Chiapas Support Committee
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EZLN: Homage to David Ruiz García
HOMAGE to the COMPANERO DAVID RUIZ GARCÍA during the Exchange between Indigenous Peoples and Zapatista Peoples
Words of the National Indigenous Congress compañero Armando García Salazar, of the Hñahñu´ people of San Francisco Xochicuautla, in homage to the deceased compañero DAVID RUIZ GARCÍA during the Exchange between Indigenous Peoples and Zapatista Peoples, August 4, 2014.
AND
TWO SHORT CHRONICLES OF THE HOMAGE
- Words of Compañero Armando García Salazar on behalf of the family and Compañeros of the deceased Compañero David Ruiz García.
Good morning everyone.
Good morning brothers, sisters, grandparents, children, and all of the compas who represent this movement.
Two months ago a nephew, a son, came to these lands in support of our brother Galeano. Unfortunately he suffered an accident upon his return.
Out of eagerness to defend justice and indigenous rights, he had been part of this movement for eight years. He very much wanted to come meet the Zapatista brothers, and to be frank, shake the hand of Subcomandante Marcos. It was his greatest desire. And he fulfilled it. He came to La Realidad.
Unfortunately, destiny is like this. Today, despite this, we, his brothers and his relatives, are here again. We will not retreat; David would have wanted us to go forward.
Since he began to participate in the struggle, he would ask why there was so much for so few and so little for so many. I could never answer him because I haven’t yet understood this either. He believed however that one day this would change, and that is what we are doing now.
All of us present here come with an objective. All of us present here come with conviction, and we are doing what many people have done: raising our voices, not giving in, claiming what is ours, and running off those who have invaded us.
This was one of David’s objectives, and I come humbly here today to carry out the traditional custom of our community: to put a cross at the site of the accident.
Many thanks, Zapatista brothers.
In his first visit to the beautiful state, David said, “I must go and contribute the voice of our tribe, our indigenous people, the Otomí or Hñahñu´.
Many thanks for listening to me, and for sharing this experience in this place. Thank you brothers.
- TWO CHRONICLES
ONE…
The initial ceremony of the exchange between the CNI and THE ZAPATISTAS was held and compañero comandante Tacho read a speech. Afterwards, all of the compañeras and compañeros present on stage went to pay homage to the compañero David Ruiz García at the site of the accident.
One relative of the deceased compañero David said he was commissioned to leave a cross at the site.
We started out toward the site, walking in two columns, with one compañero showing us where exactly the accident that killed the compañero David had happened and where we would leave the cross. The compañero sub comandante insurgente Moisés and the compañero comandante Tacho began to clear the area, and another compañero dug a hole in which to place the cross. Meanwhile the compañeras and compañeros of the CNI began to burn something like incense; they had brought embers in a small cup and they began to pray and sing in their ways of paying homage to the compañero David, who was a fighter. They expressed their pain at his death, and to see the compañeras and compañeros is to continue the path of struggle. They sang a song titled “Heroes and Martyrs,” and then climbed a small path to place the cross there. It is a rocky area, but they planted the cross with boughs of flowers and a candle. They prayed and sang again, and chanted “vivas,” LONG LIVE DAVID, LONG LIVE GALEANO, and THE STRUGGLE CONTINUES, and applauded. One of compañero David’s compañeros in struggle said that compañero David would be present here and in all of the struggles of our country. They brought a muslin cloth which was received by compañero sub comandante insurgente Moisés who also spoke, affirming that the compañero David was with us, that he would stay with us here in rebellious territory, and that it was good that the compañero David had known where to give his life. Finally, one of the CNI members asked us to accompany him in singing the Zapatista anthem and then we returned.
ANOTHER…
Compañeras and Compañeros here, August 4, 2014. Today was the inauguration for the National Indigenous Congress Compañeros. First, comandante Tacho spoke. After he finished, compañero subcomandante Insurgente Moisés spoke and said that we would go to the site of Compañero David’s accident. The Compañero David’s family brought an iron cross and boughs of flowers and bean and corn seeds to the site, and they placed the cross there. They sang some songs for the compañero. In truth, the family is very much in pain, but they are also very strong and they will follow the example of the compañero David who did not die just anywhere, but in Zapatista territory. After this was over, the family gave a handkerchief and an embroidered cloth to the compañero sub comandante insurgente Moisés. The compañero sub comandante insurgente Moisés then spoke, saying that the compañero David had known where to give his life, and that he would always be with us. We then returned to continue our work.
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Text and camera work by Airwaves Insurgent Compañera Angelina, and Infantry Insurgent Compañera Erika of Los Tercios Compas [“Odd Ones Out”].
Note: “Odd Ones Out,” as their name indicates, are neither media, nor free, nor autonomous, nor alternative, but are rather more of the however-you-call-it type, but they are compas… I think. They are a collective dispersed through calendars and geographies, and they would be completely anonymous except that their members’ identity is given away by their rebellious irreverence. They are the EZLN mass media, and they function whenever they can, which is just once in a while. They are made up of human beings and animals, although sometimes you can’t tell the difference between them. They include those who edit texts and images, put them into cyberspace, add and subtract and sometimes successfully publish something moderately comprehensible. Their logo is a cat-dog putting the rubber stamp where it should always go, that is, below and to the left. Formal registry for the Junta de Buen Gobierno is still in process for the simple reason that they are currently all in the exchange. Reproduction authorized for non-population purposes, wrong-way circulation, and non-consumerist consumption. I testify: meow… or was it woof?
Cat-dog
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Originally Published in Spanish by Enlace Zapatista
More photos at:
Inauguration of Zapatista Exchange with Indigenous Peoples of Mexico
INAUGURATION OF THE FIRST EXCHANGE OF THE INDIGENOUS PEOPLES OF MEXICO WITH THE ZAPATISTA PEOPLES
Indigenous man speaks at Zapatista Exchange with Indigenous People of Mexico
The words of Comandante Tacho, on behalf of the Indigenous Revolutionary Clandestine Committee – General Command of the EZLN, at the Inauguration of the First Exchange of Indigenous Peoples of Mexico with Zapatista Peoples.
August 3, 2014.
COMPAÑERAS AND COMPAÑEROS OF THE NATIONAL INDIGENOUS CONGRESS:
COMPAÑEROS AND COMPAÑERAS OF THE INDIGENOUS PEOPLES WHO ARE VISITING US:
We greet you hoping that everyone has arrived safely to these Zapatista lands.
You have made a long journey from distant lands to meet us here in this corner of rebellious Zapatista lands of the Mexican Southeast.
Compañeras and compañeros:
Welcome, compañeras and compañeros of the original peoples, the guardians of Mother Earth.
Welcome peoples, nations, and tribes.
Welcome brothers and sisters:
NAHUAS, PURÉPECHAS, MAYA PENINSULARES, MAZAHUA, ZOQUE, WIXARIKA, MIGRANTE, TEPEHUANO, COCA, HÑAHÑU, MAYO, TRIQUI, NAZA BI BINNI ZAA, CHINANTECO, IKOOT, AFROMEXICANO, POPOLUCA, TZOTZIL, CHOL, TOJOLABAL, TZELTAL, TOTONACO, CHOL, KUMIAI, AMUZGO HUARIJIO, MIXE, ÑHATO, CHONTAL
WELCOME INDIGENOUS PEOPLES!
Welcome to all of the bases of support, representatives of the Zapatista communities. Welcome compañeros Subcomandantes Insurgentes. Subcomandante Insurgente Moisés. Subcomandante Insurgente Galeano.
From the General Command of the Zapatista National Liberation Army.
We hope that you have all arrived safe and sound in order to carry out this first very important exchange between the National Indigenous Congress and the Zapatista communities.
This exchange carries the name of the compañero “David Ruiz García”.
We send our most sincere greetings to all of our compañer@s insurgentes.
And to the compañeras and compañeros – elders, young people, and children – who are bases of support of the Zapatista Army for National Liberation.
As well as to all of the compañeras and compañeros of the Fuerzas Mexicanas de Milicias [Mexican Militia Forces] of the EZLN.
To the members of the MAREZ (Autonomous Zapatista Municipalities in Rebellion) and to all of the compañer@s who make up the Good Government Juntss.
Compañeros and compañeras of the National Indigenous Congress.
We come to share our suffering and pain caused by the Neoliberal system.
But not only this…
We also come to share valuable knowledge, our experiences in struggle and organization, and our goals and challenges.
We do so in the face of the neoliberal capitalist invaders that have done us so much damage.
These invaders were not satisfied with the theft and looting carried out by the conquistadors in 1492.
Those conquistadors encountered the resistance of the peoples, tribes, and indigenous nations of these lands of this country called Mexico.
They killed those who opposed subordination to the Spanish monarchy.
These wicked invading tormentors stained their hands with indigenous blood and stole the richness cared for by our oldest ancestors.
They persecuted the Indian peoples of Mexico and all of Latin America with the goal of eliminating the indigenous peoples completely and banishing their existence.
They did not achieve this. That we are here now is proof.
However, communication from the communities of our ancestors was lost; the relations of these communities were lost.
But the wisdom and intelligence of our oldest grandparents was hidden from the Spanish invasion.
And with that the indigenous peoples remade their existence.
We grew, forgotten by the powerful, for 500 years in all of the corners of our Mexican homeland.
We as original peoples were ignored, deceived, forgotten, exploited, and enslaved in their dominion for more than 500 years.
And now, through the rise of the neoliberal powers, the machine of destruction appears once again to disappear our peoples.
They have made it bigger and more modern, supported by laws and bad governments, in order to invade us once again.
It has a new plan of dispossession, dispossessing us of our mother earth using the machinery of the power of money, looting the riches that mother earth has held and kept safe for millions of years.
With this machine comes the death and destruction of our peoples and our mother earth.
When we say these two words so well known by our peoples—these words of death and destruction—our heart and our gaze goes to the PALESTINIAN people. We hear and read what they say about “the conflict in Gaza,” as if there were two equal forces confronting each other, and as if saying “conflict” would hide the death and destruction such that death would not kill and destruction would not destroy.
But as the indigenous people that we are, we know that what is happening there is not a “conflict” but a MASSACRE, which the government of Israel is carrying out a war of extermination upon the PALESTINIAN people. Everything else is just words to try to hide reality.
But we also know, as the indigenous people that we are, that the PALESTINIAN people will resist and will rise again, that they will once again begin to walk and that they will known then that, although we are far away on the map, the Zapatista peoples embrace them today as we have before, as we always do, with our collective heart.
And here on our map, the power of money’s machine of war of is without a brain, without memory, wicked, like a savage animal unleashed against our indigenous peoples of Mexico.
They do not care about the destruction and death of our entire peoples, tribes, and nations.
We as the indigenous peoples of Mexico are not protected by laws and by bad governments.
Our hope lies only in ourselves.
No one is going to come save us; absolutely no one will fight for us.
Not political parties, nor politicians, nor laws; there is nothing there for us.
Compañeras and compañeros, the political parties, laws, and bad governments have demonstrated this clearly.
They will not be able to keep deceiving us; they have shown what they are for the last 83 years. They all work in the service of transnational capitalists.
That is why we have to struggle together to defend ourselves and to defend our mother earth.
This is the earth from which we were born, that gave us life, and in which we will rest eternally.
That is why we are all the colors that we are, all of the languages that our hearts speak; that is why we are peoples, tribes, and nations. We are the guardians of these lands, of this country Mexico, of this continent and of the world.
So, compañeras and compañeros, today is the beginning of our walk together and our search for how we will defend ourselves communally. There is no more time.
We will work with wisdom and intelligence these days together.
We inaugurate this encounter of exchange under the name of compañero David Ruiz García, let his heart continue to walk in our step, today August 3, 2014, at 10 hours and 21 minutes.
On behalf of the Indigenous Revolutionary Clandestine Committee—General Command of the Zapatista National Liberation Army, in the name of all of the women, children, men, and elders of the Zapatista National Liberation Army…
I declare formally inaugurated this first Exchange.
Welcome to all of you.
Welcome here is the word of those who resist and struggle. Welcome is the ear that listens and the heart of a compañero.
Thank you very much.
From the Zapatista Realidad.
Comandante Tacho. Mexico, August of 2014. In the twentieth year of the war against oblivion.
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Originally Published in Spanish by Enlace Zapatista
You can also find more photos on the Enlace Zapatista website above
Note about the photos: Regarding photo credits, if they come out badly or blurry or are generally worthless, you can say that they are from CNN, EFE, AFP, Reuters, AP, Notimex, or one of those agencies that misinforms about the crime taking place against the Palestinian people. If they look good, or at least so-so, and they at least do more than rob megabytes from your page, then you can put “Photos courtesy of the EZLN mass media collective, ‘Odd Ones Out’,” which, as their name indicates, are neither media, nor free, nor autonomous, nor alternative, but really more of the “however-you-call-it” type, but they are compas. Photo reproduction, circulation, and consumption is permissible as long it is not for esoteric purposes or for anything with too many
32 Zapatistas displaced in San Manuel
[San Manuel is the autonomous Zapatista municipality (municipio) with which we, the Chiapas Support Committee, have had a partnership (hermanamiento) for the last 12 years.]
FRAYBA: ZAPATISTAS DISPLACED FACING RISK OF ATTACK
Peace Camp in San Manuel
San Cristóbal de Las Casas, Chiapas, August 4, 2014
Press Bulletin No. 22
Displacement of Zapatista Bases before the risk of attack
32 people from the Egipto (Egypt) autonomous community, belonging to the Caracol of La Garrucha, were forcibly displaced.
Residents of the Ejido Pojcol invade recuperated lands of the Bases of Support of the Zapatista National Liberation Army (BAEZLN, their initials in Spanish)
The Fray Bartolomé de Las Casas Human Rights Center (Frayba) documented the forced displacement of 32 people from Egipto Community, of the Rebel Autonomous Municipality Zapatista (MAREZ) of San Manuel, belonging to the Good Government Junta “Path of the Future,” Caracol III, La Garrucha, Tseltal Jungle Zone, in Chiapas, (official municipality of Ocosingo).
The acts occurred on August 1, at 11:30 PM, when a group of armed people, coming from the Ejido Pojcol, municipality of Chilón, entered the land (used) for regional collective work of San Manuel Autonomous Municipality, recuperated by the Zapatista National Liberation Army (EZLN, its initials in Spanish). In this territory, bordering on the Autonomous Communities of El Rosario and Egipto, the armed individuals killed a steer and fired gunshots.
When the group from Ejido Pojcol carried out acts of occupation and armed harassment, members of the Egipto Autonomous Community perceived that, various individuals with flashlights in hand, were heading towards their village. For this reason and to avoid a possible attack, on August 2, at 12:30 AM, 32 people (women, little girls and boys, and the elderly) were forcibly displaced, walking during all the early hours of the morning, to reach another Zapatista town where they are currently sheltered.
These new acts of harassment, territorial dispossession and aggressions are presented within the framework of the First Exchange of the Zapatista Peoples and the Original Peoples of Mexico “Compañero David Ruiz García,” meeting with the National Indigenous Congress, which began this Monday, August 4 in the Autonomous Community of La Realidad.
Before imminent risk and the gravity of the acts that happen in the MAREZ of San Manuel, belonging to the Junta “Path of the Future,” of Caracol III of La Garrucha, we ask National and International Civil Society to remain alert so that acts of violence against the Zapatista bases don’t continue escalating. Background:
On Friday, July 25, at 6:00 AM, 19 armed people entered the land for regional collective work of San Manuel Autonomous Municipality for the first time. They constructed roofs; they destroyed, burned and used signs that the EZLN had installed in protest after the murder of Teacher Galeano as firewood. At the same time, the aggressors fired 3 gunshots into the air, with .22-caliber weapons during the morning g and afternoon and afternoon. They left the community at 1:30 AM, on July 26. During the time that they were there, they threatened the Zapatista bases from El Rosario and Egipto autonomous communities with dispossessing them of their lands.
On Wednesday, July 30, the aggressor group again entered to clean one part of the land, they fumigated 3 hectares of pasture, injured a zebu steer with a knife and inscribed the legend “Pojcol Territory” on the land.
Because of these acts, this Human Rights Center made punctual interventions, directing documents to the Chiapas state government so that the necessary measures are adopted to avoid consequences difficult or impossible to repair.
The Frayba has documented other aggressions against the BAEZLN, among the recent ones: the murder of Señor José Luis Solís López “Teacher Galeano” and the destruction of the autonomous Zapatista clinic and school, last May 2 in the Autonomous Community of La Realidad, official municipality of Las Margaritas. Members of the Green Ecologist Party of Mexico (PVEM), National Action Party (PAN) and members of the Independent Central of Agricultural Workers and Campesinos-Historic (CIOAC-H) perpetrated those acts just prior to the announced meeting of the National Indigenous Congress and the Homage that the EZLN was going to hold in memory of Don Luis Villoro.
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1. Another denunciation (in Spanish) of the La Garrucha Junta, because of aggressions from members of the Ejido Pojcol: El mal gobierno intensifica la campaña de contrainsurgencia, 7 de julio 2011. Disponible en: http://enlacezapatista.ezln.org.mx/2011/07/09/el-mal-gobierno-intensific…
Originally Published in Spanish by Frayba at: http://www.frayba.org.mx/archivo/boletines/140803_boletin_22_desplazamiento_baez.pdf
EZLN: They arrived safely
THEY ARRIVED SAFELY
ZAPATISTA NATIONAL LIBERATION ARMY
Mexico
August 3, 2014
To the Sixth in Mexico and the world:
To the free, autonomous, alternative, or however-you-call-it media:
Compas:
Zapatista greetings.
FIRST. I am writing to let you know that the participants of the National Indigenous Congress have arrived safely to this First Exchange of the Zapatista Peoples and the Indigenous Peoples of Mexico “Compañero David Ruiz García.” The compañeras and compañeros bases of support that will be sharing their history of struggle have also arrived.
Here I want to share some information with you:
1. From the National Indigenous Congress as well as other indigenous social groups, peoples, tribes, and nations of Mexico, 312 participants have arrived from the following groups:
NAHUA
PURÉPECHA
MAYA PENINSULAR
MAZAHUA
ZOQUE
WIXARIKA
MIGRANTE
TEPEHUANO
COCA
HÑAHÑU
PAME
TRIQUI
MIXTECO
BINNI ZAA
CHINANTECO
IKOOT
AFROMEXICANO
POPOLUCA
TZOTZI
CHOL
TOJOLABAL
TZELTAL
TOTONACO
KUMIAI
AMUZGO
MESTIZO
HUARIJÍO
MIXE ÑHATO
CHONTAL
Mobile Seats (bancos)
2. On behalf of the Zapatista communities, we have the participation of:
-50 presenters (male and female) -50 scribes (male and female) -1200 listeners from the Zapatista communities
In total: 1300 Zapatista bases of support.
All have arrived safely. I am letting you know so that you can inform others where you live and that way the families of those who have come from far away do not worry.
SECOND. As proposed by the compañeras and compañeros of the National Indigenous Congress, the closing event of this first exchange, on Saturday August 9, 2014, will be open to the press in general.
THIRD. The compañeras and compañeros of the National and International Sixth are special invitees to the closing event.
FOURTH. The compañeras and compañeros of the free, autonomous, alternative, or however-you-call-it media are special invitees to the closing event.
FIFTH. The compañeras and compañeros of the National and International Sixth are welcome to arrive as of Friday August 8, 2014, and their departure is at their own convenience.
We ask the free, autonomous, alternative, or however-you-call-it media to see about staying one extra day after the closing event so that we can hold that cursed press conference that we’ve been promising you, and which we couldn’t hold last time because we saw that you needed to leave quickly because the paid media were stealing the material you produced at the Homage for our deceased compañero Galeano. Indeed that is how capitalism works, stealing what others produce. So let’s see if you can organize things so that you can report on the closing event and then later we will do the press conference.
And SupGaleano tells me to inform the free, autonomous, alternative, or however-you-call-it media to come prepared because we are going to interview you. He says we are going to include a section in our magazine REBELDÍA ZAPATISTA called “The ducks shoot at the rifles,” where we will print the interviews we do with you. SupGaleano says that you will understand why the section has that title.
Closeup of Mobile Seat
Finally, the last thing for today, I am sending you some photos that SupGaleano took of the set-up that has been prepared here. We’ll see if they send because the Internet here is really slow, it’s like a snail with a limp. He says the title of the photos is “The Zapatista Alternative to the International Monetary Fund and the Usurious Banks: The Zapatista Mobile Bank.”[i] If the photos don’t go through, you can see the Zapatista Mobile Bank when you come.
You will also be able to see how the reconstruction is coming along for the clinic and the school that were destroyed by the CIOAC-Historic paramilitaries.
It would be good for you to take photos, video, or whatever of the construction so that the good people who supported this just cause can see in the free, autonomous, alternative, or however-you-call-it media that we are honoring our word, not like the bad governments who keep everything for themselves while they say they are making social improvements. Pure thievery is what they do.
Well that’s all for now, compañeras and compañeros of the National and International Sixth. Tomorrow, Monday, after the inauguration, the work of the exchange will begin. We will send you the inaugural speech that compañero Comandante Tacho will give in the name of all of the Zapatistas.
That’s all.
From the mountains of the Mexican Southeast,
Subcomandante Insurgente Moisés, Mexico, August 2, 2014, in the twentieth year of the war against oblivion.
[i] The photo shows a large covered area with many rows of small, carved wooden seats referred to in Spanish as “bancos” which also happens to be the Spanish word for bank.
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Originally Published in Spanish by Enlace Zapatista
http://enlacezapatista.ezln.org.mx/2014/08/03/llegaron-bien/
Zapatistas speak out on massacre in Gaza
ZAPATISTAS REPUDIATE THE MASSACRE OF PALESTINIAN PEOPLE
Moisés (with mic), Tacho (in forefront) and Galeano, aka Marcos, (way in back with eye patch) address indigenous meeting in La Realidad
By: Isaín Mandujano
TUXTLA GUTIÉRREZ, Chis. (apro) – More than 300 representatives of indigenous peoples and some 1300 Zapatista support bases expressed their solidarity with the people of Palestine that are under attack from the Israeli Army.
Within the framework of the meeting “First exchange of the original peoples of Mexico with the Zapatista peoples,” Comandante Tacho was the one in charge of giving the principal message at the event that Subcomandantes Galeano (aka Marcos) attended, as well as Moisés.
In La Realidad Trinidad, a community enclaved in the Lacandón Jungle, Tacho welcomed more than 300 representatives of different indigenous peoples of the country, the EZLN’s 1300 support bases and insurgents and members from the autonomous municipalities and from the Good Government Juntas.
“We came to share our sufferings and pains that this neoliberal system has given us; but not just that. It is also certain that we came to share the valuable knowledge, experiences with struggle, organization and challenges in front of the neoliberal capitalist invaders that have caused us so much damage,” Tacho emphasized.
To these invaders, he abounded, “it’s not enough with the theft and looting that the Conquistadores did in 1492, that those Conquistadores encountered resistance from the original peoples, tribes and nations of these lands, of this country that is Mexico.
“They murdered those who opposed being subjected to the power of the Spanish monarchy. These perverse invaders and executioners stained their hands with indigenous blood, stole the riches that our oldest grandfathers were caring for. But not only did they persecute the Indian peoples of Mexico and All of Latin America with the proposition of disappearing them and eliminating their existence. They didn’t achieve that; the example is that we are present here,” Tacho added.
Thus passed “500 years in all corners of our Mexican country. We original peoples were ignored, deceived, forgotten, exploited, for more than 500 years, enslaved in domination. And now again the powerful neoliberals’ invention is the machinery of destruction, of the disappearance of our peoples,” he pointed out to the audience.
Nevertheless, he warned, now “the strategy has made it larger and modern, protected with laws and bad rulers to once again invade with their new plan, dispossessing us from our Mother Earth, with the machinery of the power of money, to take out all the riches that Mother Earth has, which she has kept there for millions of years.”
This machinery, he denounced, “has been accompanied by death and destruction of the peoples and of Mother Earth.”
Within that framework, he maintained, it is like the death and destruction that is happening now against the Palestinian people.
“Because we hear it and read it, in which they say that ‘the Gaza conflict,’ as if there were two equal forces that are confronting each other, as if by saying ‘conflict’ the death and destruction would be hidden, and that way death no longer kills and destruction no longer destroys,” Tacho said.
But as Indigenous, he added, you know well that what is happening is not a “conflict,” it’s a massacre, “that what the government of Israel is doing is a war of extermination against the Palestinian people and that the rest are words that want to hide the reality.
“But we also know, as the Indigenous that we are, that the people of Palestine will resist and will rise up again and walk again and will then know, although far away on maps, the Zapatistas embrace you now as we did before, as we will always do, in other words we embrace you with our collective heart,” the Zapatista comandante said.
The war machinery of money, he accused, “is without a brain, has no memory, its representatives are perverse, savage animals that threw themselves against the indigenous peoples of Mexico.
“The destruction is not important to them, the death of our entire peoples, of tribes and nations. We the original peoples of Mexico are not protected by laws and are suffering bad governments. The only hope is that us. No one is coming to save us, no one, absolutely no one, is going to struggle for us. Not political parties, not politicians, not laws, there is nothing for us,” the masked man admitted.
And therefore it is necessary “to all struggle together to defend Mother Earth: The land that saw us born, which gives us life and finally gives us rest in her eternally.
“Therefore, we are all the colors that we are, all the languages that our hearts speak, therefore we are peoples, we are tribes and we are a nation. We are the guardians of these lands, of this country Mexico, of this continent and of the world. And so compañeras and compañeros, today will be the beginning of our walk and the search for how we must make our common defense, there is no more time,” Tacho noted upon inaugurating the event this morning.
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Originally Published in Spanish by Proceso
Translation: Chiapas Support Committee
Monday, August 4, 2014
En español: http://www.proceso.com.mx/?p=378798
Gustavo Esteva: Complicity
COMPLICITY
By: Gustavo Esteva
We lack words. No one manages to receive the magnitude and depth of the impact. The spirit is not prepared to take in something like Gaza.
We must get to the bottom of the issue. It is an easy out to attribute everything to a psychopathic tyrant, although there is that. The recent poll that indicates that 75 percent of the residents of Israel support what is being done may or may not be valid. But there is no doubt that a substantial portion of the population of that country back the policy that now arrives at this unsupportable extreme.
We’re not talking about blame, but rather about responsibility. It is what the new generations of Germans have had to assume: they had no blame in what their parents or grandparents did, but they must accept their responsibility. And if one deals with that, the issue does not end with Israel, or with the United States and its allies, thinking not only about their governments, but also about their populations. This concerns everyone. We’re talking about exploring our complicity.
We must confront with integrity the measure in which we are involved in these crimes. What occurs in Gaza now is but an insane and savage manifestation of a state of things in which we are immersed. We must ask ourselves about the measure in which we are responsible for what persists.
There are more or less conventional proposals. Do we buy products from Israel or its allies? Do you invest in that country’s institutions? Obviously, private corporations exist that obtain benefits in this situation and therefore one of the resources used in its moment against apartheid is appealing: the boycott that leads to disinvestment, a campaign explained well in Wikipedia. We can make up part of that campaign, avoiding buying those products and fighting those investments.
They are steps in the right direction but clearly insufficient. It is also useful to go out in the street to protest, be it in Tel Aviv or in San Cristóbal, or join the Latin March that took place yesterday, from the Río Grande to Patagonia. It implies painting limits, keeping a distance and denouncing. But that is also insufficient.
The state of things that produce the aberration of Gaza encompasses the political and economic system in which we live, that combination of irresponsible corporations with equally irresponsible governments, which have learned to ignore the will of their voters and continuously contradict their mandates. Their irrepressible destructive desire levels human lives and nature equally. Security is the pretext for the brutal use of force and the abuse of the governments’ capacities, although security is precisely the greatest evidence of the failure of the government system in the nation-state and the international institutions: they cannot fulfill that function, which is their primary obligation.
Without a doubt, it is a question of power. But one must take into account that power is not a thing, it is not something that some have and others don’t, which is there above, concentrated, because of which it can be dispersed or distributed, to “empower” those that lack that “thing,” power. Power is a relationship. We are all involved in the structures of power. We maintain a point. It depends on us whether or not a specific power relationship is maintained, if the state of things persists or not.
It’s not enough to say that were dealing with capitalism, to consequently make us anti-capitalists, as was proposed today in a thousand different ways in the “Transcending capitalism” gathering, organized by the Center for Global Justice in San Miguel de Allende.
It is necessary to go further still. Behind all that, the horror of Gaza, the migrant children or the outrages of all kinds of Mexico’s formal powers, behind capitalism and formal “democracy” and of all that state of things, behind modernity and post-modernity, are the mentality and practice of patriarchy. All that is an expression of a way of thinking, of acting, of being, that encompasses men and women, and has the appropriated name of patriarchy, in which the beginning of the end signifies control, domination, power, and it is exercised in the “male” tradition. It is its destructive impetus, which arrives at its extreme at the hour of its collapse. And if that’s what we’re dealing with, we are all accomplices. There is no way to wash our hands or elude our responsibility. It is time to thoroughly break with the mentality and patriarchal behaviors that affect so many men and women everywhere. Only in that way can we seriously begin to dismantle that whole abominable structure. That defines, for sure, the very nature of the Zapatista undertaking.
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Originally Published in Spanish by La Jornada
Translation: Chiapas Support Committee
Monday, August 4, 2014
En español: http://www.jornada.unam.mx/2014/08/04/opinion/021a2pol
Zapatista News Summary for July 2014
ZAPATISTA NEWS SUMMARY for JULY 2014
In Chiapas
1. Sup Moisés Reports On Fundraising to Rebuild the Autonomous School and Clinic in La Realidad – In a July 18 communiqué entitled Almost 5 Times, Subcomandante Moisés reports that fundraising for rebuilding the autonomous school and clinic in La Realidad has yielded almost 5 times the amount they estimated it would cost. CIOAC-H members destroyed the school and clinic during the May 2 attack in which Compañero Galeano was murdered. They will use additional funds to buy equipment and supplies for the school and clinic. The original amount requested was only for construction materials.
2. Zapatista Exchange with the National Indigenous Congress (CNI) – The Zapatistas will hold an “exchange” with the National Indigenous Congress (CNI, its initials in Spanish) in La Realidad between August 4 and 8. That meeting is not open to all Zapatista supporters. A report from the Exchange will be given on August 9 in La Realidad, which is open to all Zapatista supporters. August 9 is the anniversary of the Juntas. In a July 7 communiqué, Sup Moisés gave the initial report on fundraising and also asked for solidarity to house and transport CNI members. He later reported in the Just so you know comunicado that some of the funds raised for the reconstruction will be used to support the exchange with the CNI.
3. Las Abejas Speaks out on Palestine – In its July 22 statement, Civil Society Las Abejas (The Bees) sent the following message to the Palestinian people: “While the bad Mexican government foments aggressions and designs strategies to break the social fabric in our communities, our brothers and sisters in Palestine are massacred by the government of Israel. Perhaps Palestinian men and women, children, and elders do not know of Acteal or of our struggle, but we feel your suffering and pain in the deepest part of our hearts, as when parents see their sons or daughters mutilated by Israeli bombs and bullets, or when boys and girls have their parents killed and become orphans. We do not understand how any human being or the Israeli government can be so evil as to not respect life! Is it not true that there exist international laws to condemn this type of war that murders innocent people? We know that it is not enough to pray, but from Acteal we pray for life and the protection of boys and girls, men and women, and female and male elders of the Palestinian people. We ask God to stop the massacre in Palestine and to touch the hearts of men and women throughout the world, so that together we can demand that the Israeli government stop killing innocent people.” On the 22nd of each month, Las Abejas issues a statement in commemoration of its members that were massacred on the 22nd of December 1997.
Mexico’s Southern Border
1. Peña Nieto Announces Southern Border Strategy in Chiapas – On July 7, Mexican President Enrique Peña Nieto inaugurated a new Customs Station at Playas de Catazajá, Chiapas., and announced two types of immigration cards for Guatemalans; one card is for a temporary work permit, the other is a 72-hour visitor’s permit limited to border states. He did not say how many work permits would be available. Otto Perez Molina, President of Guatemala, was with Peña at the event. Peña also announced the five elements of his Southern Border Strategy: formal and ordered passage; greater security; protection and social action in favor of the migrants; regional co-responsibility and inter-institutional coordination. Apparently, the strategy includes placing 10 sentry posts on the border and creating a Border Police, similar to the US Border Patrol, but specific details of the plan were not revealed. A short time later, Humberto Mayans was named the “Czar” for the southern border. Part of the strategy is to deter migrants from hopping freight trains that carry them through Mexico towards the US.
2. Merida Initiative Has Funds For Immigration Project – Two days after Peña announced the elements of his strategy for the Southern Border, the US made known through its embassy in Mexico that there were funds available in the Merida Initiative to support Mexico’s efforts to control immigration on the southern border.
3. US State Department Advisor Thomas Shannon Inspects Chiapas Border with Guatemala – For two days in mid-July, Thomas Shannon, Counselor to John Kerry at the US State Department, visited the Tapachula portion of the Chiapas border with Guatemala. He visited the Century XXI (Siglo XXI) Immigration Station in Tapachula, reportedly the largest one in Latin America (capacity 2,500 per day). He also visited a migrant shelter and met with activists and human rights defenders, who made a proposal: give the migrants visas to travel through Mexico, thereby making their journey less dangerous. He said he was interested in learning about the situation of the unaccompanied child migrants. Shannon’s visit to the Chiapas border just 2 weeks after Ambassador Anthony Wayne’s visit in June dramatizes the importance this issue has taken on and the importance of Mexico’s southern border.
In other parts of Mexico
1. Jose Manuel Mireles, Self-Defense Leader, Formally Charged and Held In Prison – On July 6, a judge issued the formal indictment against Mireles and the 3 guards arrested with him, meaning that they must stand trial for carrying firearms for the exclusive use of the Army and for the charge of simple possession of marijuana and cocaine. They were remanded to federal prisons while awaiting trial. The defense team maintains that the charges are false and that Mireles is a political prisoner. Javier Sicilia said that the arrest of Mireles demonstrates that the government is on the side of the criminals. Mireles’ wife maintains that the illegal weapons Mireles was allegedly in possession of are registered with the government. In other words, she seems to be alleging that not only are the charges false, the weapons were planted. Recently, Mireles issued a letter from prison to the autodefensas, in which he alleged that Alfredo Castillo, the Federal Commissioner for Michoacán, came to Michoacán to repress and lock people up. He termed the commissioner an executioner and said he lies and betrays. Mireles also urges the self-defense groups not to make agreements with Castillo and not to talk to him. Finally, he urged them not to fight among themselves.
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Compiled monthly by the Chiapas Support Committee.The primary sources for our information are: La Jornada, Enlace Zapatista and the Fray Bartolomé de las Casas Human Rights Center (Frayba).
We encourage folks to distribute this information widely, but please include our name and contact information in the distribution. Gracias/Thanks.
Click on the Donate button at www.chiapas-support.org to support indigenous autonomy.
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Chiapas Support Committee/Comité de Apoyo a Chiapas
P.O. Box 3421, Oakland, CA 94609
Email: cezmat@igc.org
http://www.facebook.com/pages/Chiapas-Support-Committee-Oakland/
EZLN: Just so you know
JUST SO YOU KNOW
ZAPATISTA NATIONAL LIBERATION ARMY
MEXICO
July 2014.
To the compañer@s of the Sixth in Mexico and in the world:
To all those who supported us in the reconstruction of the school and the clinic that belong to the compañeros of La Realidad:
Compañer@s:
Greetings from the Zapatistas.
We want to inform you of the following:
1. Upon hearing that the National Indigenous Congress still lacks adequate funds to travel to the exchange in the Caracol of La Realidad, the Zapatista compañeros and compañeras from the community of La Realidad have decided to use part of the $958,646.26 Mexican pesos that they received for reconstruction in La Realidad to support this travel.
2. According to the accounts the CNI sent us, they need approximately $200,000 (two hundred thousand pesos). They already have a part of this from donations sent by musicians, compas of the Sixth in Mexico and the world, and other good people who have supported them without any self-interest. But they don’t have sufficient funds to cover the rental costs of the trucks that will take them to CIDECI in San Cristóbal de Las Casas, Chiapas, which is where we are going to pick them up to bring them to Zapatista Reality [La Realidad].
3. The Zapatista bases of support in La Realidad are the ones who received the support you all sent for the reconstruction of what the CIOAC-Historic destroyed, so we consulted them about this budget problem that the compañeros and compañeras of the CNI are having. We consulted the bases of support because that money belongs to them, not to the EZLN; we just function as their voice to ask for and receive support, which we hand over to them as it arrives. In other words, we as the EZLN cannot decide what to do with that money. We explained to the Zapatista compas of La Realidad that this money was given to support their community reconstruction, and that if it is to be used for something else we have to consult them. We can’t act like the bad government who says the money is for one thing and then uses it for another. So that’s what we explained.
4. The compas in Zapatista La Realidad got together and decided to contribute $59,000 (fifty-nine thousand pesos) to support the National Indigenous Congress’ travel to the exchange that we will hold here soon. They agreed to offer this support, and they told us to let you know about this agreement so that there wouldn’t be any deceit or misunderstandings.
5. So, according to the last report that we gave you, there remain $899,646.26 (eight hundred ninety-nine thousand, six hundred and forty-six pesos and twenty-six cents Mexican pesos). We still have to see if more comes in, but we will let you know.
I also want to tell you that we have finished the construction work for the exchange with the brothers and sisters of the indigenous peoples, and we are now putting on the finishing touches in order to have everything ready to joyfully receive our invitees.
Next comes the construction of the new school and clinic, which will also be undertaken with joy. Because what those above destroy, we below will rebuild.
That’s all the information I have for you for now.
From the mountains of the Mexican Southeast,
Subcomandante Insurgente Moisés.
Mexico, July 2014. In the twentieth year of the war against oblivion
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Originally Published in Spanish by Enlace Zapatista
En español: http://enlacezapatista.ezln.org.mx/2014/07/25/para-que-sepan/
Zibechi: A glance at the one percent
A GLANCE AT THE ONE PERCENT
By: Raúl Zibechi
The Rising Sun is the 10th largest yacht in the world. Originally built in 2006 at a cost of $200 million for Oracle CEO Larry Ellison, it is now owned by music mogul David Geffen.
The current crisis is deepening social and economic polarization between a small handful of multimillionaires and a good part of humanity that is drowning more and more all the time in poverty and desperation. The rich get richer every day, something that we know through dozens of works that have been published in recent years. Nevertheless, the wealthy of financial accumulation are different from the other stages of capitalism, when hegemony corresponded to productive capital.
They are prison dogs, “large predators” as Fernand Braudel defined them. In this period of the descent of United States imperialism and of geopolitical chaos, they have acquired an additional profile: they are warriors, the type of cruel mercenaries of the worst civil wars; they don’t obey rules or have the least respect for human beings. The economist Michael Hudson, who knew them up close, emphasizes that they profess feudal values and seek to set the working population back to debt servitude.
The master’s thesis of Marco Bulhões Cecilio, who is part of the team of the Brazilian economist José Luis Fiori (The Global and geopolitical power of capitalism, within the framework of the Federal University of Río de Janeiro), points out that “in the current financial system, the biggest winners are the elite of the management class and not the shareholders.” As we have pointed out on other occasions, the bourgeoisie has been bifurcated between property owners and the managers of capital, who are those that make the decisions and are situated in echelons where the money flows.
Cecilio’s thesis recuperates the work of Braudel on the period of “accelerated accumulation of wealth,” and submits some of his ideas to severe scrutiny, among them that which postulates that the market economy and capitalism are opposed.
Among the class of managers that make enormous profits for themselves, he places for example some presidents (CEOs) of big corporations, who earned in full crisis remunerations up to 162 million dollars, like Stanley O’Neal, of Merrill Lynch. He is an exceptional case, in a medium where many executives earn more than a million dollars annually. In 2007, the corporation paid bonuses to its executives of 4 billion dollars and in 2008 Wall Street corporations paid 18 billion dollars to its executives, when the government saved the financial system.
Continuing with the remunerations, in 2014 the consultant Robert Walters studied the fixed medium salaries of executives in 27 countries, in particular those that have more than 12 years of experience. Without including the bonuses, after the 2008 crisis, a financial director (CFO) receives 360,000 dollars annually in Shanghai, scarcely on top of their colleagues in New York and London. In São Paulo the same position receives 250,000 dollars annually. The accounting managers, situated in the lower part of the echelon, obtain around 100,000 dollars (Valor, 12/2/14).
But there is a second question as important as that of income. The profile of this group indicates that 80 percent are white males, graduates of elite universities, prepared for a ferocious competition, which has not the least fidelity to anything that is not theirs. A poll by the Brazilian consulting firm Talenses, among 620 high level executives of São Paulo, revealed that for directors and managers the decisive factor at the time of deciding where to work is feeling challenged, and the remunerations and bonuses only appear in second place (Brazilian Human Resources Association, 1/29/14).
Challenges are what motivate them most, the conquest of new achievements, the permanent challenge to go beyond. They change companies constantly: only 6.6 percent of those interviewed have more than 10 years in the same company, 29 percent have between two and five years and 52 percent less than two years. Changing companies is part of the challenge for these executives that are between 24 and 40 years old. The high salaries seek to retain them.
As Braudel points out, they are people that have the privilege of being able to choose, have freedom of movement, don’t cling to previous activities, and don’t specialize in only one activity so that they can enter games inaccessible to others. They have access to privileged information that permits them, on the one hand, to elude controls, and on the other to appropriate for themselves the innovations that are almost always born in the base of society, much of the time economizing on technological development.
“Long term parasitism,” he calls that vital attitude; an active, destructive and obliterating parasitism. This way of behaving, this business culture, has enormous similarities with what the military think tanks promote. Today more than ever, the armies act like the CEOs of the financial sector, and vice versa.
In The Search for Power, William McNeill synthesizes these characteristics brilliantly: “Our only significant macro-parasites are other men, who, by specializing in violence, show they are capable of insuring life without having to produce the food and other things they consume” (Siglo XXI, 1988, Preface). He continues emphasizing that the changes in the weaponry of armies look like genetic mutations of microorganisms for “opening new geographic zones for exploitation, or destroying some limits through the exercise of force inside of the same society that hides them.”
Financial capital and armed forces (state or quasi-state) are the big parasite-predators that behave like plagues swindling humanity. It is the logic of the one percent, which won’t change of their own will. As we know, one cannot negotiate with plagues. One stops them or they destroy us. It is necessary to have clarity about the modes of the one percent. But we must recognize that we still don’t have a strategy for stopping them.
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Originally Published in Spanish by La Jornada
Translation: Chiapas Support Committee
Friday, July 11, 2014
En español: http://www.jornada.unam.mx/2014/07/11/opinion/023a1pol
The State organizes violence in Chiapas: TPP
THERE HAS BEEN STATE VIOLENCE AGAINST THE ZAPATISTAS, the PERMANENT TRIBUNAL of the PEOPLES CONCLUDES
By: Hermann Bellinghausen, Envoy
Mario Landeros Cárdenas, state leader of Xi’Nich
San Cristóbal de Las Casas, Chiapas, July 19, 2014
In El Limonar community, in the jungle north of Ocosingo, they held a pre-hearing this Friday of the Permanent Tribunal of the Peoples (TPP, its initials in Spanish), an international instance that will culminate its México chapter next November, when “it will denounce and make visible to national and international public opinion the grave human rights violations that the State committed,” unpunished as of this date.
The tribunal considers that there is sufficient evidence “to presume the commission of crimes against humanity” by the Mexican State, which “identified certain populations that constituted or were able to constitute a social base for the Zapatista National Liberation Army (EZLN, its initials in Spanish) and, based on that, defined an ‘internal enemy,’ the object of a counterinsurgency strategy that included thousands of Tzotzil, Tzeltal, Chol and Zoque civilians, belonging to Las Abejas, Xi’nich [1], sympathizers and the EZLN’s support bases.”
The pronouncement emphasizes that State violence was not directed “only against combatants, but also against the non-combatant civilian population, including children,” which “demonstrates that the only factor common to all the victims was their belonging to determined organizations,” and shows that these acts were committed “with the intention of destroying such groups totally or partially.”
Witnesses and survivors of acts of great violence in Chol communities of the Northern Zone participated in El Limonar (Jolnixtié Sección I, Miguel Alemán, Usipá, El Limar, Saquil, Susuclumil, Masojá Shucjá, Masojá Grande y Chuctiejá); Tzotziles of Chenalhó, members of Civil Society Las Abejas of Acteal, and those displaced from Viejo Velasco, all “victims of the war strategy of counterinsurgency and of extermination contemplated in the Chiapas 94 Campaign Plan and implemented by the Mexican government at the start of the EZLN’s armed uprising, which yielded as a consequence dozens of forced disappearances, murders, forced displacements, sexual violence and massacres: crimes against humanity that continue unpunished,” exposes the pronouncement of the pre-hearing.
The pre-hearing was convoked by 50 national and international popular, student, social and human rights organizations, as well as the 74 organisms that make up the National Network of Civil and Human Rights Organisms All Rights for All, the Network of Community Radios (AMARC, its initials in Spanish) that groups together 35 radio projects, the 42 organizations from the National Campaign Against Forced Disappearance in Mexico, and Chiapas Peace Network, made up of 10 organizations.
Alejandro Cerezo Contreras, Alejandro de Jesús Martínez Martínez, and the Tzeltal arrangers Carlos Núñez Ruiz and Juan Méndez Gutiérrez, Joel Heredia and Rubén R. García Clark participated as national judges. They decided that the three cases examined “are framed within social and political struggles of the peoples and communities for the recognition and vindication of the identity and indigenous rights.”
The tribunal resolved that: “violations were committed to the human rights of the indigenous peoples in the Northern Zone, Viejo Velasco [2] and Acteal, by conduct that derived from the behavior of paramilitary groups like Paz y Justicia, or residents of the Nueva Palestina community, or in Chenalhó, always “organized by federal, state and municipal authorities.” [Emphasis supplied.]
The Mexican State “is obligated to integrally repair the damages,” the tribunal determined. It recognized in the declarants firmness, dignity, certainty of their memory, and a search for justice and truth. It also recognized “their bravery before the threats that can emerge after pre-hearings.”
Finally, the TPP said it observed with concern the events in the La Realidad community, “where José Luis Solís López (Votán Galeano) was extra-judicially executed, signifying the continuity of the counterinsurgency policy in Chiapas.”
[1] Xi’nich means “The ants” in Chol, a Mayan language. It originated as an indigenous Catholic campesino organization, similar to Las Abejas (the Bees). Its members lived in Viejo Velasco.
[2] For background on the Viejo Velasco Massacre in Chiapas, please see: https://compamanuel.wordpress.com/2014/02/05/murder-in-the-lacandon-jungle-background-on-viejo-velasco-massacre/
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Originally Published in Spanish by La Jornada
Translation: Chiapas Support Committee
Sunday, July 20, 2014
En español: http://www.jornada.unam.mx/2014/07/20/politica/017n1pol
Chiapas Support Committee 