Chiapas Support Committee
Home of the Compañero Manuel blog on zapatistas & mexico
From Rojava to Chiapas
Kurdish women
By: Raúl Romero*
Kurdistan is a people with their own language and culture that live between the Tigris and Euphrates rivers. For years and in different ways, these people have struggled for their self-determination. In the past, the Kurdish territories were divided by the Ottoman and Persian Empires. After the imperial allotment that came with the first world war, the Kurdish people were divided between Iraq, Iran, Syria and Turkey.
The struggle of the Kurdish people for their liberation has also become a struggle for their survival in which they face armies of national governments, of the Isamic State, and of imperial powers. Among them, the Kurdish organizations are many and diverse, and these differences are often used by actors interested in the region’s oil to diminish the resistance.
Among the Kurdish peoples’ organizations, the Workers Party of Kurdistan (PKK), a Marxist-Leninist organization founded in 1978 that formed part of the anti colonial struggles that exploded in those years. With the passage of time, the PKK started transforming itself intellectually to find its “own path”, Democratic Confederalism, a project that according to Abdullah Öcalan — ideological figure and political prisoner— characterized as being “flexible, multicultural, anti-monopolist, oriented toward consensus and where ecology and feminism are central pillars.”
Democratic Confederalism can be stated as an anticapitalist, anti-patriarchal, and popular project built by the Kurdish people which experienced a paradigmatic moment between 2012 and 2014: the de facto declaration of autonomy by Rojava, a region in Syrian Kurdistan, a process that found international resonance. In this process, the armed resistance led by Kurdish women and their Kongra Star congress would play a decisive role.
For the sociologist Azize Aslan, “Rojava is not only the territory where the revolution is taking place, it is also a territory where the idea of a revolution is redefining itself.” Her argument is powerful: a network of assemblies is built there that make direct democracy possible and self-government possible. “The purpose of the system of popular assemblies in Rojava is to organize an anticapitalist and autonomous model for a Stateless, anti-patriarchal and ecological society.” (https://bit.ly/2MJ0NYG).
The theoretical depth and practice of critique and alternatives that are constructed in Rojava stand out for several features: it is a questioning of capitalist modernity, of Nation-states, of hegemonic science, of the patriarchy and of ecocide. The critique is accompanied by a praxis aimed at construction — not without contradictions — of a “democratic modernity” with its confederalism, its autonomy, its alternative economy, its leadership by women, and also its critical science, a science that gave way to the Jineolojï, or “science of women”, based in ethics, aesthetics with practical power and related to the economy.
Alessia Dro, of the Movement of Women of Kurdistan, has indicated that one of the biggest contradictions of our time is that between the resistance of women and the patriarchy. That contradiction, reclaimed as the backbone of the Kurdish revolution is what makes thousands of women worldwide identify with this movement. “To make the transformation we have to manage to achieve change with a perspective of women’s liberation. Women’s liberation means liberation of society as a whole. This is something that the revolutionary movements in the world still have not even elaborated as an axis of priority, and I believe that for this reason there are women from many places who join the movement.” (https://bit.ly/2PucW4H).
Zapatista Women
The theoretical and political solidity that the Kurdish revolution has achieved is reflected in the recognition of its peers in other parts of the world. It is with the EZLN and the Zapatista women with whom they have established a fraternal dialogue. In December 2019, word from the women of Rojava arrived in Zapatista territory to the Footsteps of Comandanta Ramona seedbed, where the Second International Gathering of Women who Struggle was held: “Today we would have wanted to be together with the Zapatista women in the gathering of women that was held there, but it is clear that in our situation and with the attacks on our people, this has not been possible. But we can say that our hearts are there and with all of the women in struggle for their liberty and that of their people. Because we are fighting against every type of occupation imposed on the people, on all kinds of slavery imposed on women. And we are together in the struggle.”
In Rojava and in Zapatista Chiapas, emancipatory alternatives of a new kind are being built. They are not the only ones, there are others with their own ways and times. A new history is being built and we must learn to listen to it.
* Sociologist
———————————————————–
Originally Published in Spanish by La Jornada
Saturday, March 6, 2021
https://www.jornada.com.mx/2021/03/06/opinion/014a1pol
English interpretation by Schools for Chiapas
Re-Published by the Chiapas Support Committee
The Women Who Are No Longer With Us
Another World Is Possible.
Their histories
Their joys and sorrows
Their pain and rage
Their memories and omissions
Their laughter and tears
Their presence and absence
Their hearts
Their hopes
Their dignity
Their calendars: The pages they were able to turn The ones they left unturned and the ones left to us to turn
Their screams
Their silences
Yes, above all, their silences
Whoever you are, do you hear these women? Who does not recognize him or herself in them?
Women who struggle Yes, us
But above all, them: Those women who are no longer here
But who are with us nonetheless
We do not forget them We do not forgive those who took them from us
We struggle for those women, and with them
From the Indigenous Zapatista Women
March 8, 2021
En español: http://enlacezapatista.ezln.org.mx/2021/03/08/las-que-no-estan/
Frayba: the Government continues without recognizing the Army’s human rights violations in Chiapas
In February 1995, the Mexican Army entered Zapatista communities in the Lacandón Jungle and committed an extrajudicial execution in La Grandeza.
By: Desinformémonos Editors
Mexico City
The Mexican government continues without recognizing the grave human rights violations committed by the Mexican Army in the implementation of the Chiapas 94 Campaign Plan, Fray Bartolomé de las Casas Human Rights Center (Frayba).
To the contrary, Frayba indicated, “the Mexican State maintains the logic of war with militarized structures, without respect for the human rights of the population.”
It pointed out that 26 years after the military incursion into the La Grandeza ejido, in Altamirano municipality in Chiapas, the Mexican State has not complied with the recommendations of the Inter-American Commission on Human Rights (IACHR) with respect to the extrajudicial execution of the indigenous Tseltal Gilberto Jiménez Hernández, committed by members of the 17th Infantry Battalion.
The extrajudicial execution of Jiménez Hernández occurred during the military incursion of the Rainbow Task Force of the “Yabur” grouping, a branch of the Secretariat of National Defense (Sedena, its Spanish acronym), when he and his family fled into the mountains as forcibly displaced persons. “Gilberto was carrying one of his daughters tied to his back with a shawl,” the Frayba remembers.
He added that: “faced with impunity in Mexico,” in November 2016 the IACHR recommended that the Mexican State repair the human rights violations and carry out an impartial, effective and timely investigation into the execution of Gilberto Jiménez.
However, mote than 4 years after the recommendation “the investigations don’t present any progress, breaking with a reasonable time period, without identifying the lines of investigation to follow, without knowing the corresponding administrative, disciplinary or penal measures against the actions or omissions of the state officials who contributed to the denial of justice and the impunity in which the facts are found, without adopting measures of non-repetition that include legislative, administrative and any other measures in order to ensure that the use of force on the part of State agents is compatible with international standards.”
Therefore, the Frayba urged the Mexican State to comply with the measures that the IACHR issued, as well as to suspend the militarized national security model, “as well as to prevent crimes committed by members of the Armed Forces and to stop their impunity.”
Here is the full statement:
At 26 years after the military incursion into the La Grandeza Ejido, in the municipality of Altamirano, Chiapas, the Mexican State has not complied with the recommendations of the Inter-American Commission on Human Rights1 (IACHR) relative to the extrajudicial execution of Gilberto Jiménez Hernández (Gilberto) and continues without recognizing the grave human rights violations that the Mexican Army committed in the implementation of the Chiapas 94 Campaign Plan.2
Starting in February 1995, the Mexican Army intensified the siege of the Zapatista National Liberation Army (Ejército Zapatista de Liberación Nacional,3 EZLN) with the occupation of territories of the Native Peoples and the siege of the population. The objectives of the military intervention were embodied in the “Chiapas 1994 Campaign Plan,” designed by the Secretariat of National Defense (SEDENA, its Spanish acronym) to “destroy and disorganize the EZLN’s political military structure.” The action of the Mexican Armed Forces changed from dealing directly with national security to dedicating themselves more actively to the control of internal security; as a result they perpetrated arbitrary detentions, torture, extrajudicial executions, disappearances, forced displacement, among other human rights violations.
It was in this context that members of the 17th Infantry Battalion committed the extrajudicial execution of Gilberto Jiménez Hernández, of Tseltal origin, on February 20, 1995, around 1 o’clock in the afternoon, between the Patiwitz and La Grandeza ejidos, during the military incursion of the Rainbow Task Force of the “Yabur” grouping, a branch of the Sedena. He and his family were fleeing into the mountains as forcibly displaced persons, and Gilberto was carrying one of his daughters tied to his back with a shawl.
Faced with the impunity in Mexico, the facts and their consequences were presented to the (IACHR), a body that on November 30, 2016, issued its Admissibility and Background Report No. 51/16 on Case 11.564, in which it recommended that the Mexican State: repair the human rights violations taking into consideration the community effects of the application of the Chiapas 1994 Campaign Plan; carrying out an impartial, effective investigation inside a reasonable time period for the purpose of completely clarifying the facts, identifying the intellectual and material authors and imposing the sanctions that correspond to the human rights violations, taking into account clarification of the context.
More than 4 years after the international recommendation, the investigations don’t present any progress, breaking with the reasonable period of time, without identifying the lines of investigation to follow, without knowing the corresponding administrative, disciplinary or criminal measures against the actions or omissions of the state officials who contributed to the denial of justice and the impunity in which the acts are found, without adopting non-repetition measures that include legislative, administrative and any other measures in order to ensure that the use of force on the part of State agents, is compatible with international standards.
The IACHR established as precedent that the military incursion into the La Grandeza Ejido was part of an official Plan that the Mexican Army implemented and that it generated a favorable framework for arbitrary and discriminatory behavior, as well as the excessive use of anti-subversive force.
The current Mexican government of Andrés Manuel López Obrador has the historic and progressive challenge of building a path that leads to the acceptance of the facts and of the context, which includes the recognition of the strategy implemented through the Chiapas 94 Campaign Plan and executed by the Mexican Army. Elements like those above will fully comply with the recommendations of the IACHR. Their acceptance would emerge as a measure of satisfaction for the Native Peoples who suffered a grave impact faced with the counterinsurgency war, in addition to providing non-repetition guarantees regarding the use of excessive force in military operations.
However, the Mexican State maintains the logic of war with militarized structures, without respect for the human rights of the population. Starting in 2019, with the creation of the National Guard and with the 2020 presidential agreement, public security is in the hands of the Armed Forces permanently.4 Therefore, the Frayba urges the Mexican State to suspend the militarized national security model, as well as to prevent crimes committed by members of the Armed Forces and to stop their impunity. We urge guarantying the collective rights of the Native Peoples to autonomy, territory and self-determination.
Notes:
1 CIDH, Informe No. 51/16, Caso 11.564. Fondo. Gilberto Jiménez Hernández y otros (La Grandeza). México. 30 de noviembre de 2016. Disponible en: https://www.oas.org/es/cidh/decisiones/2016/MXPU11564ES.pdf
2 Plan de Campaña Chiapas 94. Available at:https://frayba.org.mx/historico/archivo/articulos/941001_plan%20de_campana_chiapas94_sedena.pdf
3 On January 1, 1994, the Zapatista National Liberation Army (EZLN) started the armed uprising, taking the municipal seats of San Cristóbal de Las Casas, Ocosingo, Altamirano and Las Margaritas in the state of Chiapas. The Mexican Army’s presence in the region has increase since then.
4 As of July 2020, the National Guard was composed of approximately 90,000 members, of which 51,101 had been transferred from the Army and 10,149 from the Navy. Miguel Agustín Pro Juárez Human Rights Center. “Security Models.” Mexico. 2020. Page. 57.
———————————————————————-
Originally Published in Spanish by Desinformémonos
Monday, February 22, 2021
Re-Published with English interpretation by the Chiapas Support Committee
Samir Flores: The Wound of Amilcingo
By: Luís Hernández Navarrro
“In Anenecuilco, the history of the country opens like a wound,” wrote Gaston Garcia Cantú in Utopias Mexicanas. Half a decade later, in Xochicalco, repetition of the injury was reaffirmed as a policy toward the peasantry. In the Amilcingo of today, it was shown in black and white, not only that the original wound never healed, but that it has become deeper and more painful.
The shades of regional history are like windows to peek out on the tragedy of the Republic; the project of Zapata converted into a national project. Anenecuilco, Xochicalco and Amilcingo are all communities in the state of Morelos that sum up the dreams, at once modest and profound, of men of the countryside, and the betrayals they have been subjected to, far beyond Morelos.
Emiliano Zapata was born in Anenecuilco. There he was incubated, between the summer of 1914 and the summer of 1915, in the heat of the revolutionary struggle fueled by the acceptance of shared traditions, a modern utopia-made-reality: what Adolfo Gilly christened as the Morelos Commune. A practice of genuine agrarian reform from below: armed self-defense and indigenous campesino self-governance. True to their roots, the people won back land, water and forests; they reclaimed their territory and they planted the crops associated with the community that they desired, and back on track, they reinvented their society. In an exercise of memory and innovation, they kept their identity and the legitimacy of their aspirations alive.
In Xochicalco — sings José de Molina — the earth screams, wounded by a knife. What hurts her in her belly, the death of Jaramillo. In the darkness and betrayal, soldiers in formation, dressed as campesinos murdered Rubén1 and his family: his wife Epifania and his sons Ricardo, Filemón and Enrique.
The successor to the Zapatista cause, he combined the armed and electoral struggle and the taking back of land, defended campesino and indigenous struggles, but also supported projects that could give work to the population, organized in cooperatives.
The blood of their executions had not yet dried, when a Morelos campesino told Carlos Fuentes: The death of those five Jaramillos was the best fertilizer for life and the action of 500, of five thousand new Jaramillos. The commander died. Now we are all Jaramillos.
Vinh Flores Laureano was born the 18th of December of 1946, and lived there until his parents separated in 1959, returning several times. He was a tireless local hero touring the villages of the region; he defended the rights of campesinos, and in the spirit of the Zapatista motto of education for the people, with his compañeros, education institutions like the Emiliano Zapata Rural Normal School of Amilcingo (the last of its kind), the CBTA of Temoac, and the secondary school of Xalostoc. His role was key in the struggle for the recognition of the municipality of Temoac. (https://bit.ly/3qGe6I6).
Vinh participated actively in the Communist Youth and was the national youth leader of the Independent Campesino Central, linked to the hammer and sickle party. He was trained in the former U.S.S.R. and paid dearly for defying the government and encouraging the rebellious effervescence of the communities of eastern Morelos. On the 6th of September of 1976, he was tortured and murdered, together with his uncle Enrique Flores, in the mountains of Tepexco, Puebla.
Two years ago on the 20th of February, also in Amilcingo, a group of gunmen took the life of Samir Flores Soberanes, nephew of Vinh Flores, indigenous Nahua, founder of Radio Amilzinko, metalworker, organic amaranth grower, opponent of the Morelos Integral Project (PIM, its initials in Spanish) and rebel against the fatalities of submission. (https://bit.ly/3ue3nXn).
If the waters of the insurgents of Ayala became a flood of cries of “Down with the hacienda! Long-live the people!” the struggle of Samir for the community continuity and permanence, and respect for the right to decide how to live became a multitude with the demand of “Down with the PIM! Long live the people!”
The resistance, fueled by Radio Amilzinko, that began as a modest loudspeaker and became station 100.7 FM opened the way for community reconstitution. The station bears the unmistakable stamp of his work.
Gifted with a tremendous capacity for listening, Samir Flores was, like Zapata, Jaramillo or Vinh, a man of the people of Morelos. He lived the pride and pain of his people; he defended his cultural roots, threatened by the dispossession that goes hand-in-hand with big business. Like them, he was sacrificed in impunity and cowardice. And like them, he lives beyond his death in the heart of the people.
The Zapatismo of the Morelos communities is not nostalgia for by-gone times, but rather a patient wait for -as Carlos Fuentes says— the arrival of their time, the original time of their desires. It is not a buried past, but a contemporary constituent force, that refuses to live as human leftovers and claims the struggle for life protecting their lands, their waters, and their ways of coexisting and reaching agreements on that which affects them. The legacy of Samir, remembered this past February 20th in the most distinct geographies of the planet, from Zapatista caracoles to Copenhagen or Barcelona, reminds us that today in Amilcingo, —just like yesterday in Anenecuilco— opens the history of the country like a wound.
Footnote
- Ruben Jaramillo Mendez was a campesino political leader and a military leader in the Mexican revolution at the age of 17. He was a powerful leader who struggled for the rights of the ejidos and was regularly at odds with the Mexican government. Federal Police murdered him at his home, along with his wife and sons.
———————————————————–
Originally published in Spanish by La Jornada
Tuesday, February 23, 2021
https://www.jornada.com.mx/2021/02/23/opinion/016a2pol
English interpretation by Schools for Chiapas
Re-Published by the Chiapas Support Committee
Photo taken from Notisistema: https://www.notisistema.com/noticias/familiares-y-amigos-dan-el-ultimo-adios-al-activista-samir-flores/
The social commitment and ethical congruence of Pablo González Casanova
Don Pablo González Casanova (Comandante Pablo Contreras
By: Gilberto López y Rivas
On February 11, Pablo González Casanova, the most renowned and recognized intellectual in contemporary Mexico, celebrated 99 years of a life full of contributions to critical thinking about a social science committed to the oppressed and exploited, indigenous peoples and socialism.
In a few brief autobiographical strokes, González Casanova recalls the formative roots that marked the guiding lines of his action and thinking: a father who wills his son his spirit of rebellion, socialist ideas, ideological pluralism, respect for the religious beliefs of others and the intellectual option; a mother who taught order and discipline, punctuality and domestic work as also the task of men, the art of living and resolving concrete problems, a taste for languages and strengthening of the will.
The teachers and courses left “a good legacy of a jurist apprentice and bachelor with important reinforcement in national history.” The decisive influence the teachers at The College of Mexico (El Colegio de México), most who came from republican Spain, and who taught “to work, to think, to investigate what we don’t know, and to write what we were sure of, ready to discover errors, after having made efforts to eliminate them.”
There was the influence of his best friend in those years, the Cuban Martí-Communist Julio Le Riverend, from whom he learned to be tolerant of those who don’t think like him, including conservatives and the bourgeoisie. The lessons of life as a graduate student in France with Fernand Braudel: the theaters, museums, the art of conversation peppered with humor, wit, and references to the day’s readings. It was in Paris where he studied philosophy, sociology and Marxism. In Marxism, he became interested in Gramsci, whose complete works Vicente Lombardo Toledano gifted him.
“I believe –writes don Pablo– that the free and fair way of thinking that my father left me was reinforced with the magnificent philosophy of Gramsci, and the patriotic sense that my elementary school teachers, and the entire Mexican school system, combined with the encounter with communism –that I met through Le Riverend and through a streetcar friend called Suárez– and with the Marxist Leninist nationalism the official Mexican style, in which Lombardo was a teacher.”
On a scale closer to the political struggle –Casanova pointes out– “with La democracia en México (Democracy in Mexico), I initiated an exploration of freedom, participation in government and the State, the problem of national and state sovereignty, and the necessary confluence in the project of those who think or thought with empiricist or Marxist philosophies.”
From the fraternal friendship with Luis Cardoza y Aragón, which was strengthened with his defense of Guatemala faced with the State coup, González Casanova recognizes that he owes him the “curious method of criticizing revolutions without becoming counterrevolutionary and of supporting revolutions without becoming adulterous.”
In “The Zapatista Caracols: networks of resistance and autonomy (interpretation essay)”, Pablo González Casanova affirms that the Zapatista movement has given rich contributions to the construction of an alternative. The idea of creating organizations that are a tool of objectives and values to be achieved and to make autonomy and “govern obeying” not remain in the world of abstract concepts or incoherent words. This power project is not constructed under the logic of “State power” that imprisoned previous revolutionary or reformist positions, leaving the main protagonist abysmally ignorant of autonomy, be it the working class, the nation or the citizen. Nor is it constructed with the logic of creating an “acratic” society where no one holds power, the logic that prevailed in anarchist and libertarian positions (and that subsists in unhappy expressions as “anti-power,” which not even its authors know what it means), but which is renewed with the concepts of self-government of civil society “empowered” with a participatory democracy, which knows how to represent and knows how to control its representatives in whatever is necessary to respect “agreements.”
The project of the Caracoles is a project of peoples-government that they articulate among themselves and that seeks to impose paths of peace, as much as possible, without morally or materially disarming the peoples-government, less in moments and regions where the State and local oligarchy’s repressive organs, with their varied systems of cooptation and repression are following increasingly aggressive, cruel and foolish patterns of the neoliberalism of war that includes hunger, unhealthiness and the “obliged ignorance” of the immense majority of the peoples, either to weaken them, decimate them or even to destroy them if it’s necessary, when the systems of intimidation, cooptation and corruption of leaders and masses fail.
Congratulations, Comandante Pablo Contreras!
———————————————————–
Originally Published in Spanish by La Jornada
Friday, February 19, 2021
https://www.jornada.com.mx/2021/02/19/opinion/020a1pol
Re-Published with English interpretation by the Chiapas Support Committee
“For Life, Against Megaprojects, and in Honor of Our Brother Samir Flores”
The Zapatista Caracol of La Garrucha remembers Samir Flores.
Thousands of Zapatista support bases got together on February 20, 2021 in all the Zapatista Caracoles in Chiapas to render homage and remember Samir Flores Soberanes, a social fighter from the Mexican state of Morelos, murdered two years ago for opposing the imposition of megaprojects in the center of the country, as the Peoples Front in Defense of Land and Water of Morelos, Puebla and Tlaxcala, the National Indigenous Congress (CNI) and the Zapatista National Liberation Army (EZLN) have denounced.
Images of the Zapatista Mobilizations during the Day of Action “For Life, Against Mega-projects, and in Honor of Our Brother Samir Flores” – Images from all the Caracoles can be viewed here.
Published by the Chiapas Support Committee
Fonatur did not define the feasibility or social risks of the Maya Train
By: Enrique Mendez and Arturo Sánchez Jiménez
The National Fund for the Promotion of Tourism (Fonatur) started the Maya Train project in 2019 without having determined its social feasibility and without having a diagnosis that anticipates the possible effects and social risks that its construction and operation would cause, according to the Superior Auditor of the Federation (ASF, its initials in Spanish).
In the 2019 Report of the Result of the Superior Audit of the Public Account it states that the agency carried out seven audits of the Maya Train, in which after reviewing the exercise of more than 1.1 billion pesos, it concludes, among other points, that the destination of 156 million pesos, related to unjustified payments and contract awards must be clarified.
In these audits, the ASF recommends that Fonatur evaluate the replacement of the indigenous consultation and that it define a strategy for the purpose of guarantying that the project is profitable.
And it’s that, in its reviews, the Auditor found that the Fonatur “initiated administrative measures before consulting the indigenous population, since it did not inform them about the effects and risks, did not foresee care for the population that would be affected, in the social ambit, for its development. Additionally, the quasi-State agency did not accredit the social focus of the project, nor its contribution in matters of health, education and wellbeing in its host communities.” [1]
To the auditing agency, in 2019 the Fonatur lacked the studies to determine the project’s social feasibility because it didn’t have the definite route of the Maya Train, nor of the location of the development poles along its route.
In one of the audits carried out on the project, the ASF made 20 recommendations to Fonatur related to the social effects of the project, among which is to implement the methodology for defining and promoting the social benefit that the development of the Maya Train Project will have its host communities.
In another review on the performance of the construction project, the ASF issued 13 recommendations, among which is to define a control mechanism for monitoring the investment, which includes the costs and benefits expected for each one of the sections of the train, as well as the profitability indicators of the Maya Train Project, through which it will be guaranteed that it’s profitable.
To the ASF, if the modifications to the project’s design continue –such as changes in the train’s route– or if there are delays in construction, “it could increase the cost and there would be a risk that the State may not obtain the expected profitability for the project.”
[1] This finding by the Auditing agency clearly gives indigenous communities that oppose the Maya Train support for legal actions against the train’s construction. AMLO is angry and wants one of the auditors removed.
———————————————————–
Originally Published in Spanish by La Jornada
Sunday, February 21, 2021
https://www.jornada.com.mx/2021/02/21/politica/004n1pol
Re-Published with English interpretation by the Chiapas Support Committee
Yucatán court grants three new orders to stop work on Maya Train
By: Angélica Enciso L. and Jared Laureles
The fourth district court seated in Yucatán granted three new provisional suspensions against the Maya Train in the state, which prevents federal authorities from continuing construction work on Section 3 of the new project until the definitive suspension is resolved.
The Múuch’ Xíinbal Assembly of Defenders of Maya Territory and the Chuun t’aan Maya Collective, as well as the legal team from Indignation, Promotion and Defense of Human Rights (Indignation), reported that the three suspensions (amparos) that indigenous Mayas from 40 Yucatán communities filed challenge the constitutionality of the Environmental Impact Statement (EIS) approved by the Secretariat of the Environment and Natural Resources (Semarnat, its Spanish acronym), in favor of the National Fund for the Promotion of Tourism for the project’s construction.
In a videoconference, José Orvelín Montiel Cortés, a lawyer with Indignation, pointed out that the arguments outlined in the appeals for suspension –presented last January 20– maintain that the right to information was violated, since “the indigenous communities had no access at any time to the studies derived from the EIS” and with that se “the right to adequate participation” was violated. At the same time, he argued to the judicial authority about the omission of holding a regional environmental evaluation that includes the study of the project’s impacts in a comprehensive and not a fractured way.
Faced with these violations, the fourth district judge considered that the approval of the EIS “implies a preponderant risk” to the environment of the communities and to future generations for the damages that construction of the Maya Train may cause, Montiel Cortés said.
These resolutions, he specified, are added to the other five already granted to different communities on the [Yucatan] Peninsula. In Chiapas, there are two suspensions, but only one with a definitive suspension. In Campeche, there are three suspensions with two being provisional and one definitive. In the case of Yucatan, there are five suspensions with four provisional suspensions, as well as two cases that were turned over to the Supreme Court of Justice of the Nation.
Jorge Fernández Mendiburu, also a lawyer with Indignation, warned that despite the provisional suspensions, the construction work continues, with “the argument that they are carrying out maintenance on the tracks,” because of which he made a call to the judges to pay attention to these facts, because by not respecting the resolutions “it would be a simulation.”
———————————————————-
Thursday, February 18, 2021
https://www.jornada.com.mx/2021/02/18/politica/015n1pol
(See 2nd article below)
-Ω-
YUCATAN JUDGE GRANTS DEFINITIVE SUSPENSION of WORK ON MAYA TRAIN
By: César Arellano García
The third district court seated in Yucatán granted the definitive suspension of construction on Phase 1 the Maya Train to residents of the municipalities of Chocholá, Mérida and Izamal.
The ruling orders federal authorities to abstain from continuing work and initiating new construction related to the project, while it is resolved whether or not they grant protection to the residents. However, the resolution can be challenged so that the case is appealed to a collegiate court.
In that regard, the Kanan Human Rights Collective recalled that the Ministry of the Environment and Natural Resources (Semarnat), through the General Directorate of Environmental Impact and Risk, held a consultation in July 2020 in which some people detected the omission in certain annexes related to the report presented in the environmental impact statement of the Maya Train project in its phase 1, and given those irregularities, they initiated the case for a suspension.
In a communication, the organization pointed out that last January 21 Judge Karla Domínguez Aguilar, head of the third district court based in Yucatán, granted the provisional suspension in which she prohibited the execution of new work on the project.
This definitive suspension is very important to the activists, since with it residents of that area will be able to demand the right to have public information and obtain a favorable ruling that can be materialized. “It’s important that the project be stopped to prevent irreparable harm to the rights of all people, especially to public participation, active transparency and a healthy environment.”
Last week the fourth district court in Yucatán granted three new provisional suspensions to members of the Múuch’ Xíinbal Assembly of Defenders of Maya Territory and the Chuun t’aan Maya Collective against construction of the railroad.
The collectives also challenged the approval of the environmental impact statement that the Semarnat granted to the National Fund for Promoting Tourism (Fonatur, its Spanish acronym).
————————————————————
Originally Published in Spanish by La Jornada
Tuesday, February 23, 2021
https://www.jornada.com.mx/2021/02/23/politica/011n2pol
Re-Published with English interpretation by the Chiapas Support Committee
“San Andrés strengthened the processes of autonomy, with or without recognition from the State”
By Daliri Oropeza
Twenty-five years have passed since the San Andrés Accords were signed. The agrarian lawyer Carlos González, founding member of the National Indigenous Congress, believes that the reality of Indigenous peoples changed following the signing of the document, regardless of the failure of the Mexican government to comply with them.
On January 1, 1994, the Zapatista National Liberation Army (EZLN) declared war on the Mexican State. In the First Declaration of the Lacandon Jungle, they formulated 11 basic demands for Indigenous peoples: work, land, shelter, food, health, education, independence, freedom, democracy, justice and peace. These demands inspired other Indigenous communities who carefully observed what the EZLN was doing in Chiapas. After the first peace dialogue with the government, they initiated a long-range and unprecedented process of reconstitution. They convened Indigenous peoples, civil society, advisers and guests, addressing them by name. The Protocol of the dialogues that the Zapatista guerrillas entered into with the government included the phrase “peace with justice and dignity.”
According to the agreed upon Protocol, the dialogues would entail four working groups, three topics, and several stages. The first stage was to establish the basis for negotiation, by identifying agreements and disagreements. The second, to formulate commitments and agreements. The third, to ratify and sign, after a period of consultation declarations, agreements and commitments.
The EZLN’s guests and the government made proposals and exchanged documents for discussion. The topics were: Indigenous Rights and Culture-Roundtable 1 (which took place); Democracy and Justice -Roundtable 2 (which stalled after the second stage because the government offered nothing, and the dialogue was eventually suspended with the arrest of Comandante Germán): Welfare and Development, Roundtable 3 and Women’s Rights- Roundtable 4, neither of which took place. The three themes were: conciliation between various sectors of Chiapas society; political and social participation of the EZLN; and comprehensive détente, including measures to prevent the resumption of hostilities.
“Throughout the negotiations, the EZLN has been gathering diverse statements and getting consensus in order to get the government to resolve the problematic situation and the undignified misery that the Indigenous peoples of the country endure. As for their autonomy, which has not been fully accepted by the Federal government, the EZLN conceives it in the context of a much broader and more diverse national struggle,” the EZLN announced the day before the signing, in a document entitled Follow-up, where they stressed that they would negotiate all the demands of the attendees, not only those that gave birth to the EZLN.
Carlos González participated in these dialogues held on the San Andrés Sacamchén ball courts, in the middle of the wooded mountain range of the Altos de Chiapas. He maintains that the eleven demands of the EZLN reflected the profound inequality suffered by the original peoples of Mexico to this day. And the people saw themselves in them. The Indigenous struggle changed as a result of both the uprising and the dialogue process that led to the San Andrés Accords on February 16, 1996.
González is a founding member of the network of Indigenous peoples that arose from these agreements: the National Indigenous Congress (CNI, Congreso Nacional Indígena) . Twenty-five years after this unprecedented event in Mexico, the agrarian lawyer gives his diagnosis of the Indigenous movement and puts into perspective why for the country there is a before and an after San Andrés Accords.
The Indigenous watershed in the movements
—What was the Indigenous movement like before the San Andrés Accords? What is it like now?
—The Indigenous peoples were not part of the armed and unarmed movements of the left. The Zapatistas were the first to transform themselves by abandoning the traditional Marxist discourse and placing the Indigenous peoples as an important subject of struggle. The Indigenous had no rights.
Before the Zapatista uprising and the signing of the San Andrés Accord, the Indigenous movement had been unifying and gaining strength, at least since 1992, the year of the 500th anniversary of the European invasion of the continent they called America, and the beginning of the subsequent conquest of our peoples.
The government of Spain and various European and American governments tried to celebrate the 500-year anniversary. The Indigenous movement that existed, limited as it was, began to organize around the demand that there be no celebration, no commemoration, rather that the date be acknowledged for what it was: A date of mourning, the beginning of the greatest genocide in the history of humanity, one that caused the death of at least 60 million people whose villages were plundered and at least 90 million human beings who were brought from Africa to America as slaves. The greatest genocide in the history of humanity.
As a result, various struggles and Indigenous movements in Mexico on the continent began to unify.
The San Andrés Accords were a series of conversations attempting to propose State reforms that could lead to constitutional reforms that would begin to recognize the basic rights, the fundamental rights, of the Indigenous peoples in Mexico. This provoked the emergence of an American Indian movement and an Indigenous movement in Mexico that achieved a certain unity. However, in 1994 these movements, these processes were still invisible, they did not reach the entire national territory, nor did they have a sufficient presence or political force at the national level, much less at the international level.
The Zapatista uprising, first of all, gives visibility to Indigenous peoples. Secondly, it puts the political agendas and the demands of the original peoples up front and center.
Third, Zapatismo brings together the original peoples and leads to the formation of Indigenous movements that are more coherent and profound and broadens the scope of their objectives, as we saw in the dialogues.
The communities emerged with more political power that eventually, under the auspices of Zapatismo, and following the signing of the San Andrés accords on October 12, 1996, results in the founding of the National Indigenous Congress, which includes representatives of the Clandestine Indigenous Revolutionary Committee General Command (CCRIG) of the Zapatista National Liberation Army.
From betrayal to autonomy
—What is your diagnosis at this moment of the Indigenous Movement?
—Twenty five years after signing the San Andrés agreements, the first thing that should be pointed out is: The government betrayed them.
In 2001, the CNI, together with the EZLN, organized the March of the Color of the Earth to pressure the Mexican State to include the San Andrés Accords in the Federal Constitution. On April 28, 2001, the Chamber of Deputies enacted legislation that pretended to include them. It was not so. The basic rights of autonomy, the recognition of the communities as entities with collective rights, the ability of these communities to associate with each other, the rights of municipalities where the majority are Indigenous, the recognition of territorial rights were not included in the constitutional reform, which totally deformed the San Andrés Accords. It rendered them nugatory [null and void; meaningless], illusory.
From that moment to this day, the situation of Indigenous peoples in relation to the State has consisted of a constant erosion of their rights and a permanent violation of them; multiple processes of dispossession of their territories and natural resources in favor of great national and transnational capitals.
Throughout these years, the Indigenous movement has suffered a major onslaught, a relentless battering, full of violence. However, the San Andrés agreements strengthened processes of autonomy, with or without the recognition of the State, and regardless of the degree of recognition in the Constitution. Particularly important and unique are the Zapatista Autonomous Municipalities, the Good Government Juntas and the Caracoles that exist totally outside the law and control of the Mexican State, and that survive without any kind of public budget.
—What has the CNI meant for the Indigenous movement as having derived from the San Andrés dialogues?
—The National Indigenous Congress perseveres in spite of this very adverse situation. It has survived throughout all these years and in a few months it will be celebrating its 25th anniversary as a space of organization, of unity, with its own highs and lows. But it continues with its struggle and its historic proposals, which have been reinforced since 2017, when the Indigenous Governing Council [Consejo Indígena de Gobierno, CIG] was formed and launched its spokesperson Marichuy as a candidate for President of the Republic.
The CNI, from my point of view, is not the only space, nor is it the only process, but it is the most representative and the most important at the national level, the one that represents the historic and strategic interests of the Indigenous movement.
There are many other movements that are good and that also derive from San Andrés, but they are fighting conjunctural issues, questions of mediate and immediate demands.
The CNI considers the long-term historical objectives of Indigenous peoples; and that we have to put them at the center. The Indigenous people who are oppressed by the Mexican State and by the capitalist system must liberate themselves. And that is the deep and radical proposal of the National Indigenous Congress.
That is what gives it a representativity beyond that which can be derived from representative democracy or sheer numbers, that’s one side. But also, this network gives visibility, gives light, to the different Indigenous movements, whether they are with the CNI or not. Why? Because it gives presence and continuity to the struggles in the communities of this country which helps them get coverage and support. Even for some movements that have a vision that is opposed to the National Indigenous Congress, that are prone to making alliances or agreements with the Mexican government or with parts of the Mexican State. We have had important colleagues who are currently in key positions within the Mexican State, pushing their Indigenist policies, right?
—How do you see the immediate future of the country in terms of Indigenous peoples?
—The future is catastrophic for the world and for the country, for Indigenous people and for non-Indigenous people. Capitalism is leading us to a kind of massive destruction of human living conditions on the planet that is being expressed in a profound health, ecological, cultural and economic crisis. Right now capitalism threatens humanity as a whole—Mexico of course, to say nothing of the original peoples. However, I believe that the original peoples, in their forms of life, in their deep relationship with the earth, are able to propose a different way of living and inventing the world, and that they have tried to do so.
Current Issues
—What is your diagnosis of the movement twenty five years after the San Andrés Accords?
—The issues have changed. At that time, the issue was for the Constitution to incorporate the fundamental rights that were established in the San Andrés Accords.
At this point, including these agreements in the Constitution would be basically unrealistic, because there is a whole legal constitutional framework that has been reformed over thirty years to favor the neoliberal capitalist dispossession of lands, territories, natural resources and culture of the country’s Indigenous and peasant communities.
The mere incorporation of the San Andrés Accords are no longer relevant. There is a set of processes, of laws governing energy and other profound reforms to the Constitution, such as Article 27, that are totally contrary to the spirit of the San Andrés Accords and that render it, I use a legal word again: nugatory [null and void; meaningless] that is, illusory, that are mere illusion.
The great issue that is now pending, it sounds small, is the destruction of capitalism. And it’s urgent. It is something so difficult, so complicated and so great, and it’s urgent. That is the priority that we have as humanity, because we are really ending our living conditions as societies, as cultures, as human civilizations.
——————————————————
Published in Spanish by Pie de Página and translated by the Chiapas Support Committee. Read the original here: https://piedepagina.mx/san-andres-fortalecio-los-procesos-de-autonomia-con-o-sin-reconocimiento-del-estado/
Background: Conquest, national independence and indigenous emancipation [On internal colonialism]
By Francisco López Bárcenas
This year marks 500 years since the fall of Tenochtitlan to the power of the Spanish invaders. That event initiated the conquest and subsequent colonization of all of Anahuac, the part of the continent known as Central America and Aridoamerica, the territory that now makes up the Mexican State. Maybe it was thinking of this that two days before 2020 ended, the Diario Oficial de la Federación [The Federation’s Official Daily] published a decree made by the Congress of the Union declaring this current year the Year of Independence. Because these events are bound together, various academic institutions announced plans to analyze the impact that the conquest, colonization and struggles for independence continue to have on the life of its inhabitants, but most of all, on the indigenous peoples that live in the country.
This issue is important, most of all given new interpretations that we have of these events, which are the product of historical findings and because of the structures that maintain exploitation in recent years. Since the mid 20th century, studies began to appear that contradicted the way that the history of the conquest was officially told and that question the way in which the war of independence unfolded, but most of all, they question the outcomes of that war. This was how we knew that the conquest was made possible by the superiority of Spanish weapons, but also by the cooperation of some Indigenous groups who thought that they would be liberated from their rivals, which they were, but only to fall into a much more profound subordination, which was not only economic, political and military, but also cultural, religious, and epistemic. Spanish domination was both spiritual and material.
And more has been discovered about independence: The new interpretations discuss how national independence didn’t represent an independence for indigenous peoples, who in those times made up the majority population. These studies explain that the State that emerged when New Spain separated from the Spanish crown maintained the same colonial structures that were built over 300 years. The only difference was that now the colonizers were Criollos [Spanish people born in Mexico], and the colonized were the indigenous. They explained the dispossession of Indigenous lands, forests and water over the second half of the 19th century, which led to their armed confrontation with the State to ensure their existence. The studies talk of a second colonization, which persists. Many respected academics referred to the phenomenon as an internal colonization, with different stages and expressions.
Contrary to popular belief, indigenismo [indigenism] was part of these politics of internal colonization and multiculturalism was its neoliberal version. It is important to have this in mind, especially when thinking about the emancipation of peoples fighting for their autonomy. Many indigenous weren’t completely aware of this during the indigenismo movement. This led them to accept positions in the colonizing government, thinking that in this way they were contributing to the emancipation of their people, when, to the contrary, they attained personal prestige and a better financial and social position for themselves. In exchange they helped construct a discourse that concealed the dispossession of their people and concealed the repression of anyone who was in opposition. Those who buy into the “Fourth Transformation” do the same: They are silent when the rights of Indigenous people are violated, or worse, they say that their rights are respected.
To shed light and find the horizon on the road to emancipation that we are to walk moving forward, it is good to enter the debate taking in mind the perspective and conditions of the people. There are issues that require explanation: What are the specific characteristics of internal colonialism in a government that said it was about transformation, but at the heart maintains the same politics as its predecessors? What effect does intercultural education have on either maintaining or rising above the colonization of knowledge? Do the paths to political participation created by the Mexican government lead towards emancipation or to the continuation of internal colonization? Do the forms of community production serve as emancipatory processes on the regional or national level, or do they just function in some localities? And, most importantly, are we building roads towards emancipation, or just towards resistance?
——————————————————————
Originally appeared in Spanish, published by La Jornada, as “Conquista, independencia nacional y emancipación indigena.” Translated to English by the Chiapas Support Committee. Read the original here: https://www.jornada.com.mx/2021/01/20/opinion/016a1pol
In the above mentioned decree from the Congress, declaring 2021 the Year of Independence, the executive powers are instructed to create a program with activities to commemorate it. The organizations of indigenous people and their allies could do the same from their specific perspective: searching for concrete solutions to real problems. The ideological struggle is also important in the creation of the road to emancipation.
Chiapas Support Committee 