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Ostula: Autonomy, Self-Defense, Natural Resources and Narcos
The community recuperation of Xayakalan on the Michoacán Coast is about their lands, guards and autonomy
All kinds of interests cross each other within their territory: the governments seek to implement highway projects that facilitate the shipment of merchandise and stimulate tourism at the beaches; the mining companies want to exploit the vein that originates in San Miguel de Aquila; the small property owners want to plant their lands or subdivide and sell them; and, the drug traffickers have an important point for circulation of their merchandise here.
Self-defense forces (autodefensas) enter Xayakalan, Michoacán
By: Adazahira Chávez
Organization of the Nahua community of Santa María Ostula, Michoacán, in its struggle for land, was renewed in February of this year. Later, in June 2009, the comuneros activated their Policía Community Police and took back the place known as La Canaguancera (renamed Xayakalan). They confronted a wave of murders and disappearances —especially against members of the traditional guard of the communal wealth (commission)— that established a climate of terror and obliged the displacement of entire families.
But they are returning now and, as they declared in 2009, assert that they will not abandon their lands. Recently, accompanied by self-defense groups from Tierra Caliente, the community guards re-entered their territory —many of them, like their commander Semeí Verdía, were exiled— and the displaced comuneros also returned to Xayakalan, which continues in a legal dispute with the small property owners of La Placita, who invaded it four decades ago. The urgent task, they point out, is to construct the assemblies and to work the lands that gave them sustenance and that they had to abandon.
The task does not look easy, and the Nahuas know it. They tell that all kinds of interests cross each other within their territory: the governments seek to implement highway projects that will facilitate the shipment of merchandise and stimulate beach tourism; the mining companies want to exploit the vein that is born from San Miguel Aquila; the small property owners want to plant their lands or subdivide and sell them; and the drug traffickers have an important circulation point here for their merchandise. In this state —according to the denunciations that the comuneros have made for years— many times these actors are the same subjects. And the comuneros of Ostula are the owners of this coveted land.
Rich land, dispossessed [stolen] land
The communal capital de Ostula and its 22 administrative districts encompass more than 28,000 hectares (approximately 69,000 acres) of Aquila Municipality, one of those of greatest marginalization in Michoacán. The Nahuas have populated the portion of their territory that extends to the Michoacán Coast little by little.
Municipality of Aquila, Michoacán, which lies along the Pacific Coast, is in red.
The lands corresponding to the district of Xayakalan, the comuneros report, are located inside of their land titles that in the 18th Century were the very first and also inside of the Presidential Resolution that recognized part of its territory in 1964. Despite that, they confront agrarian litigation over some 700 hectares that six small property owners of La Placita invaded “not only for the planting of papaya, mango and tamarind, but also to sell it to the highest bidder” in spite of precautionary measures in favor of the indigenous. The Commission for the Defense of the Communal Wealth of Ostula points out that some of those invaders are heads of organized crime in the region.
Aquila’s land has an abundance of minerals (silver, zinc, gold and copper), besides iron deposits, which the Ternium, Sicartsa and Metal Steel companies currently exploit, and it contributes one fourth of the national production. The vein that runs through San Miguel Aquila —a community from which members of the traditional guard and the comuneros also had to leave due to conflicts with the mine and with organized crime— arrives in the lands of Ostula, and the Argentine company Ternium has in sight its future exploitation. Ternium is the owner of half of Peña Colorada, the mine in Ayotitlán, Jalisco, which has also provoked persecutions against leaders of the Nahua comuneros like Gaudencio Mancilla.
Inside of this invaded territory pass not only the rich mineral veins, but there are also beaches with animal species in danger of extinction. There, they contemplate the expansion of the Coahuayana-Lázaro Cárdenas Highway, and even the construction of a port for transporting the materials that Ternium extracts from San Miguel Aquila.
Pristine beach in Aquila Municipality, Michoacán.
On June 13 and 14, 2009, the National Indigenous Congress published the Ostula Manifesto, which vindicated the right to self-defense. After several fruitless attempts at negotiation and upon feeling mocked by the government, the comuneros took back the lands of Xayakalan in 2009, established their community guard “to care for the territory that belongs to us” and around 250 people, belonging to 40 families, settled here.
Los comuneros decided not to participate in the 2011 official (national) elections, just like their Purépecha brothers of Cherán, Pómaro and Coíre, in rejection of the authorities’ lack of efficiency and the divisionism that, they denounced, the political parties promote.
The response to their challenge was deafening. In the last three years, 32 residents of Ostula were brutally murdered or disappeared. The executions in 2011 of the leaders Trinidad de la Cruz Crisóstomo, known as don Trino or el Trompas, in charge of the community guard, and of Pedro Leyva stand out. The Navy bases —that were established after 2009— did not help to stop the wave of violence. Judicial authorities did not resolve even one single crime. Bullets from the “goat horns” (AK- 47s) populated the crime scenes, and the threatened families fled.
Few residents stayed in Xayakalan, but those displaced occupied themselves with planning their return and the reconstitution of their autonomous organization, which was concretized this 2014. On February 8, “a group of comuneros of Santa María Ostula, in coordination with self-defense groups from the municipalities of Coalcomán, Chinicuila and from the capital of Aquila, took control of the tenancy of Ostula,” they reported in a public document.
Xayakalan
Coincidentally, since that day “groups of federal ministerial police and members from the public ministry, in a totally illegal way, have been threatening the comuneros that live in Xayakalan with evicting them.” For the indigenous it is “the continuation of the grave conditions of an undeclared war that Ostula has lived through precisely since it resolved to guard the lands of Xayakalan, on June 29, 2009.”
This February 10, a federal Army platoon attempted to disarm the community guard and the self-defense groups that were supporting them, but residents made the soldiers return the weapons. On February 13, more than 1200 comuneros in an assembly decided to formally reorganize the Community Police. Now, efforts are centered on strengthening community decision mechanisms, reconstructing the material base for their organization and survival —food and scarce resources— and on maintaining security within their territory. Despite the years of terror, they indicate to Ojarasca from Ostula, “the people respond to their ancestral organization.”
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Originally Published in Spanish by Ojarasca #203
La Jornada Supplement, March 2014
Translation: Chiapas Support Committee
En español: http://www.jornada.unam.mx/2014/03/08/oja-costa.html
The Return of Comrade Ricardo Flores Magon – A New Book
Struggles and Contributions are narrated in The Return of Comrade Ricardo Flores Magón
Ricardo Flores Magón. Photo taken from Internet
** They praise the first transnational network of Mexican and US revolutionaries in a book
** The anthropologist and historian Claudio Lomnitz emphasizes that the theme has current resonance
By: David Brooks, Correspondent
New York, March 10, 2014
The first transnational network of Mexican and US revolutionaries –of which Ricardo Flores Magón formed a part– its participants, its struggle and ideological contributions within the context of the Mexican Revolution are told in the book The Return of Comrade Ricardo Flores Magón, from the anthropologist and historian Claudio Lomnitz.
“This is the narration of a transnational revolutionary network that thought of itself as the servant of an ideal. It could be told in the mold of Don Quijote, it is the story of a group of men and women that read books and acted on them, only to confront a society entrenched en its most vulgar preoccupations,” Lomnitz writes in the introduction to the extensive text that explores the political, social and individual dimensions of an extraordinary list of anarchists and socialists of both sides of the border ambos.
Lomnitz, professor of anthropology and director of the Center for Mexican Studies at Columbia University and a La Jornada collaborator, tells how exiles Mexicans came to Texas in 1904, where they began to elaborate plans to impel a revolution in Mexico. “They did not perceive themselves as creators of a new nation, but rather as a regenerative force (…) If they perceived themselves as planting something, it was the seed of revolution (…) For their part, the Americans that worked with these men and women perceived themselves as collaborators in ‘the Mexican cause,’ a movement that had taken the leadership in the universal struggle for emancipation,” he added.
For 1908, two circles –one of Mexicans with Ricardo Flores Magón at the center, almost all anarchists and communists in exile, and the other a circle of US socialists committed to the “Mexican cause”– were linked together around the legal defense of those exiled from Mexico and from there they developed what Lomnitz calls “the first big grass roots US-Mexican solidarity network.”
Ricardo Flores Magón, with his brother Enrique and those around him, are erroneously categorized as “precursors” de la Revolución, Lomnitz writes, and adds that they were contemporaneous with that whole stage. At the same time he points out that the bi-national dimension of that revolutionary network is almost never fully emphasized. The book narrates the experience of Flores Magón and his comrades, among them John Kenneth Turner, Ethel Duffy, Lázaro Gutiérrez de Lara, on both sides of the border before and during the Revolution.
At the New York presentation of the book, professor Renato Rosaldo, of New York University, commented that: “this is a very dangerous book.” He remembers that Flores Magón became a “hero of the Chicano Movement,” just because of his bi-national presence, something that continues having echoes today. “He is a reminder that Mexicans in the United States, the migrants, are not numbers or ants, but rather that they come with very well formed ideologies muy, with political projects and more.” He indicated that Flores Magón was key “in offering a vision of Mexico in and from the United States,” and that he personally suffered repression and persecution on both sides of the border. He emphasized that the text reveals “the role of the US and Mexican revolutionaries in the United States during the Mexican Revolution.”
Professor Arcadio Díaz, of Princeton University, emphasized that the book offers data about the “importance and search for allies” in the bi-national history of the Revolution, the role and particular vision of the anarchists and their devotion to the “worldwide revolution,” as well as the internal conflicts and disputes around this ideal. At the same time, history offers details of, for example, the “complicity of the United States and Mexican governments to spy on and infiltrate the networks” of these revolutionaries. Díaz praised Lomnitz for his exploration of the philosophical debate, the revolutionary practice in exile, the language and culture of the “transnational experience of exile.” He also argued that in some measure this work shows that: “Mexicans and US citizens generated together part of the ideology of the Mexican Revolution.”
Lomnitz explained in the presentation that before the “ideological incoherence of the Mexican Revolution,” manifested in the contradictory poles between Zapatismo, Carrancismo and Villismo, the influence of Magonismo was notable, having emerged from “a movement inside and outside of Mexico,” despite its irrelevance in military terms. The author added that the circle around Flores Magón in the United States was composed of a broad list of revolutionaries with international origins –Irish, Italians, Jewish– who used to sing La Marsellesa in English, Spanish, Italian and Yiddish in their meetings in Los Ángeles.
Lomnitz considered that all of this has current resonance, where a “profound critique of the State” as is expressed in this history, “is what we need today.”
The book was published in English by Zone Books and distributed by MIT Press. The Spanish version will be announced soon.
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Originally Published in Spanish by La Jornada
Translation: Chiapas Support Committee
Tuesday, March 11, 2014
En español: http://www.jornada.unam.mx/2014/03/11/politica/017n1pol
Raúl Zibechi: Reclaiming the Strategic Debate
RECLAIMING THE STRATEGIC DEBATE
By: Raúl Zibechi
It seems evident that we are before a turn of history. What happens in the next few years, added to what is already happening, will have a long-term effect. What we do, or what we stop doing, is going to have some influence on the immediate fate of our societies. We know that it is necessary to act, but it is not clear that we are capable of doing it in the appropriate direction.
The recent events in Ukraine and Venezuela intensified the sensation that we are facing decisive moments. This juncture reveals that violence will play a decisive role in the definition of our future: war between states, struggle between classes, violent conflicts between the most diverse groups, from gangs to drug trafficking organizations. As happened in other periods of history, violence starts to decide junctures and crises.
Violence is not the solution, and the longer we are able to postpone it the better. “Without violence we will not be able to achieve anything. But violence, as very therapeutic and efficient as it may be, does not resolve anything,” Immanuel Wallerstein wrote in the preface of Frantz Fanon’s book Black Skin, White Masks. Being prepared for violence, but subordinating it to the objective of social change, is part of the necessary strategic debates. (Emphasis added.)
I mention the question of violence because of what’s happening in Venezuela and the Ukraine, in Bosnia, South Sudan, Syria and more places all the time. Like it or not, the conflicts are not being resolved in voting booths, but rather in the streets and in the barricades, by means of insurrectional arts that the right is learning to use for its purposes, supported by the big Western powers, the United States and France in an emphatic place. What’s called democracy languishes and tends to disappear.
I never tire of reading and reproducing the view that the journalist Rafael Poch sent from Kiev’s Maidán Square: “In its most massive moments some 70,000 people have congregated in this city of 4 million residents. There is a minority among them of several thousand, perhaps four or five thousand, equipped with helmets, rods, shields and bats for confronting the police. And inside of that collective there is a hard core of perhaps 1,000 or 1,500 purely paramilitary people, disposed to die and to kill, which represent another category. This hard core has made use of firearms” (La Vanguardia, 2/25/14).
Multitudes protesting and small decided and organized nuclei confronting state apparatuses that usually lose all restraint. They succeed for three reasons: because there are tens of thousands in the streets that represent the sentiment of a part of the society, which legitimizes the protest; because there is a “vanguard” often trained and financed from the outside; and because the regime is not in any condition to repress them, either because of weakness, a lack of conviction or because it has no plan for the following day.
That the right may have photocopied the revolutionaries’ ways of doing things and uses them for their own ends, and that they count on abundant support from imperialism, doesn’t make the central question: how to confront situations in which the State is overwhelmed, neutralized or used against those from below?
My first hypothesis is that the anti-systemic forces are not prepared to act without the state umbrellas. Almost all of the continent’s progressive governments were possible thanks to direct action in the streets, paying a high price for putting one’s body on the line, but that dynamic remains very far away and is no longer the patrimony of the movements. Putting one’s body on the line stopped being the common feeling of protest ever since the state shield reappeared with the progressive governments.
The second is that confidence in the State paralyzes and morally disarms anti-systemic forces. To my way of seeing, the worst consequence of this confidence is that we have disarmed our old strategies. This point has two sides: on the one hand, it’s not clear what kind of world we’re struggling for, when state socialism stopped being a projection for the future. On the other hand, because it is not up for debate whether we affiliate with the insurrectional thesis or the prolonged popular war, in other words the European and Third World types of revolution.
I don’t want to linger on the electoral question because I do not consider it a strategy for changing the world, not even a way of accumulating forces. I understand that there are better and worse governments, but we cannot take the electoral path seriously as a revolutionary strategy. In sum, we are not debating the how. Meanwhile, the right does have strategies, in which the electoral plays a decorative role.
Between insurrection and popular war, Zapatismo inaugurates a new path, which combines the construction of non-State powers defended by the communities and support bases with weapons in hand, with the construction of a new and different world in the territories that those powers control.
It can be argued that we’re dealing with a variable of the popular war sketched by Mao and Ho Chi Minh. I don’t see it that way, beyond some formal similarity. I believe that the radical innovation of Zapatismo cannot be comprehended without assimilating the rich experience of the indigenous movement and of feminism, on a crucial point: they do not struggle for hegemony, they do not want to impose their ways of doing. They just act; and the rest decide whether or not to accompany them.
There is a trap in this argument. One cannot “struggle for hegemony” because it would be transmuting it into domination, something that the triumphant revolutions quickly forgot. Hegemony is attained “naturally,” to use a term related to Marx: by contagion, empathy or resonance, with ways of doing that convince, create and enthuse. It seems to me that reclaiming the strategic debate is more important for changing the world than the endless denunciations against imperialism. It’s still necessary to sign manifestos, but it’s not enough.
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Originally Published in Spanish by La Jornada
Translation: Chiapas Support Committee
Friday, March 7, 2014
En español: http://www.jornada.unam.mx/2014/03/07/opinion/025a1pol
Venezuela: Cubs of Reaction
Luis Hernández Navarro speaks out on Venezuela
Venezuela: cubs of reaction
Venezuela Celebrates May Day 2013
By: Luis Hernández Navarro
Lorent Saleh is a 25-year old Venezuelan youth, with flaming language, who studied foreign trade. He is one of the visible heads of the coalition that seeks to overthrow President Nicolás Maduro. He directs Operación Libertad (Operation Freedom) organization, which locates Cuban Castro-communism as the principal enemy of Venezuela.
Lorent began his task against the Bolivarian Revolution in 2007. Since then he has not let up. He organizes hunger strikes that campaigns as Chávez lies. Although he abandoned the classroom years ago, he still introduces himself as a student leader. And, although he has no known employment, he travels around Latin America to try to isolate the Maduro government.
The young Saleh has good friends in diverse countries. In Colombia, for example, the Nationalist Alliance for Freedom and Third Force, neo-Nazi groupings, protect and promote him (El Espectador, 21/7/13).
Vanessa Eisig is a pleasant 22-year old blond woman, who wears glasses and describes herself on her Twitter account as a “warrior for light and bigamous, married to my career and to Venezuela.” She studies communications in the Andrés Bello University and confesses that, by participating in the protests, she feels that she makes history.
Vanessa is a member of United Active Venezuela Youth (JAVU, its initials in Spanish). It demands “the removal of the usurper Nicolás Maduro and all of his cabinet.” The organization has a white right fist as its emblem, which –the young woman says– “is a sign of resistance and of mockery at socialism.”
JAVU, which impels the Operation Freedom initiative, has performed a relevant role in the current disturbances that take place in Venezuela. Founded in 2007, the organization defines itself as a youth resistance platform, which seeks to overthrow “the pillars that sustain a government that scorns the Constitution, wounds our rights and delivers our sovereignty to the orders of the decrepit Castro brothers.”
In its comunicado of February 22 of this year, JAVU denounced that: “foreign forces have militarily besieged Venezuela. Their mercenaries attack us in a vile and savage way. Their objective is to enslave us.” Getting their freedom, they point out, is vital “defending the nation’s sovereignty, expelling the Cuban communists that are usurping the government and the Armed Forces.”
JAVU is inspired and has a close relationship with the Otpor, which in Spanish signifies Resistance, and with the Center for the application of non-violent actions and strategies (Canvas). Otpor was a student movement created in Serbia to remove the government of President Slobodan Milosevic in 2000, which received financing from US government agencies. Canvas is the new face of Otpor.
The guru of those groups is the philosopher Gene Sharp, who vindicates “non-violent” action to overthrow governments. Sharpe founded the Albert Einstein Institute, the promoter of the so-called revolutions of colors in countries that are not similar to the interests of NATO and Washington.
Cables distributed by Wikileaks made public that Canvas –present in Venezuela since 2006– elaborated for the opposition of that country a plan of action, in which it proposes that the student groups and “the informal actors are the ones capable of constructing an infrastructure and exploiting their legitimacy” in the struggle against the government of Hugo Chávez.
The relationship between JAVU, Otpor and Canvas is very tight. As Marialvic Olivares, a member of the extreme right group confessed: “the international organizations that are supporting us at this time always have been at our side, not only in questions of protest, but also in questions of formation, and us with them we have always been at their side. We are not ashamed, we are not afraid to say it.”
But the links between the young Venezuelan student leaders and the think tanks and agencies in cooperation with the right go far beyond the alliance with Otpor/Canvas. Different US foundations have openly financed the dissident movement. They have also counted on support from the Partido Popular of Spain and with the youth organization of Silvio Berlusconi in Italy.
It is the case of the young lawyer Yon Goicoechea, a brilliant star of the 2007 protests and that now is studying for a masters degree at Columbia University, after affiliating with the party of Henrique Capriles and abandoning it when they didn’t give him a deputy position. In 2008 he was generously compensated for his commitment to struggle against Hugo Chávez. The Cato Institute awarded him the Milton Friedman Prize for Freedom, a grant of half a million dollars.
Another force that has played a relevant role in the attempt to depose Maduro is the March 13 University Social Movement, a student organization that acts in the University of the Andes. Its more known leader is Nixon Moreno, an old student of political sciences, accused of raping Sofía Aguilar, now a fugitive and exiled in Panama.
Those youths know what they do: promote political destabilization. They receive international financing. They are active members in the ranks of the ultra-right and anti-communism. They are xenophobes. They are linked with Nazi and conservative organizations in several countries. And they march elbow to elbow with politicians of the radical right like Leopoldo López, María Corina Marchado and Antonio Ledezma.
Despite receiving all this support, Lorent Saleh of Operation Freedom, laments: “We are tremendously alone.” They are partly right. They don’t awaken sympathy or solidarity among Latin American youth. To the contrary, they arouse mistrust and repudiation. And it is how the holder of the pen sees them. Their cause has nothing to with the ideas of the 1968 Mexican student-popular movement. Not in vain do the combative Chilean students repudiate them publically. To them, the cubs of reaction are unpresentable.
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Originally Published in Spanish by La Jornada
Translation: Chiapas Support Committee
Tuesday, March 4, 2014
http://www.jornada.unam.mx/2014/03/04/opinion/021a1pol
EZLN Governs 250,000 Indigenous Mexicans
EZLN Governs 250,000 Indigenous Mexicans
Over the course of twenty years, the Zapatista insurgents have founded schools, hospitals, coffee exporting cooperatives, and even banks. Their model has also inspired the growth of community police forces, forest guards, and resistance movements around Mexico. However, they still have work to do in terms of justice and openness to the world.
Zapatista Community Store
By: Laura Castellanos*
Morelia Caracol, Chiapas – In the wooded heart of Chiapas, the highest authority in the Zapatista region (or Caracol) of Morelia meets to discover the motives of our visit and decide whether we can enter or not. Known as the Good Government Board (Junta de Buen Gobierno, or Junta), the group is made up of three young women, two older women, and three men – none of whom receive a salary.
Dressed largely in traditional indigenous clothing, they all write down our names in their notebooks. Unlike the majority of images seen of the Zapatistas, the committee members do not have their faces covered. However, they are wary of our presence, and a serious-looking young woman of about seventeen years old asks us why we are here. Our answer is that we had previously witnessed the Zapatistas’ rupture of relations with the state and federal governments – and the subsequent creation of autonomous forms of government, justice, education and healthcare – and that we want to report on their progress.
According to a confidant close to the EZLN, there are around 250 thousand Tzeltales, Tsotsiles, Tojolobales, Choles, Zoques, and Mames (Maya ethnicities) living under the system of self-management in the twenty-seven Autonomous Zapatista Rebel Municipalities (MAREZ, their initials in Spanish). They represent twenty-one percent of the indigenous population of Chiapas, which stands at around 1,141,499, according to INEGI (the National Institute of Statistics and Geography).
On January 1st 1994, as NAFTA went into effect, the EZLN rose up against the Mexican government, demanding land, food, work, healthcare, education, housing, justice, and equality for the nation’s indigenous population. Twenty years later, the movement is sharing its achievements with the world, such as four regional hospitals equipped with operating rooms – found on the border with Guatemala, in Los Altos, in Tzotz Choj and the Lacandón Jungle (where the hospital is specialized in reproductive and sexual health) – and dozens of municipal clinics. In addition, 1,100 midwives and 1,500 herbalists have been trained.
Central Figures
In the field of education, Bruno Baronnet – doctor of social sciences from the Colegio de México and the Sorbonne University in Paris – recorded the presence of more than 500 primary and secondary schools “in resistance”, where 1,500 educators teach and from which 45,000 youngsters have graduated. Author of the book “Autonomy and Indigenous Education: The Zapatista Schools of the Lacandón Jungle in Chiapas,” Baronnet emphasizes that these youngsters go on to serve their communities in terms of healthcare, education and communication, whether as authorities in an ejido (collective farm) or an autonomous municipality.
The Zapatistas have also created two banks – one of which is the Autonomous Bank of Zapatista Women (BANAMAZ) – along with dozens of ecological farming cooperatives, animal farms, community shops, brick factories, bakeries, and handicraft workshops. On top of this, they produce medicinal herbal products and export coffee to Italy, Germany, France, and Greece.
Francisco Bárcenas is the author of twenty books about indigenous communities, one of which is titled “Autonomy and Indigenous Rights in Mexico.” He believes that, since the EZLN uprising, indigenous communities have moved from being marginal figures to central figures in politics, saying “indigenous people have been responsible for the most important struggles in Mexico and Latin America in the last twenty years.”
However, he also points out that “the quality of life and respect for the rights of indigenous people is the same as it was twenty years ago, and in some cases worse, though this does not depend on the Zapatistas but on government policies.”
The Caracoles
The five Zapatista Caracoles (La Realidad, Morelia, Roberto Barrios, La Garrucha, and Oventic) were created in 2003. In the Oventic Caracol, one militant explained his own understanding of Zapatista autonomy as follows: “we don’t accept help from the bad government. All that we have comes from our own hard work and effort and our aim is to ensure the welfare of everyone.”
One example of this philosophy is that both Zapatistas and non-Zapatistas are treated in the autonomous health institutions. A civilian source told me that the small hospital in Oventic – with emergency services; surgeries; and gynecology, ultrasound, dental, optical, and endoscopic services – has attended to “PRI supporters, AMLO sympathizers, and even soldiers.”
The creation of the Caracoles came in response to the legislative rejection of the San Andrés Accords by all Mexican political parties in 2001. These accords would have constitutionally recognized the right of indigenous communities to autonomy, justice and equality. The fruit of seven years of negotiations between the government, intellectuals and indigenous organizations, its rejection was incredibly disenchanting. However, the EZLN took matters into its own hands, creating the Caracoles as a representation of the right to autonomy that had been constitutionally denied to indigenous communities.
The regions were formed from 27 autonomous municipalities, dispersed along a corridor that occupies a third of the state of Chiapas – including the border area with Guatemala, Tzotz Choj, the wooded area of Los Altos, and the Lacandón Jungle.
Each Caracol is independent and has its own rules, but each one decided that a citizens’ assembly would elect members of the Junta. Members of the Junta deal with internal and external conflicts and coordinate cross-community cooperation. There is no hierarchy between them, no wages, and total transparency regarding their activities. Nonetheless, through their work in the cooperatives, communities usually give the representatives corn or subsidize their transportation.
The Juntas are normally made up of twenty-four people, though this number depends on the Caracol – as does the length of time they serve, which can be around three years, with rotation every week or two. The way in which the Juntas coordinate with other community representatives also varies.
Mariana Mora, author of the book “Decolonization of Politics: Zapatismo, Autonomy, and Indigenous Peoples” which will soon be published, affirms that the EZLN “transformed political work into an ethical one.” Examples of this transformation can be seen in the collective decision-making, empowerment of youngsters and women, and lack of government support with the foundation of the Caracoles.
Marcos Arana, investigator from the Centre of Training in Ecology and Health for Country Workers (CCESC), says that it’s necessary for these communities to open up to the outside world in order to share their achievements as, up to this point, they “have been closed to doing.”
The major challenge for the Caracoles is their system of justice. At the Zapatista School of August 2013, a militant pointed out that there was insufficient infrastructure and a lack of programs for the reforming and retraining of murderers, rapists, and thieves. In a video, recorded for and shared with EZLN sympathizers, the Zapatista says: “Who is going to look after them? Who is going to feed them? Who is going to care for them when they’re sick? That’s why they sometimes escape.”
The Zapatista Effect
One of the pillars of the Zapatista struggle is Convention 169 of the UN’s International Labor Organization, signed by Mexico, in which collective indigenous rights are demanded, including: territory; consultation; free decisions; autonomy; and freedom from discrimination.
The EZLN had an impact on several autonomous indigenous processes after 1994. One of these was the growth of community police forces, starting in 1997 and now present in dozens of municipalities in Guerrero and Michoacán. Another was the creation of forest guards like those found in Cherán, Michoacán.
It also inspired communities, united in the National Network of Resistance to the High Costs of Electrical Energy, resisting payments to the Federal Electricity Commission (CFE) in sixteen states. Equally, projects of ‘monetary resistance’ drew inspiration from the EZLN, such as those involved in creating the alternative ‘Tumin’ currency in Espinal, Veracruz.
Resistance has also spread as a result of the increasing encroachment into Mexican territory of multinational corporations. For example, popular struggles have fought to defend land and natural resources and fight against so-called ‘Mega-Projects’. The Mexican Movement of Dam Victims and in Defense of Rivers (MAPDER), the Network of Mining Victims and other civil society groups have all recorded 55 community conflicts against such projects.
Bárcenas adds to the list of struggles influenced by the Zapatistas, including those of “the Yaquis in defense of water; the Nahuas, Wixaritari, Mixtecs, and Zapotecs against mining companies; and the Zapotecs, Ikoots, and Kiliwas against wind-farming companies”, among others.
An influence seen a lot recently in the news is that of civilian self-defense groups (autodefensas). When the EZLN rose up in 1994, they appealed to Article 39 of the Mexican Constitution, which says “The People have, at all times, the inalienable right to alter or modify their form of government.” This appeal helped to spread the idea of popular right to the armed path and to self-defense.
From October 2011 to December 2013, civilian guards emerged against organized crime, appealing to Article 39, in a dozen municipalities of Michoacán, as well as in 11 indigenous municipalities of Guerrero.
In the rest of the world, the Zapatista ideology gave fuel to the growing alter-globalization movement against neoliberalism – a forerunner of the ‘Indignados’ movement in Europe and the Occupy movement in the USA.
The Struggle Continues with the Coming Generation
On the morning of December 21st 2012, prophetically marked by the Mayan Calendar as the end of time, 40,000 ski-masked Zapatistas appeared in the municipal capitals of San Cristóbal de las Casas, Ocosingo, Altamirano, Las Margaritas, and Palenque. According to the press, two thirds of the protestors were youngsters. Marching through the streets in silence, the EZLN showed the next generation of Zapatistas off to the world.
On that day, Subcomandante Marcos wrote a communiqué, saying: “Did you hear? It’s the sound of your world collapsing. It’s the sound of ours resurgent. The day that was day, was night. And night will be the day that will be the day.” With these comments, the EZLN reaffirmed its presence, reminding the world that it is still fighting to overturn the current world order and it will soon succeed.
* Laura Castellanos is the author of Corte de Caja, a book about her interviews with Subcomandante Marcos in December 2007 and January 2008.
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Originally Published in Spanish by El Universal
Thursday, January 2, 2014
Originally translated and adapted by Oso Sabio
http://ososabiouk.wordpress.com/2014/02/18/ezln-governs-250000-indigenous-mexicans/
Adapted and edited by the Chiapas Support Committee
New Zapatista Magazine – Rebeldía Zapatista
New publication: Rebeldía Zapatista: The Voice of the EZLN
MARCH 1, 2014
Editorial by Subcomandante Insurgente Moisés for the first edition of Rebeldía Zapatista, the Word of the EZLN
Front Cover of Rebeldía Zapatista
We rebellious Zapatistas, along with our mother earth, are threatened with destruction in our Mexican homeland. Both above and below the earth’s surface, the bad governments and bad rich people, all neoliberal capitalists, want to commodify everything they see.
They want to own everything.
They are destructive; they are murderers, criminals and rapists. They are cruel and inhuman, they torture and disappear people, and they are corrupt. They are every bad thing you can imagine; they do not care about humanity. They are, in fact, inhuman.
They are few, but they decide everything about how they will dominate countries that let themselves be dominated. They have made underdeveloped countries into their plantations, and made the underdeveloped capitalist so-called governments of those countries into their overseers.
This is what has happened in Mexico. The neoliberal transnational corporations are the bosses, their plantation is called Mexico, the current overseer is named Enrique Peña Nieto, the administrators are Manuel Velasco in Chiapas and the other so-called state governors, and the badly named municipal “presidents” are the foremen.
This is why we rose up against this system at dawn on January 1, 1994.
For 30 years we have been constructing what we think is a better way to live, and what we have built is available for the people of Mexico and of the world to see. It is humble but healthily determined by tens of thousands of men and women who decide together how we want to autonomously govern ourselves.
Nothing hides what we do, what we want, what we seek; it is all in plain sight.
The bad government on the other hand, that is, the three bad powers and the capitalist system, do everything behind the people’s back.
We are sharing our humble idea of the new world that we imagine and desire with compañeros and compañeras from Mexico and all over the world.
That is why we decided to have the Zapatista Little School.
The Little School is about freedom and the construction of a new world different from that of the neoliberal capitalists.
In addition, it is the people themselves, that is, the bases of support, who are sharing these ideas, not just their representatives. These people, not their representatives, are the ones who will say if they are doing well or if the way that they are organized is working well. That way others can see if things are really like the people’s representatives say they are.
This great “sharing” between all of us, compañeros from the city and the countryside, is necessary because we are the ones who must think about how the world we want should be. It can’t just be our representatives or leaders who think about and decide how that world should be, and they certainly can’t be the ones who say how we are doing as an organization. It is the people, the base, who must speak to this.
You can tell us if this has helped those who attended.
As you will read in the writings in this edition of our magazine REBELDÍA ZAPATISTA, this process has helped the compañeros and compañeras who are bases of support to meet good people from other parts of Mexico and all over the world. This is important because in Mexico there is no government that recognizes the indigenous people in this country. The government only remembers them come election time, as if they were electoral paraphernalia.
It is only through organization and struggle that the bases of support have defended themselves for 30 years now.
The bases of support have done everything possible, and everything that seemed impossible, over these 30 years and this is what they are sharing.
We worked to create the Little School so that the words of the compañeras and compañeros who are Zapatista bases of support could reach much further. With the Little School, their voices carry thousands and thousands of kilometers, not like our bullets on January 1, 1994, that only went 50 meters, or 100 meters, and maybe some 300 or 400 meters. The teachings of the Little School cross oceans, borders, and skies to reach you, compañeras, compañeros.
We rebellious indigenous know that there are other indigenous rebellions that also know what neoliberal capitalism is about.
There are also rebellious brothers and sisters who are not indigenous but who write to share in this edition what they think and how they view this system that is destroying planet earth. That is why we include the words of our anarchist compañeras and compañeros in this edition of the magazine.
Well, compañeros of the Sixth, it is good that those who came saw with their own eyes and heard with their own ears what is happening here, and they left ready and willing to communicate this to those who couldn’t come.
In this first edition of the magazine we will begin to share some of the words and ideas of our compañeras and compañeros who are Zapatista bases of support, families, guardians and teachers, about how they viewed the students at the Little School. Throughout the first editions of our publication we will share the evaluations made by the Little School teachers, votanes, families, and coordinators from the zones of the five caracoles.
Just as you have talked about or published what you lived, heard, and saw in our Zapatista territory, here you can read how we saw and heard those who came and raised the flag of ZAPATISTA REBELLION.
Subcomandante Insurgente Moisés
Mexico, January 2014, 20 years since the beginning of the war against oblivion.
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Originally Published in Spanish by Enlace Zapatista
March 1, 2014
Translated by El Kilombo Intergaláctico
Zapatista News Summary for February 2014
FEBRUARY 2014 ZAPATISTA NEWS SUMMARY
In Chiapas
1. Catholic Nuns Assaulted in Attack on Zapatista Community – During the first two days of February, reports started to come out about a January 30 attack on the Zapatista community of 10 de Abril (April 10th) in which there were serious injuries to several Zapatistas. The aggressors/attackers were from the November 20 ejido in another municipality and called their grouping the CIOAC-Democratic. When 10 de Abril called for medical personnel from the San Carlos Hospital in Altamirano to bring help, the attackers detained the medical personnel and their vehicles, including an ambulance. The aggressors also put their hands all over several nuns in a search for whatever was in their pockets, and ultimately took money and papers out of their pockets. Apparently, the Frayba Human Rights Center notified the Chiapas government of the “urgent” situation and it did nothing. This incident is one of many geared towards dispossessing the Zapatistas of their recuperated land and is part of the “low-intensity” counterinsurgency war. You can read a report here. The national CIOAC organization stated that the aggressors from November 20th are not members of, nor are they affiliated with the national organization.
2. Government Pressure to Privatize Communities in Resistance – Early in February La Jornada issued a series of reports on the northern jungle zone of Chiapas that uncovered government maneuvers used to pressure landholders into privatizing their land. One measure used is to condition Procampo funds on privatization. Procampo is a program that gives cash benefits to peasant farmers. It is funded through the Inter-American Development Bank and designed to offset the negative effects of NAFTA. While many of these communities are in resistance, meaning they do not accept money or programs from the government, there may be a minority living within these same communities that is not in resistance. They DO accept Procampo. Thus, the conditioning of Procampo money on the community agreeing to privatize causes further division within a community. The communities in resistance are supportive of the EZLN in various degrees. Privatizing land is another way to dispossess indigenous communities supportive of the Zapatistas of their land and to foster further political divisions. One report also included an update on the Viejo Velasco Massacre fallout.
3. San José El Porvenir Also Opposes San Cristóbal-Palenque Toll Road – Last month, Los Llanos, a Tzotzil community in the rural part of San Cristóbal de las Casas Municipality, obtained a temporary injunction against construction of the San Cristóbal-Palenque Toll Road until there is a decision on the case. We posted a translation of the news article on our blog. The toll road is one of the infrastructure projects envisioned within the Plan Puebla Panamá (now renamed the Mesoamerica Project). Its purpose is to facilitate tourism. Now, another Tzotzil community affected by the toll road, San José El Porvenir, has announced its opposition to the superhighway and its agreement with Los Llanos. San José El Porvenir is located in the municipality of Huixtán.
4. They Inaugurate Palenque International Airport – On February 12, Mexican President Enrique Peña Nieto and Chiapas Governor Manuel Velasco Coello attended the inauguration of the Palenque International Airport in Chiapas. The opening of this airport represents the completion of another key infrastructure project of the Mesoamerica Project for facilitating tourism and commerce in the Northern Zone of Chiapas. It is anticipated that the airport will receive the first Interjet flight on March 13. Of interest was a statement from the (federal) assistant secretary of Transportation and Communications, Carlos Almada López, about the Palenque-San Cristóbal Toll Road. Almada said that the preliminary design for the superhighway would be finished in May and that will determine the project’s specific trajectory and timetable. After this inauguration it was revealed that the federal government will provide $18 billion pesos for highway construction in Chiapas in order to further facilitate tourism and commerce.
5. Displaced from the Puebla Ejido Return to Acteal and Land Returned to Church – The people displaced from the Puebla ejido extended their stay in Puebla to harvest their coffee fields until February 6. Members of social organizations continued to accompany them. Although they received insults and threats, the harvest was successful. Many of the 98 displaced individuals are members of Las Abejas of Acteal, an adherent to the EZLN’s Sixth Declaration. The displaced have set the following conditions for a permanent return to the Puebla ejido: 1) recognition of the Catholic Church’s ownership of the plot of land in question; 2) recognition and reparations for the damages, to the community for the destruction of work on the church and for the destruction of homes;” and 3) reparations for “personal damages for the robberies and destruction” of personal belongings inside their homes.The land on which the church was being re-built was returned to the Diocese of San Cristóbal de las Casas on February 26.
In other parts of Mexico
1. Amnesty International Human Rights Abuse in Mexico – The Secretary General of Amnesty International (AI), Salil Shetty, visited Mexico from February 15-18. He said that Mexico projected a false image of respect for human rights. While it passes many important laws in that regard, grave human rights violations continue to occur and some of the data even indicate a crisis. Among the grave concerns are the forced disappearances, attacks on journalists and human rights defenders and the abuse of undocumented migrants. What all these violations have in common is the impunity of the perpetrators. He also expressed concern about the self-defense groups (autodefensas). You can read AI’s report “Human Rights Challenges Facing Mexico” here.
2. Santa María Ostula Issues Denunciation And Gets Help From Autodefensas – On February 24, Santa María Ostula posted a comunicado/denunciation on the Enlace Zapatista website. Ostula declared its autonomy in 2009 and is part of the National Indigenous Congress and an adherent to the EZLN’s Sixth Declaration of the Lacandón Jungle. One of the communities the autodefensas visited this month is Santa María Ostula and its village of Xayakalan. According to the denunciation from Santa María Ostula, its residents, together with the autodefensas, took control of Santa María Ostula. Then, on February 10, a Mexican Army platoon entered Ostula and disarmed both the local community police and the autodefensas. The weapons were returned after they convinced the Army that they would be murdered if they were without weapons. 31 members of the autonomous region have been murdered since 2009. On February 13, Santa María Ostula reorganized its community police and, in coordination with the autodefensas, took over the nearby town of La Placita. That is where the people live that murdered the 31 comuneros. The comunicado and several news reports state that some of those living in La Placita are heads of the local drug cartel. The alleged cartel members fled before the community police entered the town. The denunciation states that ever since February 8, federal ministerial police have come to Ostula threatening eviction and it asks national and international civil society to be alert to these threats.
3. Joint DEA and Mexican Navy Operation Nabs El Chapo Guzmán – On February 22, Mexican marines and DEA agents raided an apartment in Mazatlan, Sinaloa, Mexico and took alleged drug kingpin Joaquin “El Chapo” Guzmán Loera into custody. He has been placed in a maximum security prison. The United States wants him extradited. While much will be made of his capture and imprisonment as a major victory in the Drug War, the reality is that someone will replace him and the drugs will continue to flow. You can read the story of his capture in the Los Angeles Times.
4. Obama Attends North American Summit in Toluca – On February 19, US President Barack Obama attended the North American Summit of NAFTA leaders in Toluca, Mexico. He spent a total of 8 hours in Mexico with the Canadian Prime Minister and the President of Mexico. The visit was expected to be mostly about the Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP); in other words, about trade. While some agreements that facilitate trade were reached, the general impression was that Obama was preoccupied with events in the Ukraine and Venezuela.
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Resumen De Noticias Zapatistas – Enero 2014
RESUMEN DE NOTICIAS ZAPATISTAS – ENERO 2014
En Chiapas
1. ¡Los zapatistas celebran 20 años de resistencia!.– El primero de enero de 2014, los zapatistas celebraron el 20 aniversario de su rebelión y resistencia. Recibieron aproximadamente 5000 estudiantes durante las dos Escuelitas, una durante la semana antes del primero de enero, y otra la semana después. Los estudiantes de ambas Escuelitas asistieron a la celebración del aniversario, junto con otros simpatizantes que se unieron al festejo. Estamos a la espera del próximo comunicado del EZLN anunciando las fechas de la próxima Escuelita.
2. Ejido en Chiapas interpone amparo contra la autopista San Cristóbal-Palenque.– El 6 de enero, Los Llanos, una comunidad tzotzil ubicada en la zona rural del municipio de San Cristóbal, interpuso una demanda de amparo contra la construcción de la autopista San Cristóbal-Palenque. El 13 de enero, el juzgado admitió el amparo y suspendió los permisos de construcción hasta que se resuelva en definitiva el juicio del amparo. Hemos traducido al inglés un artículo sobre esta noticia y publicado en nuestro blog. La autopista es uno de los proyectos de infraestructura del Plan Puebla Panamá (ahora conocido como Proyecto Mesoamérica) para facilitar el turismo. Los Llanos se ubica al otro lado de la carretera del ejido Mitzitón, que tiene una historia de conflictos y protestas contra la construcción de la autopista.
3. San Sebastián Bachajón (SSB) denuncia que un ex-prisionero no está libre y que ha habido otro intento de desalojo.– Antonio Estrada, residente de San Sebastián Bachajón, fue liberado de la prisión estatal de Chiapas la nochebuena pasada. Sin embargo, tiene que reportarse y registrarse cada semana en el tribunal de la capital del estado. Aparentemente todavía hay un caso federal pendiente contra él por el delito de postración de armas de uso exclusivo del ejército mexicano. El 24 de enero, un tribunal le otorgó a Estrada una orden de protección contra el cargo, lo cual abre la puerta a la posibilidad de absolución por este delito.
Los ejidatarios también acusan a la facción pro-gobierno en el ejido SSB de intentar de fabricar otro acto de asamblea falso para poder despojarles de las tierras en disputa desde el 2011.
4. Los desplazados del Ejido Puebla regresan a cosechar su café.- Del 17 al 27 de Enero, los desplazados del ejido Puebla volvieron a cosechar sus cafetales después de casi 5 meses. Miembros de organizaciones sociales los acompañaban. Aunque recibieron insultos y amenazas, fueron capaces de cosechar sus campos y luego regresar al campamento de refugiados en Acteal. Muchas de las 98 personas desplazadas son miembros de Las Abejas de Acteal, adherentes a la Sexta Declaración del EZLN.
5. El Ejido Tila obtiene orden judicial para detener el despojo de su tierra.-El ejido Tila está situado en la zona norte del estado y es un adherente a la Sexta Declaración de la Selva Lacandona. Una porción de su territorio ejidal se encuentra dentro de la ciudad de Tila, capital del municipio de Tila. Un edificio conocido como “Casino del Pueblo” fue tomado por las autoridades municipales hace algún tiempo y es todavía objeto de litigio que lleva años y aún está pendiente ante la Suprema Corte de justicia de México. Ahora, sin embargo, las autoridades municipales quieren derribarlo para construir allí un centro comercial y, aunque el edificio no es propiedad del municipio, están promoviendo un referéndum sobre el proyecto para utilizarlo como un sustituto del “consentimiento previo, completo e informado” requerido cuando las tierras indígenas son afectadas por el gobierno. El 24 de enero, el ejido Tila obtuvo una orden judicial a favor suspendiendo cualquier actividad de construcción en la propiedad del ejido hasta que se resuelva definitivamente el caso en la corte.
6. Despojo en la Selva Lacandona de Chiapas.- Un periodista de La Jornada recorrió partes de la Selva Lacandona y describió, en diversos reportes, sobre los intentos del gobierno por afectar la tierra en la parte norte de la selva, algunos de estos en la denominada zona de amortiguamiento de la lacandona. Las comunidades de esa región están descontentas con la aplicación de programas gubernamentales como el Fanar (fondo de apoyo a los núcleos agrarios sin registro, anteriormente llamado Procede), que limita el uso de sus tierras y que permitiría la privatización de parcelas individuales. Fanar está siendo promovido por Sedatu (Secretaría de Desarrollo Agrario, Territorial y Urbano) y también por la Procuraduría agraria.
De otras partes de México
1. El gobierno mexicano legaliza provisionalmente a grupos de autodefensa michoacanos.– El 27 de enero, los grupos de autodefensa michoacanos y el gobierno federal firmaron un acuerdo en el municipio de Tepalcatepec. El acuerdo requiere que las fuerzas de autodefensa sean registrados por nombre, al igual que sus armas por el gobierno y que se incorporen al Cuerpo Mexicano de Defensas Rurales bajo el mando de la Secretaría de Defensa Nacional (SEDENA). El acuerdo se dió después de un mes de enfrentamientos entre los grupos de autodefensa y supuestos integrantes de los cárteles, mientras que el Ejército Mexicano se desplegó masivamente en el estado. A principios del mes, la agencia Reuters dió a conocer que algunos cárteles estaban exportando hierro de las minas a China a través del puerto Lázaro Cárdenas. En cuanto a los grupos de autodefensa, se ha cuestionado frecuentemente de donde proviene su financiamiento. Existen también versiones acerca de que otro cártel, el llamado cartel Jalisco Nueva Generación ha proporcionado algunas de las armas a las autodefensas.
Compilación mensual hecha por el Comité de Apoyo a Chiapas.
Nuestras principales fuentes de información son: La Jornada, Enlace Zapatista y el Centro de Derechos Humanos Fray Bartolomé de las Casas (Frayba).
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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/
Nuns Assaulted in attack on 10 de Abril Zapatista community
Nuns Assaulted in attack on 10 de Abril ejido, and are impeded from attending to the injured
Patients at San Carlos Hospital, Altamirano, Chiapas
** They retain an ambulance, a pickup truck, the driver and a doctor, in Chiapas community
** Attempts to take possession of Zapatista lands, which began in 2007, continue
By: Hermann Bellinghausen, Envoy
San Cristóbal de las Casas, Chiapas, February 2, 2014
During the attack of residents from November 20 ejido (Las Margaritas) on the 10 de Abril (April 10th) ejido (autonomous zapatista municipality of 17 de Noviembre), last January 30, denounced yesterday by the Good Government Junta of the Morelia Caracol, not only were three EZLN support bases gravely injured, but personnel from the San Carlos Hospital in Altamirano were also attacked and impeded from attending to the injured.
Sister Patricia Moysén Márquez, known for many years in the Altamirano region for her work at the San Carlos Hospital and her closeness to the indigenous communities, relates what happened: “At approximately 7:30 AM we received a call to go to help the injured because of a problem in 10 de Abril (April 10th) community. The ambulance left with the driver, a doctor and a sister.” A pickup truck followed it, “because of not knowing the number possibly traumatized.” At the San Miguel intersection “we encountered lots of people from November 20 (community) with sticks and machetes.” Another group intercepted them farther ahead.
“Sister Martha Rangel Martínez and I were riding behind the ambulance. We identified ourselves and said that we were going because of a call for aid due to the fact that there were people injured. Their reaction then was that ‘they were going to burn the pick up because we are from the government and the problem will be solved faster like that’. We told them that we are not from the government but rather the Church. They said that then we were Zapatistas that we are going to support our group. We said that we were going to see those injured of whatever religion or party; the problem that they had was not our issue, only the injured.”
They pulled out the ambulance driver “and some said that we could pass then, but we had to take out the injured from both parties, if it was not like that then the driver was going to be taken to November 20. I told them that it was better that the ambulance enters and better that we stay. But another group arrived that said that no one is going to pass, that the government has to resolve it and that the ambulance as well as the pickup truck are going to be burned right there.”
Sister Patricia continues: “As I did not want to give them the key or get out, they said that they were going to turn the pickup truck over. We insisted a lot to them on the urgency of saving the life of anyone that was injured.” After a while the ambulance returned. “Someone from November 20 was driving. They began to hit our pickup with sticks, trying to open the doors. I don’t know how they opened the passenger door and pulled Sister Martha out. I had to make the turn, as they wanted, Sister Martha got in with many more of them, they told me that I should go to the intersection and we got out, but I didn’t want to give them the keys, I put them in the pocket of my habit, because I saw that they pulled the ambulance towards November 20.”
Then, the religious woman continues her story, the women from the same group “they started to molest us, trying to take the keys away from me. As I resisted, they began to undress us. They put their hands wherever they wanted and held both of our arms. They hurt us, tore my jacket and took out the keys and my coin purse where I have all my documents. I asked them to return it to me but they roundly refused.”
A little later the Cioac members “took off with the pickup and all their cars, which were many, full of people, the majority men from November 20. Sister Martha and I got a ride back to Altamirano to give warning.” When the acts were reported at the hospital, two people arrived that: “identified themselves as politicians from the state government working in Altamirano, Juan Baldemar Navarro Guillén, assistant delegate, and Jorge Alfredo Jiménez, political operative.” Towards 11:40 AM, the driver, the doctor and the first religious woman achieved returning, but the ambulance and pickup truck remained in November 20. The municipal president of Altamirano promised to recover them.
There were warnings from the Junta
The foolhardy attempt to take possession of Zapatistas lands by the robbers from the Cioac began to get out of control on November 13 but according to what the Junta of the Whirlwind of Our Words Caracol said this Saturday, the first time that “they provoked us to take away the land we recuperated in 1994 was in 2007,” because “they wanted to become the owner.” On October 18, 2013, residents of November 20 attempted it again.
The most recent provocation to the Zapatista bases of April 10 had occurred last Monday, January 27, when 250 people from the Cioac democratic destroyed the signs at the ejido’s entrance and proceeded to cut down the trees “that we have as an ecological reserve,” according to the Junta, with five chainsaws: nine pines, 40 oaks, 35 coffee bushes and three banana trees. Removed levels, boards, firewood, “not for family use, were stolen to sell them, taking them away in a total of 41 pickup trucks.”
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Originally Published in Spanish by La Jornada
Translation: Chiapas Support Committee
Monday, February 3, 2014
En español: http://www.jornada.unam.mx/2014/02/03/politica/011n1pol
Raúl Zibechi: Democratic Militarization
Democratic Militarization
By: Raúl Zibechi
2013 Brazilian protests over increased cost of public transportation. Photo: Reuters.
Oxfam’s recent report Working for the Few shows with authentic data what we have been feeling: that democracy was kidnapped by the one percent to widen and maintain inequality. It confirms that the most important tendency that exists in the world in this period of increasing chaos is toward the concentration of power and, therefore, wealth.
The report points out that almost half of the world’s wealth is in the hands of one percent of the population, which has benefitted from almost the totality of the economic growth after the crisis. Oxfam also succeeds in linking the growth of inequality to “the appropriation of the democratic processes on the part of the economic elites.” It also succeeds in warning that the concentration of wealth erodes governability, destroys social cohesion and “increases the risk of social rupture.”
What Oxfam does not say is that the concentration of wealth goes hand in hand with the militarization of societies. To defend the gigantic concentration of wealth, those above are being protected, militarizing every corner of the planet. One of the recommendations directed at the members of the Davos Economic Forum sounds too ingenuous: “Don’t use your economic wealth to obtain political favors that supposes a diminishing of the spirit of your fellow citizens.”
We live in societies more controlled and militarized all the time, be it in the north or south, under conservative or progressive governments. We are facing a global tendency that cannot be reversed, in the medium term, in local scenarios. Oxfam assures that inequality has diminished in Latin America in the last decade. Certainly! But, we’re talking about the most unequal region in the world and it’s being compared with the 1990s, when inequality reached such a high peak that it provoked social explosions and popular uprisings.
Among the countries where inequality has diminished Brazil, Mexico, Argentina and Colombia stand out. In all those cases the reduction is due to similar reasons (progressive taxation, public services and social policies). I want to emphasize that essential tendencies exist, beyond what political currents occupy the government. Something similar can be said about Europe: the workers pay for the crisis, as much under governments of the right as under governments of the “left.”
It interests me to emphasize the tendency toward militarization: the kidnapping of rights and the criminalization of protest. Those below live in a “state of permanent exception,” following the maxim of Walter Benjamin. Militarization is neither transitory nor accidental. It does not depend on the quality of governments nor on its discourse nor of its ideological character. We’re dealing with something intrinsic to the system, which can no longer function without criminalizing popular resistance.
Brazil’s Defense Ministry just published (partially for sure) the Manual of Guarantied Legal Rights and Order (GLO), in which it defines intervention of the armed forces in internal security matters. The GLO had two versions: the first, of December 2013, was refined in the one published at the end of January and the most shocking aspects were removed (or were sent to blank pages). For example, that the armed forces are going to intervene to restore order against “opposing Forces.”
When the manual defines what those forces are, one can read: “movements or organizations;” “persons, groups of people or organizations acting autonomously or infiltrated into movements.” When it details the “principal threats,” it says: “blocking public roadways;” “urban disturbances;” “invasion of properties and rural or urban installations, public or private;” “paralyzing productive activities;” “sabotage in places for large events;” in sum, a good part of the repertoire of action of social movements.
It is a good example of militarization and of the criminalization of protest. Strictly speaking, the GLO is the updating of a group of norms that figure in the Constitution and have been regulated since the 1990s. What’s symptomatic is that it is updated after the massive June demonstrations when the FIFA Confederations Cup was held, and when a part of the popular movement announces new actions during the coming World Cup of Soccer (Futbol). Therefore, any mobilization during “large events” is considered sabotage. That is the predisposition of a government like that of Dilma Rousseff, which passes for being more democratic that those of Mexico and Colombia, for example.
The problem is not that the government of Brazil might have changed, but rather that the State feels the need to respond to the challenge from the street and it does what any State does that has self-esteem: it guaranties order at the expense of rights. What we’re dealing with in this case is assuring that one of the most corrupt multinationals, the FIFA, can celebrate its most lucrative activity without being disturbed by collective protest actions. I insist: it is just an example; I don’t want to focus in Brazil.
Faced with the escalation of militarization that travels around the world, those below organized into movements are far from having any kind of answer. Moreover: our strategies, born in periods of “normality,” are showing limits in moments of crisis and systemic chaos. In the first place, we need to be conscious of those limits. Secondly, we must learn to defend ourselves.
As the Chilean historian Gabriel Salazar points out: “Popular power is the only way to have a true democracy. People that have rights but have no power are nothing. The law has no value without power.” The community defense systems teach us something about the construction of power among those below. The labor movement had a vast experience, until the rise of Nazism, about forms of self-defense. It may be the time to refresh them.
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Originally Published in Spanish by La Jornada
Translation: Chiapas Support Committee
Friday, February 7, 2014
En español: http://www.jornada.unam.mx/2014/02/07/opinion/024a1pol
Chiapas Support Committee 