Chiapas Support Committee
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Ayotzinapa: key pieces of the official version fall apart
Relatives of the 43 students at the 27th Infantry Battalion in Iguala, Guerrero. Photo by: Germán Canseco.
A Special Report By: Anabel Hernández and Steve Fisher
A key piece in the version that the PGR has published after the disappearance of 43 Ayotzinapa students is that the students were detained and taken to the base of the Iguala Municipal Police before being delivered to the United Warriors cartel. But the judge that would have received them assures that was not the case. In this sixth delivery of the reporting carried out with the support of the Investigative Journalism Program of the University of California at Berkeley, documents and testimonies strengthen the version of the judge, who currently is asking for asylum in the United States and fears for his life.
MEXICO, D.F. (Proceso). – Ulises Bernabé García was a booking judge for the Iguala Municipal Police in Guerrero on the night of September 26, 2014, when the enforced disappearance of 43 students from the Ayotzinapa Rural Teachers College was perpetrated. In an exclusive interview he reveals what happened that night.
In this sixth delivery of the investigation carried out with the support of the Investigative Journalism Program of the University of California at Berkeley, García asserts in an interview –from a Mexican border city and crossing point to the United States– that the students were never taken to that base [headquarters] and that the Cocula municipal police did not arrive either, as the official version asserts.
His testimony and the documents obtained for this investigation reveal that the worst part of the attacks against the students occurred when the Attorney General of the State of Guerrero, the 27th Infantry Battalion and the Federal Police were operating in the streets of Iguala.
One of the principal parts of the official version is that, at 11:30 that night, Iguala police took the students from Juan Alvarez Street –where one of the aggressions against the students occurred– to the municipal police base. In one version, the PGR asserts that there were 43 and, in another, only 10 or 15. From there, in two patrol vehicles of the Cocula Municipal Police they were taken to the Loma de los Coyotes spot, where they handed them over to the United Warriors criminal group, who allegedly murdered them and burned them in a garbage dump at midnight of that same day.
In contrast, García asserts that, at the time that the Attorney General of the Republic (PGR) says that the students were taken to the municipal police base, a military man known as “Captain Crespo,” of the 27th Infantry Battalion of Iguala, in command of a group of 12 armed soldiers in uniform made an exact inspection in all of the (police) command for more than 15 minutes. A little later, García points out, the assistant attorney general of Guerrero, Víctor León Maldonado arrived at the same site and took control of the base for the rest of the night and until 8 o’clock in the morning of the next day.
(Fragment of the report that is published in the 2015 edition of the magazine Proceso, now in circulation.) A complete version in English can be found at: http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2015/06/14/disappeared-students mexico_n_7574652.html
Note: Representatives of the Ayotzinapa parents and students made note of this new information in their meeting with adherents to the Sixth in Northern Chiapas. And, an official of the Guerrero human rights office confirmed the above account of Ulises García to La Jornada Guerrero.
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Originally Published in Spanish by Proceso.com
Saturday, June 13, 2015
http://www.proceso.com.mx/?p=407453
Looking sideways at capitalism
LOOKING SIDEWAYS AT CAPITALISM
SupGaleano with children
The Zapatista National Liberation Army (EZLN) sponsored the Seminar on “Critical thought versus the capitalist hydra” from May 3 to May 9, 2015. A star-studded cast of left intellectuals participated either in person or by sending papers to be read by others. Subcomandante Insurgente Moisés and Subcomandante Insurgente Galeano (formerly Marcos) issued their words, as did Comandantas Miriam, Rosalinda and Dalia. Compañeras Lizbeth and Selena also gave their word. More than 1500 people registered to attend the Seminar. A complete list of presenters can be found here:
Before the start of the Seminar in the Caracol of Oventik, the EZLN paid homage to Compañero Galeano, the teacher, and also to Compañero Luis Villoro.
Prior to the start of this anticapitalist gathering, SupGaleano issued an important communiqué called, in English, “The Storm, the Sentinel and the Lookout Syndrome,” [1] which puts the purpose of the Seminar in perspective, or better said, it puts the purpose of the Seminar into a Zapatista perspective.
The Storm
“We, the Zapatistas, see and hear a catastrophe coming, and we mean that in every sense of the term, a perfect storm.” However, he also says that others don’t see it coming, they don’t see what the Zapatistas see. He elaborates: “We see the tendency to resort to the same tactics of struggle, to continue with marches, real or virtual, with elections, surveys and rallies.” As if nothing has changed in the last 20, 40 or 100 years! We think they have the Lookout Syndrome.
If you do the same thing over and over and it doesn’t work, maybe you should try something different!
“We Zapatistas look sideways. We pay more attention, climb to the top of the ceiba (tree) in order to try to see farther, not to see what has happened, but to see what’s coming.” And what they see is “something terrible, more destructive than ever.” But, Galeano admits, they can be mistaken. So, they want to hear what people from other geographies are thinking, what the compañeros, compañeras and compañeroas of the Sixth are thinking. That’s why they called for the Seminar, to share ideas.
Ceiba tree with house for looking sideways at capitalism
The Sentinel
Every military installation has lookout towers, guard posts, watch posts, or whatever you may call them, a place where members assigned to that military installation take turns (shifts) at guard duty. Their role is that of the Sentinel: to survey the surrounding area to know who or what is out there; and to sound the alarm in case of an attack or other event. The EZLN is no different; its military members call the guard post the “posta” and take turns carrying out the role of the Sentinel, or lookout. But the important thing is that the Sentinel must be vigilant for signs of danger. If something big and destructive is coming, then the Sentinel must alert everyone to the imminence of the coming storm.
Galeano says that, according to the Zapatistas, theoretical reflection and critical thought have the same task as the Sentinel. “Whoever works on analytic thinking takes a shift at the guard post.” The problem is that the Sentinel, or lookout, can become overwhelmed, overtaken by the task of critical observation and can develop the Lookout Syndrome.
The Lookout Syndrome
After a while the Sentinel “exhausts” his capacity for vigilance. This is what the Zapatistas refer to as the Lookout Syndrome. It consists of: “a) not keeping watch over the whole, but only one part of the whole, and b) when the lookout ‘tires,’ he does not perceive the changes that appear in the zone being watched because those changes are imperceptible to him; that is, they don’t merit his attention.” Because being on lookout duty reproduces the same images over and over again as if nothing ever changes until the lookout doesn’t want anything to change and repeats that: ‘everything is fine and nothing bad is going to happen.’
One way of counteracting the Lookout Syndrome is indirect observation or peripheral vision, also known as “looking sideways.” So, the Zapatistas are inviting people to the Seminar to look sideways with them at what is coming.
Looking sideways at voting
With mid-term elections taking place in Mexico during June 2014, let’s see what thoughts looking sideways at elections produced.
The Zapatistas have not been into voting for a long time. It makes sense for them because they have declared war against the Mexican government and have their own local and regional government. But what should everyone else do? Subcomandante Moisés says you can go ahead and vote, but don’t expect anything to change. We assume he means change for the better. And, indeed, if citizens are looking for fundamental progressive change in Mexico by means of the ballot box, they may have a very long wait! But, Moisés points out that whether you vote or not, you must definitely organize. If you want positive change you have to organize!
On the other hand, what if you live in the United States? We have a presidential election in 2016 and candidates are already announcing their candidacy, starting to raise money and taking positions on issues.
Immanuel Wallerstein, a United States sociologist and left thinker, submitted a paper that addressed, among other issues, voting in different electoral systems. He seems to agree in principle with SupMoisés about not relying on elections for any fundamental progressive change. However, in countries where people have won certain benefits from the government, like social security in the U.S. or universal health care in Canada and Europe, perhaps it’s worth voting to hold onto those benefits. Remember when George W. Bush tried to privatize (take away) social security? If one party is proposing to cut social benefits, Wallerstein suggests that it’s definitely worth voting for the party that doesn’t want to take them away (this assumes there is such a party). Hmm…
Looking sideways at the Storm
SupGaleano did not say in “The Storm, the Sentinel and the Lookout Syndrome” what kind of storm the Zapatistas see coming. Is the storm coming to Chiapas, to Mexico, or to the entire world? Will it come from war, climate change, drug-resistant diseases, one or more natural disasters or the depletion of our natural resources? We thought that perhaps the branches of the ceiba tree obstructed their vision.
And then, the “words” SupGaleano spoke on May 4 were posted on the EZLN’s website in Spanish. (As this is written, those words have not yet been translated into English.) His words give us some answers to those questions. In Spanish the comunicado is entitled “El Método, la bibliografía y un Drone en las profundidades de las montañas del Sureste Mexicano.” [2] It translates as: “Method, bibliography and a Drone in the depths of the mountains of the Mexican Southeast.”
SupGaleano says that the storm is a profound economic crisis, but not only economic. It stems from the complete domination of the world by international banking, but also from the loss of legitimacy of “traditional” institutions (parties, government, judicial system, church, army, police, communications media, family). Additional factors contributing to the crisis are the corruption of the political class and destruction of the environment. The latter is due to privatizing or “the transformation of everything, even fundamental needs -water, air, light and shade, land and sky-, into merchandise.”
SupGaleano goes on to sum up this profound crisis, this perfect storm as follows:
“We are facing a reality that is synthesized today in one word: Ayotzinapa. For we Zapatistas, Ayotzinapa is not the exception, but rather the current rule. It is the family portrait of the system on the global level.
It has been said that organized crime or drug trafficking has permeated politics. It has been the reverse: the uses and customs of a corrupt political class (like the Mexican political class), […] were transported to organized crime.”
And the antidote for this profound crisis: ORGANIZE! Prepare yourselves! The dominant message of the EZLN’s Seminar is to organize. While Galeano uses examples from Mexico, he applies the control of international banking, privatization of our shared environment, corruption of the political classes and the loss of legitimacy of traditional institutions globally.
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Mary Ann Tenuto-Sánchez
June 18, 2015
NOTES:
Wallerstein: Elections can minimize the damage from the right
Elections can minimize the damage that the right inflicts, Immanuel Wallerstein says
People burned ballots in Tixtla, Guerrero (above) and in other states prior to Mexico’s midterm elections last Sunday, June 7. The PRI benefitted from the decline of the PRD.
By: Elio Henríquez
San Cristóbal de las Casas
The United States sociologist and historian, Immanuel Wallerstein, asserted that one must “use electoral tactics defensively” and although “it’s clear that victories” in the elections “don’t transform the world, it’s also true that they must not be underrated because they can be an essential mechanism for protecting the immediate needs of populations all over the world against the loss of benefits already acquired.”
Those “electoral battles,” he said, “must be developed within the logic of minimizing the damage that the global right is still able to inflict by means of control of the governments of the whole planet.”
In a position paper that he sent in writing to the seminar titled Critical thought versus the capitalist hydra, organized by the Zapatista National Liberation Army (EZLN), which was held in this city, he maintained that “we must not underrate this kind of battle because we all live and survive in the present and no movement can tell people that survival isn’t relevant in the short term.”
He clarified that it implies that “those electoral tactics be assumed exclusively as a pragmatic matter,” because “none of us ought to think that winning State power is a way of really transforming the world; but the decision about which is the lesser of the evils, must be analyzed case by case and moment by moment.”
In his paper titled “The anti-systemic movements and the future of capitalism,” read and translated by the social scientist Carlos Antonio Aguirre Rojas, investigator from the Autonomous National University of Mexico (UNAM), he said that: “this decision depends in large part on the electoral system with which we’re dealing. A system in which the winner takes it all must be confronted differently than a system in which two rounds (runoffs) exist or a system of proportional representation.”
Besides that, he added, “there are many different partisan or sub-partisan traditions inside the global left and although the majority of traditions are relics from a previous era, many people still continue voting according to these traditions.”
He emphasized: “Then, if state elections are only a pragmatic issue it is crucial to create alliances that respect these traditions seeking the 51 percent that, pragmatically speaking, counts a lot. But it’s very clear that we won’t ever jump for joy in the streets when we attain winning in these state elections, because the electoral victory nothing more than a simple defensive tactic.”
Considered one of the most important U.S. intellectuals on the left, Wallerstein recognized that individuals and movements exist that think that the electoral processes “are crucial,” but another part “considers that they are totally irrelevant.”
After asserting that one must “incessantly pressure towards greater democratization,” he stated that: “at least during the last two centuries, what movements on the left and the people have demanded most loudly from the States can be summed up in the word ‘more,’ in other words, more education, more health care, more income that guaranties a certain standard of living, and these demands not only are popular but also immediately useful in the everyday life of the majority of the people.”
He exposed that: “the conquest of ‘more’ also reduces the possibilities of the incessant accumulation of capital, because of which “these demands must be continuously maintained, because here the point of ‘too much’ will never be reached.”
The United States analyst asserted that: “although it’s clear that expanding all these functions of the ‘Welfare’ State will always pose questions about the efficiency in expenses, corruption or the creation of omnipotent or irresponsible bureaucracies, questions that we must resolve, that should not impede us from continuing with those basic demands for more, much more”.
In this sense, he emphasized, “it’s crucial that the popular movements facing governments of the center, center left, sometimes called progressive that they have participated in electing, not excuse them from the satisfaction of these demands for more health care, more education, more income, because the fact that they’re dealing with a friendly government and not with a government openly of the right, does not mean that we should lower our arms and stop fighting forever.”
Very much to the contrary, he continued, since by “pressuring those friendly governments we oblige opposition forces on the right to look towards a position on the center left, while if we don’t pressure them we push those governments of the center left towards positions on the center right.”
He emphasized that: “if it’s very clear that they could come to present certain special circumstances in which we would have to ignore these affirmations, the general rules with respect to democratization are clearly those of always looking for more, for much more.”
At 84 years of age, Wallerstein also said that: “the anti-systemic movements now are found in the midst of a ferocious fight around what our future can be,” because the world capitalist system is in the “structural crisis” phase.
In his opinion, “a real parting of waters exists in the programs of the left parties and social movements of the whole world in the period that encompasses from the 1960s of the last century until today.”
In the 1960s, he indicated, the programs of the movements of the old left placed their emphasis on the change of the economic structures and up to a certain point on the socialization or nationalization of the means of production, but they said very little and at times nothing in regard to the inequalities that didn’t have a class foundation.
“On the other hand today, almost all those parties and movements or their respective heirs put forth proposals that refer to gender, race and ethnic inequalities. Many of those programs are terribly inadequate, but at least those movements now feel that it’s necessary to say something with respect to these inequalities.”
He stated that on the other hand, “virtually no party or movement exists today that considers itself as being on the left and that continues defending the socialization or the nationalization of the means of production and a large number of them are proposing to move towards other horizons. And this is a healthy turn that some salute and others reject but that the majority accepts.”
He considered that: “that from 1968 until today an enormous quantity of attempts have been accumulating to create alternative strategies proposed by different movements, old and new, which has also created a healthy change in the relationships that between them guard that group of different anti-systemic movements in the sense that the mutual denunciations and the vicious struggles of the past have been considerably abated, which is a positive development that I believe we have underestimated.”
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Originally Published in Spanish by La Jornada
Translation: Chiapas Support Committee
Saturday, May 9, 2015
En español: http://www.jornada.unam.mx/2015/05/09/politica/013n1pol
Zibechi: Extractivism staggers
EXTRACTIVISM STAGGERS
Conflicts over Tia Maria Mine have left 4 people dead in Peru.
By: Raúl Zibechi
Resistance to extractivism [1] is sweeping the Latin American continent, from north to south, from the Atlantic to the Pacific, involving all the countries, forcing governments to put its military in the streets and decree states of emergency to terrorize populations that no longer yield, because they are suffering the consequences of the model.
Open sky mega-mining, large public works like hydroelectric dams, mono-crops fumigated with glyphosate and real estate speculation are being responded to as never before in intensity, extension and duration. The peoples are obtaining pueblos important victories in recent years: paralyzing the planting of Monsanto seeds in Malvinas Argentina; stopping the Barrick Gold, Pascua Lama bi-national project; postponing the construction of dozens of dams, as happened with La Parota, in México.
In recent weeks it has been the population of Arequipa, in southern Peru that is forcing the government of Ollanta Humala to decree a new state of emergency, after a fourth victim died because of police repression within the framework of an indefinite strike that has now lasted more than 60 days against the Tia María copper project of the Southern Copper company.
It is probable that Peru is the epicenter of the resistances to mining, with an average of 200 socio-environmental conflicts since 2008. In Brazil not only is there resistance to mining but also to large hydroelectric projects like Belo Monte, besides multiple resistances to real estate speculation (urban extractivism), which advances feverishly in Río de Janeiro facing the 2016 Olympics.
The Argentine pampa is the epicenter of resistance to the soy model, where the Mothers of Ituzaingo, the Argentine Malvinas Assembly, Stop Fumigating Us campaign and committed doctors stand out, who from June 15 to 18 organize the Week of Teaching Training for Dignified Science and Socio-Environmental Health in Rosario.
Until now no unified or centralized resistance exists, not on a regional scale or in each of the countries, but the multiplicity of struggles is coordinated in the streets, without the need for a unified apparatus. As the latest report of the Latin American Observatory of Mining Conflicts (OCMAL) [2] points out, “all this effort for maintaining mining extractivism is more widely criticized every day and delegitimized by broad sectors of society, and mining does not achieve convincing the population of its advantages” (OCMAL, April 2015, p. 101).
A certain similarity exists between current resistance to the extractive model and worker resistance to Fordism in the 1960s. Factory workers succeeded in disarticulating production based on direct resistance in every section and every shop, and based on direct action without depending on union bureaucracies, until the discipline and division of labor were defeated. It seems necessary to insist that it was a non- institutional struggle, not even openly declared, but so effective that it bent capital within its own territories, the factories, forcing a complete restructuring of the productive apparatus.
Something that we can learn from that wave of workers struggles is that to overthrow a model of domination what is central is what happens on the ground where that model is applied, the governments and the state administrations being completely unimportant. The struggle and direct resistance cannot be substituted, as the chronicles compiled in the infinity of works and stories teach.
On this point it’s necessary to emphasize that there is not a moment of defeat or “final struggle,” as the stanza of The International (La Internacional) says, because what’s decisive is the long process of direct actions that achieve engaging the mechanism of domination. From the time Fordism [3] and Taylorism [4] were implemented until they were overthrown and neutralized, more than half a century had transpired; two or three generations of workers were necessary to find the weak points of the employers’ gear.
What is happening against extractivism must be the source of multiple lessons; with an eye placed on the history of resistances and another on the present, we are able to draw some conclusions.
The first is that the indigenous peoples, blacks and mestizos champion the resistance in the areas where the mining companies, the mono-crops and the infrastructure mega-projects are deployed. We’re talking about a broad and heterogeneous framework of campesinos, rural workers and inhabitants of towns, where the role of women and their families is emphasized. It is a face-to-face struggle against corporations and governments, almost always without support from the institutions, which only make themselves present when the larger part of the population occupies the streets.
The second is the importance of the defense of water, the principal common good affected by extractivism. In some countries, like in Uruguay, the urban population started to react against the model al verifying the deterioration of the water quality that it consumes. In that way they were able to articulate alliances in effect between rural and urban, among grass roots collectives unions, between workers and scientists.
The third is the variety of forms of struggle that, at any moment, gain in massiveness provoking social explosions that are not spontaneous but rather the fruit of a prolonged labor of distribution and organization. Something of that happens these days in Arequipa, when the better part of the population of the villages and towns, first, and of the big city, later, forms an opinion against mining.
The fourth is the importance of small local and territorial groups, made up of members and neighbors, generally young. These kinds of groups are decisive because on their part the initial information that enables debate among broader sectors of the affected population.
Extractivism is still far from being demolished. But we already see that it staggers.
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Notes:
- Extractivism is the English translation of extractivismo, which Zibechi uses for describing capital’s “accumulation by dispossession.” In Mexico, the word most used to describe “accumulation by dispossession” is despojo. Urban extractivism is, at least in part, what we call “gentrification” in the U.S.
- Observatorio de Conflictos Mineros de América Latina
- Fordism – A technological system that depends on mass assembly-line production.
- Taylorism – A factory management system developed in the late 19th Century to increase efficiency by evaluating every step in the manufacturing process and breaking down production into specialized repetitive tasks.
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Originally Published in Spanish by La Jornada
Translation: Chiapas Support Committee
Friday, May 29, 2015
En español: http://www.jornada.unam.mx/2015/05/29/opinion/017a2pol
EZLN: Words from the homage and seminar
An Outline of the EZLN’s Word from the Homage and the Seminar
The EZLN’s seminar on Critical Thought versus the Capitalist Hydra and the Homage to Luis Villoro and teacher Galeano generated a high volume of comunicados and “words,” as well as articles in the print media. All are, of course, in Spanish and all have now been translated into English. The comunicados and words are published on the EZLN’s Enlace Zapatista website under the themes below. If you do not read Spanish look for the dates (3 may, 4 may, etcetera); the English option is there for most. If there is no English option on the front page, click on the words after the date and when the document opens, an English option should appear.
I. Comunicados (Issued on May 2, 2015 at the Homage)
- Words of Subcomandante Moisés
- Zapatista Teacher Galeano: Notes on a Life – SupGaleano
- Compañero Luis (words of SupMarcos prior to his “death
II. Our View of the Hydra (May 3, 2015 at the Seminar)
- The Crack in the Wall: First Note on Zapatista Method (SupGaleano)
- ON THE ELECTIONS: Organize! (Sup Moisés)
III. Our View Towards the Inside
A. Political Economy from the Communities (SupMoisés)
- Political Economy from the Zapatista Communities I (May 4, 2015)
- Political Economy from the Zapatista Communities II (May 5, 2015)
B. The Struggle as the Women that We Are
- Comandanta Miriam (May 6, 2015)
- Comandanta Rosalinda (May 6, 2015)
- Comandanta Dalia (May 6, 2015)
- Compañera support base Lizbeth (May 6, 2015)
- Compañera listen Selena (May 6, 2015)
IV. Resistance and Rebellion (All by SupMoisés)
- Resistance and Rebellion I (May 6, 2015)
- Resistance and Rebellion II (May 7, 2015)
- Resistance and Rebellion III (May 8, 2015)
Zibechi: Crisis and collapse
CRISIS AND COLLAPSE: NEW CHALLENGE
By: Raúl Zibechi
Solidarity with Zapatista Communities
One of the difficulties that the anti-systemic movements and those who continue pledged to constructing a new world confront consists of not attaining agreement on the definition of what is happening before our eyes. In broad strokes, two not necessarily opposed but very different views coexist: those who maintain that we are facing a crisis, greater even than the cyclical crises of capitalist economies, and those that tend to consider that humanity is being led to a situation of collapse by the system.
Understanding that we’re dealing with a theoretical debate with strong practical implications, since we would be facing two very different situations. It’s worth remembering that in other periods of recent history, the rise of Nazism for example, provoked deep divergences between the lefts of the epoch. Not a few failed to consider the importance of Nazism as a real systemic mutation, and thought that it was about an authoritarian regime similar to others that we had known. Nevertheless, with the passage of time we are able to agree with Giorgio Agamben that the field of concentration modified politics at the root, together with what he defined as a permanent state of emergency.
The seminar-seedbed “Critical thought versus the capitalist hydra,” organized by the EZLN from May 3 to 9 in Oventik and San Cristóbal de Las Casas, was the scene of the diverse views that cross through us, and their extraordinary wealth and fecundity. Many diverse analyses about the current world coexist within the anticapitalist field, some well founded, others more romantic, some focused on the economy and others on ethics, and many others are combinations of these and other forms of gazing and comprehending. I think that all of them have their importance, but they lead along partially different paths. Or, better, they can contribute to squandering forces.
What’s more complex is that no one can claim to have truth in his or her hands. This point seems to me extraordinarily complex, because it doesn’t permit discarding any proposal, but neither can it lead us to giving validity to any argument.
It seems to me necessary to distinguish between crisis and collapse, not because they are exclusive, but rather because they embody two distinct analyses. The concept of crisis is associated, in the anti-systemic field, with the periodic crises through which the capitalist economy crosses. On this point, the work of Karl Marx is an obligatory reference for anti-capitalists of all colors. His analysis of the crisis of over-accumulation has been converted, with complete justice, into the crucial point for comprehending how the system functions. From there derives a group of strictly present considerations.
Although some economic currents have coined the idea of the “collapse” of capitalism because of its own internal contradictions, and fail to consider the importance of collective subjects in its fall, it is evident that Marx is not responsible for this drift that he knew to have firm followers in the first part of the 20th Century.
In the same direction as Marx, Immanuel Wallerstein mentions the existence of a systemic crisis underway, which, after several decades of development, will give way to a different world than the current one (since at a certain moment it will produce a bifurcation), which can lead us to a better or worse society than the present one. We would be facing a window of temporary opportunities, during which human activity can have a large confluence in the final result. In this analysis, the crisis will be converted into chaos, from which will come a new order.
The idea of crisis is associated with periods of change, disorder, instabilities and turbulences that interrupt the normal development of things, and that after a certain time become a new but modified normality. Factors of order can emerge in the crisis that will give the new order a different physiognomy. From the movements’ point of view, it is important to discard two things: that the concept of crisis is associated too much with the economy and that it appears linked to transformation and changes.
If I understood correctly, following the words del Subcomandante Insurgente Moisés, who said at the closing of the seminar-seedbed that: “we don’t know whether we’ll have time to multiply this,” what lies in wait is not a crisis, but rather something more serious.
He insisted: “time is not waiting for us,” and said that walking is no longer sufficient, but rather it’s time to trot, to go faster. The previous night, before Subcomandante Insurgente Galeano said that up to 40 percent of humanity would be migrants and that there will be depopulation and destruction of zones in order to be restructured and reconstructed for capital. I believe that he wasn’t thinking about a crisis, but rather about something that we could call collapse, although he didn’t use that term.
Collapse is a large-scale catastrophe that implies the bankruptcy of institutions, in the form of rupture or definitive decline. There were many crises in history but few catastrophes/collapses. For example it occurs to me what happened with the Tawantinsuyu, the Inca Empire, because of the arrival of the invaders. Something similar can have happened to the Roman Empire, although I don’t have sufficient knowledge to assure it. Anyhow, the collapse is the end of something, but not the end of life, because, as happened with the Indian peoples, they rebuilt after the catastrophe, but as different subjects.
If in truth we face the perspective of a collapse, it would be the sum of wars, economic, environmental, health and natural crises. Just one fact: the World Health Organization warned that in the immediate future antibiotics will be incapable of combating the super-bacteria causing tuberculosis and pneumonia, among others. In sum, the world as we know it can disappear. If this is the immediate perspective, and those above know it and prepare for it, the Moisés’ haste is fully justified. It is time to accelerate our step.
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Originally Published in Spanish by La Jornada
Translation: Chiapas Support Committee
Friday, May 15, 2015
En español: http://www.jornada.unam.mx/2015/05/15/opinion/019a2pol
Gustavo Esteva: Seedbed
SEEDBED
By: Gustavo Esteva
A mural in La Realidad depicting Compañero Galeano (left) and Subcomandante Pedro (right).
The seminar on “Critical Thought versus the Capitalist Hydra” came to an end. In the closing plenary ceremony, this Saturday, we received the news: they were repressing the compañeros in San Quintín. What we had been analyzing was confirmed in the most unfortunate way. As Subcomandante Moisés emphasized, that announced that at best we no longer had the time that we thought we had; that the storm intensifies and attacks us and that sorrows join us together. We still haven’t healed from Ayotzinapa, and we continue waiting for our 43, and that arrives. And that it demands, if we learned anything at the seedbed (seminar), an immediate reaction from us for finding how to warn each other, how to take care of each other and how to weave our stories.
I believe that no one feared the pen or the word when he dealt with characterizing horror. We were charged with emotion, but also with analytical and historic rigor. We were able to show many heads of the hydra and also the form in which to cut off the ones that multiply. It was clear to us that, despite such brilliant, multiple and solid analyses, we still lack a lot: we just started. But at least it was possible to tend the theoretical and practical soil on which one can plant the seeds of knowing that we learned and to cultivate it, each in their own way, in the nurseries in each place that it may be possible.
The immediate task was clear. Upon returning home, without irresponsible haste, but with a sense of urgency, we must multiply the seedbeds. Those who have collectives, assemblies, spaces of reflection, autonomous forms of thinking and acting, we must share in them how much we learned, be it for venturing into new paths that are opened or for touring once again, with renewed eyes, what we have traveled a thousand times. Those who lack those spaces need to create them, although it may be with two friends or close friends.
One of the seedbed’s most important things was to find exact agreement on the gravity of the moment. From the most diverse positions, on a broad spectrum in which important differences became evident, recognized the immense dangers that weigh on us, an us that now is entirely general: no one escapes.
And yes, it was fascinating. But the truth is that we arrived at the gathering restless. What to do before such an overpowering circumstance, so immediately catastrophic, a condition that leaves no room for optimism and barely for hope. We asked each other the old question again, because we know that the old answers no longer function, but still weigh: imagination is paralyzed when one radically abandons them.
We did not get an answer. We heard many. That is the nature of the resistances and rebellions of today. They do not consist solely in opposing something, for resisting the aggression of any of the heads of the hydra. It was clear to many of us that participated in the seedbed that the only effective way to act is to multiply the no, the radical rejections to how much they attack and repress us, and in that same operation multiply the yeses, the different ways of constructing the new world. I believe that many of us also learned a central lesson: not to cling tightly to a position about what can be better.
Again and again, in the words repeated by Subcomandante Moisés, the Zapatistas took away from us the urge and capacity to idealize them and they also made us see that we should not imitate them. It was necessary to practice that almost surgical operation. The emotion of being in Zapatista territory, the impression that the Escuelita left in many participants, the 30 years of achievements, the vitality of an initiative that seems to be the world’s most radical and important, and even the very fact that the Zapatistas called us to this seedbed with their traditional sense of political opportunity, all that together led to losing a sense of reality. Although it would be viable and sensible to reproduce this experience as such, in the places of each one that does not now have the time that they had.
One of the most difficult challenges, of the many that we have, is how to share these reflections and even the sense of urgency with compañeros and brothers that appear distracted, who don’t perceive or feel the gravity of the current situation, who still harbor hope that things will soon return to normal and that, therefore, still cling to the usual paths. How to find the simple terms that will permit sharing without offending and to open this to wake up other minds and hearts in those with whom we need to be united?
We came with many burdens on our shoulders, but they are shoulders renewed and full of courage. We can walk around and even trot with that new weight.
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Originally Published in Spanish by La Jornada
Translation: Chiapas Support Committee
Monday, May 11, 2015
En español: http://www.jornada.unam.mx/2015/05/11/opinion/017a2pol
EZLN: Whatever color you vote for, it’s going to get worse
EZLN: “WHATEVER COLOR YOU VOTE FOR, IT’S GOING TO GET WORSE”
Subcomandante Moisés holding his radio in a La Realidad Mural
By: Isaín Mandujano
SAN CRISTÓBAL DE LAS CASAS, Chiapas (apro) – The Zapatista National Liberation Army (EZLN) assured that it will not promote abstaining, but neither will it call for voting next June 7, “because whatever color [party] you vote for, it’s going to get worse,” he said. What all the peoples must do, he emphasized, is “to organize.”
According to Moisés, in these days “there is this thing that they call the electoral process, we hear and we see that they’re coming out with saying that the EZLN calls for abstention (…) That and other foolishness from those who in vain have a big head, because they don ‘t even study history.”
Within the framework of the seminar named “Critical thought versus the capitalist hydra,” which is being held since yesterday at the University of the Earth and will conclude next Saturday May 9, the subcomandante set the EZLN’s official posture about the elections next June 7.
“As the Zapatistas that we are we do not call for voting or for not voting. As the Zapatistas that we are, what each of us does is tell people to organize to resist, to struggle, to have what is necessary.”
As native peoples of these lands, he added, they already know the actions of the political parties, “which have been weaving a bad history with bad people.”
According to the Zapatista subcomandante, those political parties have only been used for dividing the peoples and communities in the whole country. The political parties, he insisted, confront, use those below to obtain positions and afterwards, now above, they forget about them. They only give them crumbs in order to use them, and it’s that way until the next electoral process.
“Here below, be it whatever color, red, yellow, green, blue or discoloration, the political parties are not what they say they are: that the politicians that come are like ‘saviors;’ that they are going to take you out of poverty. They only come to use you in their petty interests of winning the political positions to which they (the politicians) aspire.”
He continued: “The politicians and their parties only use poverty for coming to give crumbs, for taking the photo of how they are helping the most fucked, the poorest, the dispossessed. Nevertheless, they only use you to come and take the photo.”
For many years, the Zapatistas have decided to organize themselves better, and he that wants to vote can vote, but the vote will not lift anyone out of poverty, what’s better is collective organization like the rebels have done, organize for going forward, not waiting for others to arrive with deceit and false promises, he said.
“We don’t tell you to vote. Nor do we say don’t vote. We don’t tell you to enter the Zapatistas, because we know well from our history that not anyone has the strength of heart to be a Zapatista.”
He added: “We’re not joking. We tell you, plain and simple, to get organized!”
When they ask us what to do, we simply tell them: “There you are going to see for yourself what to do, what comes into your heart, into your head, and no one else comes to tell you what you have to do.
“We don’t tell you lies, don’t give you big rolls or discourses. We only tell you the truth: it’s going to get worse,” he maintained.
And it’s that those above just live to deceive the people, and therefore it is necessary to organize below, because the people make the solutions, not the leaders, or the parties, he specified.
Later he let out: “If (Manuel) Velasco gives hand slaps, those party members give slaps with their poorly hidden racism.”
He explained that they know perfectly well what the elections are, but the Zapatistas, he added, have another time, another geography, another calendar of how to do elections in rebel territory, with resistance.
“While there above they spend millions of pesos on electoral propaganda, on tons of plastic waste, on canvas with photographs of rats and criminals, in Zapatista territory we have found another way of doing the elections without false promises or deceit.”
In the autonomous communities, the slogan is made effective that says: “Here the people command and the government obeys.”
That, he added, is now the Zapatista life in the peoples. It is a culture of truth. “We have certainly made many errors, many mistakes. We will surely make more, but they are our mistakes. We commit an error and we pay, while there above are the parties and their leaders that commit those mistakes, but at the end of accounts those below are the ones that pay for it.
“What comes of the elections in the month of June, doesn’t go to us or come to us. Nor do we call to vote or not to vote. It doesn’t matter to us. Moreover, it doesn’t worry us. For us Zapatistas what interests us is knowing more about how to resist and confront the many heads of the capitalist system that exploits us, represses us, scorns us and robs us.”
The elections that the capitalist system organizes only serve to perpetuate those up there above in power, he pointed out.
“If you already thought that you are not going to vote, we say that’s okay, we don’t say that it’s bad. We’re just saying that we believe that it’s not enough; we have to organize. And, clearly, get ready because they are going to blame party members of the Institutional left for the misery.”
He closed: “We, the Zapatistas, don’t get tired of saying: organize, let’s get organized, each one in your place, let’s struggle to be organized, let’s work to get organized, let’s think about organizing and let’s find each other to unite our organizations for a world where the peoples govern and the government obeys.”
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Originally Published in Spanish by Proceso.com.mx
Translation: Chiapas Support Committee
Monday, May 4, 2015
http://www.proceso.com.mx/?p=403265
Holloway: Critical thinking against the capitalist hydra
CRITICAL THINKING AGAINST THE CAPITALIST HYDRA
By: John Holloway*
Critical thinking: thinking that looks for hope in a world where it doesn’t appear to exist anymore; that opens what is closed, that rattles what is fixed. Critical thinking is the attempt to understand the storm and more. It is to understand that at the center of the storm there is something that gives us hope.
The storm is coming; or better yet it is already here. It is here and it is probably going to intensify. We have a name: Ayotzinapa; Ayotzinapa as horror and also as a symbol of many other horrors, Ayotzinapa as a concentrated expression of the fourth world war.
Where is the storm coming from? Not from the politicians; they are merely the executors of the storm. Not from imperialism, it is not a product of the governments, nor from the most powerful governments. The storm surges from the form in which society is organized. It is an expression of the desperation, the fragility, the weakness of a form of social organization that is already past it’s expiration date, an expression of the crisis of capital.
Capital as such is a constant aggression. It tells us every day “you have to mold what you do in a certain way, the only activity that is valid in this society is the one that contributes to the expansion of capital’s profits.”
The aggression that capital is has a certain dynamic. To survive it has to subordinate our activity every day more intensely to the logic of profit: “today you have to work faster than yesterday, bend over more than yesterday.”
With that we can see capital’s weakness. It depends on us, what we want and accept what it imposes on us. If we say “excuse me, but today I am going to cultivate my plot of land.” or “today I am going to play with my children,” or “today I am going to dedicate time to do something that makes sense for me,” or simply “We are not going to bow down,” then capital cannot extract the profits it needs, the rate of profit falls, capital is in crisis. In other words, we are the crisis of capital, our lack of subordination, our dignity, and our humanity. We are the crisis of capital and proud of being so, we are proud of being the crisis of the system that’s killing us.
Capital despairs of this situation. It looks for all the possible ways to impose the subordination it needs: authoritarianism, violence, labor reforms, educational reforms. It also introduces a game, a fiction; if we cannot extract the profits that we require, we are going to feign that there exists, to create a monetary representation for a value that has not been produced, expand the debt to survive and try to use it at the same time to impose the discipline that is needed. But this fiction increases the instability of capital and additionally it fails to impose the necessary discipline. The dangers for capital that this fictitious expansion represents becomes clear with the collapse of 2008, and with that it becomes more evident that only way out for capital is through authoritarianism: all the negotiation around the Greek debt tells us that there is no possibility for a softer capitalism, that the only path for capital is the path of austerity, of violence; the storm that is already here, the storm that approaches.
We are the crisis of capital, we who say no, we who say: Enough of capitalism!, we who say that it is time to stop creating capital, that there is another way of living.
Capital depends on us, because if we do not create profits (surplus value) directly or indirectly, then capital cannot exist. We create capital, and if capital is in crisis it’s because we are not creating the necessary profits for the existence of capital, that’s why they’re attacking us with so much violence.
In this situation, we really only have two options of struggle. We can say “Yes, we are in agreement that we are going to continue producing capital, promoting the accumulation of capital, but we want better living conditions.” This is the option of the governments and parties of the left: of Syriza, of Podemos, of the governments in Venezuela and Bolivia. The problem is that, even though we can improve our living conditions in some regards, through the desperation of capital itself there is very little possibility of a more humane capitalism.
The other possibility is to say “Good by, capital, leave, we are going to create other ways of living, other ways of being in relationship, among ourselves and also with the non-human forms of life, ways of living that are not determined by money and the search for profits, but through our own collective decisions.”
Here at this seminar we are at the very center of the second option. This is the point of encounter between Zapatistas and Kurds and thousands of more movements that reject capitalism, attempting to construct something different. Everyone of us, women and men are saying “Capital, your time has passed, leave now, we already building something else.” We express in many different ways: We are making cracks in the wall of capital and attempting to promote its confluences, we are building the commons, we are communing, we are the movement of doing against work, we are the movement of use value against value, we are the movement of dignity against a world based on humiliation. We are creating here and now a world made of many worlds.
But, do we have sufficient strength? Do we have enough strength to say that we are not interested in capitalist investment, that we are not interested in capitalist employment? Do we have the strength and force to totally reject our actual dependency on capital to survive? Do we have the strength to say a final “good-bye” to capital?
Possibly, we do not have it, yet. Many of us who are here today have a salary or our grants that come from the accumulation of capital or, if not, we are going to return next week to look for work from a capitalist. Our rejection of capital is a schizophrenic rejection: we want to say a definitive goodbye, and we cannot or it costs us a lot of work. Purity does not exist is this struggle. The struggle to stop creating capital is also a struggle against our dependency on capital. Which is to say, it is a struggle to emancipate our creative capacities, our strength to produce, our productive forces.
We are in it, that’s why we came over here. It is a question of organizing ourselves, clearly, not about creating an organization, but of organizing ourselves in multiple ways to live from now on from the world we want to create.
How do we advance, how do we walk? By asking questions, of course, asking and holding each other and organizing ourselves.
* Post-graduate professor of sociology at the Instituto de Ciencias Sociales y Humanidades de la Benemérita Universidad Autónoma de Puebla. This is the text of a document presented to the Seminar on critical thinking against the capitalist hydra [Seminario sobre el pensamiento crítico frente a la hidra capitalista].
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Originally Published in Spanish by La Jornada
Translation: Chiapas Support Committee
Friday, May 15, 2015
En español: http://www.jornada.unam.mx/2015/05/15/opinion/018a1pol
La Garrucha denounces paramilitary acts in San Manuel
CARACOL OF RESISTANCE TOWARDS A NEW DAWN
Path of the Future Good Government Junta,* La Garrucha, Chiapas, Mexico
Mural on front of former offices of Good Government Junta in La Garrucha carries the name of the Caracol in both Spanish and Tseltal.
May 11, 2015
WE DENOUNCE PUBLICLY
To public opinion:
To the communications media, alternative, autonomous or whatever you call them:
To the national and international adherents of the Sixth:
To the honest human rights organisms:
Sisters and brothers of the people of Mexico and of the world:
We energetically denounce what the paramilitary groups of Rosario are doing to us. There are 21 paramilitaries in Rosario and 28 paramilitaries from the Chikinival barrio of the Pojkol ejido in the municipio of Chilón, Chiapas.
Our compañero support bases live there in Rosario, because it is recuperated land, belonging to San Manuel autonomous municipio of Caracol III La Garrucha.
There are 21 paramilitaries living in Rosario and they are supported by the 28 paramilitaries from barrio Chikinival that are invading our recuperated land.
It has been the same problem since August 2014, when they killed a stud bull of ours, when they destroyed homes and destroyed our collective cooperative, stole our belongings, when they fumigated a hectare of pasture land with herbicide, when they were shooting and leaving letters in the ground with spent shells that said: “Pojkol territory.” [1]
WHAT HAPPENED
On May 10, 2015, at 9:35 in the morning, 28 arrived people that belong to the Chikinival barrio of the Pojkol ejido in the official municipio of Chilón, some 40 minutes away by car from the town of Rosario. They arrived aboard eight motorcycles, in the recuperated town of ROSARIO where the compañero support bases live, because they want to take our land away by force.
These paramilitaries of Rosario, accompanied by the paramilitaries from the Chikinival barrio of the Pojkol ejido, started to measure the sites where the compañero support bases are already living, during the day they were working there.
At 15:15 pm, a group of them withdrew from working, another group stayed in the same place, but 5 minutes later three of them headed to the home of a support base compañero, and the majority of them stayed on the highway 30 meters from the compañero’s house. They only found the 13-year old daughter of the support base compañero at home sweeping her room, not the father. The mother was outside on one side of the house.
Two of these paramilitary aggressors belong to the Chikinival barrio of the Pojkol ejido and one belongs to Rosario. His name is ANDRES LOPEZ VAZQUEZ. The 2 from Chikinival entered inside of the house, while Andrés, the Rosario paramilitary, stood guard at the door of the house. Upon seeing that the compa’s young daughter went out running for the door, ANDRES shot at her 4 times with a 22-caliber pistol. Her father arrived at the moment of the shots and the compañero defended his daughter, throwing a stone at the attacker that hit him in the head. None of the bullets hit the young woman. His compañeros that were at 30 meters carried the injured man away.
Yesterday afternoon, May 11, the injured man returned the family members of the aggressor went to the compañero’s house, in other words, the wife and 3 sons to say that they have to pay him 7,000 pesos for his care.
It’s clear that the compañero will not pay, because he is not the one who sought and provoked what happened.
On May 10 at 6:50 pm, 16 people arrived in village of Nuevo Paraíso in Francisco Villa the autonomous municipio. Three of them were armed with two 22-caliber pistols in hand and one 22-caliber long arm. They were aboard 8 motorcycles. These people belong to the Chikinival barrio of the Pojkol ejido. They came to throw a letter in the street, wherein they blame the support base compañeros for provoking these problems first.
But in reality we are not the ones provoking any problem, because we have been seeking peaceful alternatives for trying to resolve this matter, but they have never understood us. We have even delivered one hectare to each one of the 21 persons that are provoking, even so they have been threatening us. From February until today, May 11, those from Chikinival in the Pojkol ejido are threatening us daily because they ask those of Rosario to patrol armed. Those from Pojkol are always armed every day.
Therefore, we contradict what they are doing and blaming. It’s clear who provokes first.
We have cited (sent a notice to appear) the Pojkol ejido’s authorities and they came and said that they cannot do anything, because that group is not recognized now in the ejido, because they are totally some hoodlums, they do not respect or obey in the ejido. He also advised that the State of Manuel Velasco Coello also does nothing because it is his paramilitary.
Compañeros and compañeras, brothers and sisters of the world, these are the strategies with which the three levels of bad federal, state and municipal government are provoking us, when they use people that don’t understand our just cause so that that way we fall into their traps; but we are clear about what this bad government is doing: organizing, preparing and financing organizations and people that let themselves be bought off or that sell out.
We say to those without brains up there above: we are never going to stop resisting, not are we going to fall into their traps; we will continue resisting here, working our lands and constructing our autonomy.
Whatever may come to pass, we place responsibility directly on the federal, state and municipal governments and on the paramilitaries from Chikinival barrio of the Pojkol ejido and from Rosario.
Sisters and brothers, we will continue reporting what may happen with our peoples and we want you to remain attentive to what may happen.
SINCERELY,
Good Government Junta
Jacobo Silvano Hernández Lucio Ruiz Pérez
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* We have translated the name of the Good Government Junta as “Path of the Future” because in that region of the Jungle the word camino is used to refer to one’s current path in life.
[1] For background on what happened last August 2014, see: https://compamanuel.wordpress.com/2014/10/04/anatomy-of-a-paramilitary-attack-on-the-zapatistas/
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Originally Published in Spanish by Enlace Zapatista
Translation: Chiapas Support Committee
Monday, May 11, 2015
Chiapas Support Committee 