Chiapas Support Committee
Home of the Compañero Manuel blog on zapatistas & mexico
Peru, a popular destituent movement
By: Luís Hernández Navarro
Southern Peru burns. Angered by the usurpation of the popular will and government repression, demonstrators set fire to banks in Yunguyo, Puno department. They did the same at the police station in Triunfo, Arequipa. In the Antapaccay company camp in Cusco, the population looted company property and set fire to facilities. The fire has also burned television channels and residences of politicians in other cities.
The list of documented protests is endless. Most are peaceful, which does not prevent police violence from targeting them. According to the Ombudsman’s Office, 78 points were blocked on January 22 in 23 provinces. Among other actions, airports, road pickets, bridges and railway networks have been taken; attempts to occupy the barracks in the district of Llave. According to the authorities, there have been 14 attacks on judicial headquarters and seven fires of their buildings, as well as 34 protests against police stations, four of which were turned into bonfires. And, of course, the massive occupation of Lima.
Popular anger boils over in multiple regions. Congresswomen, such as the Fujimorista Tania Tajamarca, are expelled with stones when they return to their demarcations. But citizen anger does not distinguish political parties. “Are you happy with the results, Ms. Susel? How does it feel to go to sleep every day with 52 dead?” a woman complained to parliamentarian Susel Paredes, an LGBT activist.
The pyres have not been lit by small radical groups. They are, along with the blockades of communication routes, clashes with the police and the seizure of public offices, the work of the popular uprising in progress. It is a modern Fuente Ovejuna [1] that grows beyond parties, fed by peasant patrols, popular groups that have territory as an identity, small merchants, teachers, indigenous communities, transport workers, unions and student groups. It’s the return of the Four Regions Together (the Tawantinsuyo, in Quechua).
The heterogeneous and diverse popular movement that moves through the country like the magma of a volcano does not claim particular demands. The protagonists have put aside their specific approaches. They are, from the outset, a destituent power [2] of the old political regime, which demands the resignation of the de facto usurper government, its president Dina Boluarte and Congress. Without formulating it that way, it maintains a kind of “let them all go away!” It demands new elections and an endorsement of a Constituent Assembly, in addition to the release of Pedro Castillo. The most recent poll by the Institute of Peruvian Studies indicates that 69 percent of respondents agree to convene a Constituent Assembly to change the Constitution.
In a structurally racist and classist country, like Peru, with the Lima oligarchy dominating the provinces, a huge army of precarious workers, the systematic subrogation of [public] works and services and the endemic political persecution of social fighters, the ongoing popular revolt is also fed by old grievances, which today emerge on the surface. Fueled by anger and social resentment, it is a movement for dignity, formulated in a political key.
The Peruvian State, Héctor Béjar has written, one of the great ethical-political intellectual references of that nation, is a “ship full of holes, which sails without a compass and without a captain. Captains are fleeting. They arrive thinking about what they are going to take. It’s a State in a situation of disability, in which it can do nothing, because everything has to be contracted with private companies.” A State, which is a power in copper production and which, however, has not been able to prevent 41 large mining contracts from being paralyzed by resistance from the communities, nor does it have the strength to begin to renegotiate the pacts signed by Fujimori that end this 2023.
The movement has a start date (December 7), but its end is not in sight. Its permanence is surprising, despite the savage repression of the de facto civic-military government, which has declared the suspension of constitutional guarantees and the murder of more than 60 people; it advances in waves; its intelligence to retreat during the Christmas holidays and regrow with more vigor and ability to summon them at the end of these; its power to reissue a new “March of the Four Suyos,” similar to the one that in 2000 marked the beginning of the end of the Fujimori dictatorship, while controlling the south of the country. The solidarity networks feed, host, supply water, transport, heal and protect it.
With its own specificities, the Peruvian destituent uprising joins the cycle of popular mobilizations from below that have shaken Ecuador, Chile, Colombia and Bolivia in recent years. As these South American experiences show, its outcome is uncertain. History does not advance in a direct line.
Big transnational mining capital demands stability and guarantees for their investments and will use all their resources and influence to maintain them. Although the decision to repress popular insubordination has broad consensus on the Peruvian right, the usurper government of Boluarte is unviable in the medium term. However, the magnitude of the violence against the rebels may drown in blood and fire, in the short term, this push for removal from Peru below. The Peruvian people have become subjects of their own destiny. All solidarity to their epic!
Notes
[1] Fuente Ovejuna – A small town rises up against a cruel overlord, putting him to death in an act of collective justice.
[2] Destituent Power – destituent power outlines a force that, in its very constitution, deactivates the governmental machine.
Originally Published in Spanish by La Jornada, Tuesday, January 24, 2023, https://www.jornada.com.mx/2023/01/24/opinion/010a2pol and Re-Published with English interpretation by the Chiapas Support Committee
Radical artistic wealth blossoms in the southeast; in the Muy Gallery, a show
Located in the coleto [1] barrio of Guadalupe, the space is a living museum and supplier of plastic work of creators from Chiapas indigenous communities // It exposes and sells the work of painters, potters and photographers, such as Maruch Méndez, PH Joel and Marco Girón.
By: Hermann Bellinghausen
San Cristóbal de las Casas
The Muy gallery (root of the Tsotsil word meaning “pleasure”), established in an old house in the coleto neighborhood of Guadalupe, beautiful and rustic, is a container and a supplier for the plastic work of artists from indigenous communities in Chamula, San Andrés, Tenejapa, Ocosingo, Huixtán, Las Margaritas, Rayón and other municipalities. About twenty painters, sculptors, ceramists, embroiderers, photographers, engravers, videographers or digital creators of Tsotsil, Tseltal, Zoque, Tojolabal and Chol origin are represented by Muy. They frequently create here, in the gallery workshops, their paintings, clay works, installations.
It is a living museum and a school where tradition and contemporaneity, even avant-garde, go hand in hand and produce pieces of the imagination that do not need to ask permission to be considered Art. They participate in the indigenous awakening of Chiapas, which in the past 30 years has produced literature and revolution, painting (mural and easel) and cooperatives, a curious mixture of the communal and the personal.
In the last quarter of the twentieth century, the encounter of the traditionalist indigenous peoples of the Highlands of Chiapas with a sudden cosmopolitan modernity and of all Mexico, often enlightened, via tourism, and also, paraphrasing Maurice Ravel, for various noble or sentimental causes, had a great cultural effect. Over time, rebels, liberationists, writers, artists sprang from the mist of the mountains and the green curtain of the jungle. The invisible ones became visible.
A couple of rooms for the exhibition and sale of the work. Muy artists’ work offer a sample of the pictorial wealth and radical craftsmanship that is taking place in these regions of the southeast. Some self-taught, others formally educated and even professionals, born between 1957 and 1997, have in common the undeniable condition and aesthetic commitment of the artist.
Crossing a small garden is the large room for temporary exhibitions, this time with numerous pieces of clay, ceramics and sculpture by P. T’ul Gómez (Chonomyakilo’, San Andrés, 1997) and other potters. Some pieces seem to have just come out of the ground, in others a rereading of Picasso, Soriano or Toledo appears. All together and scrambled. High-flying pottery.
On one side, with the guidance of Darwin Cruz, another artist of the house, a Chol originally from Sabanilla (1990), La Jornada visits the tumultuous workshop-cellar of the artists, where the chaos of figures and objects seems to come alive. Cruz shows his own finished or in-process work, sculptures and prints. His painting, which is not here, portrays a tremendous reality. There are also works in progress by PH Joel (Francisco Villa, Ocosingo, 1992), anthropologist and ceramist between the neo-Maya and the phantasmagoria of a dream of gods and cyborgs.
Explosive and refined proposals
The list of artists represented by the gallery is wide and varied. There is the painter and potter Maruch Méndez (K’atixtik, San Juan Chamula, 1957), with an original “innocent” power. Juan Chawuk (Tojolabal from Las Margaritas, 1971), renowned painter, who has exhibited abroad, stands out for a painting, sometimes a mural, loaded with provocative eroticism and irony, not far from the tragicomic realism of Raymundo López (San Andrés Larráinzar, 1989).
Also known are the painter Saúl Kak (Nuevo Esquipulas Guayabal, Rayón, 1985), who adds to his explosive and expressive work an environmental and cultural activism in the Zoque region, and Antún Kojtom (Tenejapa, 1969), with a characteristic, neo-figurative, post-cubist style, sober in color, intense in its representation.
Maruch Sántiz (Cruztón, 1975), with extensive experience, was one of the first indigenous photographers in Mexico, with “portraits of things” who knew how to speak. His “little brother” Genaro (Cruztón, 1979) from a very young age followed in his footsteps and today is an elegant photographer of nature and detail.
The linguist, university teacher and translator Säsäknichim Martínez Pérez (Adolfo López Mateos, Huixtán, 1980) has developed a bold practice of photo and video, as well as textile intervention. Cecilia Gómez (Chonomyakilo’, San Andrés, 1992) seems closer to the “craftsmanship” of embroidery, but with a radical free touch.
They are joined by Gerardo K’ulej (Huixtán 1988), who makes spatial and sculptural interventions of inexplicable balance and refined sobriety, and Marco Girón (Tenejapa), experienced photographer and web designer.
Another realist painter is Carlos de la Cruz (San Cristóbal, 1989), who transitions naturally from coal to mural. Manuel Guzmán (Tenejapa 1964) practices the wild expressionism of a Kandinsky votive offerings painting. Somewhat predictable, and notable however, is the Lacandón Kayúm Ma’ax (Naha, 1962); he is related to the Amazonian painters of Ecuador, and like them he portrays dreamlike landscapes that replicate from here the customs officer Rousseau .
This tour closes the interconnectivity of the writer Xun Betan, Tsotsil of Venustiano Carranza and also a member of the Muy gallery, founded by John Burnstein, and currently directed by Martha Alejandro, originally from the Zoque region.
[1] Coleto is a word used to describe residents of San Cristóbal de las Casas, Chiapas, who believe they are direct descendants of the Spanish invaders.
Originally Published in Spanish by La Jornada, Tuesday, January 24, 2023, https://www.jornada.com.mx/2023/01/24/cultura/a03n1cul and Re-Published with English interpretation by the Chiapas Support Committee
Violence against the Indigenous Peoples
By: Francisco López Bárcenas
Popular predictions at the beginning of the year announced that January would bring storms, but few imagined the magnitude of them. The violence against indigenous peoples in this first month of 2023 has acquired such dimension and modalities that it gives us much to think about. In such violence, community mobilizations in opposition to megaprojects are repressed, and community guards responsible for providing security to the peoples of which they are a part are assassinated. Likewise, defenders of communities in struggle are disappeared and community authorities who defend the rights of those they represent are arrested, without any foundation or motivation. All this in a context where human rights organizations denounce that the country is one in which the most violence is exercised against human rights defenders.
One constant in this violence is that it is presented in regions where they generate the most opposition to the emblematic projects of the federal government. This is the case of the repression that was exercised on January 9 against inhabitants of Nuevo Paraíso, Campeche, who had blocked work on the Maya Train. The police action began at noon and involved five units of the state prosecutor’s office with at least 40 heavily armed elements, two of the Mexican Army and about 16 troops, two patrols of the state preventive police with about 10 agents, two units of the National Guard composed of 10 people, as well as three Fonatur vans. Excessive force unnecessary to accomplish its goal, but necessary to instill fear. In the action, several people were beaten and two identified as responsible for the blockade were arrested.
This is also the case of the arrest of David Hernández Salazar, municipal agent of the Puente Madera community, municipality of San Blas Atempa, where the construction of an industrial park for the operation of the Trans-Isthmus Corridor, another of the emblematic works of the federal government, is planned. His arrest occurred on January 17 in the city of Tehuantepec, in compliance with a court order, for the crimes of fire damage and intentional injury. His compañeros mobilized and denounced his disappearance, with which they achieved his freedom, which makes them suspect that the authorities intended to charge him with invented crimes in order to stop him, and to thus stop opposition to work on the Trans-Isthmus Corridor.
Another form of aggression against the indigenous peoples, in which no governmental institutions participate directly, but have responsibility due to their omission, is the murder of opponents of the regime. As Magdalena Gómez wrote in these pages: “Last January 12, three members of the communal guard of Santa María Ostula and the community guard of Aquila municipality were murdered: the community members Isaul Nemecio Zambrano (of Xayakalan), Miguel Estrada Reyes (of La Cobanera) and Rolando Mauno Zambrano (of La Palma de Oro). The crimes were perpetrated at a vigilance point near the municipal seat of Aquila, by a commando of some 20 members of one of the criminal groups that operate in the area.” No one in the government has said anything in that regard.
The most recent case is the kidnapping and disappearance of human rights defender Ricardo Lagunes Gasca and the leader of the indigenous community of Aquila, Michoacán, Antonio Díaz Valencia, on Sunday, January 15 on the highway between Aquila and Tecomán, Colima. According to the public denunciations of their compañerxs and of human rights organizations –including the representation of the United Nations Organization in Mexico–, the lawyer “was accompanying the Nahua community of Aquila in the legal defense of its communal land, coveted for many years by mining companies that operate at the limit of legality and in collusion with organized crime groups.” As in the previous case, the aggression has not occasioned any statement from any authority, despite their obligation of proving security to the population.
One of the characteristics of capital at this juncture is the control of spaces in which to operate and the speed of its movement. On them, as well as on the dispossession of natural goods depend their profits, not on the exploitation of labor to produce surplus value, as in past times. And both the spaces and the resources that interest it are located in indigenous territories. That may explain so much legal and illegal violence against them. What is not explained is that a government that declares itself anti-neoliberal maintains the patterns of repression of its predecessors, from which it seeks to distance itself. Care should be taken with this, because violence generates violence and peoples also get tired of always providing the deaths.
Originally Published in Spanish by La Jornada, Monday, January 23, 2023, https://www.jornada.com.mx/2023/01/23/opinion/015a2pol and Re-Published with English interpretation by the Chiapas Support Committee
An Indigenous cultural awakening radiates with intensity in San Cristóbal
In Ciudad Real de los Altos a scenario like few others has been created, in which creativity, art and literature flourish in cafes, galleries and bars where Tsotsil and Tseltal writers, plastic artists, filmmakers or academics gather
By: Hermann Bellinghausen, Envoy
San Cristóbal de las Casas
To commemorate International Maternal Language Day (February 21) and in tribute to indigenous peoples, in 2022 Darwin Cruz made the oil painting Lajkña Ch’ol (left), a symbol of the campesino community that continues to work the land and resists changes in contemporary societies, the artist shared on his Instagram account.
The awakening, or rather, the indigenous awakenings that have been experienced in Mexico during recent decades created cultural scenarios of their own, but few like that of the arrogant Ciudad Real in the Highlands of Chiapas. Outside the national spotlight, the cultural activity of authors, collectives and promoters may go unnoticed, but here it is breathed intensely.
In cafes, restaurants, galleries and bars writers, plastic artists, filmmakers or academics gather, of Tsotsil and Tseltal origin, mainly. It is not irrelevant. San Cristobal de Las Casas used to be one of the most openly racist places in the country. Disdain for the Indians was inherent in the dominant population, kaxclán or “white.” Maya women and men were invisible, poor, cannon fodder. They had to give the sidewalk to the coletos. They were worth “less than a chicken,” according to the finqueros (estate owners).
In a little more than 30 years that changed radically. Not that the discrimination has dissipated, but it is now shameful and quiet. What’s indigenous, and feminine indigenous, are fashionable, if you will. No wonder. In itself, the tourist attraction of Ciudad Real was, despite everything, the indigenous crafts and the atmosphere of the campesinos and merchants who came from the mountain villages.
The Zapatista imprint was felt in the local Maya culture almost immediately at the end of the twentieth century, as a sequel to the uprising and political activism of the rebels. For the same reason, it also became a destination for thinkers, writers, filmmakers from all over the world, but that is not what is talked about here.
Today there is a young but rich bilingual literary corpus in Tseltal, Tsotsil, Chol and Zoque. It would be lengthy to list the poets and storytellers who have published and given readings in these years. Much poetry and stories, far from ethnographic folklore, are accompanied by the theoretical reflection of authors such as Mikel Ruiz, Delmar Penka or Xuno López Intzin. Translators and cultural promoters such as Xun Betan, the Chamula poet Enriqueta Lunez, the Chol poet Juana Peñate and the teacher Armando Sánchez are here. Book publishing is difficult and of restricted circulation, but incomparably more widespread than before.
Photography, painting, cinema and gastronomy
From the admirable traditional craftsmanship have emerged photographers such as Maruch Santiz, painters and plastic creators such as Juan Chawuk, Saúl Kak, Pet’ul Gómez, Antún K’ojtom, Darwin Cruz, Säsäknichim Martínez, to mention just a few.
In the modest yet lavish Zapatista autonomous stores one finds the eloquent naïve oil paintingsof the Zapatista Caracol of Morelia. Now there is a caracol in San Cristóbal: Jacinto Canek, a place of meeting and reflection for indigenous people from the region’s communities and the municipality of San Cristóbal itself.
Training and production support programs such as ProMedios, ImagenArte, Tragameluz, Sinestesia, Ambulante have left their mark and given rise to a new documentary film and a new photography. We have recent films, such as those of Xun Sero, María Sojob, Juan Javier Pérez and others that already parade through film libraries, festivals and platforms.
There are key antecedents such as the cooperative Sna jtzi’bajom (since 1982), the Taller Leñateros, the school for writers in the Los Amorosos bar in the 90s, the Chiapas Photography Project. Today we find important spaces, such as the Muy gallery, dedicated to promoting the creation, exhibition and promotion of Maya and Zoque artists, where one finds canvases, engravings, sculptures and installations of important aesthetic value.
A new Chiapas Maya cuisine flourishes in successful gallery restaurants such as Taniperla, where good pizzas and tasty stews are added to a jungle cuisine based on banana, Creole corn, flowers, chiles and leaves of the Lancandón. Even the debatable pox today has tourist stores, as well as coffee and honey from cooperatives and autonomous municipalities, which also promote cultural spaces.
Although in other parts of the country there is a similar indigenous cultural profusion, such as Oaxaca and Mexico City, in San Cristóbal it is more unexpected and visible. Although public institutions in the sector play some role, they are not as successful as independent indigenous enterprises, projects and cooperatives.
Nor is the scientific and cultural effect of the Colegio de la Frontera Sur, the Center for Research and Higher Studies in Social Anthropology, the National Autonomous University of Mexico, the State Center for Indigenous Languages, Art and Literature, the Union of Mayan Writers-Zoques, the cultural collective Abriendo Caminos José Antonio Reyes Matamoros or Cideci-Universidad de la Tierra, as well as public universities (Autonomous University of Chiapas, University of Sciences and Arts of Chiapas, Intercultural). All with work frequently directed to resources, ethnology, linguistics and biology in indigenous territories, with a growing presence of students and researchers from indigenous peoples, almost always bilingual.
In the midst of a simultaneous social decomposition that affects the state’s communities, the product of corruption, paramilitarism, criminal violence, massive migration northward and aggressive urbanization, the now dangerous Jovel Valley also appears as a novel melting pot for the arts, research and dissemination of those who until recently were seen only as peasants, street vendors, artisans and beggars. The indigenous cultural change that San Cristóbal de Las Casas radiates is profound.
Originally Published in Spanish by La Jornada, Monday, January 23, 2023, https://www.jornada.com.mx/2023/01/23/cultura/a06n1cul and Re-Published with English interpretation by the Chiapas Support Committee
Comandanta Ramona: the first of many steps
By: Raúl Romero*
On October 12, 1996 in the Zócalo of the capital, in front of thousands of people, a small woman with a giant heart, brilliant eyes and a sincere gaze, dressed in a white Tsotsil huipil with red embroidery, and covering her face with a ski mask, took the microphone and pronounced an important message: “I am Comandante Ramona, of the Zapatista National Liberation Army (EZLN, Ejército Zapatista de Liberación Nacional). I am the first of many steps of the Zapatistas into the Federal District and all parts of Mexico. We hope that all of you will walk alongside us.”
It was the first time that a member of the Indigenous Revolutionary Clandestine Committee of the EZLN (Comité Clandestino Revolucionario Indígena del EZLN) arrived in the city, which meant not only breaking the military siege, but also reenforcing the dialogue and meeting with many other native peoples and social sectors of Mexico: “We came here to shout, along with everyone, that never again a Mexico without us,” Ramona said. And she continued: “That’s what we want, a Mexico where we all have a dignified place. That is why we are ready to participate in a great national dialogue with everyone. A dialogue where our word is one more word in many words and our heart is one more heart within many hearts.”
In clandestinity Comandanta Ramona had played a key role inside of Zapatismo. She participated in a revolt inside the revolt, or what the late Sup Marcos called the “EZLN’s first Uprising.” Together with Comandanta Susana and other women, before January 1, 1994, Ramona promoted the “Women’s Revolutionary Law,” a document that among other points established that “women, without importance to their race, creed, color or political affiliation, have the right to participate in the revolutionary struggle in the place and grade that their will and capacity determine.”
Ramona became the most visible figure for several generations of Zapatista Maya women who went from living in submission to the colonialist, patriarchal and capitalist structures, to being at the front of a political-military insurgent organization. Let’s remember, for example, that in the middle of 1993 Chiapas finqueros (estate owners) exercised the “derecho de pernada” in the families of their peons; in other words, they practiced their “right” to rape women who married one of their peons. In 2013, regarding the escuelita zapatista (little Zapatista school) –an initiative in which the Zapatista communities showed thousands of people from all over the world their achievements in everyday life–, different women support bases told how that practice led to the “Women’s Revolutionary Law.” The exercise was fantastic, and also led to a proposal to expand the law with 33 new articles.
In May 2015, 20 years after the war against oblivion, at least six generations of Zapatista women, shared their word on how the situation has changed for women in those 20 years. The stories, compiled in the “The struggle as Zapatista women that we are” section of the book titled Critical thought versus the capitalist hydra I, are exceptional documents of collective and trans-generational self-evaluation. There, the Zapatista support base Lizbeth said: “We as […] young Zapatistas of today, no longer know what a capataz (foreman) is like, what a landowner or boss is like […]. We now have freedom and the right as women to give our opinion, discuss, analyze, not as before.” In the same sense, in April 2018, at least six generations of Zapatista women would recount the advances and the challenges of Zapatista women.
Comandanta Ramona died on January 6, 2006, but her steps continue resonating in Zapatista Chiapas, in Mexico and in the whole world. In 2019, in the Seedbed “Footprints of Comandante Ramona,” the 2nd International Gathering of Women Who Struggle with thousands of women from different countries would be celebrated, and in 2021, the “Zapatista Land-Sea Training Center” would be installed there,” the place in which the almost 200 Zapatistas who would later travel by ship and by plane to rebellious Europe would stay.
Comandanta Ramona was the first of many steps of the Zapatistas into the Federal District, and she was also the first part of a long road ahead: one that has led them to travel to other parts of the world, and that has also invited them to rethink the multiple dominations in exploitive relationships. 29 years after the war against oblivion, Zapatismo continues to be a dream that encompasses many worlds, and Comandanta Ramona became a star that guides their navigation.
* Sociologist
Twitter: @RaulRomero_mx
Originally Published in Spanish by La Jornada, Wednesday, January 11, 2023, https://www.jornada.com.mx/2023/01/11/opinion/015a1pol and Re-Published with English interpretation by the Chiapas Support Committee
Massacre in Peru: Democracy at war against the peoples
By: Raúl Zibechi
“In the Andes massacres follow one another
with the rhythm of the seasons.
There are four in the world; in the Andes there are five:
spring, summer, autumn, winter and massacre.”
Manuel Scorza
On January 4, a regional strike began in the country’s south, which had been interrupted in December by the Christmas holidays. More than 60 road blocks (especially in Cusco, Apurimac, Ayacucho, Huancavelica, Puno), demanding elections in 2023 and the resignation of Congress, which has only 8% support in the population.
On January 9, tens of thousands of Aymara community members entered the city of Juliaca, the largest in the department of Puno, in a peaceful demonstration that was repressed from helicopters with tear gas and from the ground by police who fired bullets that exploded in bodies (https://bit.ly/3GBlOw2 ). In addition, police fired gas at nurses and medical personnel who attempted to treat the wounded, beat doctors and firefighters and according to some reports stole medicines.
The result was 17 deaths, adding up to a total of 48 killed since Pedro Castillo’s former vice president, Dina Boluarte, assumed the presidency. Almost all the deaths happened in three hours, between 3 p.m. and 6 p.m., according to detailed accounts by the newspaper La República. To the dead must be added around 300 wounded, including children and journalists, especially in the regions of the Quechua and Aymara peoples of Apurímac, Ayacucho, Puno and Arequipa.
These are the crimes of Peruvian democracy, of a political caste that has always governed the country from a racist State “whose decomposition Fujimorism initiated, continued with the other governments, parties and businessmen corrupted by Odebrecht, and that today murder to continue in the distribution of power,” as a statement from social organizations points out.
These are crimes endorsed by a parliament that is corrupt to the core. Proof of this is that the plenary session of Congress shielded, on the same day, the parliamentarian Freddy Díaz who is investigated by the Public Ministry for the sexual rape of a Legislative worker in his own office (https://bit.ly/3X0mJ08).
Hours later, the same Congress gave a vote of confidence to a government that carries more than 40 deaths on its back and when the Prosecutor’s Office is beginning to investigate the president, the prime minister and the ministers of Interior and Defense, for “crimes of genocide, qualified homicide and serious injuries committed during the demonstrations of the months of December 2022 and January 2023 in the regions of Apurimac, La Libertad, Puno, Junín, Arequipa and Ayacucho” (https://bit.ly/3CBFUVW).
What is called democracy, are totalitarian states in the Andes where only the heirs of the landowners, today mafia businessmen who dominate the media and illicit economies, can govern. That is why a military coup is not necessary in Peru, because the media (in particular television) are absolutely controlled, don’t report on massacres and refer to protesters as “terrorists.”
Under these conditions, new elections will only guarantee the continuity of authoritarian and corrupt governments, as has been the case since the 1980s, a situation aggravated by the current dominance of mafia economies.
If it were true, as Noam Chomsky has just pointed out, that “a better world is within our reach” and that “Another world is possible,” we should reflect on what paths to take to get closer to that goal.
The Amazonian peoples grouped in Aidesep (Interethnic Association for the Development of the Peruvian Jungle) are mobilizing against the government, like the other peoples of Peru. But they also point towards the creation of autonomous territorial governments (as Wampis and Awajún have already done), because they consider that it is the only way to stop this model of death that we call extractivism. A model that is supported by criminal states with democratic veneers and armed gangs, legal and illegal, that govern the territories of mining, gold extraction, forest clearing and cocaine laboratories.
Previous analyses regarding Peru:
Luis Hernández Navarro: https://chiapas-support.org/2022/12/24/peru-the-language-of-the-street/
Manolo De Los Santos: https://chiapas-support.org/2022/12/15/the-peruvian-oligarchy-overthrew-president-castillo/
Originally Published in Spanish by Desinformemonos, Wednesday, January 11, 2023, https://desinformemonos.org/masacre-en-peru-la-democracia-en-guerra-contra-los-pueblos/ and Re-Published with English interpretation by the Chiapas Support Committee
A lawyer for Indigenous communities and a communal leader disappear in Michoacán
By: Ernesto Martínez, Elio Henríquez, correspondents and Jessica Xantomila, reporter
The lawyer for Indigenous communities Ricardo Arturo Lagunes Gasca and Antonio Díaz Valencia, a teacher and community leader from Aquila, Michoacán, have been missing since January 15, when they returned from an assembly in the Nahua community of Aquila, their relatives and members of human rights organizations reported. The van in which they were traveling appeared with impacts from firearms.
The Office in Mexico of the United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights (UN-DH), Amnesty International Mexico, the Fray Matías de Córdova Center, the Miguel Agustín Pro Juárez Human Rights Center and the Fray Bartolomé de Las Casas Human Rights Center (Frayba), among others, demanded from the authorities the prompt appearance of the lawyer and the professor alive.
The Frayba, in which Ricardo Lagunes collaborated several years ago, demanded from the Mexican State the prompt appearance of the lawyer and the communal leader alive. In addition, it pointed out that their disappearance “takes place in a context of murders, threats, intimidation, harassment and physical attacks against communities in the region.”
Residents of the Nahua area of Aquila blocked for the second day, every three hours, the bridge on the coastal highway that connects Michoacán with Colima, to demand the search for the lawyer and the professor.
Authorities reported that the day contact with Ricardo and Antonio was lost, on the border between Michoacán and Colima, on the federal highway to Manzanillo, in the area with speed bumps near Cerro de Ortega, municipality of Tecomán, the white pick-up truck in which they were traveling was located, which had bullet impacts.
Lagunes Gasca and Díaz Valencia attended a general assembly in the Nahua community of Aquila, about the renewal of the communal property authorities, which for reasons beyond the control of the 465 community members had been postponed for two years.
Ricardo Lagunes provided legal accompaniment in the indigenous community of Aquila, where there is a lot of mining activity and internal conflicts that are generating serious impacts on the area. In the above photo a community member indicates the iron extraction area of the Ternium Las Encinas mine, which for 10 years has been a focus of conflict because the company intends to reduce royalties for using the land where the deposit is located.
At the end of the meeting, according to the last communication with them, around 6:50 p.m., the lawyer and the activist headed towards Coahuayana to reach the capital of Colima; but they never arrived. “Therefore, it is presumed that Professor Valencia and defender Ricardo Lagunes were deprived of their freedom by unknown persons, a situation that puts their physical integrity and life at serious risk,” says the text signed by their relatives and civil organizations.
Ricardo Lagunes was founder of Asesoría y Defensa Legal del Sureste and has a long national and international career in the defense of collective rights and ejido and communal lands against megaprojects, dispossession and human rights violations, in Chiapas, Oaxaca, Yucatan and Campeche, which has allowed the protection of thousands of hectares of collective lands, of valuable ecosystems and collective rights, especially of indigenous communities.
Guillermo Fernández-Maldonado, representative of the UN-DH in Mexico, said that the disappearance of these two defenders “is a terrible and alarming fact. In this country, defending human rights is an absolutely paramount task, which must be protected. This crime not only undermines the human rights of both defenders, but also seeks to generate fear among those who defend the rights recognized by law.”
The disappearance was reported to the National Search Commission and was registered with folio 1AA67B3D1-8CAF-4A7D-979A-78B786BA141E.
The Protection Mechanism for Human Rights Defenders and Journalists was also notified, since Lagunes Gasca had precautionary measures; the National Human Rights Commission was also notified.
See also Luis Hernández Navarro’s article on mining and organized crime in the region: https://chiapas-support.org/2020/03/29/santa-maria-ostula-mining-and-organized-crime/
Originally Published in Spanish by La Jornada, Wednesday, January 18, 2023, https://www.jornada.com.mx/2023/01/18/estados/027n1est and Re-Published with English interpretation by the Chiapas Support Committee
In Chicomuselo, they march against armed groups that impose mining
Hundreds of people marched in Chicomuselo to demand an end to the violence and a halt to paramilitary groups that seek to impose mining in the region.
By: Isaín Mandujano
TUXTLA GUTIÉRREZ, Chiapas (apro)
Hundreds of men, women and children came out to march in Chicomuselo, in the Sierra Madre of Chiapas, to demand a stop to the insecurity and violence, a stop to the organized crime groups that operate in the region, their paramilitary groups and a stop to the extractive mining that breaks the social fabric.
In the municipality of Chicomuselo, the campesinos and the faithful of that border town’s parish, walked through the streets peacefully “to demand an end to the violence unleashed by organized crime that seeks to impose mining on the region with the complicit silence of the authorities.”
In their message, ejido and community representatives denounced that since the middle of 2022, a barite mine began to operate illegally in the Santa María ejido. [1]
In what was called the “March for Life,” they recalled that this mine has its antecedent in the concession to the Canadian company BlackFire, which tried to settle in the Grecia ejido in 2009, and that stopped its operations after the murder of Mariano Abarca, a defender of the territory.
They denounced that, for this, “they have used the violence exercised on behalf of this mining company by an organized crime group called MAIZ, which has toured the communities with long weapons to intimidate the population and warn them that, if they oppose mining, they will harm them and, incidentally, have begun the collection of “floor rights” (protection payments) from commerce and transportation in the municipality.”
“It is worrisome that mining activity takes place under the protection of organized crime, and in a context of militarization with Chicomuselo being the headquarters of the Army’s 101st Infantry Battalion, which suggests that a counterinsurgency strategy is being applied to impose mining,” the demonstrators’ spokesmen said.
They pointed out that one of the most serious events was the recent kidnapping, torture and attempted murder against the Defender of Mother Earth and leader of the Social Movement for Land (MST, Movimiento Social por la Tierra), Isabel Recinos Trigueros, last December 30, to intimidate this mobilization under threat of violence against the population if it demonstrated this January 5, an issue that was rejected with the massive call of thousands of women and men to this mobilization.
At the end of the meeting, the spokespersons called for unity of all the people over political, economic and religious interests, to ensure peace and the common good and in turn demand that the federal, state and municipal governments cease toxic mining and death projects, and the closure of the Santa María mine and the cancellation of the mining concessions of “Barita de Chiapas” and / or BlackFire.
They demanded an end to the violence and the disarticulation of MAIZ, a criminal group, and a stop to their actions of intimidation and collection of protection money from business and transport, and demanded the protection of the life and integrity of the defenders of Mother Earth, in particular Isabel Recinos Trigueros, who was attacked on December 30.
[1] The Santa María ejido is the municipal seat of one of the new autonomous municipalities the EZLN announced in August 2019.
For more info on Chicomuselo: https://chiapas-support.org/2022/09/28/threat-of-mining-activities-without-prior-consultation-in-chicomuselo-chiapas/
Originally Published in Spanish by Proceso, Friday, January 6, 2023, https://www.proceso.com.mx/nacional/estados/2023/1/6/marchan-en-chicomuselo-contra-grupos-armados-que-imponen-la-mineria-en-chiapas-299891.html and Re-Published with English interpretation by the Chiapas Support Committee
Transnationals covet resources in Zapatista territory: SEDENA
Las Margaritas, Chiapas, October 14, 2017 – Autonomous Zapatista authorities receive María de Jesús Patricio Martínez “Marichuy,” in the community of Guadalupe Tepeyac. Photo: ADOLFO VLADIMIR / CUARTOSCURO.COM
By: Zosísimo Camacho
Minerals, water, wood and fossil fuels are among the resources identified by the SEDENA in Zapatista Territory. They are of interest to transnationals such as FEMSA Coca Cola, Frontier Development Group and First Majestic, and to the public companies CFE and Pemex.
The “complaints” of the “self-named” Zapatista National Liberation Army (EZLN) to the Mexican State are focused on the current “mining, oil wells, super highways, highways and mega [water] wells” concessions, as well as on the construction of the Maya Train, according to an internal document of the Secretariat of National Defense (SEDENA), dated February 2020.
It warned that the policies and development projects of the federal government in the indigenous regions, as well as the continuity of the concessions granted in previous six-year periods, have “increased the tension” between the Zapatista bases and leaders and those of the federal government.
The study Socio-political Activism of the EZLN and its Impact on the National Security, ordered by SEDENA to its Mexican Institute of Strategic Studies in Security and National Defense, pointed out tensions between the Zapatista movement and the federal and state governments due to the arrival of public and private companies to indigenous territories throughout the country. And, particularly, the intentions to explore the Chiapas territory of Zapatista “influence.”
It cited the cases of the Federal Electricity Commission (CFE), Petróleos Mexicanos (Pemex), FEMSA Coca Cola, Frontier Development Group, First Majestic Silver Corp, Radius Gold and Blackfire Exploration.
It emphasized that at the heart of the complaints was the extraction necessary for development projects, from water, gas and oil, to timber and precious and industrial minerals.
The report placed the EZLN as one of the poles around which part of the leftist opposition to the 4T is articulated. The issues underpinning the discourse of this opposition are indigenous rights, water management, mining exploitation, electric power generation projects and the Maya Train (Tren Maya).
In the document “El Activismo Sociopolítico del EZLN” (The Sociopolitical Activism of the EZLN) — elaborated in February 2022– SEDENA identified what until then were, in its opinion, the main disputes between the Zapatista movement and the government of the so-called Fourth Transformation.
Classified as “confidential,” the report pointed out that the EZLN “has become the main reference point for the indigenous community rights complainants in the country.” It considered that this had been possible because Chiapas is inhabited by 1,800,000 indigenous people. Eight out of 10 live in extreme poverty, “most of the times due to their own ancestral usos y costumbres (customs and traditions), with traditional difficulties in incorporating themselves into national development,” according to Sedena’s vision.
It also stated that, while “AMLO” (Andrés Manuel López Obrador) was in the opposition, Obradorismo and Zapatismo were “independent allies.” They had no formal relationship or association, but agreed at various junctures. Such a situation ended in 2017, when the relationship between the bases of Zapatismo and those of the National Regeneration Movement (Morena) became tense.
With the electoral triumph of Obradorismo, the relationship became even more tense. According to SEDENA’s assessment, Lopez Obrador “sent direct messages to indigenous groups with the intention of diluting any hostility and confrontation. At the inauguration, the second ceremony, held in the Mexico City Zócalo after the official one in the Chamber of Deputies, there was an indigenous ceremony linked to the presidential investiture and the leadership of the indigenous groups. Various indigenous groups participated, the EZLN was not present” (sic).
The analysis acknowledged that Zapatismo is a referent for social struggle in the world. Since its irruption in 1994 “various models of social participation have been strengthened in different parts of the world.” It mentions the Sao Paulo Forum and the Podemos party of Spain among the expressions of “critical anti-globalism” that have Zapatista inspiration.
It stated that after the “containment” of the armed uprising, the EZLN focused its activism towards the demand “to generate in Mexico a multinational system within the State in the framework of human liberties, which would seek the modification of the current constitutional structure.” It referred to the demand for respect for indigenous rights and culture, embodied in the San Andres Accords which, to date, have not been recognized by the Mexican State and whose central demand is autonomy for the native peoples, tribes and nations.
The document pointed out that López Obrador’s style of governing and exercising his leadership had contributed to the break with Zapatismo. The president has sought a direct relationship with indigenous groups and individuals, “undermining the leadership. This eliminated a possible “communication and good coordination with the EZLN,” according to SEDENA.
Obrador’s term has not reduced the Zapatista base, the study pointed out. As of February 2020, the EZLN had managed to keep its communities loyal and had even expanded “its territory of influence.”
It recalls that at the time the proposal of the original Maya Train project –whose route was intended to cross Zapatista territory– would generate “confrontation on various fronts with the EZLN, including the armed one,” since the guerrilla had “said that they would defend even with their lives” their territorial integrity.
The rekindling of the conflict in the southeast could have been unleashed after the “supposed approval of Mother Earth [to the Maya Train project] in a limited and controlled referendum,” it warned.
Water, mines and other resources
Other points of conflict between the 4T and the Zapatista movement were “[…] the complaints about water [that] are linked to hydroelectric plants such as Malpaso, La Angostura and Chicoasén, which supply other states of the Federation and generate electricity for the national system, which is also sold to Guatemala; this issue nourishes the social problem of water as part of the Zapatista discourse […].
The analysis warned that this situation is taken advantage of by the EZLN, since “[…] the Zapatista rhetoric is based on [questioning] who is the true owner of water as a national security issue […]”, an issue on which they coincide with populations from all over the country.
To the dams already in operation others will be built during the current government: Peñitas and Itzantun, which are priority projects because they will allow Chiapas to generate “approximately 50 percent of the national electric energy; in contrast, the data indicate that 47 percent of the inhabitants of the state […] lack electricity supply.”
It also pointed out that Zapatismo was repositioning itself among the indigenous communities of the Republic by questioning mining activities. This industry has plans to execute large projects in Chiapas, as it already does in other states of the Republic.
“In the last federal administration, nearly 99 mining concessions were granted for 50 years, along with 54 mining projects for the state [of Chiapas], where Canadian and Chinese mining companies are fundamental, requiring cheap labor and large quantities of water for their own extractive activities, right in a region that is having problems with water supply […]. The state of Chiapas, besides being one of the main water reserves, has 13 types of basic minerals for global development such as: gold, silver, copper, zinc, iron, lead, titanium, barite, tungsten, magnetite, molybdenum and salt.”
These resources are located in “regions compromised by the influence of the EZLN.” In this regard, the document cited the constitutional municipalities of Acacoyagua, Acapetahua, Chicomuselo, Frontera Comalapa, Tapachula, Tonalá, Ángel Albino Corzo, Escuintla, Motozintla, Ixhuatán, Mapastepec, Pijijiapan, Siltepec and Solusuchiapa Contalapa.
It also listed the companies that have concessions granted by previous governments and that are interested in undertaking extraction projects. They are: one of Chinese origin, Up Trading, and five Canadian companies: Frontier Development Group; First Majestic; Silver Corp; Radius Gold, Inc, and Blackfire Exploration, Ltd.
These companies were granted concessions in Chiapas for “the largest barite mine in the world, an essential material for oil drilling, from which 360 thousand tons are obtained annually, in addition to the titanium and magnetite concessions in the municipalities of Pijijiapan, Acacoyagua and Chicomuselo.”
It added that the entire Soconusco region is of interest to foreign corporations dedicated to the extraction of uranium and titanium. The former, “used in the processing of energy in nuclear plants”; the latter, “in the manufacture of airplanes, helicopters, armor, warships, spacecraft and missiles.” For this reason, both are coveted by “today’s military powers such as the United States, China and Russia.”
It pointed out that in terms of mining, Chiapas is divided into seven districts. In addition to the listed minerals, amber, limestone, quartz, zhanghengite, clay, sand and sulfur are extracted in these districts.
The interests in the extraction of these resources “coincide” with the plans for a highway route with private investment from Pijijiapan, in the Soconusco area, to Palenque. Added to this is the Maya Train “and its cargo mobility along the Peninsula located between the Gulf of Mexico and the Caribbean Sea.”
In terms of oil, Pemex works in 24 Chiapas areas located in five municipalities: Reforma, Juarez, Pichucalco, Ostuacan and Sunapa. It operates 129 oil, oil and gas wells. “Likewise, Chiapas has one of the largest gas processing complexes in the southeast of Mexico: Cactus. It occupies an expanse of 1,822 kilometers.
The analysis pointed out that the social programs Sembrando Vida, Jóvenes Construyendo el Futuro and the Benito Juárez scholarships are linked to priority projects such as the Maya Train and National Reforestation. “They have a great impact due to the current conditions of poverty and social inequality, even more so with the numbers in the indigenous population.”
The document –part of the thousands of files hacked from the SEDENA by the Guacamaya group of cyber hackers– also issued “recommendations” to the federal government with respect to Zapatismo. The first of them stated: “the President of the Republic should consider in his discourse the provocation towards the EZLN, avoid open confrontation that favors the formation of an indigenous front against the government and the Armed Forces.”
It also pointed out that: “the intelligence attention to Zapatista women is not clear and exact; it’s relevant to monitor and follow up on them, given that they are often the carriers of messages from the EZLN leadership to other organizations.”
It concluded that “the social activism of the EZLN and its adherent communities has not reached the level of a threat to the National Security of the country; the social, economic and political backwardness of the Chiapas area requires the attention of all levels of government, from federal to municipal, in a coordinated effort, including consideration of the problems of the EZLN itself.”
Originally Published in Spanish by Contralinea, Sunday, December 18, 2022, https://contralinea.com.mx/interno/semana/trasnacionales-codician-recursos-naturales-en-territorios-zapatistas-sedena/ with Translation by Schools for Chiapas and Re-Published by the Chiapas Support Committee
Memory of the Machetes of War
By: Hermann Bellinghausen
Photos: Mario Olarte
It’s night at the end of 2022. A half-moon hangs over us. In the backyard of his plot the family gathers to talk with visitors. Around a bonfire, two board benches and two stool-like logs form a circle. Seated very formal and hospitable are Javier, Magda and their offspring of daughters, sons, a grandson. Anselmo, veteran Zapatista miliciano,[1] father and neighbor of Javier, soon joins.
Javier leans on a couple of logs, at his feet a short, pointed machete, almost a knife or small sword.
“If this machete could tell everything it has seen. It was my dad’s when the war started.
Anselmo, in his baseball cap, nods with a brief sigh in Tseltal. He laughs like one who peers into a pit of inexhaustible memories.
Jonah, the little boy, great-grandson of Anselmo, still shows signs of mute activity. A few steps away are the two stick bars between stakes that serve as a walker to teach you to walk. In the arms of young Nely, he is a fourth-generation Zapatista who soon falls asleep in his mother’s milky sea.
The night of the Zapatista National Liberation Army’s Uprising Javier was 10 years old, Anselmo about 30 years old and a miliciano. He speaks little, and half in Tseltal, but makes it clear that he had to remain in the rear guarding the women, the elderly and the minors, and did not participate directly in the fighting in the city of Ocosingo on the first days of January 1994, where he did lose his little brother.
“The little brother carried his machete like this but he wasn’t lucky and didn’t return,” says Javier. Other comrades did, and they told how they were tucked behind some sacks in a ditch when the armies arrived. They saw the soldiers’ legs, they unleashed a machete blow at them, they fell and then quickly drew their weapons.
As part of the conversation, Magda cuts splinters from a piece of ocote wood with the same old machete of so much use and so very sharp. Someone says that it also serves to shell corn.
Laugh.
The lands where this autonomous community sits were part of a large cattle farm until 1993. The owner, from Ocosingo, never returned. Their cows and land remained, badly battered.
“Pure pasture land,” Magda recalls dreamily.
For three decades now, the recuperated lands have served better for milpa, acahual (fallow land), vegetable gardens, banana groves. A few lands remained for pasture. There are much fewer cows here than before, and few horses, the pasture is small. They have several clean springs on the hill.
Javier was a child that night and remembers his fear:
– We only saw how the compas went to war. We went to the shelter of the mountain. We got into a cave; it was very cold. My dad was one of those who took care of us in the mountains. Even before that day, we children were afraid when soldiers began to pass by, looking for the guerrillas who had surprised them in May in the Sierra Corralchén. It was in the news. The soldiers went all over the cañadas (canyons) and it seemed that they were going to go into the houses. After the war it was different, we had our army to defend us, and we no longer felt the same fear when they patrolled.
However, Javier acknowledges that with “Zedillo’s betrayal,” the military occupation in February 1995 was also very traumatic. They took refuge in the mountain again, but this time they had with them their own army, as they do now.
He adds that everyone knew that the uprising was coming weeks before. They began to take a lot of meat from the farmer, who sold it or trusted it to peasants and laborers and then forced them to pay, very scumbag. But people already knew about the war and that they wouldn’t need to pay him. Laughter and sparkling comments follow in their language.
“When the war started, we had eaten a lot of meat,” Javier says jovially, as a prank.
The memories of those days and nights that are now part of Mexico’s history led him to the news that the combatant compas brought in the days that followed, the epic or tragic stories that would resonate in the mountains, valleys and ravines in the months and years to come.
-Two compas who were from Altamirano got lost on their return from the taking of San Cristóbal and came out through Chanal. They were only carrying their machete. They met some people and asked them the way to their community and they said yes, we’ll guiden you right now, and two started walking with them at night. The compas were looking at their milicianos’ report and the people saw it. The compas confided, they took them further, and suddenly one of the people hits one of the comrades with the machete from behind in the neck and cuts off his head. That’s how it was, hanging forward. The other comrade sees that they are being attacked and defends himself with his machete, kills one of those accompanying him, but the other one goes for machete blows, cuts off his arm. The compa starts running with his arm hanging. At last, he runs into his platoon that was looking for them. They took him away and were able to heal his arm, he was maimed but alive.
This bloody tale opens the range of conversation to stories, dreams and stories of apparitions, where Javier’s children also participate. They invoke the Sombrerón, who is presented in different ways. Sometimes he whistles at the horses, takes them to the hill, braids them and lets them return. The braid gives more life to the animal, one cannot undo it.
They also tell of Señora Cortada, with her stump of a leg, who sits on a standing log like those we occupy tonight. And that the Sombrerón, if he takes you, puts your clothes back on inside out so you can come back.
“A disheveled girl appeared here in the yard. Only my mom saw her. She passed right here through the entire patio, screaming, and even Canela (the nice lame dog who now dozes around here) followed in her footsteps, says Javier.
Nely then reveals the kind of nightmares they give her teenage brother Antonio, who laughs shyly next to her.
-One night he got up sleepwalking repeating: “Uncle’s tacos belong to someone, Uncle’s tacos belong to someone. “
The remembrance is hilarious for everyone, except Antonio, who smiles wishing he would be swallowed by the earth.
Such was the family box painting that I witnessed and heard, I was lucky, somewhere in the Lacandón Jungle a few nights before the 29th anniversary of the Zapatista uprising that shook these peoples in 1994. In the background, on a wall of the wooden house cleanly painted green is a red star and reads in large letters “E.Z.L.N.”
In the various rebel communiqués, as made clear by the signs on their edges or the murals on some houses, regularly made of wood and in good condition, although they contrast with the constructions of material that mostly belong to the families that accept the government programs. In Javier’s community, this difference is less evident, unlike other parts of the vast indigenous region of Chiapas where people live in rebellious autonomy.
In Los Altos and other parts of the jungle, inequality manifests itself much more markedly, especially in San Juan Chamula, Chenalhó and Las Margaritas, where illegal businesses and official support have created a kind of middle class or even indigenous bourgeoisie throughout the recent decades of persistent political and economic counterinsurgency policies.
Javier is clear that living autonomously and being Zapatista implies an additional effort. But it’s worth it. He and his family are not alone. They live in dignified conditions, even with room for good taste details and savoir vivre, where hospitality and joy fit. Having dared to rise up against all possibilities, take back the lands of his native land, defend them and work them to sustain autonomy all these years, fills Javier with pride.
What he still does not know, or does not reveal, is whether there will be a party or assembly in his Caracol on New Year. At least that’s what he says, you see that the Zapatistas are always mysterious.
[1] Milicianos in the EZLN are similar to a National Guard. They are civilians, but have military training and live in the civilian communities. Milicianos participated in the 1994 Uprising.
[2] There are no captions under any of the photos used in the original piece. However, some of the scenery looks very familiar to those of us in the Chiapas Support Committee who have often visited the Zapatista Caracol of La Garrucha.
Originally Published in Spanish by Desinformémonos, Monday, January 2, 2023, https://desinformemonos.org/la-memoria-de-los-machetes-de-la-guerra/ and Re-Published with English interpretation by the Chiapas Support Committee
Chiapas Support Committee 