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Zapatistas convoke 2016 activities
ZAPATISTAS CONVOKE 2016 ACTIVITIES
February 29, 2016
Considering:
First: That the serious crisis that shakes the entire world, and that will only worsen, puts the survival of the planet and the entire population, including human beings, at risk.
Second: That politics from above is not only incapable of coming up with and constructing solutions, but is also among those directly responsible for the catastrophe already underway.
Third: That the sciences and the arts rescue the best of humanity.
Fourth: That the sciences and the arts now represent the only serious opportunity for the construction of a more just and rational world.
Fifth: That the originary peoples and those who live, resist, and struggle in the basements of the entire world possess, among other things, a fundamental wisdom: that of survival in adverse conditions.
Sixth: That Zapatismo continues betting, in life and death, on Humanity.
The Sixth Commission of the EZLN and the Zapatista bases of support:
CONVOKE ARTISTS, FORMAL AND NATURAL SCIENTISTS, COMPAÑER@S OF THE NATIONAL AND INTERNATIONAL SIXTH, THE NATIONAL INDIGENOUS CONGRESS, AND WHATEVER HUMAN BEING WHO FEELS CALLED, TO THE FOLLOWING ACTIVITIES:
ONE: TO THE FESTIVAL AND SHARING EXCHANGE “CompARTE FOR HUMANITY” WHICH WILL TAKE PLACE July 17-30, 2016.
All those who practice ART can participate. For Zapatismo, an artist is anyone who considers their activity as art, independent of canons, art critics, museums, wikipedias, and any other “specialist” schemas that classify (that is, exclude) human activities.
The festival will have two major events:
The first will be at CIDECI, San Cristóbal de Las Casas, Chiapas, México, and in any other venues and alternative calendars that are implemented according to the attendance confirmed. All persons, groups, and collectives who register and/or have been invited can participate in this event. The deadline for registration is up to and including June 15, 2016. The email where you can register for this activity is compArte@ezlnorg.mx.
The other will be at the Caracol of Oventik, Chiapas, Mexico. In this event only Zapatista bases of support will offer their artistic expressions. To this end, from the month of February through the month of June, 2016, in the Zapatista communities, regions, and zones, tens of thousands of men, women, children, and elderly Zapatistas will hold meetings and festivals to decide the forms of their artistic expression and select who will participate. The Zapatista part of the festival will begin July 17, 2016.
Invited and registered artists can offer their art itself or a reflection on it.
Entry is free (with previous registration).
TWO: To the FESTIVAL IN HOMAGE TO THE NATIONAL INDIGENOUS CONGRESS for its 20 years of struggle and resistance, TO BE HELD OCTOBER 12, 2016, at CIDECI in San Cristóbal de Las Casas, Chiapas, Mexico. In the days before and after the event, the National Indigenous Congress will hold the activities it considers pertinent in the place or places it determines. Registration for observer-participants in the festival in honor of the CNI can be made at the following email: CNI20aniversario[at]ezln.org.mx.
THIRD: To the gathering “The Zapatistas and the conSCIENCES FOR HUMANITY” TO BE HELD from December 25, 2016 through January 4, 2017, at CICECI in San Cristóbal de Las Casas, Chiapas, Mexico.
In this gathering, participation in the discussion will include ONLY invited formal and natural scientists, in addition to, and as students, Zapatista young people, bases of support, who will present their doubts, questions, and inquiries to the attending scientists. Although entry is free (with previous registration), only the invited scientists and the Zapatista young people who have been selected to attend by their communities, regions, and zones will be able to take the floor to speak. There will be no exam for the students; but for the scientists…well, good luck with the questions. To register to attend as escuchas (listeners), use the following email: conCIENCIAS[at]ezln.org.mx .
We will share more details in the coming days.
From the mountains of the Mexican Southeast
Subcomandante Insurgente Moisés
Mexico, February 2016
————
Originally Published in Spanish by Enlace Zapatista
February 29, 2016
http://enlacezapatista.ezln.org.mx/2016/02/29/convocatoria-zapatista-a-actividades-2016/
EZLN: Why don’t you self-prescribe this?
EZLN: WHY DON’T YOU SELF-PRESCRIBE THIS? [1]
Zapatista National Liberation Army
Mexico
To the Federal Judiciary Council of Mexico:
In all this time the only terrorists have been those who for more than 80 years have so badly governed this country. You are simply the sink where those who commit genocide go to wash their hands and together you have converted the judicial system into a poorly built and clogged latrine, the national flag into a reusable roll of toilet paper, and the national shield into a logo made of undigested fast food. Everything else is pure theater in order to simulate justice where there is only impunity and shamelessness, feigning “institutional government” where there is nothing more than dispossession and repression.
So, prescribe yourselves this (the graphic images):
The Captions read: (Left) From 6 feet under, The deceased and sorely missed (ha!) SupMarcos
(Right) Why so serious? I adhere and subscribe (not prescribe/expire):
SupGaleano
Authorized by the General Command of the EZLN
Subcomandante Insurgente Moisés
Mexico, February 2016
P.S. So, does this mean the Tampiqueño [2] is now free to leave the community and go out for some stuffed crabs? He’ll pick up the tab, of course, otherwise forget it. So he is free now to do what any other Mexican can do? That is, now he’s free to be exploited, mocked, defrauded, humiliated, disrespected, spied on, extorted, kidnapped, murdered, disappeared, and to suffer all those insults to his intelligence from those who say they govern this country? I mean, I’m asking because this is the only thing the “institutions” guarantee any citizen in this country who isn’t above.
Translator’s Notes:
[1] On February 23, 2016, Mexico’s Federal Judiciary Council determined that the outstanding charges and arrest warrant against then Subcomandante Insurgente Marcos were extinguished as a matter of law because the statute of limitations expired after 21 years (February 1995 to February 2016). The charges were for the crimes of terrorism, sedition, mutiny, rebellion, and conspiracy. This comunicado is in response to that determination and plays on the different meanings of the Spanish verb prescribir, which can mean to prescribe (like a remedy) or to extinguish (as in a legal provision). The Mexican Judiciary says his arrest warrant “se prescribe” (is extinguished) and the EZLN answers: “why don’t you “autoprescribirse” (self-prescribe)… this.” Then, the images of middle fingers appear.
[2] “El Tampiqueño” – Refers to a male person from Tampico. In 1995, the Mexican government claimed that it knew the real identity of Marcos. Therefore, it filed charges and issued an arrest warrant against the person they claimed was Marcos. That person is originally from the Mexican state of Tampico and so the EZLN refers to the person as the “Tampiqueño.”
Originally Published in Spanish by Enlace Zapatista
http://enlacezapatista.ezln.org.mx/2016/02/25/asi-que-mejor-autoprescribanse-esto/
EZLN: And in the Zapatista communities?
Zapatista National Liberation Army
Mexico
February 2016
To the compañer@s of the Sixth:
To whom it may concern:
Compañeroas, compañeros and compañeras:
Now we are going to tell you a little bit about the Zapatista communities, where the support bases resist and struggle.
What we are going to share with you now comes from reports by the Zapatista compañeras and compañeros in the communities who are coordinators for their commissions (for example, health, education, youth, etc.), autonomous authorities, or other organizational coordinators. But along with the compas of the Comité [CCRI] we checked to make sure this information wasn’t a lie, that things hadn’t been altered so that the good things would appear and the bad things would remain hidden. The work of these writings is not to lie to our compas of the Sixth or to those who support us and are in solidarity. We won’t lie to you, to them, nor to anyone else.
If things are going badly we will tell you so clearly, but not so that you feel even more sad on top of everything that is happening in your own geographies and calendars. We tell you because it is our way of being accountable, of letting you know what’s happening and so that you know if we are on the path we said we were on or if we have wandered off that path, perhaps repeating the same vices we criticize.
But if we are on the right track, well we want you to know that too in order to bring joy to the collective heart that we are.
How do we know if we are on a good or bad path? Well, for us as Zapatistas it’s very simple: the communities speak, the communities rule, the communities do, the communities undo. The very moment someone heads down a bad path, the collective quickly gives them what is more or less a knock on the head, and they correct themselves or they’re out.
This is our autonomy: it is our path, we walk it, we get things right, we make mistakes and we correct ourselves.
In sum, we tell you the truth because we imagine you are sick and tired of lies. And truth, while sometimes painful, is always a relief.
So we don’t want to be like the bad governments that recently put on a lot of makeup, apparently to please the visitor so that he wouldn’t see what was happening below. But all that makeup only served to show how false the government is. In other words, what reasonably intelligent person wouldn’t see the truth? Now whether that person admits or denies what they see, that is something else and that’s on them.
Okay then, without more fanfare. What we share with you here is happening in addition to what was already explained in the Zapatista Little School textbooks. If you didn’t attend the Zapatista Little School in community or from elsewhere or you don’t know what the textbooks say, we recommend you read them. There you will learn all about the process of the construction of autonomy.
What we are going tell you about now is new, new things that have since appeared, things that weren’t there a year or two ago.
Zapatista growth continues, and more and more young people [jovenes y jovenas] are joining.
In the area of health, the compañeras and compañeros are doing well. We see that there are fewer patients at the autonomous clinics because the work of prevention has grown substantially and the autonomous health promoters attend to the people. Meaning, the people get sick less. Those who are in fact arriving more and more at the Zapatista autonomous clinics are the partisans [people affiliated with political parties].
In the area of education, primary school education is equally available everywhere. But there is a new demand from the communities: middle school and high school education. In some zones there is already a middle school, but not everywhere. There are now young people who are demanding higher education. They don’t want workshops, but higher education in the arts and sciences. But they don’t want a capitalist education in the institutional universities, but rather an education that respects our ways. In this sense we still have a lot to do.
In the area of economy, and not counting what already existed and is maintained through collective and individual work (cultivation of corn, beans, coffee, chickens, bananas, sheep, cattle, vegetable gardens, honey, as well as the supply stores, livestock sales, and other products), what we have seen is that overall production has grown, which has improved our nutrition and health, above all for the young people and children.
In some zones the autonomous health promoters are already being trained to perform ultrasounds, working in the laboratory, holding general medical consultations, and practicing dentistry and gynecology. In addition they carry out preventive health campaigns in their regions. In one zone, the profits from a collective livestock project were used to buy laboratory equipment and an ultrasound machine. They already have compañeras and compañeros trained to operate these devices, which is an outcome of the health promoters of one Caracol teaching those of another Caracol; in other words, they are teaching each other. Another hospital clinic is already under construction where minor surgeries can be carried out, similar to what already exists in La Realidad and Oventik.
Regarding work on the land, the corn cultivation and cattle-raising collectives have grown substantially. With the profits from that work, in addition to buying medicines and equipment for the clinics, the bases of support have bought a tractor.
In the autonomous stores there are no fancy name-brand clothes or the latest fashions, but there is no lack of slips, dresses, blouses, pants, shirts, shoes (the majority of which are made in autonomous shoemaking shops) and everything anyone might want to cover their private parts.
Those who have advanced the most in production and commercialization are the compañeras. A few years ago, with the fruit of the collective work of the comandancia, the comités and the insurgents (yes, we also work in production in order to generate income), a portion of our earnings were sent to each autonomous municipality so that the compañeras bases of support could start a collective of whatever kind they desired.
And they turned out to be much better administrators than the men; in one municipality the compañeras not only put together a successful cattle collective, now they are advanced to a point where they are giving their cattle “al partir” to other communities that have women’s collectives (We Zapatistas say “al partir” to mean that what is earned is divided in half, and one half is given to another party).
The same thing has happened with the cooperative stores: now they are making loans to other collectives or communities in the region, and sometimes even to individual compañeras.
All of the autonomous municipalities have collective projects for cultivating corn and some have livestock. All of the regions have collective work that produces profit. For example, in a recent celebration, the regions all contributed to funds for the cow that they ate at the festival and to pay the musicians.
The great majority of the communities have collective projects. In a few the compañeros don’t have collectives but the compañeras do, and in some communities there are two collectives, one of compañeros and one of compañeras. Individually they all struggle to make a living and they have been able to advance. Milician@s as well as insurgent@s work in production collectives in order to support themselves and to help support the communities.
In the Caracol of Oventik they now have an autonomous tortillería. We don’t know how much a kilo of tortilla costs in your geographies, but in Oventik it’s at 10 pesos a kilo. And these tortillas are made out of corn, not Maseca [processed cornmeal]. Even the public transportation vehicles make special trips to buy their tortillas there. Corn is not produced in the Highlands Zone of Chiapas where the Caracol of Oventik is located. The corn is produced in the Jungle regions and then bought and sold between collectives in the zone so that Zapatista families can get corn at a good price and without middlemen. For this commerce they use trucks that were donated to the Juntas de Buen Gobierno [Good Government Councils] by good people who we won’t name here, but they and we know who they are.
In many Zapatista communities around 50% of people work in collectives and the rest work individually. In some, the majority work individually. Although collective work is promoted, individual work that doesn’t exploit other individuals is respected. Collective work and individual work are not only sustaining themselves but are growing.
The collectives are organized according to local decisions. There are collectives at the community level as well as men’s, women’s, and young people’s collectives. There are regional and municipal collectives. There are zone level collectives and Junta de Buen Gobierno collectives. When one collective does well, it supports the other collectives that are behind or slower. Or, in some regions, the collective production of food goes to the warehouses that supply the autonomous middle schools.
_*_
The news of all these advances made doesn’t come from the Zapatista commanders; in other words, it doesn’t come out of the heads of a few people, but rather from the sharings among the communities themselves.
In those sharings they talk about their work, their advances, their problems and their errors. In that process many new ideas are exchanged among them. In other words, the compañeros and compañeras are learning from each other.
Of course we as authorities also learn a lot from our Zapatista compañeras and compañeros.
The things we see and hear are terrible and marvelous, so much that we don’t know what will come of all these advances.
Right now we won’t tell you about the rearming of the paramilitaries, the increase in military, air, and land patrols, and everything the bad governments do to try to destroy us. We won’t enter into details because we know well that you all don’t have things easy either, that your resistances and rebellions suffer aggressions every day, every hour, and everywhere. And we know that nevertheless, you continue rebelling and resisting.
But we also know that you know that everything that we are telling you about here takes place in the midst of aggressions, attacks, harassment, slander, and complicit silence. In the midst of a war, that is.
And although in dark periods, like that of the present, there emerge all types of “merchants of hope,” the Zapatistas don’t let ourselves be taken in by ecclesiastic, secular, or lay nonsense of those now calling for a “new constituent”[i] that will “save us” and that rely on the same old methods of coercion that they criticize, and that lie about the alleged support of the EZLN while trying to rewrite history under the guise of obsolete “vanguards” that, as of quite awhile ago, ceded their legacy.
The EZLN does not support selling people little mirrors. We are in 2016, not 1521, wake up already. [ii]
_*_
Compas of the Sixth, Sisters and Brothers of the National Indigenous Congress:
With everything that is happening and the threats that pursue us, the Zapatistas are preparing ourselves for the worst, for what is coming.
We are not scared. Not because we are foolhardy, but because we trust our compas.
Indeed, it looks like in the face of the storm that is shaking heaven and earth all over the world the Zapatista support bases have grown. It is as if now is when their ability, wisdom, imagination, and creativity shine brightest.
In reality what these words are meant to do, more than inform or provide an accounting, is to embrace you [iii] and remind you that here, in this corner of the world, you have compas that, despite the distance of calendar and geography, have not forgotten you.
But not everything is going well. We will tell you clearly that we have identified a failure: the Zapatista women are advancing more than the men. That is, there is not equal development.
Everyday less and less remains of that time when the man was the only one who brought money into the home. Now in some zones it is the women’s collectives that are employing the men. And there are more than a few Zapatista homes where the woman is the one who gives money to the man so that he can buy his shirt, his pants, his bandana, and his comb in order to look handsome for the upcoming activities that we will soon announce.
Because maybe we are dirty, ugly, and bad, but this is for sure: we are well groomed.
From the mountains of the Mexican Southeast,
Subcomandante Insurgente Moisés
Subcomandante Insurgente Galeano.
Mexico, February 2016
——-
From the Notebook of the Cat-Dog:
Fragment of a conversation between some partisans and some Zapatistas:
Partisans: The EZLN doesn’t receive government programs like Procampo, Prospera, or Nuevo Amanecer for the Elderly?
Zapatistas: No.
Partisans: Who subsidizes you as an organization?
Zapatistas: We are organized and we work together as support bases, we govern, and we have collective work projects. That is how we generate economic resources to sustain our resistance.
Partisans: How can we as civil society organize ourselves and how can you advise, guide, and teach us?
Zapatistas: Look at the situation of the free media or the National Indigenous Congress. We are not here to say or decide how you should organize yourselves or to give your organization a name. The people must think and decide what to do and how they will organize..
Partisans: What should we do?
Zapatistas: Our idea is to take down the capitalist system.
_*_
Report on the conversation that took place in the wee hours of the night in the month of February, between those two they call Subcomandante Insurgente Moisés and SupGaleano:
SupMoy: A recent report said that there are death threats and that the government wants to attack the Caracols in order to crush Zapatismo, because we make the government look bad.
SupGal:…
SupMoy: It says they are looking for me and for you, in order to kill us.
SupGal: To kill us? It isn’t to arrest us? Take us into custody?
SupMoy: No, the report says “to kill them.”
SupGal: Son of a…. and why me? This is racist-colonialist-hetero-patriarchal-Euro-centrism. You’re the spokesperson, you’re the one they should be after. I’m just the last bastion of Zapatista machismo, which is obviously in clear retreat. And anyway, why such violence? Before they would just say “detain,” “take into custody,” or “arrest warrant,” but now, “kill”? Plus, I’ve already died several times; don’t they take that into account? Why don’t they just accept it and write down “mission accomplished.” But don’t change the subject on me, I was telling you not to put that part about the women’s collectives in the communiqué.
SupMoy: And why not?
SupGal: Because if we include that we’re going to look bad to members of the masculine gender. A whole tradition of film by Pedro Infante and songs by José Alfredo Jiménez is at risk of disappearing. Are you in agreement with the erasure of ancestral cultures? No right?
SupMoy: Well as the ‘deceased’ used to say, Rome is fucked, because I already put that part in the communiqué.
SupGal: What!! And what about gender solidarity?
SupMoy: It would be better to think about how to get the men to try harder so that their collectives advance.
SupGal: Okay, okay, okay. We have to go back to our roots, as they say. I’m going to do a special program for Radio Insurgente. Game of Thrones has nothing on us; this is going to be all songs by that great comrade and leader, the first of his name, king of Garibaldi, father of dragons, and gentleman of “siete leguas”: [iv] Pedro Infante.
SupMoy: Hahahahaha. They’re not going to air it. The programming is run by a compañera.
SupGal: Son of a…. Damn the women’s revolutionary law! And what about José Alfredo Jiménez?
SupMoy: Oooh even less likely.
SupGal: Hmm… how about the Bukis then? The Temerarios? Brindis? Los Tigres del Norte? Piporro?
The discussion went on like that until the cat-dog, grooming its toenails, determined: woof-meow.
It was the wee hours of the night, and it was very cold, but despite a shadow looming over the surface of the earth, a tiny light illuminated the word “resistance.”
I testify, under oath of gender.
Note: This text was written on a word processors with open source free software, with operating system GNU/Linus, distro UBUNTO 14.04 LTS, on a very exclusive and well-known name brand computer “Free handout Z.A of V.C. of L.R” (i.e. “Z.A is “Zapatista Autonomous”; “V.C. is “Virtual Cooperation”; “L.R” is “Ludic Rebellion”), model “Deus Ex Machina 6.9,” “restored (it broke, but we put it back together like a jigsaw puzzle) in the Zapatista Alternative High Technology Department (DATAZ, by its Spanish acronym). Okay, okay, okay, the apparatus ended up as a three-dimensional figure that we call “KEKOSAEDRO”—because nobody knows exactly what it is now—and there were a few cables and screws leftover when we finished but it works well… until it doesn’t work anymore. “UBUNTU” in the Zulu language also means “I am because we are.” Say ‘yes’ to free software. Fuck Microsoft, Apple, and so forth (if you know what I mean)! Linux rules! [English in the original]
Notes:
[i] This reference is to a recent call from some in Mexico for the establishment of a new constitutional assembly.
[ii] The authors refer here to the historical legacy of European would-be conquerors trading beads and mirrors in exchange for enormous tracts of land and vast riches.
[iii] Abrazarlos, abrazarlas, abrazarloas is used for “embrace you” in order to give a range of possible gendered pronouns including male, female, transgender and others.”
[iv] “Siete Leguas” was the name of Pancho Villa’s horse and a “corrido” often sung by Pedro Infante.
===================================
Originally Published in Spanish by Enlace Zapatista
http://enlacezapatista.ezln.org.mx/2016/02/23/y-en-las-comunidades-zapatistas/
EZLN: And meanwhile in the partisan communities
ZAPATISTA NATIONAL LIBERATION ARMY
Mexico
February 2016
To the compañer@s of the Sixth
To whom it may concern
Compas and non-compas:
What we tell you comes from the very own voice of indigenous partisans that live in the different zones of the southeastern Mexican state of Chiapas. Although these partisans belong to, sympathize with or collaborate in the different institutional political parties (PRI, PAN, PRD, PVEM, PMRN, PANAL, PT, PES, PFH… and others that will be added from here to 2018), they have in common having received aid programs from the bad government and being human material for votes and earthly and celestial acarreos (carries) [1], besides, clearly, being indigenous and Mexican.
What you will now read not only has not appeared, does not appear, nor will appear in the local, national and international paid press; it also contradicts point by point government propaganda and the praises that its media sing (very bad, of course).
In synthesis, they are demonstrations of a crime: the “legal” dispossession of lands, history and culture of indigenous communities that believe that the bad governments and the partisan organizations are to help them. We have omitted the real names of communities and persons at the express request of the speakers, who, in some cases, fear reprisals; and in other cases because of the shame and mocking that they suffer because of the offense suffered.
The protagonists are only a small part of the victims of a war, the most brutal, terrible, bloody and destructive in world history: a war against Humanity.
We only give some examples because there are many, although the lie and the suffering are equal partners in all of them. Here goes then:
What is written is what is happening in the partisan communities.
It’s apparently not believed but now what we tell you is a fact, as the support base compañer@s tell us and say to us, and as the non-Zapatistas say in the communities, what is now being suffered in their towns. This is apart from what they are suffering in the other towns of the compañeros and compañeras of the National Indigenous Congress in our country, which is not well known because there are no communications media that get the information out, because the majority of the media are paid-off.
This that we write about is a thing of less than a year ago.
We see as if we were in an underground Drone to see how the partisans of below are, far from the governmental statistics and paid insertions in the media.
On the one side of La Realidad, in a community -good, it will continue being a community if they are going to defend themselves, because you will see what happened there-. They are not Zapatistas, but partisans.
A cattle project arrived there from the bad government. It gave cattle to all those that are ejido owners, not in common, but rather individually; individually their cows, their horse, it mounting, its corral, wire for enclosing it, salt and in common it gave them a veterinary medicine chest.
And then the people are very happy. They even have their posters and T-shirts that the government supplies. And the rulers had their photo taken and paid the media-for-pay so that they put it in big headlines: “Yes, the partisan communities advance, the Zapatista (communities) are the same or worse than in 1994.” The functionaries noted in their story that they spent a lot to hide what they stole: so much for them, so much for the governments, and another so much for the media-for-pay.
But it turns out that news travels around like a blind “Chicken Little” that doesn’t know where to go: that El Chapo already escaped for the second time, that they already grabbed him for a third time, that the Pope already came, that the Pope already left, and meanwhile in any corner of Mexico or of the world, they beat up-raped-incarcerated-murdered-disappeared-someone-unimportant. And so the news is part of the system, in other words it’s also merchandise. And it sells out if it tells, and it sells out if it’s quiet. And so the media receive more money for telling… and much more money for keeping quiet.
But not much time passed: as for one of those ejido owners in the town that receives government support, need took hold of him and he sold a cow. When we say “need or necessity” we mean that he had an emergency, like a grave illness. Then the project inspector came and started to count the cows, one-by-one, which he had given them, and well one of the cows he had given them was missing, in other words one of the ejido owner’s cows was missing. Then the inspector asked where the other cow is and the man answered: “I sold it out of necessity.” And the inspector told him: “you cannot sell it, why didn’t you ask permission? You have to buy one of the same value and the same size and breed.” And the ejido owner told the inspector: “but how, Señor, if I already exhausted the money due to necessity, where do I find the money to buy the similar one?” And the inspector responds: “that’s not my problem, it’s your problem, buy a similar one, that’s all, and if you don’t then we’re going to take away all the others.”
Not even a month passed and the bad little inspector came back and meets with the ejido owners and there is where he says to everyone dice, takes out the bunch of papers and shows the people and says, in other words the inspector says to the people: “all these papers are ready, the receipts, invoices for everything that you have received from the government, therefore the land is no longer yours, you must leave and better be good, because if not it’s going to be bad for you. If you leave in a good way it’s now ready where you are going to live: in Escárcega, on other words in the state of Campeche, or you leave for the Chimalapas.”
In other words, in all that time in which they were happy for the bad government’s support, in reality they were taking care of cattle that were not even theirs, like peons. And all the papers that they signed, with their ejido acts and their voting credentials, were in reality that they were wrongly selling their lands without knowing it.
That’s where the smiles ended, and then came pain, sadness, grief and rage.
Because in that place is a tourist zone. It’s where the Jataté River leaves a few islands that are very beautiful. That’s what the rich men that live off of other people’s money want. That is happening in the X community, official municipio of Maravilla Tenejapa, by the border with Guatemala.
Do you know where Los Chimalapas are? Yes, on the border with the state of Oaxaca. Do you know that there are frequently conflicts there, because of land problems, between Oaxacan and Chiapan campesinos? Good, because they are going to increase. The federal and state governments are using that place to relocate those who are displaced from their lands. That is what government populism does: it doesn’t resolve problems, it is making them bigger and moving them to other geographies so that they break out again in other calendars.
The people’s needs don’t matter to the bad governments and the party members of above. All their campaigns and social programs are not only a big lie and a source of money for enriching themselves, they are also a means for dispossession.
But let’s continue hearing and watching the partisans:
In the zone of the Caracol of Garrucha (but also in other zones) we relate what happened: in the W, X and Y communities they have received the “Pro Árbol” projects, there are more towns, but they don’t tell us about them. They HAVE told about those three communities, therefore we tell you. All three are about party members in the official municipio of Ocosingo, Chiapas.
The government has now prohibited all those communities from cutting trees for their needs, like firewood for cooking leña, and wood for the construction of their homes. The people now say that they now fear what is going to happen to them and that it only gave them a piece to make their milpas from low-growth woods and if they cut medium-growth woods they are fined. Then if they need to change a board on their champas, [2] they have to buy the board at the sawmills. The sawmills are those of big companies and they can cut all the trees they want, where the campesinos can’t cut. If they need firewood for cooking, well the campesinos have to buy it in another place and carry the thirds of firewood to their homes, walking with their load along the same road where the big trucks circulate with gigantic trunks from trees cut on the lands of the comunidad where their inhabitants cannot cut firewood “to take care of the ecology.”
Where does the campesino get the money to buy that board that he needs for his house or that firewood for cooking? Well from the governmental programs. What does one need to receive the government’s alms? Well, presenting minutes from the assembly, the credential, the CURP [3] and all those papers that mark persons just like the cattle and the trees are marked. Marks that are accordingly to give identity to individuals and what they do is take it away from them: no longer are they so and so, but rather the number such and so.
And for what do the bad governments want those papers? Well, to show that the campesinos legally sold their lands, and to be able to evict them, and legally displace them to other lands legally invaded. And so on.
But, how are the women in the partisan families? Well we’re going to tell you what the partisans say:
In 2 communities, X and Y, the women left to receive their projects, but the government told the young (unmarried) women to leave too and that the appointment is in Tuxtla Gutiérrez, which is the capital of the Mexican state of Chiapas, where the governor and his functionaries live. Well it turns out that, arriving in Tuxtla, they took the young women to one side and left the married women on another side. But it turned out that among the young women that they took was a married woman by mistake. And she communicated with her husband and told him that they have them enclosed in a house for 3 hours. And the unmarried women tell that they were obliged to have sexual relations. And right now it is being told in the community what it is that the functionaries are doing: they oblige them to have sexual relations in exchange for distributing the project. For example a young woman, was had problems because they obliged her to have sexual relations, and she asked her mother what it’s like the first time, if it’s painful to have sexual relations de por. And her mother asked her daughter: “why, daughter, what is it, why do you ask about that?” And the young woman had to tell her mother what happened in Tuxtla.
In other words the bad government is again imposing the right of pernada (when a young woman was going to get married, the finquero or estate owner had the right to rape the young woman) on the partisan communities. They govern per se and are seen like the finqueros and estate owners of before. And, like before, they receive the blessings of the High Clergy, which opens the doors of the cathedrals to them so that, through money, they receive the sacraments, forgive their crimes and rapes, and again pose, pure and smiling, in the photos of the paid press and on television. That is what the governors and functionaries do that pray with devotion and are first in line to receive the church’s blessings.
Hell on earth is blessed that way.
And the young party members?
What we’re telling you now we cannot tell of what town or towns, but it turns out that 2 mestizo men saying that they work with impresarios and that are looking for workers and that they know that there are those who want to go to work in the North and that it’s difficult to get there, and that they are positioned to take them and right away to the job. It turns out that those two recruited 9 youths. Months later, one achieved communicating with his family and it’s then that he tells them that he was wounded by a bullet, because he fled the place where they have them enclosed, and that the job is to grow marijuana and poppies, which they can’t leave, and that they were told clearly: “now you don’t leave here,” and because of that who knows if the others were able to leave, but at least their families know where they took them.
And in another partisan town: a family had dealings with the narco. Something happened, because the message to the father arrives: “if you don’t pay, your family pays,” they told him. And yes a cell phone arrived with the image of how they cut their daughter’s head off and if they want to bury her that she will be in such and so place. Other family members went to pick up the young woman’s body. But in the face of that disgrace the family is content that she makes good money and without much work.
And in another town, in the Northern Zone of Chiapas, government people came to offer coffee, milpa, school, clinic, church and road projects, and the people accepted. All the people are happy because they live well. Later, the government functionaries come again to tell them that they have to leave because there is uranium there, and that they are going to extract it and it’s very toxic, and thus they have to leave willingly or unwillingly. If they leave willingly they can go to Escárcega or in the Chimalapas.
And they showed them the invoices and receipts for all the expenses that they have received from the project. And their names are right there, their photos, the ejido assembly’s minutes, everything that demonstrates legally that they were not receiving support, but rather selling their land.
In another zone, in a town in the municipio of Simojovel, where there is amber and the people work those places to extract the amber in order to survive. Okay, because now they see that it was privatization of the ejido and that some towns fell into the trap. And it turns out that the one that was the owner of the [ejido] land was selling it piece-by-piece, in other words by the meter, and the people from there bought it to see if there is amber and they took some out, but then they ran them off because a Chinese investor came to extract the amber. The foreign capitalist had all the legal papers, which he had obtained thanks to the papers that the people signed to receive the governmental support and the projects.
In other towns of partisans foreign people have appeared and they have seized and charged them a fine for entering their lands without permission. In one community they charged 300,000 pesos and the strangers paid it; and they even said another time: “this is the first stage that we came, it’s going to have a second and third stage, and you are going to have a lot of work, in other words you are going to have a good example with the new owner of the land.” In another community, they also grabbed the strangers that came in a boat and charged them 100,000 pesos and the strangers paid and said that they come to investigate the place because there are sulfur mines there, among other things, and also that it’s the first stage and there’s going to be a second and third stage.
In another community, near Lake Miramar, a partisan from there commented that the number of governmental programs that they received at the beginning of December (2015) is the last one because with that payment for the land is complete and that the owner of the hill is going to occupy their land. The owner of the hill is Japanese. The issue is that in this community they are living with everything that they need to live, they are well taken case of, they even have an incubator for chickens. They received all the governmental support and it turns out that, without knowing it, they sold their lands to a foreigner.
Another governmental program is called PROSPERA, which used to be called Opportunities. The women that are inside of this program receive support for their children that are in school. But this program has its conditions; what is known about the conditions is: they oblige the women to consult frequently with a doctor and to get a pap smear by force and if they don’t do it they take the support (money) away from them, they are also prohibiting that the community practice some communal health services that are traditionally done in the communities, like the use of a midwife. Now, the women have to go into the city to give birth in hospitals. Clearly, that’s if they (the hospitals) accept them.
Another issue is that of digital television, the government is delivering televisions to all the partisan people. On December 22 and 23, 2015, all the people in all the communities of Las Margaritas municipio were gathered on the sports unit of Comitán. Since midnight the people were making a line to receive their television and it turned out that it got crowded there. What happened is that 2 people died, a little boy and a woman: the little boy died because he was trampled from the people’s pushing, and his mother wasn’t able to defend him; the woman was murdered when, upon arriving home, the husband took out his pistol and killed her for not having taken care of their son. A partisan gave this information.
A few days after they received the TVs, the partisan women commented that many TVs arrived broken and that upon connecting many others made a short and were burned; other, upon turning them on, nothing appeared; now they have to buy an apparatus in order to see anything, and the partisans comment that it’s a deal that Peña Nieto made with a Japanese company.
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Well, those were just a few examples. There are many more, and they are equally or more chilling and infuriating as the ones we recounted here.
We are not lying or inventing things.
These are the words of the partisans who, in their shame and rage, have come to us, as Zapatistas, to ask for advice and support.
We Zapatistas listen respectfully.
We don’t scold them for their betrayals, attacks, and slander.
We don’t throw in their faces the fact that they have aided our persecutors in the past and many times helped those above attack us.
We don’t mock their tragedies and shame.
We do not take joy from their pain.
Nor do we tell them that they should become Zapatistas, because we know well that it is difficult to be a Zapatista.
This has been, is, and will be our life and death: as Zapatistas.
This is what we told them:
“We Zapatistas have nothing to offer, not paid projects, not money, not earthly or heavenly promises. We only have our example. Organize yourselves, don’t let anyone tell you what to do or how or when to do it, defend what is yours. Resist, struggle, live.”
Now perhaps you are asking yourselves what the partidistas do in the face of these aggressions, evictions, and impositions. And the answer is very simple: they pass themselves off as Zapatistas.
One partisan said: “That’s the only way we are respected. So we hide our papers and we change our names. Because of the ignorance imposed upon us by the government, we thought that the Zapatistas were bad people. We see now that’s not the case.
We hope that the same thing does not happen again, that we will no longer be spies and traitors. We see now that one who betrays will be betrayed. And the truth is that we are very ashamed and enraged that we have been mocked once again, as always.
We thought that we were doing well, and we were only awaiting the worst.
We thought that we had so much, and now we have nothing.
We were blind and now we are naked.
We made fun of you, calling you “fucking Indians,” and it turns out that you are much better off than we are because you have your organization that does not abandon you, that does not detour from its path, that does not sell out, does not give up.
That’s what they told us.
The Zapatista that was listening to the partisan responded:
“Changing course, selling out, surrendering? Never!
From the mountains of the Mexican Southeast,
Subcomandante Insurgente Moisés. Subcomandante Insurgente Galeano.
Mexico, February 2016
NOTICE FOR THE SIXTH AND THE NATIONAL INDIGENOUS CONGRESS:
In the next few days we will convoke a series of activities. Be alert.
Note: this text was produced in its entirely with a word processor using free and open code software, with a GNU/Linux operating system, distro UBUNTO 14.04 LTS. “UBUNTU” in the Zulu language means: “A person is a person through other people.” Say “yes” to free software.
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Translator’s Notes:
[1] acarreos – transporting party members to a party’s political event or to the polls in order to swell increase the size of the crowd or the vote
[2] Champas are wooden huts.
[3] The CURP is an identification number for each Mexican citizen.
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Originally Published in Spanish by Enlace Zapatista
En español:
http://enlacezapatista.ezln.org.mx/2016/02/23/y-en-las-comunidades-zapatistas/
Denounce obstacles in Ayotzinapa case
Carlos Beristain, Angela Buitrago, Claudia Paz, Alejandro Valencia and Francisco Cox arriving at the press conference. Photo: Marco Peláez
OBSTACLES “PUT ADVANCES AT RISK IN AYOTZINAPA CASE: GIEI
By: Blanche Petrich and José Antonio Román
Mexico City
The Interdisciplinary Group of Independent Experts (GIEI, the group’s initials in Spanish) denounced a series of obstacles, diverting of information and illegal leaks to the press that “put at risk” the advances in the investigation into the Iguala case and into the whereabouts of the 43 disappeared Ayotzinapa students.
This international body, which is a help to the Mexican State in the investigation of the facts of September 26 and 27, 2014, indicated that the record of the emblematic case –“that is key to justice in Mexico,” in the words of one of its members Carlos Beristain, exposed some examples of the fragmentation of investigation AP001, which instead of being integrated in its totality into a single unit, continues disperse and, moreover, se has continued being dispersed.
It’s the case of the recent arrests of the so-called Cabo Gil [1] and the members of the Los Peques [2] criminal group. The SEIDO [3] opened new investigations, instead of deriving them into AP001, and denies access to the GIEI. In that record that the SEIDO manages, Gil reserved his right to not make a statement. Nevertheless, alleged leaks of those statements were published in some media wherein things he didn’t say are asserted. “It’s erroneous information, which does not correspond to reality,” indicated the criminalist Claudia Paz, a member of the group.
Another example is the protection of the bone remains recovered from 2014 at a site close to the Cocula garbage dump (not inside of it), because of an alert from the parents themselves. Instead of integrating the investigation into the central record, it is being kept in the SEIDO’s possession and the necessary identification work has not been done.
Around these practices of fragmentation and leaks, the GIEI expressed their concern to Attorney General Arely Gómez. The functionary (Arely Gómez), the GIEI’s expert Angela Buitrago asserted, “took attentive notice” of this complaint and promised to investigate “the origin of these practices.”
Almost two months from concluding their second mandate, the five specialists emphasized that this period, which concludes on April 30, is a “crucial moment” that can define the fate of the investigation.
The five members that make up the Group were present at the press conference. In it they also brought up the campaign of “personal slander and insults” on the part of an ultra-conservative sector of which they have been the object. Without directly engaging in a polemic with the protagonists of these attacks or wanting to accuse anyone of being their source, the GIEI did assert that what it’s about “with these acts and accusations is closing space for the search for truth” and generating confusion.
At the same time the group insisted on the necessity that the Mexican authorities deepen an investigation about the alleged traffic of heroine to Chicago in relation to the case of the disappearance of 43 students of the Ayotzinapa teachers college.
“It’s fundamental that the line of shipping heroine from Iguala to Chicago is investigated. It has been put forward, but we insist on the need to carry out the investigative work that we recommend for the clarification of the facts,” said the Colombian lawyer Claudia Paz.
The experts have pointed out as a fundamental element of the investigation the alleged existence of a bus with drugs that it is suspected would have as its destination the U.S. city of Chicago and that would have been taken by the students without knowing its cargo.
“The fifth bus is fundamental. We need to count on information from the investigation that the Chicago prosecutors carry out. On February 15, international assistance was requested” on the part of Mexico’s attorney general, added Paz.
The GIEI recognized that “advances” have been attained with the new investigative team that the prosecutor’s office created and in particular it turns out that the search has been reactivated for the 43 students that disappeared the night of September 26, 2014.
Translator’s Notes:
[1] Cabo Gil – Gildardo López Astudillo, alias El Cabo Gil, is a allegedly member of the Guerreros Unidos criminal group and one of those principally responsible for the attack on the Ayotzinapa students.
[2] Los Peques (The Sinners) – A criminal gang allegedly at the service of Guerreros Unidos and allegedly involved in the attack on the students.
[3] SEIDO – The organized crime division of Mexico’s Office of the Attorney General
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Originally Published in Spanish by La Jornada
Sunday, February 21, 2016
Re-published with English interpretation by the Chiapas Support Committee
Pope Francisco honors Bishop Ruiz in Chiapas
POPE FRANCISCO HONORS BISHOP SAMUEL RUIZ GARCIA, DEFENDER OF THE POOR
Pope Francisco visits the tomb of Bishop Samuel Ruíz García. Bishop Raúl Vera is next to the Pope.
By: Isaín Mandujano
Today, Pope Francisco put an end to decades of exclusion of a Church that opted for the poor, rescued native ancestral roots and inculcated a liberating vision.
At the interior of the Cathedral of the San Cristóbal de las Casas Diocese, Pope Francisco prayed today in front of the tomb of Bishop Samuel Ruiz García and blessed it, which has been interpreted by those closest to jTatik Samuel [1] as an integration or vindication of the work he constructed for 50 years.
“The fact that Pope Francisco has a moment of silent prayer in front of the jTatik Samuel’s tomb is extremely significant, it’s endorsing a work, a path of 40 years. Very similar to the defender of the poor Bishop Fray Bartolomé de las Casas at the beginning of the colonial epoch,” said the parish priest of Bachajón, José Javier Avilés Arreola, a member of the Company of Jesus.
The priest that came to Chiapas in 1984 and was adopted by the indigenous Tzeltal communities, remembered that jTatik Samuel was walking with the people, converting their hearts, letting himself be a pastor for his people. “Thank God that jTatik Francisco has asked to come to this poor Diocese, a Diocese that economically speaking has little to offer. But with a great richness of walking in defense of their rights, an integral pastoral that we have led for many years, that is what comes to strengthen jTatik Francisco, to speak to us about forgiveness, to tell us that we can continue walking with the las illusions of this people, to continue being free and to continue fighting for their own land, for their resources, from the word of God, from the gospel, from the fast, from communion, from forgiveness. jTatik Pope Francisco invites us to that,” said the religious man also known as Father Pepe Avilés.
Avilés remembered that Bishop Samuel Ruiz García was a misunderstood bishop, so much so that the Vatican cancelled the ordination of married deacons, and for 14 years there were no ordinations. It was thanks to the effort of current Bishop Felipe Arizmendi Esquivel that Pope Francisco lifted the veto at the end of last year and the ordination of deacons started again.
He explained the importance of those deacons, and that it’s not the deacon that one sees assisting in the masses because the ones in this Diocese are real pastors that lead their community, but there are also women pastors, because the Deacons walk with their spouses.
“The deacons don’t conceive of service that is individual, the two walk together, they are in communion. In that meaning of gender equity the West would have a lot to learn because they know how to work as a couple,” he emphasized.
According to Father Heriberto Cruz Vera, the Pope’s gesture recognizes that Church that was constructed with an option for the poor. What Papa Francisco now proclaims –he added– Samuel Ruiz already did and made known in the indigenous communities of Chiapas, but Juan Pablo II and Benedict XVI, never wanted to support it.
Cruz Vera pointed out that for many years, the Vatican considered the Church that Samuel Ruiz constructed as an “irregular Church.” Many governors wanted to expel him from Chiapas and many religious hierarchs inside of the Catholic Church itself did everything to remove him but while they were not able to get him out neither did the Vatican do anything that Pope Francisco just did: vindicate him.
Just like Cruz Vera, two of Samuel Ruiz García’s other close collaborators, Joel Padrón and Gonzalo Ituarte emphasized Francisco’s visit, the arrival of a Pope for the first time in its almost 500 years of creation.
Today, Pope Francisco ate where jTatik ate for 40 years, from this Cathedral where Bishop Samuel Ruiz García consolidated and framed his pastoral line with the Diocesan Synod from 1995 to 2000 that the same Bishop Samuel Ruiz headed.
A Synod that framed the standard to follow among all the faithful and the religious structure of the Diocese, in such a way that any Bishop that comes here would not be able to break apart or change theRuiz García’s heritage.
“The Pope’s visit is encouragement, hope and strength to renew our soul in a Diocese that has opted for the poor for more than 50 years, not excluding all the rest, but it is very comprehensible,” concluded Father José Javier Avilés Arriola, parish priest of the Bachajón Mission.
[1] jTatik means Father in a Mayan language, Tzeltal (also spelled Tseltal).
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Originally Published in Spanish by Chiapas Paralelo
Monday, February 15, 2016
Re-published with English interpretation by the Chiapas Support Committee
http://compamanuel.com/2016/02/18/pope-francisco-honors-bishop-ruiz-in-chiapas/
Pope Francisco says mass in San Cristóbal
FRANCISCO CALLS FOR LEARNING ABOUT THE INDIGENOUS AND ASKING THEIR FORGIVENESS
The Pope headed a mass before a crowd of thousands of indigenous Chiapanecos gathered in the San Cristóbal de las Casas Municipal Sports Center. Photo: Afp
By: Hermann Bellinghausen
San Cristóbal de las Casas, Chiapas
With his presence Pope Francisco made a broad vindication of the indigenous people, about whom, he said, “we have much to learn.” He also called for asking them for forgiveness, and upon finishing the mass that he officiated here, he delivered a decree through which liturgical ceremonies in indigenous languages are formally authorized. With that, and his silent homage afterwards to Tatic Samuel Ruiz García at his tomb in the Cathedral, the Native church and Indian theology receive the recognition that the Vatican denied them for years.
“Your peoples have not been understood and have been excluded from society. Some have considered your values, your cultures and your traditions inferior. Others, dizzied by power, money and the laws of the market, have dispossessed you of your lands or have carried out actions that contaminate them,” he said to the thousands of indigenous, the majority of them from Pueblo Creyente. “It would do all of us well to examine our conscience and learn to ask for pardon, pardon, brothers. Today’s world, dispossessed by the culture of waste, needs you.” In a certain fashion, he called to wake up, because “in many ways they have attempted to anesthetize our soul” to not feel the pain of injustice.
Directing himself to indigenous youth, “Pope Prancisco” (as the Tzotziles pronounce his name because their language does not have the “F” sound) called for recognizing the dignity of their cultures, so “that the wisdom of the elders is not lost.” The world of today, he added, “a prisoner of pragmatism, needs to re-learn the value of gratuity. There is a longing to live in a freedom that has the taste of the Promised Land, where oppression, mistreatment and inequality are not common currency.”
Without ambiguities, with a short biblical psalm in Tzotzil and an explicit mention of the Popol Vuh, Pope Bergoglio officiated a two-hour mass together with indigenous deacons and seminarians of the San Cristóbal de Las Casas Diocese, giving liturgical readings and chants in their languages. Is Tzotzil the new Latin, inaccessible to the also numerous non-indigenous faithful, but close to the people in their communities? Remember that indigenous Catholicism in Chiapas is rural.
Another one of the Pope’s central pronouncements was with respect to the violence and injustice that have provoked “one of the biggest environmental crisis in history,” something also linked to the rights of the native peoples.
Although without the spectacle that his meeting with the indigenous of Bolivia had, his visit to Los Altos (the Highlands) turned out to be, within what’s possible, a successful meeting with the Mayas of the Mexican southeast. It was certainly far from his disagreement with Native peoples of the United States on his visit to Washington months ago, where he canonized the missionary Junipero Serra, who the Indians consider responsible for genocide and an agent of dispossession.
In the Municipal Sports Center, converted into a sacred arena and practically full, the presence of Tzeltales, Tzotziles, Choles, Tojolabales and marginally Mam and Kaqchiqueles is eloquent. Many of them waited since two or three in the morning; there were those that were there for six hours before they started to move in the line to enter the field for the mass, most without losing spirit. One does not perceive an atmosphere of fanaticism or superstitious adoration. Definitely an atmosphere of joy! The Zinacantecans, and especially the Zinacantán women, came by the thousands, not only to the mass; many of were posted themselves very early on the boulevard and the crowded Avenida Insurgentes, behind the steel walls; recognizable and showy with their clothes embroidered in purples and pinks. On the other hand the Chamulas, San Cristóbal’s other Tzotzil neighbors, almost shined for their absence, being perhaps the majority population of this city and its surrounding areas. It happens that they are not usually recognized as Catholics. A few in their native land, 15 kilometers from here, practice the traditional religion; others, in San Cristóbal, children of the exodus due to religious persecution, are Protestants and the Pope sees them the same way.
Listening to a woman read Leviticus in Chol, or the songs of the Acteal Choir, amplified; observing the staging, the monumental reproduction of the Cathedral’s façade on wooden frames, the presence of the Black Christ of Tila, and on the front the colored doves of Amatenango and clay jaguars that from a distance seem like watchdogs. In the symbolic and the real, the indigenous accent is inevitable. So much so that even Coca Cola hung greetings to the Pope in (bad) Tzotzil. The contingents from San Andrés, Chenalhó, Huixtán and El Bosque are large as are those that arrived from different parts of the Lacandón Jungle. But, there are also those from Cancuc, Chilón, Las Margaritas, Altamirano, Oxchuc, Tila, Palenque, Chalchihuitán and Simojovel.
Like El Cid, Tatic Samuel won ecclesiastic battles. Even his favorite marimba group, Las Hermanas Díaz, was the one that harmonized the mass, besides a Mixe band and a local mega-mariachi.
The papal message of asking the indigenous for pardon was on target. A Coleta [1] woman reacted to street television upon hearing Francisco: “In other words I have to ask forgiveness from the man in the market, who is so nasty with me?”
Translator’s Note:
[1] A Coleta is a female resident of San Cristóbal that claims direct descent from the Spanish invaders. You can read into that definition a sense of superiority to the native peoples.
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Originally Published in Spanish by La Jornada
Tuesday, February 16, 2016
Re-published with English interpretation by the Chiapas Support Committee
Zibechi: Everything solid vanishes at the polls
By: Raúl Zibechi
Four decades ago, the Peruvian intellectual and militant Alberto Flores Galindo threshed his opinion about elections, in a brief commentary apropos of the results of the voting for the Constituent Assembly, in which the indigenous campesino leader Hugo Blanco obtained 30 percent of the votes, in June 1978.
“The universal, individual and secret vote has been a genial invention of the bourgeoisie. On voting days the social classes and groups disband into a series of individuals that stop thinking collectively, as occurs in strikes, demonstrations or any other act of protest, and in the ‘secret chamber’ emerge the doubts, fears and uncertainties that lead to opting for what’s established, for the past and not for change” (Obras Completas, tomo V, Lima, 1997, p. 89).
Flores Galindo was one of the consequential and notable thinkers in the 70s and 80s, when Peru was squeeze between State violence and that of the Sendero Luminoso (Shining Path), in a war that had cost more than 70 thousand deaths. His research “Looking for an Inca: identity and utopia in the Andes” (Buscando un Inca: identidad y utopía en los Andes), published in 1986, obtained the House of the Americas Essay Award in Cuba. He was the founder of SUR, House of Socialism Studies, which grouped together a good part of the intellectuals of the epoch, and he belonged to the Mariateguist Unified Party (Partido Unificado Mariateguista, PUM), to which Hugo Blanco also belonged.
His brief reflection on the elections has great currency and shows the crisis of critical thought. In the first place primer, it permits distinguishing between democratic freedoms and the act of founding a political strategy on electoral participation. If the oppressed won freedoms through long and potent collective struggles, elections are the mode for dispersing that plebian potency.
In second place, he doesn’t criticize electoral participation, he just warns about the incontestable fact that it’s about playing on the terrain of the dominant classes. He doesn’t wield an ideological argument, but rather one centered on how the electoral system separates those below into a myriad of isolated individuals that, upon being atomized, stop being a social force to delivering themselves to the manipulation of the powers of the system. The collective thought that emerges in popular actions gives way to individualization, in which fears and prejudices always impose themselves.
It would necessary to develop both arguments. On the one hand, the reflection of Flores Galindo connects with that of Walter Benjamin in his Thesis on history, when he asserts: “The subject of historical knowledge is the oppressed class itself, when it fights” (Thesis XII). It’s not a minor theme. In the turn of history in which he lived, Benjamin understood that if the oppressed are not organized, they are incapable of comprehending the world, they are blind and are prisoners of the way of seeing of the powerful. The problem is not the system’s resources (and boy are they a problem), but rather our inability to get organized, which is our way of being, in other words collectives that fight and, therefore, comprehend.
To my way of seeing, the electoral problem consists in founding a strategy for changes in the participation in elections, in what’s called the accumulation of forces that is summed up in a vote total. On our continent we have experienced a succession of very powerful struggles capable of displacing conservative governments, which are dissolved a little while later in the ballot boxes, installing other governments –at times better, at other times worse– that supplant collective action and the organization of those below.
The better part of the communist parties focused their action on this kind of strategy, placing the popular organization in tow of the electoral accumulation. With time, that strategy was generalized and converted, after the fall of real socialism and the defeat of the Central American revolutions, into the only mode of action of the institutional lefts.
Individualization through the vote has various nefarious consequences. Besides what Flores Galindo mentioned, the dissolution or neutralization of collective organization, another one appears: in the process of changing the collective into the individual the cooptation of leaders is facilitated because they make the bases self-governing in these processes, something practically inevitable when they are converted into representatives. The subject is dissolved when the logic of representation rules, since it’s only possible to represent what is absent.
Nevertheless, “the universal, individual and secret vote” strengthens the legitimacy of those elected, and that is the “geniality” that the Peruvian denounces. When the governments of the dominant classes feel cornered, as happened to president Eduardo Duhalde in June 2002 in Argentina, facing a potent popular attack, they call for elections as a way of dispersing the powers from below. It is a action directed towards the vigilance and control that consists, as Duhalde himself assured, of getting the people out of the street and into to return to their houses and sitting in front of their television sets.
Because the logic of the voter and that of the TV viewer is the same: it doesn’t matter to the power what each one thinks, provided he does it alone from his house, Noam Chomsky pronounced at one time. The problem to those above, then, is collective action and reflection.
It would be marvelous that power born of popular organization/ mobilization were seen and given feedback through electoral participation. The reality says the opposite, as we are able to appreciate in all the processes, and especially these days in the Spanish State, where those who voted for Podemos contemplate how those they elected negotiate in the name of those who elected them, but more distant from them each time. The institutional activity that is derived from electoral processes ends by displacing the organizations of those below from center stage.
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Originally Published in Spanish by La Jornada
Friday, February 5, 2016
Re-published with English interpretation by the Chiapas Support Committee
Las Abejas of Acteal issues statement
LAS ABEJAS: THE PRINCIPAL OBJECTIVE of FRANCISCO HERE IS “TO DEFEND THE PEOPLE of MEXICO”
Las Abejas of Acteal. Photo from La Jornada archives.
By: Hermann Bellinghausen
Acteal, Chiapas
The indigenous of Las Abejas of Acteal are convinced that Pope Francisco, on his visit to Chiapan lands, “brings a most key word: his principal objective is defending the people of Mexico,” expresses Sebastián Pérez Vázquez, president of the board of directors of the Tzotzil organization. He comes “to give his word of peace in order that peace will be established here in Chiapas and in Mexico.” But not just that, also “about how we can take care of our Mother Earth.”
Without removing a finger from the matter in their demand for justice for the massacre that occurred here 18 years ago, the civil society organization Las Abejas de Acteal does not hesitate in greeting Pope Francisco, who their organization will receive in San Cristóbal de Las Casas next Monday. He made it clear that: “as an organization we are always demanding justice, because if there is no justice peace cannot be established. The Church talks about forgiveness. There are forms where yes one can forgive. Not all things can be forgiven. But as a crime was committed, one must apply justice.”
This is the place of the largest and most paradigmatic collective wound in the process of liberation and resistance of the indigenous peoples of Chiapas: the senseless massacre of more than 45 peaceful people (Pérez Vázquez insists on this) perpetrated on December 22, 1997 by a group of paramilitaries encouraged by the federal government. That was also an attack on believing Catholic and, at that time, on the Church that Bishop Samuel Ruiz García represented. That was also about the irregular war the State unleashed against the Zapatista movement, which was crude and brutal in Chenalhó during all of 1997. The unarmed allies of Zapatismo were also targets of this war, which was the case with Las Abejas.
Although there were investigations and eventually more than 70 paramilitaries were condemned to prison for the acts, “the government never disarmed them, they were their hucksters,” the president of the organization says. Now most of the los killers are free, and walk around here.
In statements issued at the Las Abejas headquarters in the camp of Acteal, which its residents call “sacred land,” in the municipio of Chenalhó, in Los Altos of Chiapas, Pérez Vázquez emphasizes: “They only punished the material authors a little bit, but not the intellectual authors, the then president of Mexico, Ernesto Zedillo Ponce de León, and the three levels of government.”
Always in crisis always in a loud voice, always in resistance, the Las Abejas organization has resisted for almost two decades the pressures, promises and betrayals of the state and federal governments, as well as those of the courts of justice. It is an adherent to the Sixth Declaration of the Lacandón Jungle Sexta and it belongs, since its founding in 1992, to Pueblo Creyente (Believing People), the most numerous and representative popular Catholic congregation of Chiapas, with a presence in all the indigenous regions of the San Cristóbal de Las Casas Diocese.
Rumors dissipate
Throughout the night and this morning, the organizations and communities that maintained a collective occupation in the atrium of the San Cristóbal de Las Casas Cathedral withdrew, including the conglomerate of dissident groups united in the Popular Assembly of Los Altos of Chiapas.
Thus, the OCEZ of Venustiano Carranza, the residents of Chanal, the Proletarian and Popular Communist Coordinator, and the families displaced from Shulvó (aka Xul Vó), Zinacantán, [1] set free the space also called Peace Plaza. With that the rumors dissipate, widely spread in San Cristóbal yesterday, that the Pope “would suspend” his visit to the country’s most important indigenous cathedral.
Translator’s Note:
[1] Shulvó or Xul Vó is a community in the official municipality of Zinacantán or, alternatively, the autonomous Zapatista municipio of Vicente Guerrero, in the Highlands of Chiapas. Last December 9, paramilitaries violently expelled 47 people from that community. Those expelled are adherents to the EZLN’s Sixth Declaration of the Lacandón Jungle.
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Originally Published in Spanish by La Jornada
Saturday, February 13, 2016
Re-published with English interpretation by the Chiapas Support Committee
Ayotzinapa: No incineration in Cocula
THERE WAS NO INCINERATION IN COCULA, EAAF CONCLUDES
The Argentine Forensic Anthropology Team (EAAF, in Spanish), accompanied by the parents of the 43 Ayotzinapa students and others. Photo: José Antonio López, La Jornada.
By: José Antonio Román
The Argentine Forensic Anthropology Team (EAAF, the team’s initials in Spanish) concluded that there is no scientific evidence that indicates that the mass incineration of the 43 Ayotzinapa teachers college students was carried out in the Cocula garbage dump, as the version defended by the Attorney General of the Republic (PGR) asserts, and with which he sought to consider the case resolved.
Nor was evidence found to establish any correspondence between the elements recovered in said garbage dump –among them the bone remains of 19 persons– and the disappeared students.
Satellite images of the garbage dump obtained by the EAAF, through diverse institutions, show that the area of the fire on said dump’s lower surface –that the PGR indicates as the one utilized to burn the remains of the 43 normalistas– has in reality been used in previous fires at least since 2010. Therefore, one cannot talk about a single event that occurred on September 26 and 27, 2014, the date on which the youths disappeared.
In the expert opinion made public this Tuesday, they took an hour to explain the methodology and principal conclusions derived from this independent study, which required more than a year of work for a team of 30 specialists of different branches and nationalities. They also pointed to diverse and serious irregularities that personnel of the PGR committed. One of them is related to 20 of the genetic profiles from the normalistas’ families that the attorney general’s office sent to the laboratory at Innsbruck, because they were different from those the EAAF sent, although being from the same people.
Another inconsistency was what occurred on November 15, 2014, when experts and agents from the Public Ministry collected evidence at the Cocula garbage dump without the presence of or warning to the Argentine team, when the agreement was to work together. On that occasion, casually, 42 new shells were located ‘‘under a rock’’ placed in an area that had been searched a day before without finding anything.
At a press conference held in the installations of the Pro Human Rights Center (Centro Pro), the experts Mercedes Dorotti and Miguel Nieva pointed out that, in the opinion of the EAAF, sufficient scientific elements do not exist to link the remains found in the Cocula garbage dump with those recovered, according to the PGR, in the bag from the San Juan River, from which comes the only positive identification to date of one of the disappeared students, whose name is Alexander Mora Venancio.
The opinion –in which they incorporated a report about the site as well as a laboratory report– was already delivered to the PGR, a body that was invited to carry out, to analyze and to compare ‘‘together with the experts’’ the results reached for the different studies on the Cocula garbage dump.
Santiago Aguirre, assistant director of the Centro Pro, a body that represents the parents of the 43 disappeared youths, emphasized the public and detailed presentation of the EAAF’s opinion, thus subject to public scrutiny, a situation to which the PGR’s report has not been submitted.
Among its conclusions, the opinion of the Argentine team points out that the investigation on the Ayotzinapa students cannot be concluded, while an important quantity of evidence still lacks processing. More time is needed for analysis of the bone remains and associated evidence. This task will take several months of work. It suggests that this must be interpreted in all of its possibilities, without giving preference to those interpretations that only include a possible agreement with the testimonies from those accused.
Accompanied by the parents, students from the rural teachers college and lawyers, the two members of the EAAF that presented the report said that the interdisciplinary team that participated in its elaboration is specialized in areas like archaeology, criminalistics, entomology and forensic botany, as well as ballistics, fire dynamics and interpretation of satellite images, among others.
Besides, in order to conclude the scientific impossibility of producing a fire at that site with the size and intensity necessary to reduce 43 bodies to ashes, confronting the scientific evidence with the testimonial was determinative. The EAAF points out that the information derived from the statements of the alleged perpetrators ‘‘presented contradictions, like the way in which forma the victims’ remains were placed, the pneumatics (tires), the tree trunks, and the rest of the material; it varies significantly.”
Therefore, ‘‘we do not support the hypothesis that there was a fire of the magnitude required and of the reported duration,’’ the basis of the PGR’s assumption. They pointed out that although 132 shells were found at the site, among them rifle shells, the calibers of the majority do not correspond to what those implicated say they fired.
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Originally Published in Spanish by La Jornada
Wednesday, February 10, 2016
Re-published with English interpretation by the Chiapas Support Committee
Chiapas Support Committee 