
They pointed to Regino, from the middle zone of Tila, and to Nicolás, the rural agent of Unión Juárez community in the Tila ejido annex, as being some “spongers and traitors” and placed responsibility on them, together with three cited previously, for what might occur in the ejido.
They denounced that utilizing the Tile municipal government’s communications equipment, these individuals have started to coordinate the paramilitary group (named) Paz y Justicia for the purpose of submitting whoever may be in disagreement with the mayor’s decrees.
The comuneros (who are) adherents to the Sixth Declaration of the Lacandón Jungle of the Zapatista National Liberation Army (EZLN, its initials in Spanish) expressed their fear of suffering an armed attack, because of which they alerted social and human rights organizations to be on the lookout for what may occur in the Tila ejido, located in the municipal capital.
The ejido owners demand the return of 321 acres that belong to them, according to the 1934 presidential resolution, because 72 years ago the county offices were illegally built on 128 acres of their land.
Last December 16 hundreds ejido members, who asserted having suffered harassment and arbitrariness, held a march that culminated with the burning and destruction of some areas of the county building.
They remembered that in 2008 the agrarian tribunal issued a resolution in favor of the ejido owners, but as it was not executed they went to the Supreme Court of Justice of the Nation (SCJN), which has not resolved the case, allegedly because it would occasion a social problem, because it would be necessary to relocate practically all of the county seat.
In the comunicado the president of the Tila ejido commission and the vigilance council accused that rural agents from other ejidos that support the country council are provoking them.
“If they want the county council so much that they bring it to their communities, we will expel them because of the constant violations of our individual rights, as well as the violation of protective order number 73/2014, which was won so that the casino of the people would not be destroyed, without the permission of the general assembly of ejido owners,” they stated.
The Tila ejido owners agreed not to undertake any dialogue or negotiations with the governments, “because our lands are not negotiable or for sale and we will continue fighting to avoid any dispossession or against any imposition.
“In Mexico, the three levels of government always create violence, hiding behind the paramilitary groups at their service so that they can say afterwards that it is a conflict between communities,” they concluded.
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Originally Published in Spanish by La Jornada
Monday, December 28, 2015
Re-published with English interpretation by Compamanuel.com
Esteva: It was an atrocious year
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Indigenous peoples protest climate change in Paris.
By: Gustavo Esteva
In Mexico, the moral degradation, cynicism and corruption of the political classes became more and more evident, while the combined violence of legal and illegal forces continuously increased. Thus, a structure was consolidated that inside and outside the institutions seeks to subject the population to control and smother resistances and rebellions, inside of an undeclared state of exception.
Something similar, with very different degrees and modalities, occurs in the world. In the face of the political changes in Argentina or Venezuela, the persistent Brazilian political crisis, or events in Greece or France, betrayals, errors or weaknesses of the “lefts” are denounced or it warns about restorations or assaults on power from the “rights.” It characterizes what occurred as a setback of popular forces and a rise of capital, of its state administrators and the social sectors that support them. Trump would confirm this interpretation: millions of Americans support positions that even The New York Times classifies as fascist, at the same time that, in the United States and Europe, social behaviors that clearly have that character multiply. Just as 12 million Germans voted for Hitler in 1932 and 17 million in 1933, los media and other factors would be leading large groups to support governments and politicians of the “right,” even against their own interests. Thus the popular forces would be turned back and the neoliberal constellation would continue winning.
The Paris Agreement can be useful for illustrating what occurs and for trying to explain it. The conference that produced it was the result of the prolonged public demand to confront climate change. What they signed wasn’t good; the governments publicly proclaimed its merits and many applauded it without reservation, but it was rather a deceptive farce. Grain, for example, which represents a very qualified and respected opinion, pointed out that the agreement it not legally binding in the goal of reducing emissions, does not advance de-carbonization, it supports the industrial agricultural model, the generator of 50 percent of the emissions and protects that these will continue by means of actions that supposedly compensate them. The most serious is that, under the excuse of carbon “seizure,” it will now be openly supportive of geo-engineering, which for many is the principal cause of climate change.
Grain, as well as a good part of the demonstrators present in Paris, emphasized that what’s important is changing the “system,” not the climate. Since we’re talking about that, it doesn’t seem reasonable to ask it of the very same “system,” ensnared as it is in a destructive logic that it cannot stop by itself. As is continuously denounced, it’s killing the hen with the golden eggs and rapidly undermining its own basis for existence. The problem is that its suicidal behavior increasingly puts at risk the survival of the human species and life on the planet and can only be instrumented with a growing authoritarianism. First, an immense global effort was exerted to hold the conference, and later to make the decisions that are lacking. Does that make sense? Why continue trusting in the superstition that those governments and institutions are going to make decisions contrary to the interests of those who control them, that 1 percent that Occupy Wall Street denounced?
That would be the year’s principal lesson, which we are far from having learned. Awareness is more general all the time that the current predicaments cannot be overcome inside the framework of ideas, policies and practices that they produce; in other words, inside the current “system.” It’s not enough to change policies or modify the ideological composition of those who are in charge of the institutions. Nor is it sufficient to reform them. It’s illusory and superstitious to continue hoping that the “system” will correct itself, with the same or other leaders, as Paris and all the other cases prove. Therefore, we need to withdraw our trust from the same representation regimen and its electoral dispositive. We also need to withdraw from mere social mobilization, if it is only capable of producing the replacement of leaders, as the result of the Arab Spring demonstrated or of inducing marginal changes in the orientation of policies, as is proven everywhere and was proven in Paris.
At this point, the atrocious year allows a crack of hope. It’s underway everywhere, a reorganization from below that step by step transforms resistance into emancipation. The need for the apparatuses of capital and the market is dismantled and for its state administrators and new social relations are forged. Little by little, devices capable of stopping the dominant horror are established, so that the organized people themselves, not their representatives, leaders or delegates, realize the changes that are lacking. It’s not about another superstition or about mere utopias. It begins to be reality.
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Originally Published in Spanish by La Jornada
Monday, December 21, 2015
Re-published with English interpretation by the Chiapas Support Committee
Accuse private police of murdering migrants
ACTIVISTS ACCUSE POLICE OF MURDERING MIGRANTS THAT TRAVEL TO THE U.S.
Rubber rafts take people across the Suchiate River between Tecún Uman, Guatemala and Ciudad Hidalgo, Mexico.
** They maintain that those responsible belong to the Cusaem and Sepromex corporations
** The first one has million dollar contracts with federal government agencies and with the state of Mexico
By: José Antonio Román
Human rights defense organizations denounced the existence of private police corporations, with federal government contracts, which have committed grave human rights violations against migrants that travel through national territory towards the United States.
In a press conference headed by Leticia Gutiérrez, a religious woman of the Scalabrini order, who has developed widely recognized work in favor of migrants, it was reported that they already presented to the Attorney General of the Republic (PGR) a series of denunciations for eight homicides that can be attributed to members of the Auxiliary and Urbana Security Corps of the State of Mexico (Cusaem).
They pointed out that this private police corporation has million dollar contracts with different federal government agencies and with the state of Mexico.
For example, they said that since last July in the state of Querétaro the presence that corporation’s agents has been noticed along the railroad tracks from the state of Mexico to the city of Celaya, Guanajuato.
“That extra-police group has committed armed attacks, harassment, threats and aggressions against migrants. They also directly threaten collaborators at the dining room of the González and Martínez Migrant Stay,” they denounced.
After quoting testimonies of the migrants they attend to in their shelters, the human rights defenders denounced that that police corporation –whose members dress in black and carry high-powered firearms, permitted exclusively to the Army– has committed grave violations against migrants, like torture and illegal deprivation of freedom, and on many occasions there is complicity with federal and state police authorities.
Besides Cusaem, another corporation exists named Special Protection Services in Mexico (Sepromex, its Spanish acronym), which also has a list of human rights violations against migrants; it operates principally in the states in the center of the country and in the Bajío.
The denunciations were presented by Ramón Verdugo, from the organization Everything for Them; Leticia Gutiérrez, from Mission with Migrants and Refugees; Heyman Vázquez Morales, from the Home of the Migrant in Huixtla, Chiapas, and Martín Martínez, González and Martínez Migrant’s Stay, besides the priest Alejandro Solalinde, of Brothers on the Road.
The activists demand that the federal government modify the policy of violence evidenced in the Southern Border Plan and that it revise the concessions granted to private security companies, so that the harassment against migrants and against those who defend their rights.
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Originally Published in Spanish by La Jornada
Thursday, December 17, 2015
Re-published with English interpretation by the Chiapas Support Committee
Give with heart & soul: Support the Zapatista communities!
“We, the Zapatistas, see and hear a catastrophe coming, and we mean that in every sense of the term, a perfect storm.”
–The Storm, the Sentinel and the Lookout Syndrome, Subcomandante Galeano, April 1, 2015.
Dear friends and supporters of the Chiapas Support Committee:
We believe that supporting the Zapatista indigenous communities, who are building autonomy and self-determination in Chiapas, is critical to strengthening and deepening our movements for peace and justice in the U.S. Every year since 1998, when the Chiapas Support Committee (CSC) was formed, we reach out to you who are active in these movements and to community-based organizers working for deep, social justice in our neighborhoods, cities and communities to express solidarity by giving a donation to support the Zapatista communities.
Join us in supporting the Zapatista communities! Give a generous donation to support the Zapatista autonomous education project for indigenous self-determination. Click here to give securely on-line. Or you can also mail your check or money order to: CSC * P.O. Box 3421 * Oakland, CA 94609
The Perfect Storm: Zapatistas of the World, Unite!
When the Zapatistas announced their calendar for 2015, two activities stood out:
- The Seminar on Critical Thought Versus the Capitalist Hydra, held May 3-9 in San Cristóbal. The Seminar was preceded by a day of “Homage to Compañero Luis Villoro Toranzo” and “Homage to Compañero Galeano” on May 2, in Oventik. The Seminar was followed by a “Worldwide Seminar,” held from July to December in different places and through various media; and
- The Second Grade of the Escuelita Zapatista, or Little Zapatista School, from July 31 to August second.
The six-month Worldwide Seminar both piqued our interest and puzzled us. A month later, we also wondered out loud what Sup Galeano meant by “a perfect storm.” We had to wait a few months for the answers to our questions, but those answers turned out to be important.
The storm is coming to all of us, not just to Mexico, Chiapas or the Zapatistas. The storm stems from the complete domination of the world by international capitalist banking, but also from the loss of legitimacy of “traditional” institutions (political parties, government, judicial system, church, army, police, media, family).
We believe that many people in the U.S. can relate to that.
We see our young people unable to find living wage jobs, while student loans saddle them with a lifetime of debt to the banks. The mortgage meltdown, the cost of housing, real estate speculation, gentrification and displacement, global warming, the GOP control of Congress, the epidemic of police killings of people of color, a racially biased judicial system, the perpetual war and a communications media that doesn’t tell the whole story. Those are some of the issues confronting us. And the Zapatistas think this situation is going to get worse…
The Perfect Response: ¡Organize!
The Zapatistas are not just forecasting doom and gloom.
They’re urging everyone to ORGANIZE!
Hold meetings, talk to each other, share your dreams, your struggles AND organize, they tell us.
Many of us are already doing this. And the Zapatistas are urging that we dialogue across dreams and strategies, across colors and issues, and together build a more powerful movement whose voices can break down the barriers that keep us separated. Part of building this movement is being internationalists and for us that means supporting the Zapatistas.
While many of us can imagine how the Zapatistas organized their revolution, the Zapatistas decided to begin sharing their experiences and work of community organizing this year.
How did they share?
Through the Second grade, or level, of the Little Zapatista School, held via a secure video link with the password going to those who “passed” Level 1. The Zapatistas suggested that those who would receive it share the video with others. Three CSC members received the video and shared it with the rest of our collective.
Level Two of the Escuelita also included background reading from the Seminar on Critical Thought Versus the Capitalist Hydra, which has now been published as Volume I of a book with the same title as the Seminar. And, it turned out that the six-month Worldwide Seminar was for watching and analyzing the video, as well as the background materials, and preparing to share the ideas and experiences in as many ways as possible.
The theme of the storm that is coming ran through the many Zapatista “words” spoken at the Seminar and is now a theme in the writings of Zapatista inspired journalists.
The theme of organizing to prepare for and resist the storm also ran through the words of Subcomandantes Moisés and Galeano during the Seminar.
In the Level Two video, Zapatistas from all five Caracoles talked about how they formed their organization in the 10 years of clandestine organizing prior to the January 1, 1994 uprising.
They specifically say that they are giving us this information in case it would be helpful in our own organizing. The combination of the Seminar and Level Two of the Escuelitas was a seedbed of ideas for learning, sharing and for organizing.
Organizing at home and abroad
The Chiapas Support Committee offered three workshops on Community and Autonomy, which provided an opportunity to discuss these and other ideas.
The first workshop featured presentations by members of Can Batlló, a large collective based in Barcelona, which has occupied vacant commercial buildings and converted them into housing units. In an Oakland forum held by CSC, members of Can Batlló shared their experiences of taking over entire city blocks and buildings to construct autonomous community.
The second forum featured a presentation by Los Panchos (the Pancho Villa Popular Organization) from Mexico City that has constructed large and thriving autonomous communities there.
Finally, on November 17, to celebrate the 32nd Anniversary of the EZLN’s founding, CSC members shared their reflections on Level Two of the Escuelitas in a third workshop at Oakland’s Omni Commons. We talked about both the video and readings from the book Critical Thought versus the Capitalist Hydra I. The video consisted of Zapatistas from the five Caracoles talking about how they organized the work of forming their organization in the ten years of clandestine organizing prior to the January 1, 1994 uprising.
The experience of sharing our thoughts and ideas about Level Two was special for all of us. The evening ended with everyone singing the Zapatista Hymn, amazed at how the Zapatistas have evolved and endured during the past 32 years.
¡Support the Zapatistas!
Like the Zapatistas, we are evolving too. We are revising our on-line work, focusing more on the blog and our Facebook page. We are looking into the possibility of finding a workspace where we can hold meetings, classes and films, while working in solidarity with other movements. We will continue holding educational forums and workshops to better understand and support our own movements for autonomy and justice.
The Chiapas Support Committee continues deepening its commitment to support the Zapatista Education System in the Caracol of La Garrucha. We believe, like the Zapatistas, that all children should have an anti-capitalist education in which their own history, language and culture are taught. The education coordinators and promoters (teachers), the Good Government Junta and the regional assembly of La Garrucha are planning to build one or more secondary schools, possibly one in each of the four autonomous municipios (counties). Currently, there is no secondary school (middle school) in the region. It’s still in the planning stages. The CSC is waiting to find out how we can support this new effort. We are told it will happen before Christmas and are therefore starting to raise funds to support that project.
We’re asking you join us in supporting La Garrucha, as well as all other efforts in solidarity with the Zapatistas here and in Chiapas, with a generous contribution.
Your donation will go directly to support the Zapatista communities’ education work. Please click here: www.chiapas-support.org and click on the Donate button to contribute via Paypal.
Every contribution, big or small, is important.
We thank you from the bottom of our hearts for standing with us in solidarity with the Zapatistas and the indigenous-led movements for justice in Mexico.
In solidarity with peace & justice,
José Plascencia, Chair
For members of the Chiapas Support Committee
Alicia Bravo
Todd Davies
Francisco Díaz
Carolina Dutton
Arnoldo García
Jose Plascencia
Laura Rivas-Andrade
Blair Talbot
Mary Ann Tenuto-Sánchez
Zibechi: The old mole pierces stone
Subcomandante Galeano: “While above they accumulate capital below they accumulate rage.”
By: Raúl Zibechi
Secondary students brought down the Sao Paulo state government headed by the neoliberal Geraldo Alckmin, who had to withdraw his reorganization plan for the education system faced with massive rejection and strong youth mobilization. In these times of right-wing advances, the student triumph ought to be a reason for celebrations because it illuminates the future that we desire, one of resistances capable of disarticulating conservative plans.
In September the Sao Paulo government announced the reorganization of public teaching with separate centers based on three cycles, which would lead to the regrouping of the students, the closure of 93 centers and the transfer of 311,000 students. Immediately, teachers and students agreed that there would be school overpopulation and attributed the measure to an attempt to lower the cost of the education system.
In October the education workers’ unions and students carried out demonstrations, which impelled the ministry to speed up the reforms and announce the centers that would be closed. All of them are on the periphery, inhabited by the popular sectors, which already suffer a low-quality education.
The first state school was occupied on November 9, in Diadema, the center of a region with a long tradition of union struggle in the ABC Paulista (a region in the state of Sao Paulo on the periphery of the city of Sao Paulo). The occupation had the support of parents and teachers. One week later there were already 19 centers occupied, while justice denied the request to evict by deciding that the students didn’t want to appropriate the centers but rather to open a debate. There were more than 100 centers now occupied on the 23; las universities y unions began to take positions against the school reorganization. There were 196 centers occupied at the beginning of December.
At a certain moment the students decided go out in the streets, to cut off the avenues and diffuse the protest. According to the polls, 61 percent of Paulistas reject the government’s measure and 55 percent support the students, while the governor’s popularity fell to his lowest approval ratings. On December 4, Alckmin decided to postpone the school reorganization for one year.
It’s interesting to look at what happened inside the occupied centers. The students created work commissions to sustain the occupation: food, security, press, information, cleaning, external relations, among the most common. Besides the days work they hold assemblies, convoke debates with professors, parents and solidarity collectives about the most varied themes. They edited a manual (How to occupy a school), inspired in the recent struggles of the Chilean and Argentinian students.
They are thousands of youths from 14 to 15 years of age that are producing a formidable experience, confronting the authoritarianism of the social democrat-neoliberal government, challenging police repression and the media’s manipulations. A new generation of militant youths is living their experience. A movement that is born, becomes massive and triumphs in the midst of the Brazilian right’s largest offensive in many years, and that also shows that there is sufficient social energy, on the outside of the institutions, parties and unions, to change the state of things in Brazil.
The days of June 2013 are the antecedent and immediate referent of the current movement. June was a parting of waters. From that moment on the movements were reactivated, new grass roots organizations and collectives were born in all spaces of society, and the street was converted into the new scene of debates and protests. The militants of the Free Pass Movement, now divided, continues working in the peripheries, where new groups are born against the rising cost of transportation, against the State’s violence, feminist and cultural collectives, which now come together against the school reorganization.
But different than what happened in June 2013, where the dominant norms were large demonstrations that consumed a few hours of the participants’ time, the occupations “demand of the occupants that they assume being political protagonists of the events 24 hours of the day,” according to the analysis of the theater professional and militant Rafael Presto in Passapalavra (http://goo.gl/HP3glz).
Thus the occupations are “an intense formative process, a generation of militants formed in the heat of the struggles.” If to that is added that the occupied centers are converted into spaces where diverse struggles, social movements, artists, militant educators, territorial groups and groups of women converge, we can evaluate the importance of what happened in November.
The way I look at it, there are three aspects to emphasize.
The first is that the social and political energy from below has been capable of defeating an emboldened right, but one that must recede before the potency of the street. That should be a motive for reflection to those who bet everything on the institutions and cannot comprehend that the axis of change is in another place and with other styles.
The second is that the emancipatory energy is always born at the margins and among the youth. Without that youthful fire, of class and gender, possibilities for confronting a process of change do not exist. The last occasion on which Brazil registered a potent process of those below was in the 1970s, when the experience of millions of persons in the 80,000 faith-based communities (ethical commitment), young industrial workers and campesinos displaced by the green revolution, gave life to big organizations: the CUT, the MST and the PT.
Finally, as Presto points out, those who emphasize what the movements lack always appear. “They lack a political project,” they say, when in reality they want to say that: “it lacks a direction that puts things into an order,” of which they wish to become a part. But the young people are now organized, they are already militants, they just don’t aspire to form a part of the institutions that they reject because they are familiar with them. The stone is pierced from below.
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Originally Published in Spanish by La Jornada
Friday, December 11, 2015
Interpreted and Published in English by Compamanuel.com
Pope Francisco to visit Chiapas
THEY FORMALLY ANNOUNCE POPE FRANCISCO’S VISIT TO CHIAPAS
Pope Francisco gives his thumb up as he leaves at the end of his weekly general audience in St. Peter’s square at the Vatican, Wednesday, Sept. 4, 2013. (AP Photo/Riccardo De Luca)
By: Isaín Mandujano
This afternoon, the Archdiocese of Tuxtla Gutiérrez confirmed the visit of Pope Francisco to Chiapas, where he will live and will send a message to indigenous peoples and migrants from this southern border of the country.
Father Edilberto Pérez Vicente, coordinator of the Pope’s visit to Tuxtla announced in a press conference the official communication of the Mexican Episcopal Conference (CEM, its initials in Spanish) and confirmed that the Supreme Pontiff will be in Tuxtla Monday, February 15, 2016.
The “Missionary of Mercy and Peace,” as they call Pope Francisco, will arrive on a flight coming from Mexico City at the Angel Albino Corzo International Airport; from there he will fly in a helicopter to San Cristóbal de Las Casas.
At 10:15 in the morning he will officiate a mass with indigenous communities that will come from the different regions of the state, and it is hoped also from other corners of the country and from Central America.
It will be here where he is expected to make a pronouncement directed to the indigenous peoples and the migrants that cross this border on their route towards the country’s north.
After the mass he will eat with representatives of the indigenous peoples.
At 3 PM he will visit the San Cristóbal de Las Casas Cathedral, where se the tomb of Bishop Samuel Ruiz García is located.
Pope Francisco will fly in a helicopter to Tuxtla where he will head the “Meeting with Families” in the Víctor Manuel Reyna Stadium at 4:15 PM.
This would be the second visit of a Supreme Pontiff of the Vatican to Chiapas; the first was Juan Pablo II on May 11, 1990.
Pérez Vicente said that the Apostolic Journey to our country from February 12 to 17 next year, in the framework of the Extraordinary Jubilee of Mercy.
He added that the sites in which it would be carried out –the Primatial Archdiocese of Mexico, the Diocese of Ecatepec, the Diocese of San Cristóbal de las Casas, the Archdiocese of Tuxtla Gutiérrez, the Archdiocese of Morelia and the Diocese of Ciudad Juárez– “would have the pleasure of being the Pope’s hosts, as well as of the laity, the devoted, clerics and all people of good will that will come to represent the different dioceses and regions of the country.”
He said that the Pope’s presence would be to make a call to dignify life, as has always been his work. He added that they are prepared to receive some 100,000 in the San Cristóbal de Las Casas Municipal Sports Center and some 80,000 in Tuxtla.
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Originally Published in Spanish by Chiapas PARALELO
Saturday, December12, 2015
Re-published with English interpretation by Compamanuel.com
Chiapas teachers sign truce
CHIAPAS TEACHERS AGREE to “TRUCE” and RETURN to THEIR WORKPLACES
Chiapas teachers hold press conference in Tuxtla. Photo: Isaín Mandujano/Chiapas PARALELO
By: Angeles Mariscal
[The teachers warned that they would not allow those who presented the evaluation to return to their workplaces. Photo: Isaín Mandujano/Chiapas PARALELO]
After the exchange of five police that members of the National Coordinator of Education Workers (CNTE) retained for six teachers detained during demonstrations, they suspended the labor strike and demonstrations that some 50,000 teachers maintained for three days in Chiapas.
Since this morning, demonstrators took down the occupation they had on the principal plaza of the capital of Chiapas, and initiated the return to their workplaces.
The suspension of the labor strike was announced after the CNTE of Chiapas classified as positive having achieved the liberation of their compañeros that were detained during last Tuesday’s confrontations and the suspension of the evaluation of the second block of teachers that were going to be evaluated.
Another 2,300 were present during the first day that this process was carried out, the same day that members of the Coordinator were in the midst of protests. It was during those protests that a teacher David Ruiz Estudillo died from being run over and the police detained another six demonstrators.
The teachers carried out different actions to achieve their liberation, among them the retention of five police, two of them women, who they liberated Wednesday night, after 8 hours of holding them in the center of the place where they were demonstrating, and when the state government released the six detainees.
Early this morning the CNTE of Chiapas held an assembly in which they agreed to maintain a “truce” and to return to their workplaces. In the voice of one of its leaders, Pedro Gómez Bamaca, warned that: “the Labor Reform will not happen in Chiapas,” and for that they announced that next December 18 they will be added to the protest actions in Mexico City.”
They will not permit those who attended the evaluation to return to work
The CNTE’s assembly in Chiapas also agreed that they would not permit the 2,300 teachers that attended their evaluation exam last Tuesday to return to their workplaces.
According to the Coordinator, we’re dealing with teachers that entered teaching in 2014, when the Education Reform was already in effect. The Secretariat of Education issued them contracts wherein it establishes that in order to remain they are obliged to be present and to pass the exams.
Versions of dissident teachers maintain that facing the refusal of several of them to participate in the process, the Secretariat of Education offered them all permanent contracts, independent of the result they obtain on the tests; all in exchange for accepting being present at the evaluation processes.
Before abandoning the occupation, members of the Coordinator demanded the exit of Ricardo Aguilar Gordillo, Secretary of Education in Chiapas, who they accused of not working to overcome the education backlog –Chiapas occupies first place at the national level- and contrived the whole strategy for breaking the dissident teachers.
The Chiapas government asserts that it reduced the conflict with the teachers
Hours after the exchange of police for the detained teachers, the state government issued a press release wherein it asserted that it achieved reducing the teacher conflict and the return of the teachers to their workplaces, through the dialogue with the CNTE’s leaders.
“The Secretary General of Government, Juan Carlos Gómez Aranda, asserted that the Chiapas government is and will be respectful of the free expression of ideas, as long as these ideas don’t violate the rights and freedoms of citizens,” the communication points out.
It adds that the six people that were liberated –three teachers, two normalistas and a father- are “under the legal conditions described in Article 140 of the National Code of Criminal Procedure.”
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Originally Published in Spanish by Chiapas PARALELO
Thursday, December 10, 2015
Re-published with English interpretation by Compamanuel.com
Chiapas government and teachers exchange hostages
Teachers confronted Federal Police outside the Hotel Safari, in Tuxtla Gutiérrez. The photo shows 3 of the hostages (with heads covered) displayed at their central plaza occupation, as well as “material for repression.” Photo: Victor Camacho
By: Elio Henríquez, Correspondent
San Cristóbal de Las Casas, Chiapas
The state government liberated three teachers, two normalistas and a father detained Tuesday during the confrontation between police and members of Sections 7 and 40 of the National Education Workers Union (SNTE, its initials in Spanish), when they tried to boycott the application of the teacher evaluation.
The liberation occurred at 6 PM yesterday, after a meeting between federal and state functionaries with the leadership of the Chiapas teachers, in which the teachers agreed to deliver a federal agent, two policewomen and two “informants” retained Wednesday afternoon.
The teachers retained these five persons after a confrontation that occurred at midday with federal police in front of the hotels in which the police were lodged. Yesterday, the federal police were guarding the teachers that went to the exam at the National School for Civil Protection, located in the municipality of Ocozocoautla.
The activities of the teachers that are opposed to the education evaluation began at 10 AM in Tuxtla Gutiérrez, with a march to demand the liberation of the six detained Tuesday for participating in the boycott of the teachers’ exam. At the front of the contingent they carried a casket, “as part of the honors” to Professor David Gemayel Ruiz Estudillo, who died during the confrontation in Ocozocoautla. According to the organizers, more than 50,000 participated.
Manuel de Jesús Mendoza Vázquez, alternate secretary general of Section 7 of the SNTE, pointed out that the demonstration was going “calmly towards the principal park when on one of the streets of Central Avenue the federal police came out of their hotels with shields and clubs in an act of provocation, because there was no need for that because the march was peaceful.”
He reiterated that the agents “started to verbally attack the compañeros and when they responded, they threw tear gas at them. The people defended themselves and obliged them to go inside their hotels, which permitted taking away from them an impressive quantity of material for repression: boxes full of projectiles, tear gas bombs, bulletproof vests, helmets and other things that were placed in view of the media in the park, where a massive occupation has been installed since last Monday.”
He pointed out that in the battle the teachers retained a federal police agent, who was also taken to the central plaza, in front of the government palace, at the time that they damaged several buses transporting the agents.
Afterwards, he added, the teachers retained two state policewomen and two “informants,” which obliged authorities to continue the negotiations that started Tuesday night.
As a result of the dialogue, the government liberated the three teachers, two normalistas and a father around 6 PM and the teachers delivered the 5 they retained yesterday to authorities.
Mendoza Vázquez commented that they did not bring the cadaver of Ruiz Estudillo to the march. Ruiz Estudillo was a primary school teacher, 29 years old, belonging to Section 40, who was working in Ocozocoautla, although he was a native of Villaflores. “The casket was carried as a political act.”
He explained that the Tuesday protest “was a peaceful act for boycotting the evaluation, but in the face of the fascist regime’s repression we looked for the means to defend ourselves and in the battle, in the advance of the two rhinoceros (an armored unit of Federal Police) that they used to dissuade the education workers, Compañero” Ruiz Estudillo fell.
He maintained that the police “not only used tear gases and rubber bullets, but also real bullets, which can be demonstrated because we have a compañero injured in the leg with a projectile.” He affirmed that: “the federal government attempted to surprise us on Tuesday by advancing the evaluation programmed for the 12th and 13th, and because of that they created a bunker in the School of Civil Protection, where a disproportionate number of police and Army soldiers were concentrated.”
The conflict ended, affirms the state government
Last night, the Chiapas government reported in a comunicado that after several hours of dialogue with members of the National Coordinator of Education Workers it achieved in cooling down the teachers conflict, with which the teachers ended the occupation that they were maintaining in the center of Tuxtla Gutiérrez.
The Secretary General of Government, Juan Carlos Gómez Aranda, reiterated the state administration’s will to channel the demands of Chiapas teachers and that they can be attended to by the corresponding instances, in such a way that the quality of education in the state is strengthened.
He explained that the detainees were released under reserve, in terms of article 140 of the National Code of Criminal Procedure.
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Originally Published in Spanish by La Jornada
Published with English translation by Compamanuel.com
Thursday, December 10, 2015
Chiapas Support Committee 