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Zibechi: the black bloc as tactic and excuse
Zapatista March in San Cristóbal.
By: Raúl Zibechi
In recent weeks we have attended a debate in the wake of black bloc activity in Brazil, which involved leaders of social movements and collectives of militants. The black bloc tactic (destruction of glass panes and windows of banks and private companies by masked youths during demonstrations) has been habitual in Chile and in Uruguay, among others, and was installed in Brazil in June 2013, reappearing with force in the demonstrations against the illegitimate government of Michel Temer.
Ever since the black bloc tactics appeared, a polemic was generated in social organizations about the pertinence of those actions. Some maintain that they are negative, because they give the police arguments for repressing and thus alienate and frighten real or potential demonstrators. Others emphasize that it’s about symbolic violence against big companies and other representations of the system, and that it has dissuasive effects on repression. The electoral parties usually condemn them adamantly.
In Brazil the polemic includes one of the more prominent referents of the most combative movements, like Guilherme Boulos, coordinator of the Homeless Workers Movement (Movimiento de Trabajadores Sin Techo, MTST). A day before the largest march against the government, Boulos asserted that: “there is no space for those practices in our demonstrations,” and said that they ought not participate in the mobilization on Sunday the 4th (goo.gl/GUDSMi). He was harshly criticized for defending the “criminalization” of those who employ the black bloc tactic.
A little later Boulos published a note on his blog, in which he explains: “I disagree with the tactic because it separates people from the mobilizations and they make isolated decisions, but decisions that affect us all.” He rejects the accusation of criminalizing the tactic and remembers that the MTST has been “severely criminalized for practicing direct action,” noting that the movement has members in prison and with on-going criminal proceedings (goo.gl/zxqzST).
Some 100,000 people participated in the demonstration on Sunday, September 4 in Sao Paulo. The organizers, the Fearless People Alliance, in which the MTST plays a preponderant role together with some 30 social movements and political organizations, and the Popular Brazil Front, dominated politically by the PT and the CUT union confederation, told the masked ones to show their faces or they would abandon the march. No incident occurred. Nevertheless, the military police attacked them when the demonstrators were dispersing and arrested 26 youths, because “they sought to practice violent acts.”
There was not the least black bloc “provocation” on this occasion, but the repression was equally relentless. The polemic continues its course with arguments that range from questioning the violence to the convenience of its use when families with children participate in the demonstrations, including the supposition that they always use infiltrators to provoke police repression. Some considerations seem necessary.
The first is that talking about a tactic isn’t good or bad in the abstract, but can rather be convenient, or not, according to the circumstances. We are not faced with a question of principles. It’s necessary to comprehend that not all of those who cover their face are adept at the black bloc tactic, that they don’t form an organization, nor are they necessarily anarchists, nor do they use the tactic always and everywhere. Those who use it today may not do it tomorrow, and vice versa.
The second is that those who employ the black bloc tactic are radical youths, anti-capitalists, who reject the economic system and police repression. Counter to existing prejudices, they do not belong to the comfortable middle classes; they live in the peripheries, and have studied and worked since they were very young. From what I am familiar with in Uruguay, because of the data that they contribute from Chile and from the research of the authors of Mascarados (Geração Editorial, 2014), we’re talking about individuals around 20 years old, many of them women, who suffer from police persecution in their barrios. Although they are few, they show “the profound crisis in which the Brazilian left is debated” (p. 19).
The third turns around the principal argument that is used against that tactic: it facilitates police repression and frightens a part of the demonstrators, either because the callers make it clear that the marches are peaceful or rather because the repression that follows the black bloc tactic affects individuals that don’t want to suffer police violence. It classifies them as “provocateurs.”
The argument is solid, especially when the masked ones act and withdraw before the police arrive and end up randomly repressing people. But the problem is not only in those who use that tactic, but also in the very same demonstrators, who aren’t used to being organized and attend individually. Does anyone imagine that a group of youths would use the block bloc tactic during a demonstration of the EZLN support bases in San Cristóbal de las Casas?
The fourth question is related to the use of similar tactics on the part of police or military infiltrators in demonstrations. As a youth from Sao Paulo pointed out in an excellent report for the Brazilian edition of El País, “I believe that one who breaks a newspaper stand or burns a bus, for example, either didn’t understand anything or is an infiltrator” (goo.gl/2G6lck). It’s possible to differentiate between black bloc actions and police provocations, because an interest in doing it always exists.
Lastly, the theme that the journalist Eliane Brum outlines: “While destruction of the demonstrators’ bodies by military police is naturalized, the destruction of material goods is criminalized” (goo.gl/mdRPKj). In her opinion, we’re dealing with a “heritage of slavery and genocide” that has still not been overcome. In other words, the black bloc tactic, agree with it or not, proposes a dilemma for us: do we accept, without further ado, the state’s monopoly of violence?
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Originally Published in Spanish by La Jornada
Saturday, September 17, 2016
http://www.jornada.unam.mx/2016/09/17/opinion/018a1mun
Re-Published with English interpretation by the Chiapas Support Committee
EZLN: One House, Other Worlds
July/August/September, 2016
To whom it may concern:
Topic: Invitation to “CompArte and ConCiencias for Humanity.”
Yes, we know. Days and nights go by in which bitterness is the only thing that appears on the horizon. Our steps drag along in pain, rage, and indignation, stumbling every so often over the impertinent gaze of cynicism and our own disappointment; over the stupidity exalted in government positions and polls; over simulation as a way of life; over the substitution of frivolity for culture, art, and science; over the multiple tiers of disrespect for the different (the problem isn’t that the other exists, but that it shows itself”); and over a wholesale resignation in the political market sphere (“oh well, the only option left is to choose not the lesser evil, but the least scandalous”). Yes, things are hard, harder every day. It is as if the night has become longer. It is as if the day has postponed its stride until no one and nothing is left, until the path is empty. It is as if there was no breath left. The monster lies in wait in every corner, countryside and city street.
Despite all this, or precisely because of it, we send you this invitation.
It may seem that it is not the moment or the matter at hand, but we Zapatistas invite you to participate in the festivals “CompArte and ConCiencias for Humanity.” So, respecting etiquette, we have to send an invitation. This should be something that details a calendar and geography, because we know that you have your own path, your own pace, your own company on that path, and your own destiny. And we don’t want to add another difficulty to those that you already confront. Thus, an invitation must include the when and where.
But you know who we are. You know how we are, that is. And the question that we think an invitation must address is not the when and where, but rather the why. Perhaps that is why this invitation does not comply with the etiquette of the occasion and does not arrive on time, but rather too late or too early. But as you’ll see, it doesn’t matter. That is why this invitation is very other, and why it includes as a crucial element this little story:
One House, Other Worlds
It’s more of a legend than a story. That is, there’s no way to confirm the truthfulness of what is told here. This is partly because it details no specific calendar or geography; it could have happened, or not, in any undefined time or place. It is also because the supposed non-protagonist of this story is dead, deceased, done, defunct. If he was alive, we could just ask if he actually said what it says here that he said. And as he was always tenacious in his wanderings through the treetops, it is likely that he would go on at length to describe this imprecise calendar.
In any case, since we don’t have the exact date, we’ll just say it was more than two decades ago. The geography? The mountains of the Mexican Southeast.
It was Comandante Tacho who told us the story in the wee hours of the morning at the EZLN headquarters. He was describing the house of the system, the home of capital, the storm, and the ark. We were in our headquarters, the headquarters where what would later become the seedbed/seminar was born. We think we took a coffee break… or that we adjourned the meeting in order to continue the next day… to tell you the truth, we don’t really remember. The point is that we were talking to Tacho and it was he who told us what we’re going to tell you now. There is of course a little bit of finagling involved because we have added to and rearranged Tacho’s original words. We did this not out of bad faith, disrespect, or an attempt to mend faulty memories, but because both of us who are writing now knew the deceased quite well and can reconstruct his words and feelings. Here goes:
This is Comandante Tacho speaking:
“I don’t remember very well when it was, but it was when the deceased Sup was not yet deceased. He was just the Sup, staying up all night and smoking his pipe. Yes, chewing on the pipe, as usual. We were in the shelter that was the EZLN headquarters, although it wasn’t a shelter because it wasn’t finished yet. That is, it wasn’t EZLN headquarters yet. Perhaps it was going to be, but not yet.
We were telling funny stories, things that happened in the communities, in the meetings, in the work of the struggle. The Sup was just listening, sometimes laughing, sometimes asking more about what happened. Before I really knew him I didn’t understand why. Later I realized that these accounts would appear later as stories in the communiqués. I think he called them ‘postscripts.’ I asked him once why he called an account of what had really happened just a story. He said: ‘The thing is that they don’t believe the accounts, they think I am making things up or imagining things. So I write it like it’s a story because they are not ready to see the reality.’
Anyway, so there we were.
So then he asked the Sup…”
Yes, Tacho has used the third person singular: “he.” In order to clarify we asked him if by “he” he meant the Sup. “No,” he answered us, annoyed, “he asked the Sup.” We didn’t want to insist because we thought, perhaps mistakenly, that that wasn’t the point of the story, or that it was merely one piece of a puzzle still being sketched out. So Comandante Tacho used the word “he.” Not “she,” not “I,” not “we.” He said “he” in referring to the person who was questioning the Sup.
“Hey Sup, how come every time we are building a house, you ask if we are building it according to traditional custom or by scientific method?”
Here Tacho took the time to clarify:
“Every time that we built a house, the deceased SupMarcos would come and stare at the beams and rafters. Then he would always ask:
‘That crossbeam that you’re putting there, are you putting it there because it is necessary for the construction of the house?’ Then I would respond, ‘Yes, if you don’t put it there the roof will fall in.’
‘I see,’ the Sup said, ‘but how do you know that if you don’t put it there that the roof will fall in?’
I just looked at him because I knew that wasn’t the real question. It wasn’t the first time he had asked it. He continued, ‘do you put it there because you know scientifically that if you don’t the roof will fall in, or do you put it there because it is traditional custom to do so?’
‘Because it’s traditional custom,’ I answered him, ‘because that is how I was taught. That is how my father built houses, and he learned from my grandfather, and so on going way back.’ The Sup was not satisfied, and always ended up climbing up onto the central beam before the supports were finished and, balancing as if he were riding a horse, would ask, ‘so if I get up here, is the beam going to fall?’ And boom, he would fall. ‘Ouch!’ was the only thing he’d say. He’d take out his pipe from where he landed on the ground, light it, and with his head resting on the broken beam, gaze up at the roof. We would all laugh of course.
So that’s why he asked the Sup why the Sup was always asking about whether something was done by traditional custom or scientific method. The thing is that it wasn’t just that one time. Every time that our headquarters had to be moved and I had to oversee the construction of a new structure for the headquarters that’s what happened. The Sup would come, he would ask that question, I would respond, he wouldn’t be satisfied, he would climb up on the beam, it would break, and he would fall to the ground.”
(Note: in discussing this between the two of us, we have concluded that the approximate dates for what Tacho is recounting were the first months of 1995 when there was such heavy governmental persecution against us that we had to continually pick up and move our headquarters, accompanying the community of Guadalupe Tepeyac in exile. End of note and Tacho continues):
“I am telling you this so that you understand why he asked the Sup this question. At other times I had also asked him this question, but he hadn’t responded fully. It wasn’t that he hadn’t wanted to respond, but that always at that moment they called him on the radio, or someone came to talk to him. So I wanted to know the answer too.
The Sup took his pipe out of his mouth and put it to one side. We were sitting on the ground. It was very hot like it always is before a hard rain. I knew the answer would take a while, because when the Sup answered quickly, he didn’t even take the pipe out of his mouth; the words would just come out all chewed up.
So then the Sup said… well really, he asked:
‘Hey Tacho, how big is this house?’ ‘3 by 4 [meters],’ I answered quickly, because it wasn’t the first time he asked.
‘And if it were 6 x 8, would it need more rafters for support?’ he asked me.
‘It would indeed,’ I responded.
‘And if were 12 x 16?’
I didn’t respond quickly, so the Sup continued:
‘And if it were 24 x 32? Or 48 x 64? What about 96 x 128?’
Then, to tell you the truth, I laughed. ‘That’s a really big house, I don’t know,’ I answered.
‘Correct,’ he said, ‘houses are made according to one’s own or one’s inherited experience. Traditions and customs, that is. To make a bigger house, one would have to ask or try something different.’
‘But let’s say that no one has ever built a house measuring 192 x 256…’
I laughed right before the Sup finished:
‘kilometers.’
‘Umm, who would want a house that big?’ I asked laughing.
He lit his pipe and said, ‘well, let’s make it easier: what if the house were the size of the world?’
‘Ah no, that’s rough. I don’t think we can imagine a house that big, nor what it would be for,’ I said, more serious now.
‘We can,’ he said. ‘The arts can imagine this house, and can put it into words, sounds, images, figures. The arts can imagine what seems impossible and, in this process of imagination, sew doubt, curiosity, surprise, admiration—that is, they make it possible.
‘Ah, okay,’ I replied, ‘but it’s one thing to imagine and another thing to do. I don’t think a house that big can be made.’
‘It can,’ he said, and put the broken pipe aside.
‘The sciences know how. Even if a house the size of the world has never been made, the sciences can say with certainty how a construction that size would be built. I don’t know what it’s called, but I think it has to do with the strength of the materials, geometry, economics, physics, geography, biology, chemistry, and who the hell knows what else.
But even without previous experience, without traditional customs, science can in fact say how many beams, supports, and rafters are needed to make a house the size of the world. Scientific knowledge can determine how deep the foundation needs to be, how high and how long the walls need to be, what angle the roof should have if it is a pitched roof, where the windows should be given the climate, how many doors there should be and where, what material should be used for each part, and how many beams and supports it must have and where.’”
Was the now-deceased already thinking about the transgression of the law gravity and all of the straight lines linked to it? Did he imagine or already know about the subversion of Euclid’s Fifth Postulate? No, Tacho didn’t ask him. To tell you the truth, the two of us wouldn’t have asked either. It is hard to imagine, in those days of no tomorrow, with warplanes shaking the earth and sky, that there was time to think about art, much less science.
Everyone remained silent, Tacho recalls. Us, too. After a moment of silence and tobacco, he continued:
“The Sup took up his pipe again and saw with sorrow that there was no more tobacco. He looked in his pockets. Smiling, he pulled out a little plastic bag with some black strands. It took him awhile to light the pipe, I think because the tobacco was damp. Then he continued:
‘But I’m not concerned about whether the arts can imagine this house, its colors, its shapes, its sounds, where the day comes in, where the night falls, where the rain falls, where the wind blows, where the earth sits.
Neither am I concerned about whether science can solve the problem of how to make it a reality. Of course it can. It has the knowledge… or it will.
What concerns me is that this house that is a world not be the same as the one we live in. The house must be better, even bigger. It must be so big that it can hold not one world but many, those that already exist and those yet to be born.
Of course, one would have to meet with those who do art and science. That won’t be easy. At first they won’t be willing to help, not because they don’t want to but because they will be skeptical. Because we have a lot going against us and because we are what we are.
Those who are artists think that we will constrain the subject, form, and pace of their work; that their artistic horizon will hold only males and females (never others), members of the powerful proletariat showing off their muscles and bright shining gazes in images, sounds, dances, and figures; that they could not even insinuate the existence of the other; that if they comply they will receive praise and applause, and if not, seclusion or repudiation. In other words, they think we will command that they not imagine.
Those who do science think that we are going to ask them to create mechanical, electronic, chemical, biological, and interstellar weapons of mass (or individual) destruction. They think that we will force them to create schools for exceptional minds where of course one will find the descendants of those currently in power who have a salary guaranteed before they are ever conceived. They think that what will be recognized is political affiliation and not scientific capacity, and that if they comply they will receive praise and applause, and if not, seclusion or repudiation. In other words, they think that we will command them not to do science.
In addition, because we are indigenous peoples, there are some [un@s and otr@s] here and there who think that what they do is art and culture, and that what we do is folk art and ritual. They think that what for them is analysis and knowledge, for us is belief and superstition.
They are ignorant of the fact that we have produced colors that, hundreds of years later, still challenge calendars. They do not know that when “civilization” still believed that the earth was the center of the universe, we had already discovered celestial bodies and numerical systems. They think that we adore ignorance, that our thinking is simple and conformist and that we prefer to believe rather than to know. They think that we do not want advancement but rather regression.
In other words, they neither see themselves, nor do they see us.
The issue then is going to be to convince them to see themselves as we see them, to make them realize that, for us, they are what they are and also something else: hope. And hope, friends and enemies, cannot be bought, cannot be sold, cannot be coerced, cannot be contained, and cannot be killed.’
He fell silent. I waited to see if he would ask something else of the Sup, but since he didn’t say anything, I asked: ‘so what must we do?’ The Sup just sighed and said:
‘Our job is first of all to know that this house is possible and necessary. Then comes the easier part: to build it. For this task we need knowledge, feeling, imagination—we need the sciences and the arts. We need other hearts. The day will come when we will meet with those who make art and science. On that day we will embrace them and welcome them with one sole question: “And what about you?”’
I wasn’t satisfied with this answer though, and I asked the Sup: ‘And after we meet with these people, what are we going to do?’ The Sup smiled and said:
‘Etcetera.’”
_*_
That is where the story or the legend that Comandante Tacho told us that morning ends. All of this is relevant at the moment because we want to invite you to come, or to be present in some way, in this earth that we are.
We have this curiosity, you could say, that has been nagging at us over the course of many pages of the calendar and we think that perhaps you will accept this invitation and help us to resolve a particular doubt:
What do we need to build a new house, a house so big that it holds not one but many worlds?
That’s all. Or not, depending on you.
From the mountains of the Mexican Southeast,
In the name of the Zapatista children, elders, women, and men,
Subcomandante Insurgente Moisés | Subcomandante Insurgente Galeano
Mexico, July/August/September of 2016.
En español: http://enlacezapatista.ezln.org.mx/2016/09/12/una-casa-otros-mundos/
After meeting with Miranda Nava, the CNTE seeks “political exit”
CNTE banner, apparently from the Central Region of Chiapas. Note on the bottom a portion of the slogan: “Ayotzinapa Vive, La Lucha Sigue!”
By: Isaín Mandujano
The National Coordinator of Education Workers (CNTE) in Chiapas agreed early this morning to seek “a political exit” to the teachers’ movement, after meeting with the former Assistant Secretary of Governance and now the Secretary of Social Development (SEDESOL), Luis Enrique Miranda Nava, who traveled to Chiapas yesterday (Monday) to meet with the leadership of this dissident bloc of the SNTE.
Miranda Nava arrived from Mexico City at the Ángel Albino Corzo International Airport in a small jet belonging to the Presidency of the Republic. Governor Manuel Velasco Coello, Juan Carlos Gómez Aranda, the state’s Secretary general of Government, Jorge Luis Llaven Abarca, Secretary of Public Security and Citizen Protection in Chiapas and Roberto Domínguez Castellanos, Secretary of Public Education in the State traveled there, some 50 kilometers from the state capital.
Pedro Gomez Bamaca, one of the CNTE leaders, arrived later accompanied by 30 teachers from Sections 7 and 40. There, in that meeting, Miranda Nava corroborated the verbal offers made to the CNTE in Chiapas; in other words recognizing the 11 points that had already been sent for consultation last week, but were held in suspension.
Among these points are: no application of the education reform for the rest of the presidential term (sexenio) of Enrique Peña Nieto, cancellation of the arrest warrants, unblocking of the union’s bank accounts, payment of withheld wages to teachers commissioned in the union, 150 million pesos in school infrastructure material and other agreements.
One of the teachers’ leaders told Proceso that after listening to the federal government’s offer from the president’s crony, they moved to the Che Guevara Auditorium of Section 7 of the SNTE, where after holding their state assembly from Monday night to the early morning of Tuesday, the CNTE decided to seek the “political exit” to the teachers’ movement, which would imply ending the strike and taking the mechanism for a political exit and the date to a consultation with the las mobilized bases.
They will consult again with rank and file teachers
The state assembly will meet today September 13 at 6 pm to gather proposals from the base and the Sectional Executive Committee seeks interlocution with the state government beginning from there.
The official resolution points out that “the national teachers’ strike continues, adopting another modality of struggle.” It also says that this State Assembly decides to give a political exit to the movement.”
It also agreed to open “a recess to carry out a round of delegation assemblies and report on the situation that the movement holds in this stage.” Section 7 of the SNTE unionizes some 57,000 teachers in more than 800 union delegations in 24 teacher regions.
That same official resolution, besides calling the State Assembly for this Tuesday at 6 pm in the Section 7’s Che Guevara Auditorium, ordered all Chiapas teachers to withdraw from the occupation in Mexico City and to concentrate in the state capital.
Today, the Pueblo Creyente of Simojovel, headed by Father Marcelo Pérez Pérez, marched to repeat their support for the teachers’ movement faced with the threat there was of using federal and state for evicting them from their occupation in the state capital.
Last night, thousands of federal and state police, as well as functionaries from the services for the procurement of justice, civil emergency services and others were mobilized in an “intimidation action” towards the teachers’ movement.
The police patrolled through the north and south sides of the city, which put the CNTE teachers in the occupation on alert all night and early morning.
Today the teachers, once again hold the State Palace, the federal building, the Municipal Palace, the State Congress and two offices of the Treasury Secretariat of the state government in their possession, all these buildings in the center of the city.
The Secretary of Public Security, Roads and Municipal Transit, Sergio Severiano Dionisio, announced that a group of approximately 60 people wearing ski masks (pasamontañas), kidnapped a Transit vehicle, and therefore an operation to find those responsible has been implemented.
“The acts occurred on Second Avenue South at 11 East Street, the individuals were aboard a small white truck. At this time it is not known who might be responsible, but that is already being investigated.”
Finally, the municipal functionary announced that the vehicle belonging to “Transit” carried the economic number 493 and that the investigations for finding the vehicle’s whereabouts started immediately.
Faced with the possible arrival of the federal and state police forces last night, teachers used the patrol car as a barricade. They used several trucks of companies like FEMSA, Pepsi Cola and others in the same way.
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Originally Published in Spanish by Chiapas Paralelo
Tuesday, September 13, 2016
Re-Published with English interpretation by the Chiapas Support Committee
Nochixtlán nurse: we attended to injuries like in a war
June 19, 2016: Federal Police attack teachers in Nochixtlán, Oaxaca, Mexico.
By: Blanche Petrich
Nochixtlán, Oaxaca
Last June 19, the Nochixtlán community hospital existed as if it were suddenly in the midst of a war. Almost eight hours of shooting left more than one hundred injured in the surrounding. With 12 beds available, five nurses and two doctors on rotating shifts, the hospital received 45 people with bullet wounds; four of them died within two or three hours.
The police fired tear gas from helicopters onto the roof of the building. As a consequence, three newborn babies suffered respiratory crises. Intermittently, the uniformed [police] encircled the clinic. Early in the afternoon, a group of police attempted to enter the hospital kicking on the door and threatening the guard that impeded their entry.
The nurse Juan Nicolás López, who played a double role, documented all that, aware that besides assisting in the emergency it was important to document what was happening. He shares his story with La Jornada.
He says that he checked in at the Nochixtlán de la Community Hospital, financed by the state government, a little before 8 am. Juan Nicolás has the title of general nurse, with 24 years of experience.
A few meters from the hospital the police attack on the Section 22 teachers’ checkpoint had already started. With some other compañeros the nurse attempted to approach the site of the conflict in order to lend aid in case there were injuries.
“When we realized the magnitude of the confrontation we ran back to the clinic to prepare for the worst. But we couldn’t even imagine what happened. Fateful!”
Hospital personnel quickly started hanging serum, arranging healing material and stretchers, preparing the only operating room, applying mattresses and sheets. By the end of the day nothing was enough.
Many of the injured, light or grave, had to be rejected. Two of them were taken in ambulances to the hospital in Huajuapan de León, but they didn’t arrive at the hospital alive.
The Oaxaca Human Rights Office has a list of 98 injured by firearms, more than double the hospital’s census. And it recognizes that its list can be low.
According to the census of the Oaxaca Health Services (SSO, its initials in Spanish), of which this newspaper has a copy, ten injured entered the Expanded Services Health Center (Cessa) and 14 entered the local clinic of the Mexican Social Security Institute (IMSS).
Clinics and hospitals in Huajuapan de León, Tehuacán, San Andrés Sinaxtla and Juxtlahuaca also attended to those injured in Nochixtlán and sent all their available ambulances.
Jesús Cadena Sánchez was the first injured man to die –before noon– at the community hospital; he was only 19 years old and is the
Paramedics and nurses try to revive injured man at the Nochixtlán Hospital.youngest of the victims. He approached the site of the battle attending to the call of the parish priest of his colonia (district) to go to pick up the injured.
He arrived in agony at the hospital. A bullet entered through his lower bowel and traveled to the bladder, it destroyed the iliac vein and part of the intestine. His mother, Patricia Sánchez Meza, who was present during the autopsy, says that they trained the bullet on him. “He was in pieces. I suppose that it was an expansive bullet, because it caused a lot of damage inside of my son’s body. That was evident in the written record of the autopsy.” And, it wasn’t the only case.
Anselmo Cruz Aquino died a little later. He was a plumber and electrician, a native of Tlaxiaco. According to his brother José Luis, a bullet penetrated through the point of his chin, crossed his tongue, trachea and lodged in his lung. Attempts to revive him were useless. Nicolás, the nurse interviewed, supposes that it could be another case of an expansive bullet.
At 10:30 in the morning the hospital was already overflowing. There were injured on the floor of the two waiting rooms and in the hallways. They removed the seats from the waiting rooms in order to attend to the patients there on cardboard or sheets. The noise from police helicopters overhead was heard outside.
Suddenly, two strong hits were heard, one on the roof and the other by the neighboring soccer field. “They were large tear gas bombs. We were full of smoke in an instant. In the midst of the chaos we realized that the three newborns that we had were presenting signs of asphyxia, the same as their mothers, who had given birth the previous day or night. There was nowhere to protect them. We were only able to cover the cracks of the doors and windows with wet sheets,” Juan Nicolás remembers. Of the eight that died during the police attack, four died in that little hospital. Their bodies were safeguarded in the hospital, on the floor.
Two more victims died instantly at the site where they fell, in front of the Hotel Juquila. Residents maintain that sharpshooters dressed in civilian clothes shot from the flat roof against the crowd. Juan Nicolás assures that no injured police arrived at the community hospital. Now the hotel sports an impeccable facade, renovated and recently painted. It operates normally and no one has investigated its owners.
It was not evident to Juan Nicolás that an order was received at the community from the state government hospital to not give care to the injured. “Yes we closed the doors. But that was when some 20 police arrived wanting to enter. The guard closed it. The police started to kick against the door. I saw them. They were out of it like drunks.”
Panic spread inside and as soon as the front was clear many people took their injured family members, grave or not, and took them away for fear that the police would return and would want to arrest them or kill them.
Maybe because of that fear, when Juan Nicolás returned the next weekend to cover his shift, Saturday and Sunday, only one of those injured in the confrontation remained, independent of the gravity of the rest of the injured.
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Originally Published in Spanish by La Jornada
Wednesday, August 31, 2016
http://www.jornada.unam.mx/2016/08/31/politica/005n1pol
Re-Published with English interpretation by the Chiapas Support Committee
CNTE: the strike isn’t over…
CNTE: THE STRIKE ISN’T OVER and THERE WILL NOT BE A RETURN TO CLASSES, PROTESTS CONTINUE
CNTE protest with parents and social organizations in Tuxtla Gutiérrez, Chiapas.
Teachers of the National Coordinator of Education Workers (CNTE) agreed this Friday night to continue with the teachers’ movement and not return to classes on Monday, September 12, because there are no guaranties that the 11 agreements the federal government offered will be respected.
After holding a State Assembly all afternoon in which representatives of the 800 union delegations in the 24 regions of the state of Chiapas participated, teachers of Section 7 of the SNTE agreed not to end the strike and that the protests will continue this Saturday with a large march and occupation of government offices in Tuxtla.
They pointed out in their resolution that the consultation process with rank and file teachers continues, but that the results that emanate from them are postponed.
They also proposed: “to immediately demand the opening of negotiations with the federal government with the presence of the state government so that it complies with the offers it outlined and with the presence of social organizations that support the teachers’ movement.”
The teachers had already obtained 11 agreements that launched the consultation with rank and file teachers that make up Section 7 of the SNTE, some 57,000 teachers. These political agreements outlined that the education reform would not be applied during the rest of this presidential term, paying back wages, 150 million pesos for school infrastructure, unblocking bank accounts of the Section’s executive committee, eliminating arrest warrants, as well as some other agreements that the federal government now publicly denies having offered to end the labor strike.
The teachers made a call to the rank and file to gather in Tuxtla and march this Saturday and take over government offices like the state Government Palace, the Federal Palace, the Municipal Palace and the state Treasury offices.
The next state assembly where all the leaders of the Chiapas teachers’ movement are together is foreseen for next Monday, September 12 starting at noon in the Che Guevara Auditorium of Section 7 of the SNTE.
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Originally Published in Spanish by Chiapas Paralelo
Friday, September 9, 2016
Re-Published with English interpretation by the Chiapas Support Committee
Oxchuc rejects reinstating mayor
IN OXCHUC, THEY REJECT MARÍA GLORIA and the TEPJF DECISION THAT ORDERS HER RESTORED AS MAYOR
Indigenous Tseltal residents of Oxchuc Municipio in Chiapas demonstrate against reinstating María Gloria as mayor.
By: Isaín Mandujano
Oxchuc
With a multitudinous mobilization, thousands of indigenous Tseltals of Oxchuc, rejected María Gloria Sánchez Gómez’ attempt this Wednesday to be restored to her position of mayor, as the Electoral Tribunal of the Judicial Power of the Federation (TEPJF) ordered and supported the substitute mayor, Oscar Gómez López.
Coming from 115 communities, since very early, thousands of indigenous started to arrive in the municipal capital of Oxchuc. The traditional and civil authorities with the staff of command in hand concentrated at the town’s principal entrance from which they marched to the central plaza.
With banners and chants, thousands of indigenous marched headed by Oscar Gómez López, the current mayor of that municipio (country) and the president of the permanent peace and conciliation commission, Juan Encinos Gómez.
The Indigenous arrived in the plaza where they held a meeting in which they declared that they would not permit María Gloria Sánchez Gómez to be reinstated in her position as mayor, as the TEPJF ordered last August 31.
The Indigenous denounced that from their writing the magistrates are totally ignorant of the reality that the municipio experiences, because of which it concerns them not to respect said decision and that should she approach authority “María Gloria and all of them” will be thrown out.
Juan Encinos Gómez said that those that mobilized were around 25,000. The plaza was replete with indigenous Tseltal men and women that in unison stated their rejection of María Gloria Sánchez, the mayor supported by the PVEM.
Along with María Gloria Sánchez, they expressed their repudiation of her husband, the PRI member Norberto Sántiz, also twice an ex mayor, the ex federal deputy. The two maintained a political boss system for almost 15 years in that indigenous municipio.
The mayor that the people of Oxchuc support, Oscar Gómez López, said that serve in the position until the indigenous people of the 115 communities make a determination, because he took office with the principle of “mandar obedeciendo” (govern obeying). [1]
Although it had been speculated that today the indigenous would demolish the houses of María Gloria Sánchez and her closest collaborators that were expelled from the town, that didn’t happen.
But before this huge mobilization, the Network for Effective Parity (Repare, Its Spanish acronym) criticized that local authorities continue to disrespect the TEPJF’s decision and that they have not made the least attempt to restore María Gloria Sánchez Gómez in her position. To the contrary, with these marches and mobilizations they have let the hatred against women that were displaced from their positions and from that municipio to continue increasing.
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Originally Published in Spanish by Chiapas Paralelo
Thursday, September 8, 2016
Re-published with English interpretation by the Chiapas Support Committee
Chiapas CNTE holds consultations on ending strike
One of the shopping plazas closed by protesting teachers in Tuxtla Gutiérrez, Chiapas
By: Angeles Mariscal
Teachers of the National Coordinator of Education Workers (CNTE) carried out consultations in their more than 800 delegations in the state to make a decision about ending the strike that started last May 15 and return to classes. The federal government proposed, extra-officially, suspending de facto the application of the education reform only in Chiapas, through an agreement that would be in effect starting from reaching agreement until the end of the presidential term (sexenio). [1]
During the assembly held last Friday, dissident teachers announced the federal government’s proposal. According to Manuel Mendoza, the CNTE’s leader in the state’s indigenous zone, the federal government’s proposal was made verbally and includes, besides considering Chiapas as a state of emergency, revising the conditions in which education is imparted within the state, in terms of infrastructure and capacity building, to attain some improvements.
The promises also include that their wages would not be docked nor any teacher fired that participated in mobilizations against the education reform, and a program would be implemented for capacity building and incentives for those who wish to participate in the evaluations, above all for those who will be contracted under the new scheme.
During the assembly, at first the teachers decided maestros to continue the strike, because the proposal to suspend the application of the reform was only to the Chiapas teachers; however the decision of the Oaxaca teachers to return to classes next Wednesday, opened the possibility of reaching their own agreements.
Therefore, according to what the CNTE’s spokesperson, José Luis Escobar, announced during this week and until September 9 when they hold the state assembly, the teachers will hold consultations in their more than 800 delegations, in which the parents and organizations that have supported the labor strike also participate.
He explained that faced with the decision of the Oaxaca teachers, the viability of continuing the strike alone must be analyzed in Chiapas. He said that if in the delegation assemblies they make the decision to end the strike and return to classes, it does not mean the end of the movement to attain the abrogation of the education reform, but rather re-proposing a new strategy for achieving it.
They agreed to maintain protest actions while they are carrying out the consultation in which it is foreseen that teachers of the indigenous zone will oppose ending the strike because there is no formal written proposal. Today they again closed shopping plazas in the capital; in one of them business owners and their workers placed themselves at the doors se in order to impede entry to the demonstrators.
They hung canvas banners with the slogan “CNTE: We’re at home, we need to work.” Nevertheless, the demonstrators did achieve closing the establishments.
[1] Sexenio means a six-year term of office. Here, the reference is to the six-year term of current President Enrique Peña Nieto that ends in December 2018.
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Originally Published in Spanish by Chiapas Paralelo
Monday, September 5, 2016
Re-Published with English interpretation by the Chiapas Support Committee
The regional scenario after Dilma
March in Chile against the private pension system.
By: Raúl Zibechi
The removal of Dilma Rousseff by the most conservative Senate since 1964 (the year of the State coup against João Goulart) closes the progressive cycle that started with the elevation of Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva on January 1, 2003. Brazil being the region’s most important country and the one that frames tendencies, we’re facing an irreversible inflection in the short term, where the conservative right-wingers impose their agenda.
The South American regional panorama appears clearly dominated by the alliance between financial capital, the United States and the local rights, which demonstrate dynamism that’s difficult to limit short term. One must go back to the beginning of the 1990s to find a similar moment, marked by the triumph of the Washington Consensus, the rise of neoliberalism and the collapse of the socialist block.
Nevertheless, it would be wrong to think that we are returning to the past, for more than a few analysts believe that “victories” are being lost. Reality indicates that the region walks forward but, immediately, what’s in front of us is not the egalitarian and just society we dream about, but rather an imminent train wreck between those above and those below, and fights between classes, races, genders and generations. Humanity goes towards that conclusion, and that is the medium-range future that is looming over the region.
Strictly speaking, this panorama has already been profiled since several years ago, when the progressives were still governing, because of the growing alliance made between the middle classes (old and new) and the wealthier, in large measure because of the triumph of the consumer culture, de-politicizing and conservative, that those very same governments impelled. But what matters, looking ahead, is the mentioned train wreck.
A new right has been imposed on the region. A right that has no legalistic scruples, that is not disposed to respect the modes of the democracies, that seeks to destroy the education and health systems as we know them. In Brazil the new right has put up the School Without Party Movement, which attacks public education, trashes the legacy of Paulo Freire and seeks to tightly control teachers.
One will have to return with more detail about this “movement,” that promotes the separation between “educating” (the responsibility of the family and the Church) and “instructing” (the transmission of knowledge, which is the task of the teachers). If the laws proposed in the parliament were approved, a portion of the teachers could be punished for “ideological indoctrination,” for talking about the country’s reality, since in the classrooms they applaud publicly, freedom of expression should not exist. Within that reality enters not only the political, but also even violence against women. That’s just a sample of what’s coming.
You don’t have to look backwards to comprehend where the new right is going, in other words, to the period of the dictatorships, but rather to personages like the British Prime Minister, Theresa May, who assures she is willing to use nuclear weapons although it may cost innocent lives (The Guardian, 18/7/16). Or like Hillary Clinton, who considers Vladimir Putin the “new Hitler.” They are not isolated or out of context statements, it’s the state of mind of the new rightists, warlike, willing to level entire nations, like they already did to half a dozen countries in Asia and the Middle East.
There have to be two antagonistic forces in dispute in order to have a train wreck. That is what is being profiled in the region. We have gone over the new student and popular struggles in Brazil (goo.gl/Bz9OBD), the movements that gain favor in Colombia (goo.gl/DfboIk) and the new black resistances (goo.gl/GTQPzQ), among others.
To those must be added the renewed strength of the campesino movement in Paraguay; resistance to the model of the soybean and mining sectors in Argentina, and, in recent months, to the Macri government’s adjustments; the important women’s mobilizations against macho violence, like that in Peru in August; and the persistence of the indigenous movements in Ecuador and Bolivia.
New and impressive resistances are opening. In August there were enormous mobilizations in Chile, two big marches of more than one million people against the private pension system (AFP), and a cacerolazo, which announces the beginning of the end of the system that was key to the accumulation of capital in the post-Pinochet regime. Nine of every 10 retirements are less than 220 dollars, in other words, less than 60 percent of the minimum wage; therefore, the population demands the end of the private system.
The conviction that corruption is systemic is slowly opening among the popular sectors, like the narco and the femicides, and that it doesn’t matter whether the left or right governs, because things will continue more or less the same. The promised education reform in Chile, which the Communist Party used as an argument for abandoning the streets and entering the government of Michelle Bachelet, was diluted in negotiations with the entrepreneurs and private education continues to be prioritized, as the new student offensive denounces.
In this stage, the system cannot realize reforms in favor of the peoples, because it has no economic or political margin. The economy functions like a machine that extracts, expropriates and concentrates the commons. Politics is reduced to fireworks and gives way, with greater evidence each day to the police to dissolve the conflicts. The principal differences between the colors that govern is of speed in the application of a model that leaves no other alternative than resistance.
The removal of Rousseff by a Senate infested with corrupt politicians could be the occasion for reflecting on the inconvenience of continuing to trust in the so-called “representatives” who are there to return favors to capital and to oppose organization with the utmost energy. No one will do anything for us.
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Originally Published in Spanish by La Jornada
Friday, September 2, 2016
http://www.jornada.unam.mx/2016/09/02/opinion/020a2pol
Re-Published with English interpretation by the Chiapas Support Committee
CNI and EZLN announce 5th National Indigenous Congress
THE CNI AND EZLN ANNOUNCE THE FIFTH NATIONAL INDIGENOUS CONGRESS
Given that:
- This October marks 20 years of uninterrupted work by the National Indigenous Congress [CNI], a space of unity, reflection, and organization for the indigenous peoples of Mexico. The National Indigenous Congress has worked for the full reconstitution of our peoples and the construction of a society where all cultures, all colors, and all of the peoples of Mexico fit.
- Throughout these years, and with increased strength since the release of the Sixth Declaration of the Lacandón Jungle by the Zapatista National Liberation Army, we have forged in word and action our contributions to the struggles of resistance and rebellion throughout the national geography. We not only sustain our decision to continue our existence, but we honor this decision with all our strength and with our fists in the air. We honor it by weaving together profound and collective agreements that can be seen in our care of the earth, in our languages, in our traditions, and in our collective governments in their many different names and forms. The flame of our autonomy lives inside these things, and it illuminates the collective heart of our peoples, barrios, nations, and tribes. These are deep agreements that we work on every day so that each one gives rise to the complex territories that together constitute our autonomy and self-determination.
- While we weave life, capitalism designs and lays out over us its own territories of death in every corner of our suffering Mexico. Supposed mining territories, cartel activity by organized crime, agroindustry, political party territories, urban zoning rights, and conservation programs are all imposed on our lands and in none of them—no matter what name they are given by the system or its obedient governments—do the indigenous peoples fit.
- The capitalists began and continue to expand a bloody war of conquest to take over what has always been ours. They appear behind any number of masks in this constant war of extermination: the businessman, the politician, the police, the soldier, or the hitman. And as always, the dead, the disappeared, and the imprisoned come from us, as well as the stolen and destroyed lands. Any collective, autonomous, and rebellious hope is persecuted.
- We have resisted this capitalist onslaught against our peoples. From the devastation wrought on us we have dreamed and built new worlds. From our grief and mourning for our murdered compañeros we as peoples have recreated new forms of resistance and rebellion that allow us to halt this devastation and walk the only path possible for those below and to the left: to construct and exercise the justice denied us by the powerful who purport to govern us.
- It is urgent that we bring our flames of resistance, autonomy, and rebellion together. These flames illuminate every original people who weave new worlds that are truly from below, where love and the ancestral commitment to our mother—the earth—are born.
We CONVOKE the direct authorities and representatives of the peoples, nations, tribes, barrios, communities, and indigenous organizations in order to celebrate:
THE FIFTH NATIONAL INDIGENOUS CONGRESS
To be held October 9-14, in celebration of the twentieth anniversary of the CNI, at the Indigenous Center for Holistic Training (CIDECI-UNITIERRA) in the city of San Cristóbal de las Casas, Chiapas, in Zapatista territory, according to the following schedule:
PROGRAM
October 9
Arrival at CIDECI and registration for the authorities, representatives, indigenous delegates, press, and invited guests of the CNI Coordinating Commission.
October 10-11:
Inauguration of the Fifth National Indigenous Congress Principle themes of discussion:
- Displacement and repression
- Our resistances and rebellion
- State of the CNI
- Proposals for strengthening the CNI
October 12:
Celebration of the twentieth anniversary of the National Indigenous Congress
October 13:
Plenary session, agreements, and conclusions Closing of the Fifth CNI
October 14:
Return home
Early registration for indigenous delegates can be made using the CNI email: catedratatajuan@gmail.com
Members of the National and International Sixth who want to participate as observers in the sessions of the Fifth CNI should register ahead of time at the email: cni20aniversario@ezln.org.mx.
The Fifth National Indigenous Congress will have both public sessions (the inauguration and closing) and closed ones. Media that registers with and is approved by the CNI Coordinating Commission will be allowed to cover only the CNI’s public sessions. Media registration will be held October 9 and 10 at the site of the Congress.
Sincerely,
July 2016
For the Full Reconstitution of Our Peoples
Never Again a Mexico Without Us
National Indigenous Congress
Zapatista National Liberation Army
En español: http://enlacezapatista.ezln.org.mx/2016/08/31/convocatoria-al-quinto-congreso-nacional-indigena/
Chiapas teachers thank parents after huge march
“THE CNTE CHIAPAS IS EFFECTIVE, THANKS TO THE PARENTS’ SUPPORT,” TEACHERS RECOGNIZE AFTER HUGE MARCH
More than 100,000 Chiapas teachers and parents march on September 1. Photo: Pozol
Tuxtla Gutiérrez, Chiapas, September 1, 2016
“It’s sad that there is no start to the school year because of the government’s political stupidity,” members of the National Coordinator of Education Workers (CNTE) pointed out after a huge march of more than 100,000 teachers and parents today in the Chiapas capital. “Thanks to the support of the parents and their walking with us, the teachers’ movement is effective,” asserted the teachers, on strike since 110 days ago, in protest of the self-named “education reform.”
“But more important than the start of the school year is defending the right to public education, faced with the interests of the impresarios in power,” the CNTE teachers exposed during a meeting in the central park of Tuxtla. “Of what use would it be to start the school year if tomorrow the children of workers won’t have the right to education because it will be privatized,” the dissident teachers warned.
“The thousands of federal police that the government has sent in recent days and ever since 2013, have not been able to stop the teachers’ movement,” the educators emphasized faced with the arrival of federal police in the Chiapas capital, who threaten them with possible evictions. “We will know how to defend any aggression, but the exit has to be through the path of dialogue,” the teachers pointed out.
“What will Peña Nieto report today in the government report: who the police killed in Michoacán, who they killed in Nochixtlán Oaxaca, or about their million-dollar houses?” The Chiapas teachers asked these questions about the federal government report this September 1 and about the massacres and corruption scandals in the current Peña Nieto administration.
“The government bet that the movement would end with the end of the vacation period. Neither the sun, the water or the repression have been able to bury the movement,” the CNTE strikers. “The education reform is privatizing and punitive, and perversely the government argues and tries to manipulate that it seeks to raise the level of education,” they added during the meeting in Tuxtla.
“The illiterate president wants to throw the teachers into the streets, but the teachers aren’t going to permit it,” members of the teachers’ movement asserted. “We don’t ask for a salary increase or a holiday bonus, only to be participants in a real education project; but the government refuses because it defends the impresarios’ business,” the teachers emphasized.
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Originally Published in Spanish by Pozol Colectivo
Thursday, September 1, 2016
Re-Published with English interpretation by the Chiapas Support Committee
Chiapas Support Committee 