Chiapas Support Committee
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Arrival of Federal Police in Chiapas places CNTE on alert
Federal Police arrive in Tuxtla Gutiérrez, the capital of Chiapas.
By: Isaín Mandujano
TUXTLA GUTIÉRREZ, Chiapas
Teachers of the National Coordinator Education Workers (CNTE) spent a long night on alert, after the arrival of hundreds of federal forces by land and air in Chiapas Wednesday afternoon and evening.
Dozens of buses with police and Federal Police trucks, entered the state Wednesday afternoon along the Cosoleacaque, Veracruz – Ocozocoautla, Chiapas Highway
Although in the beginning everything was a rumor, photographs and videos of the federal forces arriving in the state started to circulate later in the evening.
The federal forces were not able to enter via La Pochota, because since yesterday hundreds of CNTE teachers mounted a checkpoint where they filter the vehicles. All private motorists, local cargo and passenger transport have free access, but not the trucks or trailers of transnational companies.
The caravan of vehicles had to circulate hundreds of kilometers via the road that connects Ocozocoautla, Villaflores and Suchiapa to come out in Chiapa de Corzo and thus arrive at the installations of an old plant producing sterile flies where the police spent the night.
At the Ángel Albino Corzo International Airport, an airplane of the Federal Police was sighted letting out police that were similarly transported to that old installation constructed in the seventies by the governments of the United States and Mexico.
This mobilization of federal forces to Chiapas provoked uneasiness among the CNTE teachers, who declared a state of alert and spent the night mounting guards and filtering the vehicles that passed at the five entry points to the city where they installed their checkpoints.
At 109 days from the start of the teachers’ movement, CNTE teachers said that they would not return to classes and that they would maintain their fight against the education reform.
Yesterday, on the seventh day of the official school calendar of the 2016-2017 Cycle, the Chiapas Secretary of Education reported that seven out of every 10 schools in the state are open and operate normally.
At the same time, the head of the [government] agency, Roberto Domínguez Castellanos, pointed out that today 69.7 percent of the total student body in Chiapas are receiving classes, in other words, one million 238 thousand 611 girls, boys and youths.
It’s appropriate to point out here that since the start of the School Cycle, the number of schools that are functioning has been gradually increasing; the opening of 22 percent more school buildings has been achieved, which means that 13,961 schools are functioning.
Domínguez Castellanos pointed out that the increase in the opening of schools has been achieved thanks to conciliation and dialogue that has been maintained with the teachers, the student community and the parents, in which the right to education has been privileged.
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Originally Published in Spanish by Proceso.com
Wednesday, August 31, 2016
http://www.proceso.com.mx/453012/arribo-federales-a-chiapas-pone-a-la-cnte-en-alerta
Re-Published with English interpretation by the Chiapas Support Committee
Tribunal orders the return of María Gloria as mayor of Oxchuc
Oxchuc authorities.
By: Sandra de los Santos
On Wednesday night, August 31, the Electoral Tribunal of the Judicial Power of the Federation (TEPJF) ordered María Gloria Sánchez restored to her constitutional position as municipal president of Oxchuc.
The resolution in favor of María Gloria Sánchez was expected, since the case involving the restitution of the Chenalhó mayor was discussed, a few weeks ago, and the TEPJF magistrates announced that it would also be voting in that same way in the Oxchuc case.
The project presented by Magistrate Manuel González Oropeza suggested a plebiscite for appeal directly to an Assembly of the Population for the purpose of resolving the post-electoral conflict in Oxchuc. That point was rejected, however, and what was resolved was restoring the mayor without a plebiscite.
Six months ago, in an extraordinary session of Permanent Commission of the State Congress, the request for an indefinite leave that the Oxchuc mayor presented was approved; she was never able to take possession of the office because of the demonstrations that took place in the municipality. [1]
Three weeks ago, leaders from 105 Oxchuc communities agreed on the expulsion of the political parties from that municipio and from now on they would elect their authorities through “uses and customs” (traditional indigenous methods). Therefore, they asked Governor Manuel Velasco Coello and deputies of the State Congress for the recognition of Oscar Gómez López, the current mayor.
They warned that they won’t permit the return of María Gloria Sánchez, who would be repeating for a second time as municipal president. They accuse her of being part of the PRI-PVEM’s political boss system (cacicazgo) in the municipio.
In Chenalhó, despite the Tribunal’s resolution, the mayor remains without the power to exercise her functions in practice because conditions in the municipio don’t permit it.
[1] See: https://chiapas-support.org/2016/01/13/66-police-injured-in-oxchuc-chiapas-confrontation/
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Originally Published in Spanish by Chiapas Paralelo
Thursday, September 1, 2016
Re-Published with English interpretation by the Chiapas Support Committee
González Casanova proposes an emancipatory and critical reform
Among the intellectuals attending the forum were Pablo González Casanova (right) and Adolfo Gilly (standing). Photo: La Jornada.
By: Laura Poy Solano
Facing a neoliberal globalization project that seeks to make education a “culture of servitude,” the ex rector of the Autonomous National University of Mexico (UNAM), Pablo González Casanova, exhorted the teachers to construct a real education reform that will contemplate an emancipatory and critical formation, which he defines with clarity two leading principles: the values of morality and truth, understood as the construction of the defense of the collective above individual wellbeing, of solidarity and cooperation, but also of the permanent critique of what occurs and of that which generates it.
In the first Forum towards the construction of the democratic education project, convoked by the National Coordinator of Education Workers (CNTE), González Casanova reiterated his solidarity with the teachers’ struggle and pointed out that the failure of the education reform education reform and its lack of viability in different states is the result of an historic process that “happens between confrontations and negotiations.”
Because of that, the academic said, “we must think more profoundly to yield that global and stormy struggle for an emancipatory education, knowing that ours is against the neoliberal globalization that the business, military, political and media corporations push.”
They ask to suspend the evaluation
For its part, the group of academics that advises the dissident teachers showed itself to be in favor of the “immediate suspension” of the whole evaluation system as the teachers’ obligation, as well as of its labor and legal consequences, after considering that they must “eliminate the punitive, hierarchic and contrary character of the labor laws” with which it is applied.
Before dissident teachers from various parts of the country, human rights defenders, unionists, representatives of social organizations, investigators, academics, journalists, legislators and labor lawyers, Hugo Casanova Cardiel, professor-investigator at the Institute for Research on the University and Education, read the position subscribed to by more than 10 experts from the education sector, wherein they demanded that: “all the punitive actions that have been exercised and continue being exercised against the teachers ‘be suspended or be left without effect.”
They outlined the urgency of constructing alternative evaluation proposals without a punitive character founded on “educational, formative, integral, participative and democratic” knowledge, after considering that the education proposal presented by the federal government “has turned out to be unsuccessful,” because in a period of four years the policy for the sector turned into a conflict that not only has affected public education, but also changed diverse ambits of national life.
Education, a mission of the State
In the Convention Center of the 21st Century Medical Center, UNAM’s professor emeritus Adolfo Gilly emphasized that primary and secondary education for all of the population is a “mission of the State and an obligation of those who govern.” He asserted that formation is not an “industry with capital, is not a business or a banking and financial system. Therefore, education cannot be in the hands of Televisa and of those who manage it.”
After recognizing the teachers struggle and the effort of thousands of teachers that have stayed outdoors in the occupations, who have suffered prison or have lost their lives for the teachers’ struggle, he lamented that: “all that is necessary so that we may be here today.”
He reminded that education is also the emotional and social link that is created between students and teacher, because “feelings of fraternity, solidarity, liberty and equality are experienced in the classroom. We learned that in the Normal School, which is under fire.”
He asserted that there is no evaluation that can measure the many roles that teachers fulfill, who, he said, “cover absences, teach with their attitude, their life and their knowledge (…) the school must be the education place, but it also doubles as a home. What evaluation is going to measure that?”
In that regard, González Casanova, in his speech titled Towards the education that the Mexican nation needs, warned that if they want the negotiations to be successful for the general interest, for the youth, the workers and the peoples, they confront two complex elements: the rights of the teachers as workers, and who educates, about what and how it’s done.
Therefore, he considered indispensable presenting a proposal where se prepare children and youth to have a general scientific and humanist culture, in which impelling moral values and truth are determinative.
“The project would have to specify without equivocation what is understood by these values. The ethics of struggle, of cooperation, of the defense of the general interest versus individualism, consumerism and private interests is understood as the central value of education. And in truth a permanent critique of the culture of servitude is understood, as well as a constant questioning of what one believes has happened.”
He added that it’s necessary to resort to the teachers’ colleges for middle school and universities where formative themes are broached, for the purpose of generating an updating program (continuing education?) in the teaching of the sciences, humanities, arts and technology, which permits the 1.5 million teachers to continue their formation “without any kind of pressure.”
At the same time, he said, a “profound project” could be elaborated with the reform of education through work commissions in which teachers and specialists participate.
Nevertheless, he detailed that it’s also necessary to guaranty the teachers’ respect and dignity, the defense of their labor rights and to promote a humanist, scientific, artistic and technological culture, “and not only the apologetics of the world and system in which we live, but rather the critique and creator of a better world, just, free and democratic.”
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Originally Published in Spanish by La Jornada
Wednesday, August 10, 2016
http://www.jornada.unam.mx/2016/08/10/politica/003n1pol
Re-Published with English interpretation by the Chiapas Support Committee
CNTE Chiapas: “The state sets the stage for repressing the teachers”
The sign reads: “Abrogation of the Education Reform. If there is repression in Chiapas, the just thing is to finish with the parasites.” Drawings of (president) Enrique Peña Nieto and Aurelio Nuño, Secretary of Education, are on either side of the banner.
Tuxtla Gutiérrez, Chiapas, August 27.
“The Mexican State sets the stage for openly repressing the teachers’ movement; therefore the government is realizing an atmosphere of lynching that generates a certain endorsement of police brutality in public opinion,” warn teachers adhered to the National Coordinator of Education Workers (CNTE) in a communiqué. They have been on strike for the abrogation of the self-named “education reform” since last May 15.
“The explanation for this new media lynching that we can read and hear every day, is that the Peña Nieto regime knows about the population’s discontent with its policy, and that an organization the size of the CNTE fighting can push the political awakening in the working class even further and throw out its structural reforms that have a privatizing character,” the teachers say in the face of the increasing media attack against them, and upon continuing with their strike and not starting classes last August 22.
“The lynching against the education workers is carried out daily by mandate of the Peña government, or through the servile action of the state governments,” the dissident educators evidence. “The Mexican State has unleashed a media lynching against the CNTE, making use of all its corporate communications media, aligned with los interests of the national and international oligarchy,” the teachers abound.
“To the people of Chiapas and the country we tell you that we will not cede in out defense of public education,” affirm the striking educators of Sections 7 and 40, and they demand that the federal government immediately reinstall the negotiating table with the CNTE, because “dialogue is the space for reaching agreements, and not the violent response that Peña Nieto wants to give to those that demonstrate peacefully,” they emphasize.
“We declare ourselves on permanent alert and in struggle against the misnamed education reform and against this authoritarian regime and we demonstrate for the joint construction with society of a real educational transformation,” CNTE members report.
Nevertheless, despite the media campaign against the teachers, the number of parents that are against the strike is minimal, as they have demonstrated in assemblies held all over the state where they continue offering social support to the teachers’ movement. At the same time, it has been evident in social networks that those supposedly in disagreement with the school closings are close to the government as in the much-publicized case of the state’s secondary school in the Chiapas capital.
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Originally Published in Spanish by Pozol Colectivo
Saturday, August 27, 2016
Re-Published with English interpretation by the Chiapas Support Committee
Femicides, part of the Fourth World War
By: Raúl Zibechi
The August 14 page of Desinformémonos warned about the 31 femicides registered in Querétaro since January 2015, with a short and frightening story.
“The games, dreams, school, friends, family, birthdays, trips, security, freedom, dignity and life have stopped being rights because of being converted, shamefully, intolerably and lamentably into benefits that are acquired when ‘you moderate’ your manner of speaking, when ‘you are careful’ of how you look, the hours in which you go out, the places that you frequent, when you stop confiding in people and when your life stops being your life.”
The article emphasizes that: “femicides are clearly State violence;” it denounces “the impunity that covers them and favors the repetition of harm,” and it emphasizes that the majority of the victims are usually indigenous and poor women.
The information refers directly to Silvia Federici’s book, Calibán y la bruja: mujeres, cuerpo y acumulación originaria (Traficantes de Sueños, 2010); [1] a work of lasting influence, which contributes to illuminate reality permitting a better comprehension of a social conflict. It analyzes the witch-hunts in medieval society, and at the same time contributes to the comprehension of what happens in this period of history.
Federici maintains that feudalism was eroded due to the power and autonomy obtained by the popular classes, and that the response of the dominant classes was a violent offensive that seated the bases of capitalism: slavery and colonialism, the subjection of workers in production and the confinement of women in reproduction, the creation of hierarchies of race, gender and age, formed part of this new domination.
Capitalism not only arrived “dripping blood and dirt from head to foot” (Marx), but also creating “an immense concentration camp,” where slavery on the plantations and the mita [2] in the mines impelled capital accumulation (Federici, p. 91). The power of women was destroyed with witch-hunts, and the males (and the women, boys and girls) were subjected by means of salaried slavery and slavery, for appropriating the commons.
Today we cross through the crisis of capitalism and the dominant class again uses violence to perpetuate it. At the basis of this crisis is the power acquired by the popular sectors organized into movements, particularly since the 1960s, when factory workers disarticulated the employers’ power by overthrow Fordist (assembly line) discipline.
The capital offensive underway seeks to destroy that capacity for organization and struggle of those below. But the popular world is now very different than before, particularly because of the crisis of the old patriarchy.
Anyone who knows the antisystemic movements knows that women play a central role, even when they aren’t as visible as the men. They are the mortar of collective life; they are in charge of the reproduction of life and of the movements. Besides cooking, weaving and caring for the animals on their homes, they get together with other women to do the same thing, but collectively. They are the guardians of the commons, material and immaterial.
They, and their sons and daughters, are the sustainers of the popular world, of extended families and of the organizations, from urban to campesino and indigenous communities, from Chiapas and Cherán to Wall Mapu (Mapuche Territory) and the Andes. It’s no accident that we are facing a new witch-hunt when reproduction occupies such an important place in the resistance and in the power of women within their communities.
Women, and their sons and daughters, have disarticulated the nuclear patriarchal family, the power of the Church and the priest, the disciplinary role of the school, the barracks, the hospital and the workshop. They have created a world where collective relations prevail over family relations and the cooperation among them makes that “the sexual division of labor” is “a source of power and protection for women,” as Federici writes about medieval society (p. 41). Paying attention to what happens in a tianguis (outdoor market), an outdoor cafe or a popular barrio makes further comment unnecessary.
The violence to annihilate the popular sectors, through the narco, the femicide and the wars against the peoples, has been designed by the dominant classes to destroy our powers; not only the explicit ones. Federici reminds us that the workers of the 15th Century practiced multiple resistances: they stopped working when they had enough, they only accepted tasks for a limited time, and dressed ostentatiously, in such a way that they were “indistinguishable from the lords” (p. 78).
The new witch-hunt, now without trials or formalities, but rather a clean bullet, is part of capital’s Fourth World War to eliminate us as peoples. To triumph in the class struggle, the bourgeoisie must raze the autonomy of the peoples, of the communities and of the individuals; violence and social policies are, in that sense, complementary. The attack on women and their children is one of the crucial points of this war.
As in the dawn of the system, violence is again the principal agent of capital accumulation in its decadence. Far from any illusion, we must comprehend that the violence is neither an error nor a momentary deviation, but rather a systemic characteristic of capitalism in decadence, particularly in the zones where the dignity of human beings is not recognized.
For that reason, she urges clarifying strategies for confronting the systemic violence and the will to annihilate the peoples. If the femicide and the indiscriminate murder of young people and women are systemic, what sense does it make to elect governments from different parties that are going to maintain the standing system?
[1] Calibán and the witch: Women, body and original accumulation [Dream Traffickers, 2010]
[2] According to Wikipedia, mit’a, a Quechua word, meant collective free labor on public works required by the Inca Empire. After the Spanish invaded, the word became mita and the practice became an oppressive system. With respect to the mines, workers were paid very low wages, with which they had to buy their food (from company stores, of course) and pay taxes. They earned so little that they were often unable to pay their debts and were, therefore, not permitted to leave the mines and go home.
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Originally Published in Spanish by La Jornada
Friday, August 19, 2016
http://www.jornada.unam.mx/2016/08/19/opinion/021a1pol
Re-Published with English interpretation by the Chiapas Support Committee
CNTE Mega-march in Tuxtla
WITH A MEGA-MARCH IN TUXTLA, THE CNTE CHIAPAS RATIFIES THAT THE SCHOOL CYCLE DOESN’T START
CNTE March in Tuxtla Gutiérrez. Photo: Carlos Rodríguez
“The school cycle ought to start today, but all the teachers are protesting here because of the government’s obstinacy,” said members of the National Coordinator Nacional of Education Workers (CNTE), after a march of more than 100 thousand teachers from the west to the Chiapas capital’s central plaza, 100 days after the teachers initiated their strike in protest over the self-named “education reform,” which the administration of Peña Nieto has wanted to implement in the country, even using public force to achieve his objective.
During the meeting in Tuxtla’s central park, upon welcoming the different contingents that participated in the mega-march, the question was if they were tired now, to which the teachers answered with a resounding NO, despite the long walk, despite the strong rain, despite the 100 days. The teachers emphasized that the reason for being of the teachers’ movement are precisely the students, parents and public education in Mexico.
“We are challenging the state’s authoritarianism; there is not one single educational level that is not in the movement,” they stated upon seeing the arrival of delegations of basic and middle higher education, as well as teachers’ college students, parents, retirees and social organizations in solidarity.
From Chiapas the CNTE spokespersons waved the checkered flag on stage three of the teachers’ movement magisterial that started last May 15, in which despite the fact that it will be critical and complex they will carry out more devastating actions, they assured. The CNTE movement called on the government to give an immediate response to the demand for abrogation of the “education reform,” the appearance with life of the teachers college students from Ayotzinapa Guerrero and the freedom of political prisoners in Mexico.
Members of Sections 7 and 40 of the CNTE affirmed that after more than three months, the movement remains alive and seeks a “democratic education, an alternative education project that goes from below to above.” They likewise warned that the media lynching against them would increase; therefore they will keep the parents continuously informed, who as of this date have been supporting them. “We have the support of all the aggrieved people,” they assured.
In his participation in support of the teachers’ movement, Father Marcelo Pérez representing the parish of the Simojovel community, asked those present if they were afraid, to which those present responded with a resounding NO, even after Peña Nieto’s threats to use public force against the dissident teachers. “In the face of tyranny, the people have the right to fight for the homeland and for liberty. If they touch the teachers they touch all of us,” the Chiapan parish priest assured. “They are on alert in the different communities to defend our teachers,” the religious man added.
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Originally Published in Spanish by Pozol Colectivo
Monday, August 22, 2016
Re-Published with English interpretation by the Chiapas Support Committee
Chiapas: Oxchuc expels political parties
OXCHUC EXPELS POLITICAL PARTIES and WILL NOW ELECT ITS AUTHORITIES WITH USES and CUSTOMS
Oxchuc authorities, elected via uses and customs with their staffs of command.
By: Isaín Mandujano
Leaders of 105 Oxchuc communities agreed on the expulsion of the political parties from that municipio and from now on they will elect their authorities through [Indigenous] uses and customs; therefore they asked Governor Manuel Velasco Coello and deputies in the State Congress, for the recognition of current mayor Oscar Gómez López, because the mayor they removed, Maria Gloria Sánchez Gómez, is attempting to return to the position.
Coming from the 105 communities that make up that municipio in Los Altos of Chiapas, the indigenous authorities arrived in this city with their staff of command to show like that their rejection of the removed mayor and candidate of the PVEM, Maria Gloría Sánchez Gómez, who recently filed an appeal with the Supreme Court of Justice of the Nation (SCJN) with which she seeks to be reinstated in the position.
After several months of protest, last February, María Gloria Sánchez Gómez was expelled from the town and obliged to ask for a definitive leave before the State Congress, local residents named as a substitute Oscar Gómez López, a bilingual indigenous teacher that headed the movement to put an end to the 15 years of political bossism of the mayor and her PRI husband, Norberto Santiz Gómez, who controlled political power in the municipality.
“We are here to ask the State Congress and Governor Manuel Velasco to intervene and that the Oxchuc issue be definitively resolved, because María Gloria continues saying that she is the current mayor and that is not true, because starting on February 11 she asked for her abdication and the woman was politically finished there and on February 15 the people on the esplanade of the municipal presidency before some 30,000 residents elected the current substitute Municipal President, who is compañero Oscar Gómez López and precisely here are the compañeros agents and this is the best showing that what María Gloria says is not true,” said Juan Encinos Gómez, President of the Permanent Commission For Indigenous Peace and Justice of Oxchuc Municipio.
All the indigenous raised their staffs of command and chanted slogans against María Gloria Sánchez and others in favor of the new mayor Oscar Gómez López, who they said has the support of all of the people.
Nevertheless, they said, from the state capital the removed mayor has been incited to file an appeal before the Judicial Power of the Federation (PJF) to be reinstated in her position. They pointed out that they would not respect a decision that contradicts the decision of the people and that if necessary they would against take to the streets and the highway in order to be heard.
Juan Gabriel Méndez López, a lawyer and one of the leaders of the Oxchuc protest movement, said that the population agreed to expel all of the political parties from the municipio, and that they no loner want political parties that only divide the communities and provoke confrontation among indigenous brothers.
He exposed that from now on the municipal authorities would be elected by uses and customs, which will rescue the ancestral wisdom and knowledge to name their rulers like their ancestors did, because it has become clear to them that the parties only divide them.
He also said that on this occasion the people named Oscar Gómez López as mayor, and therefore the Executive, Judicial and Legislative Power in Chiapas must recognize the investiture that the new mayor represents.
They pointed out that if María Gloria Sánchez Gómez continues returning to Oxchuc to incite the population against the traditional authorities, she could provoke “another San Juan Chamula” and would then blame the authorities for not intervening.
It was the second time that María Gloria sought to serve in the position of mayor; the first time she did it on behalf of the PRI. Her husband Norberto Sántiz, also of PRI affiliation, twice occupied the position of mayor and was on one occasion a federal deputy.
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Originally Published in Spanish by Chiapas Paralelo
Wednesday, August 17, 2016
Re-Published with English interpretation by the Chiapas Support Committee
Sup Moisés at the conclusion of CompArte
EZLN: “22 YEARS LATER WE ARE SHOWING THAT WE DON’T WANT TO USE THOSE WEAPONS, THAT IT ISN’T NECESSARY.”
Dance performance at CompArte in Roberto Barrios
From the Desinformémonos Editors
Mexico City
Subcomandante Moisés, a commander and spokesperson of the Zapatista National Liberation Army (Ejército Zapatista de Liberación Nacional, EZLN), stated that: “the soldiers would not have to kill us because we have not wanted to kill them.” The example, he said, “the compañero support bases have demonstrated it (because) for 22 years we have preserved our weapons, like tools.”
During the clausura of the CompArte Festival in the Caracol of Roberto Barrios, in the Northern Zone of Chiapas, the Zapatista leader thanked the support bases for the demonstration of their art: “They have given us something great. For now we want to tell you that we understand that the word war is using a weapon, but here we are demonstrating, 22 years later, that we don’t want to use those weapons, that it isn’t necessary. We are demonstrating that there is [another] way to achieve freedom, justice and democracy; that it isn’t necessary to kill the soldiers that the rich, the capitalist has, with which he is defended.”
The CompArte Festival, according to reports from the alternative communications media that had access, toured the five Zapatista regions (Oventik, La Garrucha, La Realidad, Morelia and Roberto Barrios), in Los Altos (the Highlands), the Lacandón Jungle and the Northern Zone of Chiapas, with demonstrations of poetry, dances, songs, paintings and other artistic activities in which Zapatista support bases and organizations and collectives from Mexico and from many parts of the world participated.
Below is the whole comunicado published by the Free Media:
“Good afternoon bases of support, the Sixth, brothers and sisters that listen to us!
We really can’t find the words to say to you because of the big surprise that the EZLN’s bases of support artist compañeros have shown us.
You have given us a lesson, an instruction, a class; that’s how we, our comandante and comandanta compañeros, feel.
We are representing our Caracoles, you have helped us a lot; you have taught us a lot; you give us strength and, well, power. We have a big task that you have given us, a big job that you have given us, and because of our practice we have to think it through collectively with our compañera comandantas and compañero comandantes.
You have given us something great. For now we want to tell you that we understand the word war is to use the weapon, but here we are demonstrating, 22 years later, that we don’t want to use those weapons; it isn’t necessary. We are showing that there is a way to achieve freedom, justice and democracy; that it’s not necessary to kill the soldiers that the rich, the capitalist has, with which he defends himself.
The soldiers would not have to kill us, because we have not wanted to kill them. The example the support base compañeros have shown, for 22 years we have preserved our weapons like tools.
We want to construct our autonomy and we are showing our brothers of Chiapas, Mexico and the world, but you aren’t going to stop, because you won’t like capitalism. You oblige us and we have to look for the way in which that doesn’t happen, but if it’s necessary to defend, one must defend oneself.
We are able to understand without killing and without dying. To finish with capitalism we need to get organized, to construct a new house or to set capitalism aside. But for now that lesson that you have given us, there is a lot of work to do and to think about.
Here in Mexico they have us so divided, into the countryside and the city, they have us so distracted so that we don’t realize how w are subjected in manipulation, but this class that you gave us, EZLN support base compañeros from the five Caracoles, we are not able to say more right now, because it was more what you told us and presented to us.
It’s really recharging the battery for us and for the comandante compañeros. We are seeing the fruits of the labor of our compañero representatives that is the EZLN’s structure.
What would happen if the thousands of Zapatista artists from the five Caracoles were seen? Something much greater would come from it. There are many types of weapons, but not the ones that kill, but rather the ones that change the life, the thinking and the idea. In all the Caracoles that we have passed through, we have met and we didn’t find the words because we need to get deeper into it, but with that material that the compañeros from the tercios compas [1] are making, that will help us a lot.
For now we have enough material to get to work, to think about it and to concretize it so that if the bases approve it, it will be a real practice. That is the wisdom that we hear, see and later think about to put into practice, that is the spark of the art of seeing, of the art of listening, so that later it will be seen in practice for the benefit of one’s own people.
Art and science are really necessary to be able to destroy capitalism. We don’t know how, but we must think about it. There is no reason that we will see things differently, we are of the same original peoples in the countryside and also in the city. Our job is to think of how to unite because capitalism is going to destroy us.
And that is the importance of art and not only for Mexico. So, the instruction that you gave us hasn’t fit in our head, we have to go over it again, that is what we feel.
Thank you to the bases of support from the five Caracoles and the invitees for accompanying us. Our thinking about what we are going to tell you will arrive soon and you will decide if it’s so or not. We will look for the art of how to reach consensus on what will emerge in the practical work of what we said in this art of struggle.
Thank you brothers and sisters bases of support and compañeros of the Sixth.”
[1] The tercios compas – the Zapatista media team
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Originally Published in Spanish by Desinformémonos
Monday, August 15, 2016
Re-Published with English interpretation by the Chiapas Support Committee
CNTE causes more economic damage that EZLN Uprising
ECONOMIC DAMAGE from the CNTE IS GREATER THAN THE ZAPATISTA UPRISING: Coparmex-Chiapas
CNTE shutting down business in Tuxtla Gutiérrez, Chiapas.
By: Isaín Mandujano
TUXTLA GUTIÉRREZ, Chiapas
The president of the Employers Confederation of the Mexican Republic (Coparmex) in this state, Enoc Gutiérrez, said today that the economic damages caused by the teachers’ conflict “are worse than those of 1994,” after the armed uprising of the Zapatista Nacional Liberation Army (EZLN).
Enoc Gutiérrez reminded that on Tuesday August 2, the Employers Center affiliated with the Coparmex presented a legal demand for an amparo (protective order) to the Judicial Power of the Federation (PJF) against the state and federal authorities due to “omissions” in attending to the teachers’ conflict that, after more than 90 days, has allegedly caused million dollar losses in Chiapas and other states in the country.
Although the case could be resolved in the coming days or weeks, Gutiérrez maintained that: “this is one of the worst situations that reflect economic damages and affectations, we evaluate and tell you that they are even worse than those in 1994. And we have an international context much more complex and a devaluation in the Mexican economy.”
He also clarified that the business owners “are not enemies” of the government authorities or of those who head the institutions of the Mexican government, but neither will they be accomplices in permitting that conflict situations cause damages to third parties that affect the economy and above all that impair the education of the state’s children.
Later he said that they would not promote the repression of movements when they are conducted with unrestricted adherence to the law, and that they will always make use of the laws that they have at hand for defending their right to free movement and the free exercise of labor and free enterprise.
He also pointed out that the demand for an amparo is so that the Mexican State will act and re-establish the peace and respect the constitutional guarantees, like the right to education.
Lastly, he demanded that the federal government and the CNTE go further in their tables of dialogue and negotiations and produce concrete results to put an end to the conflict.
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Originally Published in Spanish by Proceso.com.mx
Tuesday, August 16, 2016
http://www.proceso.com.mx/451121/dano-economico-cnte-mayor-al-alzamiento-zapatista-coparmex-chiapas
Re-published in English by the Chiapas Support Committee
The children of Nochixtlán
A funeral in Nochixtlán
By: Luis Hernández Navarro
When the helicopter flew over Casa Xitla, in southern Mexico City, the children from Nochixtlán that are temporarily housed there run to hide, terrified. The sound of the iron bird over their heads revives the fear and desperation that they experienced in their town on June 19, when the police massacred their friends and relatives.
Almost two months have passed since the attack, and the little ones haven’t forgotten what happened. The police violence appears in their drawings and in their dreams, in their conversations and in their future. When he’s big, says one of the boys, he wants to be the police to kill the other police that gassed him and crushed his relatives to death.
That June 19, 26 saw their fathers go out to defend their town from the aggression of the gendarmes and then run and hide. For days, in the esplanade of the Nochixtlán temple, two cardboard signs had the names of the minors that lost their fathers in the Federal Police attack.
That day, in the humble district of November 20, which doesn’t have water or electricity, some 30 police launched gas against houses constructed of metal sheets, cardboard, aluminum cans and scanty materials. 32 children were there, none older than 11. The little ones, seated on a mat told Arturo Cano how felt suffocated and vomited from the smoke of the tear gas.
One of them talked to him about how they heard the police barking: “Come here, you’re going to get fucked up here.” Another told him that they were shouting vulgarities and were provoking the teachers. Another one described how “they used their pistols and started to kill people.” And another boy said that they tossed a round thing behind a house, which “exploded, drew fire.”
In total, about 70 minors were direct victims of the police attack. The psychological damage that they suffered is skin deep. One must add to the count of the child victims the children of those murdered and disabled by the police attack. Starting now, without anyone to bring sustenance to the house, they and their mothers will have to work to earn a living.
The Nochixtlán Massacre left a tragic result of eight civilians murdered (11 in Oaxaca), 94 wounded by bullets, 150 direct victims and between 300 and 400 indirect. Those who suffered major injuries, who still have bullets in the stomach, from what will they live now? It certainly won’t be from cultivating the fields.
The vast majority of the Nochixtlán victims are humble people, who live without savings and with very few resources. Facing the government’s refusal to offer them medical attention and the fear of being persecuted, they had to spend their small incomes to heal poorly with private doctors.
Pain upon pain, tragedy upon tragedy, the families of the eight murdered today suffer not only the loss of a loved one, but also a heavy economic debt. They buried their dead as tradition commands, feeding those who for days accompanied them in their grief. A funeral like that costs at least between 100 and 150 thousand pesos, an expense that can only be paid with loans on which they must pay usurious interest rates.
Dozens of those victims gathered last July 31 in the emblematic Plaza de las Tres Culturas, in Tlaltelolco, with crutches and bandages. With rage and courage they narrated to the press their pain and showed their wounds. We are here –they said– we have a name, we have a face, we are afraid. We are here, we have come to demand justice, not money.”
Indignant because of the signals from PRI deputies like Mariana Benítez (assistant prosecutor when the 43 Ayotzinapa rural teachers’ college students were disappeared and co-author of the “historic truth”), they denounced that: “there were bullets that entered through the mouth and came out through the ear; shots that impacted in the legs, ankles, groin, as well as the stomach, chest, back, feet and toes.”
The anger of the Nochixtlecos with Deputy Benítez and with other members of the special legislative commission for investigating the facts in Nochixtlán comes from the enormous scorn with which they (commission members) have treated them. Their word has no value. Although that commission has been formed since last July 6, its members have been incapable of meeting with representatives of the Victims Assembly. They have talked to the PGR, the president of the CNDH [National Human Rights Commission] and the Oaxaca ombudsman, but not to those directly affected.
Moreover, various legislators have called the victims’ version of the facts into question. That’s what happened, for example, last July 26. That day, the head of Oaxaca’s Human Rights Ombudsperson, Arturo Peimbert, questioned before the commission that it’s not clear what the Federal Police (Policia Federal, PF) operation was pursuing in Nochixtlán, because “if they wanted to achieve the eviction from the superhighway in 15 minutes, they achieved it,” and he asked: “Why did they enter and raid the urban zone, the districts like November 20?” Several members of the commission responded angrily, placing the ombudsman’s version in doubt.
Almost two months have passed since the Nochixtlán Massacre, and the federal government has been incapable of offering a coherent and credible report about what happened. Nevertheless, versions have been leaked to the press that excuse the Federal Police and the Gendarmes of the repression, at the same time that it blames five popular organizations in the region. A new historic truth is underway.
It’s urgent to know the truth about what happened in Nochixtlán, to punish those responsible and to repair the damage. It’s urgent that the children and those affected are healthy. As the victim say: “if the government invested so much to murder them, they should now invest in healing us.”
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Originally Published in Spanish by La Jornada
Tuesday, August 16, 2016
En español: http://www.jornada.unam.mx/2016/08/16/opinion/017a1pol
Re-Published with English interpretation by the Chiapas Support Committee
Chiapas Support Committee 