Chiapas Support Committee
Home of the Compañero Manuel blog on zapatistas & mexico
Narco-states versus freedom
By: Raúl Zibechi
Wealth accumulated by the one percent is being protected by an alliance between drug trafficking networks and sectors of the state apparatus that serve the interests of large multinationals but at the same time have been formed as an important factor of power. This alliance operates by clearing territories for mining and energy undertakings, from which it benefits by creating broad spaces under its control that it uses to lubricate its illegal businesses.
Recently, analyses started to be published about this reality that, under the mane of drug trafficking (narcotráfico), designs a mode of domination and control of populations. We should not lose sight of the fact that the narco-states are not deviations from the tradition of the nation-states, but rather their new configuration in accordance with extractivism/fourth world war, which complicates both the resistances of popular sectors and the emancipatory struggle in general.
The formation of narco-states (and narco-institutions) seems to be increasing and the space is not restricted to Latin America. In some European countries the mafias allied with politicians achieve setting up camp in municipalities and even entire regions, reaching a decisive influence in the configuration of the political map, particularly in Italy.
In several Latin American countries this alliance operates together with the evangelical and Pentecostal churches, especially in Brazil and Colombia, where they support right-wing parties and candidates, although some of them arrived to sustain the government of Lula for years, only to then take a sharp a turn in the opposite direction.
In recent months a violent conflict reappeared over control of the city of Medellín (Colombia), which had been held up as a paradigm of the pacification of one of the most violent cities, thanks to a municipal management that used the urban architecture to generate a culture of peace. The outbreak of violence en this showcase city shows the limits of public policies for controlling drug trafficking, as well as baring its alliances and modes of operating.
An excellent report from the journalist Camilo Alzate about the war underway in Commune 13, assures that “the city of economic prodigies is under control of the mafias” and adds a revealing phrase: “The real power that formal power needs.” After the progressive management of Mayor Sergio Fajardo (2004-2007) the city had become the showcase of pacification and hosted international business forums for the global elites.
In some countries, like in Uruguay during the presidency of José Mujica, Medellín was held up as an example of the successful combat against crime, which would be solved constructing sports spaces, public libraries and meeting places where young people would discover the wonders of life and get away from the criminal gangs.
The basic idea is that good management can solve structural inequalities without touching privileges, including the endemic corruption of the state apparatus. The concept of “urban acupuncture,” which had functioned decades before in the Brazilian Curitiba was reclaimed to solve social problems through punctual interventions in the city.
What’s certain is that that experience for export failed without those responsible facing it. The social leaders of Commune 13 told authorities: “We don’t trust in the institutions, and above all we don’t trust in the police.” And they conclude: “If the community cannot trust in the police, what do we have left?”
This is the central point. There are no sectorial policies for solving the problem of drug trafficking, because it has already been integrated into the state apparatus, the real power that utilizes the institutions. In Medellín there are hundreds of people threatened and displaced by the criminal gangs that imposed a permanent curfew at night. The police limited themselves to attacking young people, who they always consider suspicious, while protecting the mafias.
On various visits to Medellín I was able to verify how in the communes this narco power controls transportation, forcing the drivers to pay them a fee, as well as all the businesses within a territorial limit that they control. The business of cans of gasoline, of cell phones and television, are all in the hands of the narcos, in a broad geography that goes from Medellín to Río de Janeiro, passing through a good part of the continent’s cities.
How is this narco-state power dismantled?
Impossible to do it from inside, as all known experiences show.
It is a central theme for the anti-systemic movements, since this power is dedicated to destroying all popular organization because they covet complete control of territories. Therefore we know that only by organizing ourselves at the margin of these powers will it be possible to construct solid and lasting emancipatory movements.
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Originally Published in Spanish by La Jornada
Friday, July 20, 2018
http://www.jornada.com.mx/2018/07/20/opinion/020a1pol
Re-Published with English interpretation by the Chiapas Support Committee
It’s capitalism!
María de Jesús Patricio Martínez (Marichuy)
By: Gilberto López y Rivas
Without a doubt, we’re experiencing an historic moment in contemporaneous Mexico, because for the first time in many decades the popular will expressed at the polls was respected; a State fraud was not imposed, nor the fall of the system, nor the cynical “it has been as it has been” of Felipe Calderón; this is a transcendent conquest of the Mexican people, without diminishing or underestimating, it’s necessary to analyze from the critical thinking and struggle of the original peoples in defense of territories, Mother Earth and life.
This transition is not due to a sudden democratic calling of the PRI regime, but rather to three interrelated factors that prevented the imposition of the traditional State fraud: 1) The extraordinary citizen participation of more than 60 percent of registered voters. 2) The fracture of the political class in the principal parties, the PRI and the PAN, which went to the election separately, and with internal divisions that deepened during the campaign. 3) The vote of punishment from millions of voters that spoke out for change.
However, it highlights the ability of the State to reconstitute itself: the triumph of the citizenry’s massive intervention was rapidly turned into a “victory of the institutions” and the “democratic system.” Gone was the violence deployed throughout and during the electoral process, and the 132 candidates murdered were quickly forgotten.
The recognition from the officialist candidate on election night, and the terse sequence of events that culminates with the message of Enrique Peña Nieto and the conciliatory speech of the winning candidate, suggests a concerted action starting with there will be no punishment for the outgoing government’s crimes of State and against humanity, or criminal litigation over the visible plundering of the treasury and the evident complicity of the three levels of government with organized crime.
At the same time, it is significant that in his first speech as the winning candidate, López Obrador sends a message to capitalist corporations to calm them that he will not take “radical measures,” “contracts will be respected,” “there will be no expropriations” and one must understand his preferred slogan in that context: “For the good of everyone, first the poor,” about which it’s appropriate to ask: Who is “everyone”?
Also, the guiding-almost-unique idea of the whole campaign that corruption is the matrix of all the country’s evils was reiterated, AMLO denying that it is inherent to capitalism, whose cornerstone is the expropriation of labor from the working class and the dispossession of strategic-natural-resources-territories by its corporations. The president-elect denies that the law of value-exploitation-surplus-value-class-struggle applies to Mexico, insisting on the corruption factor.
This peculiar perspective of López Obrador, which corrects the “classics” of Marxism, is very important for the direction that the resistance of the original peoples follows versus the process of re-colonization of the territories for the capitalist transnationals, which is made visible by the Indigenous Government Council (Consejo Indígena de Gobierno, CIG) and its spokeswoman, Marichuy, during the campaign. Mining companies, trans-Isthmus corridor, refineries, highway projects, bullet trains and a honeymoon with impresarios, are bad signs for the original peoples.
For their part, leaders of indigenous organizations around AMLO presented a programmatic document that, with the phraseology of Zapatismo, including the use of “govern obeying” (“mandar obedeciendo,” proposes, in sum, and as a principal proposal, a return to the indigenismo already overcome since the San Andrés dialogue, now under the leadership of an indigenous bureaucracy that would form a new State secretariat.
Marichuy declared that what’s really significant will come now and that the transcendent thing is to organize if you wish to take the country towards a real change; it’s about resisting the capitalist corporations and the governments that protect them, acting from where you are, in barrios, districts, cities or indigenous towns.
The limitation of representative democracy is that citizen participation is concentrated on just one day, and therefore, public issues are the monopoly of a class of professional politicians that ignore the electorate. The EZLN and the CIG, on the other hand, propose a new kind of democracy, an autonomist democracy that is founded on a construction of power and citizenship from below; as a way of everyday life, of control and exercise of power from what ought to be; that is, based on ethical terms. It is not a means or procedure of reproduction of bureaucratic estates, but rather a social and political pact, a constituent of everyday that operates unitarily in all spheres and orders of life.
The struggle for this democracy will continue, shoulder to shoulder with the peoples, below and to the left.
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Originally Published in Spanish by La Jornada
Friday, July 6, 2018
https://www.jornada.com.mx/2018/07/06/opinion/019a1pol
Re-Published with English interpretation by the Chiapas Support Committee
EZLN denies having contact with AMLO
Communiqué from the CCRI-CG of EZLN
Zapatista National Liberation Army
Mexico
To the People of Mexico:
To the People and Governments of the World:
To the Free, Alternative, Autonomous, or whatever they’re called Media:
To the National and International Sixth:
To the National Indigenous Congress and the Indigenous Governing Council:
To the National and International Press:
July 17th, 2018.
Since yesterday and during today, the media has been running a story backed by statements from Mister Alejandro Solalinde (who presents himself as a presbyter, priest, clergyman or however its said, Christian, Catholic, Roman Apostolic) about an alleged approach between the EZLN and Mister Andrés Manuel López Obrador and that “the EZLN already agreed to have a first dialogue” (textual words by Mister Solalinde). [An example of a media report is published below, following this communiqué.]
About this lie the EZLN declares:
First: The CCRI-CG of EZLN, the political, organizational and military directorate of the EZLN, hasn’t agreed to a first dialogue with anyone. As is well known by whoever has even minimum knowledge of the EZLN and its ways, a matter like this would have been made public well in advance.
Second: EZLN hasn’t received from Mister Solalinde anything but lies, insults, libel and racist and sexist comments, by assuming just like it was done during the days of Salinismo and Zedillismo, that we are poor ignorant indigenous manipulated by the -quoting his own words- “Caxlanes (outsiders) who administer Zapatismo” that don’t allow us to look down and kneel to the man who Solalinde considers the new savior.
Third: We understand Solalinde’s need to be in the spotlight and his demand for our submissiveness, but he is wrong about the EZLN’s Zapatismo. Not only he is wrong about that. We don’t know much about it, but it seems like one of the commandments of the church that Mister Solalinde supposedly serves, which goes: “Thou shalt not bear false witness against thy neighbor, and you won’t lie.”
Fourth: As anyone who knows Mexican Law would be aware, Mister Andrés Manuel López Obrador is not the President of Mexico, and he is not even President Elect. To become “President Elect” the Electoral Tribunal Of The Federal Judicial Branch needs to emit a declaration about it; afterwards the House of Representatives has to issue an edict on the Official Federal Gazette where it communicates to the population that now there is a President Elect. And according to those same laws, he is not a President in Office until he swears on the day of December 1st, 2018. By the way, according to the new Electoral Reform, he won’t rule for 6 years, but for 2 months less than that, unless the constitution is reformed and re-election becomes allowed.
Fifth: If the team of Mister Andrés Manuel López Obrador behaves as if they are the government its because that’s what the great businessmen made them believe (via YouTube, which must be a guarantee of veracity), Trump’s Administration (via its pharaonic visit), and the great media conglomerates, and its understandable; but maybe its not convenient to let everyone know their willingness towards breaking the law under the protection of a supposed “full car” (which is what PRI did during their long reign).
Sixth: The EZLN already had the bitter experience of accepting communication with a mister who afterwards was declared President Elect. We refer to Mister Ernesto Zedillo Ponce de León, who took advantage of the initial contact to plan the annihilation of the Zapatista leadership of back then. The person who operated such betrayal, Mister Esteban Moctezuma Barragán, its now one of the ones proposed to form part of the government that supposedly should take power on December 1st, 2018, and not anytime before. Now, we ignore if Mister Solalinde pretends to replace Mister Moctezuma Barragán in the same role he performed under Zedillo.
Seventh: It is not our business, but it is bad enough that those who call themselves “the true change” start off with lies, libel and threats. They already did it with the Pope, now with the EZLN. They are repeating the “customs and habits” of those whom they say they ousted from the government.
Eight: As it has been public knowledge from at least 16 years now, the EZLN hasn’t held any dialogue with the Federal Government after the indigenous counter-reform. Not with Fox after 2001, nor Calderón or Peña Nieto. Our goodwill for dialogue has always been received with lies, libel and betrayal. If you would be so kind, please lend Mister Solalinde some press clippings and books that tell about this in detail, cause he is doing just as those before him.
Ninth and Last: If we are “sectarian, marginal and radical;” if we are “isolated” and “alone;” if we are “outdated;” if we don’t represent anything or anyone; then why don’t they let us alone in peace and just continue celebrating their “triumph”? Why don’t they instead prepare better -and without lies- for those 5 years and 10 months they will be in the Federal Government? And organize yourselves, because even to fight for a bone (or crumbs) and to receive recognition from money it helps to be organized.
We Zapatistas? Well, we’ll keep on going on what we’ve been for the last almost 25 years:
Resistance and rebelliousness!
Because freedom can’t be awarded as a hand out, or as a human or divine favor; it’s won through struggle.
That is all.
From the mountains of the Mexican Southeast,
By the Clandestine Revolutionary Indigenous Committee-General Command of the Zapatista National Liberation Army
Subcomandante Insurgente Moisés. (100% Mexican, 100% native of the Tzeltal language (or “indigenous Tzeltal” to Mister Solalinde), and 100% Zapatista).
Mexico, July 2018.
***
AMLO sends letter to the EZLN inviting it to dialogue
By: Elio Henríquez
San Cristóbal De Las Casas, Chiapas
The priest Alejandro Solalinde affirmed that he would deliver a letter to the Zapatista National Liberation Army (Ejército Zapatista de Liberación Nacional, EZLN) from president-elect Andrés Manuel López Obrador, in which he expresses to the rebel group his willingness to dialogue.
“It’s an invitation from the president-elect to dialogue; we don’t know the where, when and how, they would have to agree on that without my participation,” he said in an interview.
He added that: the attitude of the EZLN is no longer useful” because “it no longer corresponds to the new era that we are beginning with president-elect López Obrador. They have to open up.
“We have a first approach tomorrow, the EZLN already accepted having the first dialogue, and tomorrow I will deliver the letter that expresses that the willingness is had to dialogue,” he stated and added that said meeting will be in this city, although he did not specify who would participate in the interview. “The president-elect’s willingness exists to maintain a dialogue with the Zapatista commanders. We are going to deliver the letter tomorrow (Tuesday) and we are going to chat with them. That is not secret, everything has to be transparent,” he emphasized.
He explained that one of the rebel group’s contributions is “having opened our eyes and awakened our consciences, and having become an anti-systemic organism; the problem is that now the attitude that they have is no longer useful.”
Solalinde came to this city to present the book Revelaciones de un misionero, mi vida itinerante (Revelations of a missionary, my itinerant life), which he co-wrote with the journalist Karla María Gutiérrez, and which is about the life of the priest, founder of the Hermanos en el Camino shelter, based in Ixtepec, Oaxaca.
During the presentation of the book, Solalinde stated that the current epoch is one “crucial for Mexico, because more than 30 million people opted in favor of change, but that is not a question of parties, which are left behind.”
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Originally Published in Spanish by La Jornada
Tuesday, July 17, 2018
http://www.jornada.com.mx/2018/07/17/politica/007n3pol
Re-Published with English interpretation by the Chiapas Support Committee
EZLN: Invitation to a Big August Zapatista Gathering
Invitation to a Gathering of Support Networks for the Indigenous Governing Council; to CompARTE 2018, “For Life and Freedom”; and to the Fifteenth Anniversary Event of the Zapatista Caracoles entitled, “Paint little Caracoles to the past, present and future bad governments [1]
July 2018
To the individuals, groups, collectives and organizations of the Support Networks for the Indigenous Governing Council:
To the National and International Sixth:
First and last:
The Grand Finale
You arrive at the grand stadium. “Monumental,” “colossal,” “an architectonic marvel,” “the concrete giant”—these and similar descriptors roll off the lips of TV broadcasters who, despite the different realities that they describe, all highlight the enormously proud structure.
To get to the magnificent building, you’ve had to wade through rubble, cadavers, and filth. Older folks say that it wasn’t always like this, that it used to be that homes, neighborhoods, businesses, and buildings were erected around the great sporting hub. Rivers of people would rush all the way up to the gigantic entrance, which only opened once in a while and on whose threshold was inscribed, “Welcome [Bienvenido] to the Supreme Game.” Yes, “bienvenido” in the masculine, as if what occurred inside was exclusively a men’s affair, as used to be the case with public bathrooms, bars, the machinery and tools sections of hardware stores…and, of course, soccer.
But from a bird’s eye view, the image below could very well be a simile for a universe contracting, leaving death and destruction in its wake. It’s as if the Grand Stadium were a black hole absorbing the life around it and, insatiable, burping and defecating lifeless bodies, blood, and shit.
From a certain distance the structure can be better viewed in its totality, although from that distance one can see that its erroneous architectonic features, structural and foundational deficiencies, and fluctuating decor based on the whims of the current team are covered by an elaborate scaffolding plastered with calls to unity, faith, hope, and of course, charity, as if to confirm the similarity of worship across spheres of religion, politics, and sports.
You don’t know much about architecture, but you’re bothered by the almost obscene insistence on a staging that doesn’t match up with reality. Colors and sounds proclaim the end of an era and the beginning of a new tomorrow, the promised land, that rest which not even death brings (as you are thinking this you make a mental count of all the people close to you who have been disappeared, murdered, or “exported” to other hells, and whose names are diluted in statistics and promises of truth and justice).
In religion as well as politics and sports, there are specialists. You yourself don’t know a lot about anything—the incense, psalms, and praises that accompany those worlds make you dizzy. You don’t feel capable of describing the structure because you walk in other worlds; the long and tedious paths you walk traverse what in the lofty balconies of the great stadium would be called “the underworld.” Yes, that underworld of the street, the subway, the bus, a car bought on an installment plan or paid for with credit based on other credit (a debt always postponed and always growing), a dirt road, backcountry trails that lead to the cornfield, the school, the market, the tianguis, to work, a job, the grind.
You’re uncomfortable, it’s true, but the optimism inside the great stadium is dominant, daunting, o-v-e-r-w-h-e-l-m-i-n-g, and it spills over to the outside.
Like in that song you vaguely remember, the spectacle that has just ended joined together “the nobleman and the petty criminal, the proud man and the worm.” For those few moments, equality reigned supreme—despite the fact that the final whistle sent everyone back to his or her place in the hierarchy. Enough pretending that everyone is one of many, and once more, “with their hangovers hanging heavy / the poor man returns to his hovel / the rich man to his riches / and the priest to his flock / Good and evil are back in their place / the poor whore returns to the doorway / the rich whore to the rose garden / and the greedy man to his accounts.” [2]
Now the noises and images before you indicate that the game has ended. The moment for the grand finale, so anxiously awaited and feared, has come, and the winning team accepts, with false modesty, the cheering of the crowd—“the respectable public,” as the political spokespeople and journalists call them. Yes, that’s how they refer to those who have participated with shouts, chants, hurrahs, insults and diatribes from the stands, like spectators who are permitted only at the very end to pretend that they have the ball and that their cheering is the kick that will send the ball to “the back of the net.”
How many times have you heard that one? So many that one wonders if it is even worth counting. The repeated defeats, the promise that the next time will be the one, and the excuses: the referee this, the field that, the weather, the lighting, the lineup, the strategy and tactics, and so on and so forth. At least today’s illusion softens the history of failures…a history to which a predictable (dis)illusion will soon be added.
Outside the stadium, a malicious hand has scrawled a sentence on its proud walls: “MISSING: REALITY.” Not satisfied with its heresy, the hand has added designs and colors to the letters with such variety and creativity that they no longer look like spray paint. It’s not even graffiti anymore, but rather an inscription, like an engraving chiseled into the cement, an indelible footprint on the indifferent surface of the wall. To top it all off, the last stroke of the last letter has opened a crack in the wall all the way to its foundation. A shredded and discolored poster with the image of a happy heterosexual couple with two children, a boy and a girl, and a title that reads “The Happy Family” tries in vain to cover the fissure which, perhaps due to an optical illusion, seems to tear also through the happy image of the happy family.
But not even the rumbling inside that shakes the walls of the stadium can hide the crack.
Inside, even though the game has ended, the crowds haven’t left the stadium. Though it won’t be long before they’re kicked back out into the valley of ruins, the cheering of the spellbound multitude echoes off the walls as people share anecdotes: who cheered the loudest, who told the best joke (they’re called “memes”), who told the most successful lie (the number of “likes” determine the degree of truth), who knew it from the beginning, who never doubted it would happen. In the stands, a few fans exchange analyses: “Did you see how the opposing team changed jerseys at half-time, and that those who started the game in the opposing team’s uniform are now celebrating the win?” “The referee (always the “sell-out ref”) truly lived up to his job this time—he really cleaned up this team’s victory.”
A few onlookers [algunos, algunas, algunoas], the more skeptical ones, notice with concern that members of rival teams are among those celebrating the triumph. They try to understand but can’t wrap their heads around it. Or maybe they can, but this is a moment for rejoicing, not understanding. To make things crystal clear, a giant screen glows with the visual jingle of the moment: “No thinking allowed.”
Night seems to be settling in late, you think to yourself. But you realize that it’s the neon reflectors and fireworks that simulate daylight. The light is not cast evenly, of course. Over there, in that corner, a set of risers has collapsed and the rescue teams aren’t attending to the accident, busy as they are in the celebrations. Nobody asks how many were killed but rather which team they were rooting for. Farther away, in that other dark corner, a woman has been attacked, raped, kidnapped, murdered, disappeared. But come on, it’s only one woman, or one elderly woman, or one young woman, or one little girl. The news media, always with their finger on the pulse, don’t ask the name of the victim, but rather whether she was wearing the jersey of this or that team.
But now is no time for bitterness; it’s time for parties, for toasts, for t-h-e-e-n-d-o-f-h-i-s-t-o-r-y my friend, for the beginning of a new championship title. Outside, the darkness seems like a metaphor for the devastated terrain. Like a battlefield, in fact, you think to yourself.
The din demands your attention again. You try to step back a bit to appreciate the impact of the spectacular triumph of your favorite team…hmm…was it your favorite team? It doesn’t matter now; the winner was and always will be the favorite of the majority. Now of course everyone knew that the triumph was inevitable, and in the stands the logical explanations emerge: “Yes, no other result was possible, only that of the intoxicating trophy cup crowning the colors of the favorite team.”
You try, without success, to take on the enthusiasm that floods the stands and balconies. It seems to reach the highest point of the structure, where the polarized windows of what we can only assume is a luxurious VIP box reflect the lights, chants and images below.
You struggle to navigate the risers; people are crammed into every aisle and flight of stairs. You’re looking for someone or something that won’t make you feel so strange, as if you’re an alien or a time-traveler who has touched down in an unknown calendar and geography.
You pause briefly where two elders are closely examining a sort of game board. No, they’re not playing chess. Now that you’re close enough, you can see that what they’re looking at is a jigsaw puzzle with only a few pieces put together, the final image not even outlined yet.
One of them says to the other: “Well, no, to me it doesn’t seem like fiction. After all, critical thought should start from a hypothesis, as crazy as it might seem. But it shouldn’t abandon rigor: it should confront the hypothesis and verify whether it can proceed, or if it’s necessary to find a different starting point.” Taking one of the puzzle pieces, the person holds it up and says, “For example, it could be that sometimes the smallest thing helps you understand the big picture. Like if in this small piece, we could guess or intuit the completed image.” You don’t hear what comes after that because the neighboring groups shout down that strange pair and drown out their words.
Someone has handed you a flyer. It reads, “Disappeared” and has an image of a woman whose age you can’t decipher. An old woman, a middle-aged woman, a young woman, a little girl? The wind rips the flyer from your hand and it gets pulled into the swirl of streamers and confetti that cloud the air.
Speaking of girls…
A little girl with dark skin and strangely colorful and adorned clothing is looking at the stadium, the stands, the multicolored lights, the happy smiles of the winners and the malicious smiles of the losers.
The little girl looks doubtful, you can tell from the expression on her face and her restless gaze.
You’re feeling pretty generous, after all, you have just won…hmm… have you won? Well anyway, you’re feeling generous so you ask her kind-heartedly what she is looking for.
Without turning to look at you the little girl responds, “The ball,” her gaze sweeping across the stadium.
“The ball?” you ask, as if the question came from another time, another world.
The little girl sighs and adds, “Yeah, well, maybe the owner has it.”
“The owner?” you ask again.
“Yes, the owner of the ball, and the stadium, and the trophy, and the teams—the owner of all of this,” the little girl replies, gesturing with her hands to the scope of the reality concentrated in the stadium.
You search for words to tell the girl that these questions are neither here nor there, but just then you remember that you haven’t seen the ball either. A fuzzy image comes to mind, from the beginning of the game you think, of a ball plastered with the logos of “our friendly sponsors.” But you can’t recall seeing it again, even when the goals were made.
But there they are on the scoreboard, noting the only reality that matters: who won, who lost. No scoreboard tells you who the owner is, not even of the scoreboard itself, much less of the ball, the teams, the courts, or the cameras and microphones.
Plus, this scoreboard isn’t just any scoreboard. It’s the most modern scoreboard that exists and it cost a fortune. It comes with a VAR [Video Assistant Referee] to help the employees add or subtract points from the score, and for instant replays of that moment when “Together we made history.” [3] The scoreboard doesn’t keep track of goals, but rather shouting: whoever yells the most wins. So who needs a ball?
But now as you ponder your memories of the game you note something strange: a few minutes before the end of the game, the fans from the opposing team went silent, and the shouting from the eventually victorious team continued unrivaled. What a strange retreat by the opposition, you think. But even stranger is that before the scoreboard even showed the final score, before even the halftime score, the opposing team came back onto the field to congratulate the winners…who hadn’t even won yet. Those in the VIP boxes at the top of the stadium erupted into jubilant celebration, their banners now displaying the colors of the winner. When did they switch favorite teams? Who really won? And who owns the ball?
“So why do you want to know who the owner is?” you ask the little girl, because her doubts aside, it’s a moment for confetti and noisemakers, not stubborn questions.
“Oh, well, because the owner never loses. It doesn’t matter which team wins and which loses, the owner always wins.”
You’re troubled by the seed of doubt this plants. What makes you even more uncomfortable is seeing how those who had before said that the now victorious team would do great harm if it won, are currently celebrating its triumph as if it were theirs. And just a few hours ago it wasn’t. In fact they aren’t acting at all like they lost; it’s more like they’re celebrating the victory as if to say “we won once again.”
You are about to tell the little girl to take her bitterness elsewhere—maybe it’s that time of the month, or she’s depressed, or she simply doesn’t understand anything that’s going on; after all, she’s just a little girl. But just then the crowd erupts in commotion: the losing team has come back to the field to thank the public for their support. The people are still in the stands and observe, entranced, the modern gladiators who have defeated the beasts… wait a minute! Aren’t the beasts the ones who are now embracing, celebrating, and carrying the winning team on their shoulders?
What the little girl said is making you think. You remember, with discomfort, that the opposing team, known for its boorishness, tricks, and deceit, left the game just before the final whistle. It was as if they feared that their own inertia could lead to their victory (fraudulent of course), and in order to avoid such an outcome they left the field entirely. Their followers and fans went with them, and now that you think about it, so did all their banners and flags.
The commotion continues. From the looks of it the people in the stands aren’t concerned by the absurdity that’s taking place at centerfield, where a podium has been set up for the final awards.
Timidly echoing the little girl’s question, it is now you who asks,
“Who owns the ball?”
But the noise of the crowd swallows your question and nobody hears you.
The little girl takes your hand and says: “Let’s go, we have to get out of here.”
“Why?” you ask.
Gesturing to the foundations of the huge building, the little girl answers,
“It’s going to fall.”
But nobody seems to realize this… Wait a minute, nobody?
(To be continued?)
-*-
With regard to the above, the Sixth Commission of the EZLN invites all of the individuals, groups, collectives, and organizations that supported and support the CIG, and who, of course, still believe that the changes that matter never come from above but rather from below (and who have not sent their letter of support and requests to their future overseer) to a Gathering of Support Networks for the Indigenous Governing Council with the following program:
—Evaluation of the process of support for the CIG and its spokesperson Marichuy, and of the situation according to each group, collective, and organization.
—Proposals for next steps.
—Suggestions for how to consult those proposals with attendees’ respective groups, collectives, organizations.
Arrival and registration: August 2, 2018. Registration and activities will be held Friday August 3, Saturday August 4, and Sunday August 5.
Register as a participant in the Gathering of Support Networks at the following email:
encuentroredes@enlacezapatista.org.mx
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In addition, the Zapatista indigenous communities invite all those for whom art is a vocation and a longing to:
CompARTE for Life and Freedom
“Píntale Caracolitos a los malos gobiernos pasados, presentes y futuros”
August 6-9, 2018
Arrival and registration: any time between August 6 and August 9.
The event will close on August 9, the fifteenth anniversary of the Zapatista caracoles.
The program will be made according to who signs up, but there will almost surely be musicians, actors, dancers, painters, sculptors, poets, and etceterists from the Zapatista communities in resistance and rebellion.
Register to attend or participate at the following email addresses:
asistecomparte2018@enlacezapatista.org.mx
participacomparte2018@enlacezapatista.org.mx
All activities will take place in the Caracol of Morelia (where the Encounter of Women in Struggle was held), Tzotz Choj zone, Zapatista territory in resistance and rebellion.
Please note: Bring your own cup, plate, and spoon, because the women in struggle have advised against using disposable supplies that pollute the environment and leave a huge mess as well. It wouldn’t be a bad idea to bring a flashlight, your whatever-it-is-you-need to put between the dignified soil and your very dignified body, or a tent, a raincoat or poncho or something similar in case it rains, any medicine or special food you require, and whatever else you will need so that when you file your complaints we can respond with, “we told you beforehand.” For older people, “wise ones” as we call them here, we will, to the extent we are able, offer special lodging conditions.
Also note: men and other minorities will be allowed access.
For the Sixth Commission of the EZLN
Subcomandante Insurgente Moisés. Subcomandante Insurgente Galeano.
Mexico, July 4, 2018.
P.S. No, we Zapatistas do NOT join the campaign “For the good of all, first the distribution of cushy jobs.” [4] They can switch up the overseers, foremen, and supervisors, but the plantation owner remains the same. Therefore…
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[1] “Paint little caracoles” (pintar caracolitos) has a double meaning here. Caracoles are the name for the Zapatista centers of self-government. In Spanish, pintar caracolitos also refers to an obscene hand gesture which in this case is directed at “the bad governments, past, present, and future.” The effect is something like “Tell the bad governments, past, present, and future, to fuck off.”
[2] These are lyrics from the song “Festival” by Catalan singer-songwriter Joan Manuel Serrat. The song employs a depiction of a raucous night of partying as part of the festival of Saint John the Baptist (June 23), in which for a day social divisions are temporarily relaxed.
[3] “Juntos hicimos historia” or “Together we made history” refers to the electoral coalition “Juntos haremos historia” (“Together we’ll make history”) made up of Andrés Manuel Lopez Obrador’s party, the National Regeneration Movement (MORENA), the Labor Party (PT), and the Social Encounter Party (PES), an evangelical conservative Christian right party.
[4] The subcomandantes are making fun of one of Lopez Obrador’s campaign slogans, “Por el bien de todos, primero los pobres” (“For the good of all, first the poor”).
Privatization and dispossession will continue after the electoral process
Sign in Lomas de Venado says: Total rejection of the Security Law.
More than 300 women, men, children, and elderly indigenous and Ch’ol people of the North-Jungle region of Chiapas met on June 15 and 16 to hold the third regional gathering “In defense of life, land and territory for food sovereignty” in Lomas de Venado community, Municipality of Salto de Agua, in which they discussed themes like the current electoral process and the Homeland Security Law (Ley de Seguridad Interior).
More than than 300 people, among them women, children, men and elderly indigenous Tzeltals and Ch´ols of the Northern Jungle region coming from the communities of Rio Tulija, Lomas de Venado, Agua Clara, Yaxj´a, Chapayal, Monte Bello, Ruiz Cortines, Velasco, Achl´um Tulija, La Concordia, Galilea, Ranchería Primavera, San Jose Juxil, Chapayal, La Jacaranda, Palma Tulija, in the Municipality of Salto de Agua; Tim, Corostic, Jolmuculja, Alan Sacun, Coquiteel 1a. y 2ª Seccion, Piquinteel, in the Municipality of Chilón; and the community of Ignacio Allende, in the Municipality of Tumbalá, said that given the current electoral context in our country and given the country’s laws in complicity with the governments of other countries and transnational corporations, they seek to disarticulate our struggles in defense of land and life.
In this gathering they analyzed the causes and consequences that they are experiencing prior to the July 1 elections, as well as the Homeland Security Law and other laws and reforms that attack their life, culture and atmosphere where they live and cultivate foods and, therefore, conclude:
We are gathered together by conscience because we believe that we have to make the struggle for life and land ourselves, no one else will do it for us, not even the governments because they don’t govern for the people, but rather for the good of the transnational corporations, we don’t believe in them, nor in their promises because we know that when they come to power they forget about the people, but now that they are campaigning they come delivering gifts, food and money, thereby buying the vote and deceiving the people.
During this day we made the agreement to walk equally, men and women, to recognize each other in equality and rights. In this meeting we analyzed the problems, causes and consequences of the policies of privatization and dispossession that the neoliberal government has been executing and that will continue even after the coming federal, state and municipal elections. We know that when the neoliberal government and candidates talk about economic growth and investment, they’re talking about continuing and deepening commodification of sacred land, water, forests, minerals, knowledge, ancestral wisdom and promoting mono-crops like African palm and others.
We will promote the participation of women and men, young men and women, boys and girls in our communities, to defender our right to life, against the Homeland Security Law and all those laws that attack our people and our land.
Our struggle is from below and to the left. We know that they seek to divide us through the programs and projects. We tell them that we struggle against their individualist ideologies, strengthening our walking together, articulating and seeking forms of communication that construct solidarity among communities and ejidos because only that way will we be able to make a common front against all the forms of violence.
We also agreed that another form of struggling is to construct our ejido regulations, we have the ability to make our own laws as indigenous peoples, where we participate men and women participate equally, because in this gathering we analyze that the men alone will not be able to make a front against this system of death, and that the political and active participation of women is valuable and important.
We say to the governments that we are not afraid, that we will continue organizing and raising our voice denouncing all the violence that they do against our families and peoples.
Another form of our struggle is constructing our autonomy where we live in peace, where justice prevails in equality and together we are able to decide how we want to plant, cultivate and care for our Mother Earth.
As women and men we must strengthen our walk, knowing and defending our rights, struggling against the violence that we experience because of being women and because of being indigenous.
*We also say to the governments that are accomplices of the agro-toxic companies that through their farm programs and projects impose the use of agro-chemicals that are destroying Mother Earth and in this way affecting our health.
*We say that although we are hungry, cold and hot, our struggle will continue, because our grandparents let us know that we must not sell our Mother Earth because we live here and our history is here.
*We make a call to ejido and community authorities and to people in general to organize and to be articulate in the fight for the defense of life, lane and everything that gives us life.
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Originally Published in Spanish by Chiapas Paralelo
Friday, June 22, 2018
Re-Published with English interpretation by the Chiapas Support Committee
Waffles & Zapatismo this Saturday
JOIN US THIS SATURDAY!
The Mexican government opens the door to the private concession of protected waters
A woman washes her clothes in the waters of Lake Chapala. Photo: Hector Guerrero
Academics and civil society organizations see in the decrees a way to “do business” with water resources whose use was limited, while the Conagua denies that it’s a privatization
By: Ignacio Fariza
Mexico, June 19, 2018
Last June 5, the Mexican government promulgated a dozen decrees that eliminate protection over the North American country’s large water basins and that, in practice, open the door to the use of that water on the part of private agents. In the cited presidential decrees, Enrique Peña Nieto, converts the prohibited zones — in which the extraction of water is almost completely restricted— into reserve zones —also protected, but in which is permitted, in a limited way, the exploitation, use or utilization of the water, even by private parties, if the authorities consider it “of public usefulness”— and leaves, according to two jurists consulted, in the hands of the National Water Commission (Comisión Nacional del Agua, Conagua) the possibility if granting concessions for the use of this resource to companies from different sectors, among them mining, hydraulic fracturing (fracking), the refreshment industry or the generation of hydro-electric energy. The aforementioned Conagua has strongly denied in a statement that it’s about the privatization of water.
The dozen resolutions promulgated change the status of a “very significant” amount of water in Mexico, according to Rodrigo Gutiérrez, a researcher at the Institute of Legal Research of UNAM and the author of several works on the right to water in Latin American country. “However, the government goes further: not only does it go from prohibited to reserved, but the door is also opened to the concession of part of the volumes to corporations and that private organisms doing business with the water. In and of itself, the decree does not privatize anything but it is one more step —and a serious one— towards privatization of this resource,” he adds. “It’s something very worrisome, which enables access to water for actors that it was costing work.”
The measure, which supposes changing the cataloguing of almost 300 of Mexico’s 757 basins, reaches the doors of the coming July 1 presidential elections in which all the polls give the ruling party, the PRI, a very low probability of staying in power. The affected basins concentrate, according to what La Jornada published last week, more than half of Mexico’s lakes and rivers.
The World Wildlife Fund (WWF), the organization for the protection of nature that covered for the Mexican president at the event in which the decrees were announced, defended the measure. “It establishes reserves of water that guaranty the availability of this resource for the population and nature for the next 50 years,” it emphasizes in a statement dated last June 5. “These decrees represent a vision of the future, since they outline a sustainable path for these basins, which will avoid the serious over- exploitation, pollution and scarcity that we experience in many other rivers in the country,” said Jorge Rickards, head of the WWF on Mexican soil.
In contrast, associations of Mexican civil society in defense of water have put out the cry in the sky for what they consider a “setback” for a country that suffers a growing water stress in the central and northern regions. In these regions —in which the bulk of the population and the GDP are concentrated, but that only have a third of the national water—are part of the basins affected by the regulatory change. The decrees, criticizes the national coordinator of Water for All, the largest Mexican entity in defense of the human right to water, which groups together almost thirty organizations across the country, “they are going to allow the Conagua to guaranty the volumes that the mining companies, oil companies and the privatizers of urban water systems are demanding, at the expense of the rights to water of indigenous peoples, agrarian nuclei and rural communities.”
According to this organization’s analysis, up to 50.000 use rights of ejidos and indigenous communities in these protected zones that have already expired will be released in order to grant concessions to private companies. “It’s a highly risky movement,” emphasizes María Luisa Torregrosa, from Flacso and the Water Network of the Mexican Academy of Sciences. “By removing the ban on concessions, what we have is the future possibility of ceding the right to water for several decades. And it also opens the way for the transfer of water from some zones to others. It is a form of liberalizing the water that was protected due to a scarcity problem,” says, in the same line,Karina Kloster, a researcher at the Autonomous University of Mexico City and the author of various works on the water problem in the North American country.
“Although the Conagua has systematically violated the bans in the last three decades,” criticizes Elena Burns, who is responsible for planning at the Center for Sustainability of the Autonomous Metropolitan University and a collaborator with Water for all, “the corporations require legal security in their concessions; thus the measure.” “We cannot permit this,” complements Raúl Pacheco-Vega, a professor at the Center for Investigation and Teaching Economics (CIDE, its initials in Spanish) specializing in the management of natural resources. “It’s a very clear message: do business with us because you don’t know if you’ll be able to do business with the incoming government.”
According to the calculations of Pacheco-Vega, 80% of the Mexican water basins are already over-exploited, and this legal change will only deepen that situation. “Basically, what these decrees permit is changing Mexican water policy from centered on conservation to privatization,” he adds by telephone. “It is, in short, a secondary privatization: it’s not, literally, about selling water at this time, but it does authorize its future use for industrial and for services.”
Some jurists, like Yenny Vega —a researcher in the School of Law at the University of Montreal (Canada) that has studied different cases that affect the distribution of water resources in North America and South America— put the accent on the “contradictions” the decrees incur: “They describe the use of bans as a tool to protect and, later, they say that it’s taking them away to protect the environment and that the measure seeks to stimulate economic development. It is presented as an environmental protection, but it’s completely the opposite.”
The only academic consulted by EL PAÍS who removes iron from the decree is Gonzalo Hatch, of the UNAM’s Research Center on North America: “The big problem is that in Mexico there isn’t a method of control over the method of assigning concessions; besides the fact that managing water by decree and not by law is authoritarian. Nevertheless, these (decrees) affect only the surface water, and 97% of the available water in Mexico is underground.”
“Mexican waters are neither public nor private, but rather national”
“In Mexico there are neither public nor private waters, but rather national. They grant concessions to private parties and assign them to public organisms,” it clarified this Tuesday in a press conference called before the information appeared about the alleged privatization of water after the ten decrees published at the beginning of June, said the professor of assignments relative to environmental regulation at the UNAM, María del Carmen Carmona. “And the president of the Republic has the ability, for reasons of public interest, to decree the bans that are necessary. The big problem is that the XX Century didn’t pass the regulation of water in Mexico: there is nothing, for example, about the 70% of the water that we consume, which comes from wells.”
Given the proliferation of critical voices since the promulgation of the decrees, the Conagua made public this Monday a statement in which it denies that the measure supposes the privatization of water. “To the contrary,” the commission emphasizes, “it would permit preserving the environment and guaranty water for the human consumption of 18 million inhabitants that are still not born, in a 50-year projection [sic].” A spokesperson for this public entity has postponed any declaration on the part of the organism until this Tuesday. “With the measures adopted, Mexico exceeds by 12% the international recommendations regarding the volume of water associated with the ecological flow. We are being more environmentally aware than first world countries,” ends the Conagua’s note.
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Originally Published in Spanish by El País
Tuesday, June 19, 2018
https://elpais.com/internacional/2018/06/19/mexico/1529362972_165665.html
Re-Published with English interpretation by the Chiapas Support Committee
Marichuy: Whoever wins, the dispossession will continue
By: Antonio Heras
Mexicali, Baja California
The spokeswoman for the Indigenous Government Council, María de Jesús Patricio Martínez, Marichuy, said that: “whoever wins on July 1 the country’s fate will be the same, because they have agreements between all the political forces and the people in power.”
In her opinion, after the elections “what is happening will continue, with the dispossession and these privatization of water decrees.”
Marichuy criticized the National Electoral Institute’s (INE) quality of work in the process, in which she aspired to be a candidate to the presidency through the independent way.
She considered that the INE is not designed to reach attain organization in colonias (districts), towns or communities, “is designed for those who have political and economic power, in seeing who continues to dispossess the country, without taking those below into account.”
In an interview, the human rights defender said that currently there is no party or candidate with a left ideological current or that add themselves a the demands of the civilian resistance movements that there are throughout Mexico.
“They say they are of the left, but in practice it turns out that they are not,” she said.
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Originally Published in Spanish by La Jornada
Friday, June 22, 2018
http://www.jornada.unam.mx/2018/06/22/politica/013n1pol
Re-Published with English interpretation by the Chiapas Support Committee
Half a century of popular education
All Oppression is connected.
By: Raúl Zibechi
Among the multiple creations that illuminated the “1968 world revolution” (a concept coined by Immanuel Wallerstein), popular education is one of the most transcendental, since it has changed in depth the ways we conceive and practice the educational act, particularly in the bosom of the anti-systemic movements.
In 1967 Paulo Freire published his first book, “Education as the practice of freedom” (La educación como práctica de la libertad), and in 1968 he wrote the manuscript for “The Pedagogy of the Oppressed” (Pedagogía del oprimido), which was published in 1970. This book influenced several generations and sold the astronomic number of 750 thousand copies, something extraordinary for a theoretical text. Since the decade of the Seventies, Freire’s works were debated in the movements, which adopted his pedagogical proposals as a form of deepening the political work of the militants with oppressed peoples.
One of Freire’s principal concerns consisted in overcoming the vanguardism that reigned in those years. He defended the idea that in order to transform reality we have to work with the people and not for the people, and that it’s impossible to overcome de-humanization and the internalization of oppression just with propaganda and general and abstract discourses.
In this way it was in tune with the principal problems inherited from the experience of the Soviet Union, but it also critically addressed the work methods of the guerrillas born under the influence of the Cuban Revolution. Almost the totality of the generation of militants from the 1960s and 1970s were firmly convinced that we could represent the interests of the popular sectors (including the original peoples and descendants of slaves uprooted from Africa), but it didn’t occur to us to consult them about their interests and even less about their strategies as peoples.
I believe that popular education is one of the principal currents of emancipatory thought and action born in the atmosphere of the 1968 revolution. A good part of the movements have some relation to popular education, not only in their educational practices and the pedagogies they assume, but especially in the work methods in the bosom of the organizations.
Freire showed concern about transforming power relations among revolutionaries and between them and the peoples (the word revolution is one of the most used in the Pedagogía del oprimido), probably because he was attempting to exceed the limits of the Soviet process. His methodology proposals sought to empower the self-esteem of the oppressed, giving hierarchy to their knowledge, which didn’t consider their knowledge inferior to academic knowledge. He proposed cutting the distances and hierarchies between the educators-subjects and the students-objects, with work methods that demonstrated enormous usefulness for utilizing the organization of the popular sectors.
Thanks to popular education’s forms of work, the oppressed were able to identify the structural place of subordination that was gripping them, which contribute to the creation of more diverse grassroots organizations throughout the continent.
In the neoliberal decade of 1990, popular education was taking other paths. An excellent work from the Brazilian sociologist Maria da Gloria Gohn (goo.gl/zBZVks) emphasizes that it produced a sharp turn that led to the “professionalizing” of popular educators, weakened the horizontality and consolidated power relations between those that teach and those that learn. Popular educators were setting aside the militant relationship with their students to link themselves to the population as “groups of beneficiaries.”
The majority of the popular educators work for NGOs (before they were organized militants that, of course, did not receive pay) and spread the idea that: “governments are no longer the enemy but rather the promoters of social initiatives to include the excluded.” From then on, popular education was directed toward individuals and no longer toward collective subjects, and the methodologies occupy a central place, thereby displacing politico-ideological debates and the concept of “citizen” substitutes for the concept of “class.”
Popular educators tend to become rented helpers of state policies when, says Gohn, they stop fighting for equality and social change and work to “include, marginally and precariously, the excluded.” The postgraduates occupy the place that the educator-militants has before, while a style predominates style that set aside organization to struggle, for adopting the agenda of international funders interested in projects to “learn to insert themselves into a de-regulated economy and into a labor market without social rights.”
It’s evident that not all the popular educators take this path. Although a majority sector has been incorporated into the ministries of Social Development during the progressive governments, even with criticism and dissatisfaction, the most active and rebellious sector works together with the new movements, the recuperated factories and the landless campesinos, and they dedicate their time and effort to formation with the rural and urban popular sectors.
A considerable portion of the new generation of popular educators (without title and without name) are dedicated to learning the popular knowledge within their territories, not to codify them or use them for their own purposes, but rather to strengthen the organization of those below. The Chilean historian Gabriel Salazar maintains that the popular sectors educate themselves, in their spaces and based on their Cosmo vision. “The objective of popular self-education is to create power,” he says.
The paths are bifurcated, as often happens in all emancipatory processes. What’s important is that popular education is alive, that it has been mutating ever since the emergence of new collective subjects and that it has the ability to incorporate the knowledge of the peoples. One part of the educators decided that critical pedagogy consists in stepping down and not up.
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Originally Published in Spanish by La Jornada
Friday, June 8, 2018
http://www.jornada.unam.mx/2018/06/08/opinion/019a2pol
Re-Published with English interpretation by the Chiapas Support Committee
Trump: anti-immigrant terrorism
LA JORNADA EDITORIAL
The escalation of anti-immigrant actions in the Donald Trump administration has reached unprecedented levels in US history with the mass separation of families that attempt to cross the border without the required documents: while between October 2016 and February of this year (2018) that number rose to 1800 families separated; in just 13 days, between May 6 and May 19, 658 children (some two years old and younger) were taken away from their parents in the context of border detentions. As often happens in the current US government, the measure was adopted without calculating its effects or making amends accordingly, therefore a humanitarian catastrophe is underway due to the lack of space in the children’s shelters.
It’s necessary to clarify that there is no guideline prescribing the separation of minors by border agents. It’s about a “collateral effect” of the “zero tolerance” policy put into effect in May, as a result of which crossing the border for the first time without documents was re-classified from an administrative offense to a crime, leading to the adults being arrested, criminally processed and, therefore, separated from the children with whom they were traveling. Needless to say, this indirect character of affectation in any way reduces its inhumane and brutal nature, something pointed out by human rights defense organisms, the United Nations Organization (UN), and even by federal judge Dana Sabraw, who classified the separation of families as unconstitutional and cruel.
As numbers of US agencies show, the cruelty of these measures has not fulfilled its alleged purpose of dissuading those seeking to enter their territory, which is explained because the current wave of migrants is not formed by seekers of better working conditions, but rather by people fleeing areas of El Salvador, Guatemala, Honduras and Mexico, where their lives are increasingly at risk due to the presence of criminal groups. To the extent that it’s impossible to convince a father or mother that will do anything within their power to protect the lives of their children, the Trump policy is nothing but an exercise in sadism against human beings trapped in the disjunctive between remaining in their communities and being murdered or migrating and suffering an arrest that violates their human rights.
The current crisis also reveals the moral collapse of the Republican Party, self-appointed defender of “family values” versus any advance in women’s rights or the rights of the community of sexual diversity. As Congressman Luis Gutierrez stated, by supporting the practice of separating migrant children from their families, Republicans have exhausted their time for talking about family values. If we add to this that a good part of the social decomposition that currently crosses through the referenced Central American nations is the effect of the military or authoritarian regimes imposed there by the United States during the last century, it becomes clear that the xenophobic policy in effect constitutes an ethical bankruptcy not only of the president, but also of the party that placed him in power and keeps him in power.
Given the manifest lack of will of the United States administration to reconsider its actions, it’s imperative that the international community, and especially the governments with citizens who are victims of this atrocious policy, to exercise every diplomatic and legal pressure on the White House tenant to put an end to an episode in which the physical and emotional wellbeing of minors is explicitly used as blackmail against adults that, on the other hand, do nothing but exercise their human right to escape from potentially lethal situations.
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Originally Published in Spanish by La Jornada
Saturday, June 9, 2018
http://www.jornada.unam.mx/2018/06/09/opinion/002a1edi
Re-Published with English interpretation by the Chiapas Support Committee
Chiapas Support Committee 