Chiapas Support Committee
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The turns of neoliberalism
1st Intercontinental Encounter against Neoliberalism and for Humanity in Zapatista Territory of Chiapas Mexico.
By: Raúl Zibechi
The crisis of critical thinking; in other words, our way of comprehending the world so we can act to transform it, has led analysts to multiply not very precise concepts that tend to be more descriptive than analytical, thus they induce confusion. Neoliberalism is one of the concepts that are being used less rigorously.
An idea has been disseminated among many professionals in politics and thought that associates neoliberalism with a type of “market fundamentalist” government, when its meaning ought to point in a structural direction: it’s capitalism in the period in which accumulation by dispossession has become hegemonic.
The Marxist geographer David Harvey, who coined the concept of accumulation by dispossession/robbery, associates this modality of capital with the neoliberal policies promoted by the Washington Consensus: privatizations, domination of financial capital, regressive distribution of income and the generation of crisis to accelerate the three previous processes.
In Latin America neoliberalism had a first privatizing period in which a good part of the state-owned companies were scrapped, transferred at very low prices to multinationals in the north. The privatizations faced a broad alliance of popular sectors and the middle classes, thereby generating a wave of mobilizations that resulted in the fall of a dozen right-wing governments, from the Caracazo of 1989 to the second Bolivian gas war in 2005.
The privatizations and the political leaders that promoted them delegitimized, neoliberalism moved the nucleus of accumulation by dispossession to other lands that we now call extractivism: agribusiness, open pit mining, infrastructure works and urban real estate speculation. We are faced with what the sociologist Maristella Svampa called “commodity consensus,” although I usually opt for a definition from below that names it the “fourth world war.”
The problem that I observe is that many analysts maintain a much more restrictive definition of neoliberalism, which they associate with the greater or lesser participation of the State in the economy and in society. In that way, it’s often maintained that when it assumes a “statist government,” real or discursive, we would already enter into a “post neoliberal period.”
I believe that defining things in this way induces confusions. Changes of government do not affect the neoliberal model, but rather hardly touch lateral aspects of the same. For example, it’s often mentioned that the compensatory social policies are part of the new post-neoliberal period. However, two central facts are ignored.
One: the progressive or post-neoliberal governments did not invent those policies, but rather the World Bank, in order to disarticulate the anti-systemic movements. Two: social policies benefit the financial sector by promoting banking from the beneficiaries. In both cases, they reinforce neoliberalism: they weaken those who can confront it and strengthen financial capital.
But what’s most important is that neoliberalism, being the current phase of capitalism, cannot be defeated by voting, electing new rulers, but rather by disarticulating the bases on which it is seated: the concentrated power of financial capital that utilizes the state apparatus as a shield and sword, beyond the rotating rulers.
I maintain that leaving neoliberalism implies a phenomenal crisis, because the power constructed by capital is so solid that it can only by defeated in a long period of self-organization of the peoples, recuperating the means of production and instituting non-capitalist ways of life, with non-state powers that defend them.
One of the most nefarious consequences of neoliberalism is that it has consolidated the power of the one percent. This power is walled in state institutions like the armed forces, which has subjected its interests to drug trafficking and other forms of accumulation by dispossession, and cannot be disarticulated without a radical change in the correlation of forces, something that was never achieved through voting, or in the short term.
Capital in the neoliberal period has been armored, learning from the lessons of triumphant revolutions. That’s why it won’t be easy to dislodge them from power, a task in which both electoral and armed options have failed. Are China and Vietnam not neoliberal?
An additional problem is the one that Darío Aranda denounces in a brilliant note. Extractivism and neoliberalism are State policies. The conservative governments reach agreements with multinational companies for the delivery of the commons. The progressives do the same thing.
The primary exporting extractive model is the continuity between them. Although the progressives assure that when they arrive in government there is no longer neoliberalism, let them ask the peoples.
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Originally Published in Spanish by La Jornada
Friday, September 27, 2019
https://www.jornada.com.mx/2019/09/27/opinion/020a1pol
Re-Published with English interpretation by the Chiapas Support Committee
Conflict grows in Chiapas over sociopolitical fights and insecurity
Tsotsil families displaced in Shishemantik, Chalchihuitán, Chiapas, on September 24 – Photo: Hermann Bellinghausen
By: Hermann Bellinghausen
San Cristóbal De Las Casas, Chiapas
Municipal presidencies closed or looted, municipal councils (substitutes for the elected government) in localities where some significant political assassination has occurred (Oxchuc, Amatán, Arriaga, Chalchihuitán) and there is a dispute for local power, which leaves in its wake a trail of displaced people, destruction, theft of crops, dispossession of lands, all kinds of extortions and a cluster of murders. In a brief tour of La Jornada through some localities of Los Altos (Chenalhó, Chalchihuitán, Chamula, rural and urban San Cristóbal de Las Casas), and direct testimonies from Oxchuc, El Bosque, Ocosingo and Las Margaritas, evidence was perceived of explosive situations. Social conflict, insecurity and community decomposition in Chiapas has been accentuated to a degree that should raise alarm. The sum of ingredients is overwhelming.
It’s appropriate to incorporate into this account an unusual fear of making denunciations and statements, similar to a “tendency” of governmental sources at least at the municipal and community level, aimed at inhibiting the previously habitual denunciations to the media or civilian organisms; that through promises of solution conditioned on silence or veiled threats.
On top of everything party fragmentation and the implanting of forms of organized crime in the Tzotzil region, with the insecurity and fear they bring with them. Just the current conflict in San Juan Chamula, only 12 kilometers from this city, poses a scenario of potential war between strongly armed civilian groups and the National Guard, which already registered one death in Bochil this week.
A group headed by Juan Shilón Gómez demands the destitution of the Morena mayor, Ponciano Gómez Gómez. On the 25th, two communal representatives and a constable were kidnapped by an armed group and exhibited in a photo on their knees, bloodied; four masked men in campaign uniforms point at them with tremendous rifles. If the demands are not met, they would burn them alive. A video circulated on Twitter where they were begging in Tzotzil and Spanish the government to respond to their captors, who threatened to burn the house of the current mayor. The municipal presidency was closed on Thursday afternoon, after being vandalized. A large sheet made in a hurry demanded of the governor on the facade: “Deal with the issue now!” and “Respect San Juan Chamula!”
At the entrance to the municipal headquarters, a burned patrol car in the middle of the road served as a warning. The media talked about that the National Guard was ready to intervene, but it wasn’t in the vicinity of Chamula. Of course, there were hawks, like in the movies, attentive to those who were traveling in the direction of Chamula. The air could be cut with a knife in the center of town: closed or vacant businesses, few women in the streets and groups of men spying on each other.
The burned municipal patrol car at the entrance to San Juan Chamula, on September 26 – Photo: Hermann Bellinghausen
But this is only one case. The community of Chavajebal, in El Bosque, is in suspense due to the hostility against Zapatista support bases and PRI members by an armed group of 40 components that calls itself the Alianza Morenista and has support in the municipal government. The entire population had to displace for two weeks at the end of 2018, after the execution of the municipal agent and the ejido commissioner; the atmosphere of danger is maintained, bullets fired into the air and harassment. The negotiation between the parties and the government is stagnant, if it’s not sabotaged. There are threats and a social network campaign against the indigenous parish priest of Simojovel, Marcelo Pérez Pérez, for intervening in favor of the victims.
Meanwhile, in Oxchuc, the interminable dispute for municipal power between parties recently caused a serious clash. In Chalchihuitán, dozens of families continue outside their lands as of today, nine groups from eight communities under fire that the paramilitaries detonate from neighboring Chenalhó, within an age-old conflict about boundaries that intensified at the end of 2017. Those displaced in Sishemtontic said they were abandoned and denied even by the municipal government. An equivalent scenario is recorded at the border between Chenalhó and Aldama, which also affects an autonomous Zapatista municipality. In Acteal last week, also in Chenalhó, the civil society Las Abejas suffered the destruction of its clinic and three homes in the displaced persons, the Catholic sanctuary and the organization’s headquarters, while several families of Río Jordán, in Los Chorros, are displaced from their community. In these two latter cases, the municipal authorities and those of Río Jordán disqualify public denunciation as a method, and they demand that not be done, “to then negotiate.”
On Friday the 27th, residents of Chalchihuitán denounced that members of the municipal council retained and deprived of their freedom the councilors Javier Nuñez Pérez and Mateo Pérez García. This Friday, Ricardo Núñez Pérez, Rafael Núñez López and Julio Girón Pérez were detained “in the same way,” and were reported “as disappeared.”
In the border jungle region, a recent crime shocked the population. On the Santo Domingo River, near Las Nubes spa, municipality of Las Margaritas, a couple of residents were found decapitated and dismembered. In Comitán, meanwhile, an organization operates that kidnaps the beneficiaries of the federal Youth Constructing the Future program (that aims to stimulate job training of those who don’t study), “charges” them half of their monthly 3,000 pesos, retains the card and the boys have to go every month to pick up “their part.” Not a few have been recruited by their captors.
There is much more to say just about Chamula, the same as San Cristóbal, a municipality with which the Chamulans maintain a paradoxical symbiotic opposition (the population of indigenous [Chamulans] formerly displaced in San Cristóbal could soon be a majority). There are many testimonies in the city about the excesses and boasts of a criminal group called Los Motonetos, something more tan urban myth, which has already carried out a nighttime “protest” with, it is said, 300 motorcyclists without license plates patrolled by vehicles also without license, challenging the San Cristóbal government. Assaults and armed violence and are attributed to them.
Originally they would have been organized, different sources maintain, by the former Coleto mayor, Marcos Cancino, a businessman of the Green Party and an Evangelical, for territorial control. Now they seem to command themselves.
In Chamula attempts at kidnapping children and disappearances are repeated. The context includes an age-old practice of trafficking persons, both migrants (polleros) and for sexual exploitation, and more recently the local production of child and adult pornography, which is sold openly in the urban markets. Reported femicides whose authors are known remain unpunished. Not to mention drugs, a business known for years. A Tzotzil friend based in San Cristóbal transmits to me the impact that it caused him seeing some young indigenous women “like this, with their traditional clothes, inhaling cocaine in the street.”
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Originally Published in Spanish by La Jornada
Sunday, September 29, 2019
https://www.jornada.com.mx/2019/09/29/politica/005n1pol
Re-Published with English interpretation by the Chiapas Support Committee
The History of Dolores Hidalgo, according to Marcos
Marcos enters Dolores Hidalgo in August 2005 | Photo: Mary Ann Tenuto Sánchez.
[In August 2005, the community of Dolores Hidalgo, now one of the EZLN’s new caracoles, hosted a preparatory meeting for the Other Campaign. The late figure of SCI Marcos gave an opening speech that included the words below.]
Compañeros and Compañeras,
Now to finish our speech, I’m going to tell you a story. Zapatista compañeros and compañeras told me parts of it and other parts I saw and I experienced. If there are any imprecisions, let’s leave it to the historians to clarify. With its verifiable facts, its legends, its inaccuracies and its gaps, this is part of our history, the history of the EZLN.
This place where we are was a finca (estate) called “Campo Grande.” The history of this place is a squeezed synthesis of the history of indigenous Chiapanecos; and, in some respects, of all the indigenous peoples of the Mexican Southeast, not only of the Zapatistas.
“Campo Grande” did honor to its name: more than one thousand hectares (2, 470 acres) of good land, on level ground, with abundant water, roads especially made to take out cattle and precious woods, landing strips so that the owners don’t get dusty or muddy traveling over the dirt roads so that they could reach their small planes, and thousands of indigenous who they exploit, despise, rape, deceive, incarcerate and murder. Then, the agrarian reform of the PRI, of the institutionalized revolution, was concretized in Chiapas like this: the good lands on level ground to the finqueros (estate owners), the rocky lands and hills to the indigenous.
The owner of “Campo Grande” was Segundo Ballinas, known among the older inhabitants of these parts as a murderer, rapist and exploiter of the indigenous, principally of women, boys and girls. Then the finca was divided: one part was called “Primor” and its owner was Javier Castellanos, one of the founders of the Union of Property Owners of the Second Valley of Ocosingo, one of those associations with which the finqueros disguised their “white guards” (paramilitaries); the other part was called “Tijuana” and its property owner was a Mexican Army colonel, Gustavo Castellanos, who kept the people subjugated with his personal garrison. Yet another part was the property of José Luís Solórzano, a PRI member and its candidate to different positions, known in the area for his broken promises, his barefaced lies and his arrogant and derogatory treatment toward the indigenous. Thus, in these lands the Power in Chiapas was synthesized: finqueros, the Army and the PRI-Government. To that bad trinity, Chiapas could be a cattle pasture, a hacienda for exercising the derecho de pernada (the right of rape), even with little girls, a shooting range on human targets, and one of the laboratories of the most modern of the PRI’s “democracy:” here it was not necessary to know the candidates, not even their names, or their proposals, nor even know the date of the election, nor what the options were, nor having identification. Wow, it wasn’t even necessary to go to the polls.
In each electoral process, in the municipal headquarters (cabecera) of Ocosingo, on the premises of the associations of property owners and cattle ranchers, the day filling electoral ballots was paid for with sandwiches and a soft drink. Of course that “democracy” had its excesses: in some of the elections before 1994, the PRI obtained more than 100% of the vote. Perhaps there were too many sandwiches and soft drinks.
In an August like this one that receives us here, but in 1982, the finqueros (estate owners) and their white guards violently evicted the inhabitants of the Nueva Estrella village. They shot, beat and took the indigenous men prisoners. Some were murdered. The women were set aside and were obliged to watch as they burned their homes. They took everything away from them. In time they returned. Still, when someone asks them why they returned after everything they did to them, they respond with this gesture.
In 1994, on the first of January, thousands of indigenous people from this Tseltal zone, together with thousands more from the Tojolabal, Chol and Tzotzil zones, after 10 years of preparation, covered their face, changed their names collectively as the “Ejército Zapatista de Liberación Nacional” (Zapatista National Liberation Army), rose up in arms. The finqueros fled, their white guards did the same thing, and they left abandoned the weapons with which they sustained their domination. The Zapatistas recuperated the lands. Look: they didn’t “take” them, but rather they “recuperated” them. That’s what the compañeros and compañeras called this act of justice that had to wait dozens of years to complete. These lands that were indigenous lands and that were usurped, were now indigenous lands again. They have been, then, recuperated. The lands were distributed. Hundreds of indigenous families, who before were crowded into a space of 5 acres, founded, together with other landless indigenous people from other villages in the zone, this Zapatista town that today receives us. Those who were attacked by the finqueros in 1982, among others, now inhabit this town.
This new Zapatista town is named “Dolores Hidalgo” and, according to what the founders tell me, veterans of the ’94 uprising, the significance of “Dolores” is about the pain that we have from more than 500 years of resistance, and the name of “Hidalgo” is for Don Miguel Hidalgo y Costilla that fought for the Independence of Mexico.
Notice that they said “500 years of resistance” and not “500 years of domination.” In other words, despite the domination, they have never stopped resisting it. And when we talk about domination, that is, when we tell our history, we also talk about resistance. And now I’m not talking about our history as the EZLN, but rather about our common history, the one we share with you, with your organizations and your movements. Our common history is that, where anyone says: “I command and dominate,” we, you, we say: “I resist and rebel.”
But the Zapatistas that founded “Dolores Hidalgo,” don’t refer only to resistance. They also name her pain: the pain along the way, the pain of tiredness, the pain of those who betrayed them on the trajectory, the pain of defeats, the pain of mistakes, and, above all, the pain of going forward despite all the pains.
You will tell us about your history as an organization and as a movement, about your pains, about your resistance and rebellion. Surely, we will recognize each other in more than one story. Many of the others will seem alien to us. But we will learn about you in all of them. And we will say to you what we have already said to others: that we want to continue learning.
We will learn, with you and with many more like you, to think well, to say well and to feel well when we say: “compañero, compañera.”
Welcome Compañeros, welcome compañeras!
Muchas Gracias,
Subcomandante Insurgente Marcos
August 20, 2005
http://enlacezapatista.ezln.org.mx/2005/08/20/palabras-de-inicio-reunion-dia-20-agosto/
English interpretation by the Chiapas Support Committee
Conservatism and the anticapitalist left
Maya Train | Tren Maya
By: Gilberto López y Rivas
Given the repeated use of the terms “conservative” or “conservatism” to identify the anticapitalist left, branded as “radical” by opinion writers that boldly defend the current government, it’s necessary specify their multiple meanings, which today refer, in the ambit of politics, to the positions and organizations of the right or the extreme right, supporters of the status quo and enemies of all revolutionary transformation, especially, of a Marxist or socialist character.
Historically, opposition to the French revolution and the Enlightenment, which fought for the restoration of the old regime, gives rise to the use of “conservative” and “conservatism” for identifying this socio-political sector, with peculiarities in different geographical-temporal contexts. In Latin America, starting with the independence movements, conservatism or conservative parties, were usually characterized by nostalgia for the colonial regime, maintenance of rigid hierarchical systems of class and cast and the extreme defense of the properties, authorities and canonry of the Church and the Army.
Thus, it is a contradiction, both historical and conceptual, to seek to pretender classify the anticapitalist left as conservative, when in reality it constitutes its antipode. We are facing the classic Manichaeism of constructing an adversary so that, in reference to the government of the Fourth Transformation (4T), without evidence or arguments, it equates the anticapitalist opposition with that of the old PRI and PAN party structure, holding that the left hides (sic) “behind its radicalism, goals similar to conservatism.”
The problem lies, jointly with these conceptual “licenses” and Manichaeism, in the absence of an in-depth analysis about the nature of the changes that are occurring in the first months of the current government that, according to the 4T legal counsel, represent a rupture with neoliberal policies. As the EZLN and the National Indigenous Congress-Indigenous Government Council (Congreso Nacional Indígena–Concejo Indígena de Gobierno) have reiterated, the megaprojects underway, the so-called Maya Train, the dry canal on the Isthmus of Tehuantepec (with its railroad lines for containers, industrial corridors, real estate and tourist development, and the certain ethnocide and ecocide damages), the Morelos Integral Project (with the opening of obsolete hydroelectric plants and gas pipelines, and marked with the death of Samir Flores Soberanes and the criminalization of opponents),the new metropolitan airport in military hands, the permanence of mining concessions that cover at least one third of the national territory, etcetera, not only do they represent a line of continuity with the neoliberal policies of past six-year term, but even go beyond what these governments imposed as managers at the service of capitalist corporations. We recall that the Tehuantepec dry canal, with its development plans for the Central American nations was the famous Plan Puebla Panamá, re-baptized the Mesoamerica [project], and that the Morelos Integral Project was also taken from the trunk of previous administrations.
Neoliberalism is characterized, precisely, for wanting the State to act as an efficient mechanism of intermediation that facilitates the process of re-colonization of territories and, in this direction, the fight against corruption and the thinning of government structures, although always positive in the terrain of the national imaginary of indignation given the impunity of the ruling class in the looting of the treasury, paradoxically constitute a factor in favor of Mexico among the national states in competition for a position in the expedited and effective implementation of the neoliberal projects, like those undertaken by the 4T.
The anticapitalist left (yes, radical, but not as a disqualifying adjective, but rather for its analysis that gets to the root of the problems caused by the systems of exploitation and domination of the current phase of necrophile militarized accumulation) does not yearn for the previous governments, which it fought and resisted for decades, at the expense of human lives and suffering that make Mexico one of the worst humanitarian catastrophes on the planet. This left does not seek the human face of capitalism nor does it aspire to be the beneficiary of client and corporate programs that individualize and fragment the communities. On the contrary, it pronounces in favor of the strengthening of its autonomous processes of defense of Mother Nature and her vital resources, in favor of critical (not conformist) thought, with the awareness that it again faces a bad government that insists on declaring war on the original peoples, while validating supposed constitutional recognition of self-determination.
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Originally Published in Spanish by La Jornada
Friday, August 23, 2019
https://www.jornada.com.mx/2019/08/23/opinion/018a1pol
Re-Published with English interpretation by the Chiapas Support Committee
They broke the siege and extended their autonomous territory!
Zapatista community life.
By: Gilberto López y Rivas
On August 17, 2019, the insurgent subcomandante Moisés, spokesman of the Zapatista Army of National Liberation (EZLN), published a historic communique in which this organization is accountable to the CNI-CIG, its spokeswoman, organizations, collective groups and people from Mexico and the world, “who care about the Zapatista peoples and continue with their hearts beating next to ours”.
In this document -ignored, minimized or misrepresented by the mainstream media and the political class as usual – it is recalled that three years ago, the peoples organized in the National Indigenous Congress, together with the EZLN, faced with recolonization and the humanitarian catastrophe of capitalist corporations and bad governments, pledged to go on the offensive in defense of territory and Mother Earth, and to spread the word and action of resistance and rebellion.
In fulfillment of the committed word, an ethical practice that characterizes the Zapatistas, he communicates that, like the CNI-CIG, the EZLN “went on the offensive in its fight for the word, the idea and the organization,” announcing extraordinary news for the emancipatory movements in the planetary sphere: the rupture of the counter-insurgency siege and the establishment of “new caracoles and more autonomous Zapatista rebel municipalities, in new areas of the Mexican southeast.”
These new rebel self-governments do not constitute a coup or media shows such as those frequently observed in the honorable Congress of the Union or in presidential morning press conferences, but the product of “years of silent work, despite the siege, despite the campaigns of lies, in spite of the defamations, in spite of the military patrols, in spite of the National Guard, in spite of the counterinsurgency campaigns disguised as social programs, in spite of the oblivion and contempt (…) Although slowly, as it should be according to their name, the five original caracoles were reproduced after 15 years of political and organizational work; the MAREZ (Municipios Autónomos Rebeldes Zapatistas) and their Good Government Juntas also had to raise and watch them grow. Now there will be 12 caracoles with Good Government Juntas.”
With this transcendent step, the Zapatista Mayas endorse the essential principle of the autonomous strategy: “We knew and we know that our freedom will only be the work of ourselves, the original peoples”, and, in that direction, they identify as a crucial factor in this exponential growth the political organizational work and the example of women, men, children and elderly Zapatista support bases, in an outstanding way, of the women and young Zapatistas. In the other equidistant pole of the passive subject who receives individualized and clientelist governmental help, in the Zapatista experience: The compañeras of all ages mobilized to talk with other sisters with or without organization. The young Zapatistas, without abandoning their wishes and desires, learned about science and the arts, and spread it to more and more young people. Thus, the EZLN can affirm, without sorrow and with pride, that the Zapatista women not only go forward to, like the Pujuy bird, mark the way for us and not get lost; they also go on the sides so that we do not deviate; and in the back so we don’t delay.
In their communique they ratify the critical position against the policy of the Fourth Transformation, which they describe as destructive of the community and nature, and point out that: “traditionally partisan communities have been hurt by the contempt, racism and voracity of the current government, and have gone into open or hidden rebellion. The one who thought that, with his counterinsurgency alms policy, he would divide Zapatismo and buy the loyalty of non-Zapatistas, encouraging confrontation and discouragement, actually gave the missing arguments to convince those brothers and sisters that the land and nature must be defended. The bad government thought and thinks that what people expect and need are monetary alms.
This prolonged process of reflection and search, with thousands of community assemblies, in which politicized and motivated autonomous subjects are forged in “govern by obeying” (mandar obedeciendo), is really constituted in a transformation of revolutionary scopes to which, again, without avant-garde or hegemonism, the Zapatista Mayas summon us with their example. Let Caracoles and Autonomous Resistance Centers sprout throughout the national and world geography!, with autonomous processes from below and to the left, anti-capitalist and anti-patriarchal, to make possible, in our realities, that concrete utopia built by the Zapatista brothers and sisters. It is time to break our sieges, to be another of the mallets that will tear down the walls, of the many winds that will sweep the earth, another of the many seeds from which other worlds will be born!
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Originally Published in Spanish by La Jornada
Friday, September 13, 2019
https://www.jornada.com.mx/2019/09/13/opinion/020a2pol
Re-Published with English interpretation by the Chiapas Support Committee
INVITATION TO THE SECOND INTERNATIONAL GATHERING OF WOMEN WHO STRUGGLE
ZAPATISTA NATIONAL LIBERATION ARMY
MEXICO
September 2019
To women who struggle all over the world:
Sister, compañera, woman in struggle:
We send you greetings, from the indigenous and Zapatista women that we are.
Perhaps you remember that at our First Gathering, we made an agreement that we must live. We see of course that the killing and disappearance of women continues—of women of all ages and social positions. We are killed and disappeared because we are women, and then told it is our fault, and that these things happen because of how we were dressed, because of where we were walking, because we were out at certain hours in certain places. Both men and women in the bad government utter such stupidities to imply that we shouldn’t go out at all. According to this mindset, women should be shut up in their homes; they shouldn’t go out, shouldn’t study, shouldn’t work, shouldn’t enjoy themselves and shouldn’t be free.
We see clearly that the capitalist and patriarchal system is like a judge that has declared us guilty of being born women and sentenced us to violence, death, or disappearance.
It’s hard to put it into words, sister and compañeras, it’s like an evil so great that it can’t be named. Now they call it “femicide” or whatever but the name doesn’t change anything, the deaths and disappearances continue to accumulate. And then our families, friends, and acquaintances have to fight so that we are not effectively killed and disappeared all over again when our murderers go unpunished, or when it is said that we were merely victims of bad luck; or worse, that we were asking for it.
Sister, compañera, this is extreme stupidity. We fight against discrimination at home, in the street, at school, at work, on public transportation, against both those people we know and those who are strangers, and on top of that they want to tell us we’re asking for it, that we are at fault for dying. No, we aren’t dying, we are being raped, murdered, cut up, and disappeared. Anybody who faults us is sexist, and even women can demonstrate sexist thinking.
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Compañera, sister, given that at the First Gathering we made an agreement to live, now we have to evaluate what we have done or not done to honor this agreement.
Thus we are calling for a Second International Encounter of Women Who Struggle, focused on one theme only: violence against women. We want to address this theme in two parts: to denounce the violence and to discuss what we are going to do to stop the massacre. So we invite you sister, compañera, to come meet with us so that we may together express our rage and state clearly what is happening to us all over the world.
We think this is important because we see that they try to scatter our pain: they talk about a woman raped somewhere, a woman beaten somewhere else, a woman disappeared over there, a woman murdered over here. They do that so that we think this is the problem of some woman somewhere out there, but that such a thing wouldn’t happen to us, that the problem isn’t that serious and that the bad governments will handle it.
But that’s not true—it will happen to us or to someone close to us, and it is a serious problem, very serious, and the bad governments are not going to do anything other than make declarations and insist that they are going to find the culprits. But by culprits they don’t mean the murderers, rapists, or kidnappers; they mean the women who break windows or graffiti statues out of rage.
That’s how the patriarchal capitalist system works, sister, compañera: a piece of glass or a wall with graffiti are more important than the life of a woman. This simply cannot continue.
We want to tell you about a time, years ago, before our uprising and the beginning of the war against oblivion, when here on the plantations a chicken was worth more than a woman. Hard to believe? Well that’s how it was, that’s what the plantation owners themselves used to say. Now, shocked and scandalized by a broken window and a graffitied wall, they say even worse things about us women. The truth is that not only are we raped, killed, and disappeared—that’s true—but also that we are not going to be quiet, obedient, and well-behaved as if nothing is wrong.
We are attacked so consistently that it would seem to be good business for the system: the more women murdered, raped, beaten, or disappeared, the more profit produced. Maybe that’s why they don’t stop the war on women. There is no other way to explain that every day more women are killed or disappeared all over the world and the system just calmly and happily marches on, paying attention only to its bank accounts.
Could it be that if we live, that if we are not abused and brutalized, that business goes down the drain? It seems like we need to analyze if profits for big capitalists increase with the number of brutalized women in the world, if the number of beaten, disappeared, and murdered women comes out about even to their millions of dollars or euros or whatever currency. We say this because we know very well that the system only cares about whatever affects its profit margin. We also know that the system profits off war and destruction. So we think that our deaths, the violence we suffer, are profitable for the capitalist, and that our lives, our freedom, and our serenity come out as monetary losses for the system.
So we want you to come and make your denunciation, not for a judge or a police officer or a journalist, but so that you may be heard by another woman, by other women, by many women who struggle. That is how, compañera, sister, your pain will not be yours alone but will unite with other suffering, and from that suffering comes not only a very big and deep pain, but also a rage that serves as a seed. If that seed is cultivated with organization, then pain and rage can turn into resistance and rebellion, as we say around here, with which we stop waiting to see if we’re going to be personally affected and we start to do something, first to stop the violence against us, and then to win our freedom as women.
That is our experience and our history as women, as peasant women, as indigenous women, and as Zapatistas. Nobody is going to give us peace, freedom, and justice. We have to fight, sister and compañera, fight for and wrest our freedom from the ultimate Ruler.
That is why we say this focus on violence against women is not only to denounce it, but also to say what we are doing, what we have done, and what we can do to stop these crimes.
We know that as women we have many ways and forms of struggle, because we saw and heard you in the First Gathering. We know that some think their way is best, and that other ways are useless or wrong. It’s fine to debate these things, even without coming to any agreement.
But the problem that we as Zapatista women see is that in order to discuss and debate who’s more feminist than who, well we have to be alive. And the reality is that we’re being killed and disappeared.
So the invitation to this gathering is based on one theme alone: violence against women, divided into two parts, denunciation and proposals for how to stop this war against us. It’s not that we’re going to come to an agreement to all struggle the same way; we know everyone has their own ways, calendars and geographies. But listening to different forms of struggle can give us ideas for how to shape our own struggles, according to what we see works for us and what doesn’t.
The system would prefer that we limit ourselves to screaming our pain, desperation, anxiety, and impotence. It’s time to scream together, but now out of rage and indignation. And not each of us on our own, scattered and alone which is how they rape, kill, and disappear us, but together, from our own times, places, and ways.
What if, compañera and sister, we learn not only to scream out of pain, but to find the way, place, and time to scream a new world into being? Just think, sister and compañera, things are so bad that in order to stay alive we have to create another world. That’s how bad the system actually is, that in order to live we have to kill it off—not fix it up a little, or give it a new face, or ask that it be a little more considerate and not so mean. No. We have to destroy it, disappear it, kill it until there is nothing left, not even ashes. That’s how we see the situation, compañera and sister, it’s either the system or us. And it was the system that made those rules, not us.
We invite you to arrive to this gathering on December 26, 2019, and stay December 27, 28, and 29 of 2019, with the closing on the 29th.
The gathering will be held at the Semillero that we are going to call “The Footprints of Comandanta Ramona,” in the Caracol “Whirlwind of Our Words” in the Tztoz Choj zone (community of Morelia, Autonomous Zapatista Municipality in Rebellion [MAREZ] of 17 de Noviembre). This is the same place where we held the First Gathering.
You can arrive directly to the caracol where you will receive nametags and the program schedule and where the compañeras who are drivers will take you to the actual semillero where no men are allowed, even if they are good men or normal men or whatever men. By that we mean that men will not be able to see, even from afar, our gathering, because the semillero is surrounded by mountains.
Men may wait in the Caracol during our gathering, but only if they are accompanied by a woman who answers for them and who is responsible and accountable for any foolishness they commit. We’re going to call that place «mixed.» In other words, people who call themselves men and women can all be there. It just might be the case that a commission of Zapatista women attending the gathering in the semillero go to the caracol to talk to the men about what is being denounced at the gathering, so they know what’s going on. And assuming they have any conscience at all those men will go tell other men what was said, most importantly the key thing, which is that we’re not going to wait for them to understand or to behave or to stop fucking up, but that we’re going to organize to defend ourselves first, and then we’re going to change everything. And we mean EVERYTHING.
One more thing, compañera and sister, we’re also going to be reviewing what we didn’t do well in the First Gathering. That’s why we want to hold this one in the same place, to see if we can correct our errors.
Another thing we realized from the First Gathering is that in the registration and programming process there was some favoritism toward the submissions that were most in line with the thinking of those helping out with registration and programming, and that some women and activities were left out. That happened because those working on registration and programming prioritized the activities of those who thought the same way as them and then there wasn’t time or room for the others.
So that this doesn’t happen again, that some women are valued more than others, we Zapatista indigenous women are going to do everything ourselves, including the registration and programming. We’ve never done it before, but then again, we had never been drivers either and as you can see now we’ve learned how to do that. So we might mess up and the program might not work out perfectly, but that will be because we are learning and not because we like the women who think like us more than the others.
We are now organizing and distributing tasks so that we ourselves are organizing the gathering in its entirety. So when you send your registration email (we’ll tell you later where and when to send it), you’ll know that it is we as Zapatista indigenous women who are going to open your email and write down your name and your organization, or your group or collective if you have one, or just you as an individual, and we will send you a response so that you know we have you on the list. If your email says you want to do something at the gathering, we’ll put that on the program. That’s why we want to ask you to send your registration in Spanish, because our languages are of Mayan roots and while we know some Spanish we don’t speak other languages. If we mess up and don’t get your name down, don’t worry because you can register when you get here and we’ll give you your nametag for the Second International Gathering of Women Who Struggle.
Alright now you know the date and the place, and you can go about organizing yourselves to come or to send someone or to put someone in charge of reporting back to you what happened and what we said. Then even if you are far away, you’ll know that our duty as women who struggle is to not let that little light that we gave you go out. You’ll know that that little flame isn’t just for light, but to burn down the whole damned patriarchal capitalist system.
That’s all for now, sister and compañera. Later we’ll let you know when and where to send your registration email. For now you have the most important information: December 26, 27, 28, and 29, 2019, at the same place as the First Gathering, the very same place from which we write you these words and send you our embrace. That is…
From the mountains of the Mexican Southeast,
Coordinators of the Zapatista Women for the Second International Gathering of Women Who Struggle
Selva-Fronteriza Zone:
Marisol , Yeni, Mirella, Neri, Yojari, Arlen , Erica, Mariana, Mayder, Cleyde, Evelin, Alejandra and Nayeli
Chiapas Highlands Zone:
Yessica , Zenaida, Lucía, Teresa, Fabiola, Flor, Gabriela, Lidia, Fernanda, Carla and Ofelia
Selva Tzeltal Zone:
Dalia , Rosalinda, Marina, Carolina, Alejandra, Laura, Ana, Cecilia, Julia, Estefanía, Olga and Eloisa
Tsots Choj Zone:
Gabriela, Elizabeth I, Maydelí I, Elizabeth II, Guadalupe , Leydi, Lauriana, Aliz, Ángeles, Maydelí II, Jhanilet , Fabiola, Mariela, Daniela, Yadira, Yolanda, Marbella, Elena and Elissa
Chiapas Northern Zone:
Diana , Ximena , Kelsy, Jessica, Ana María, Marina, Valentina, Yadira and Elizabeth
Mexico, September 2019
Film screening: “The Wanted 18”
FILM, SPEAKER, POPCORN
SUNDAY, SEPTEMBER 29, 2019 – 5:30 – 8:00 pm
OMNI COMMONS, 4799 SHATTUCK AVE., OAKLAND CA 94609
Through a clever mix of stop motion animation and interviews, “The Wanted 18” recreates an astonishing true story: the Israeli army’s pursuit of 18 cows, whose independent milk production on a Palestinian collective farm was declared “a threat to the national security of the state of Israel.” In response to the Israeli occupation of the West Bank, a group of people from the town of Beit Sahour decide to buy 18 cows and produce their own milk as a co-operative. Their venture is so successful that the collective farm becomes a landmark, and the cows local celebrities- until the Israeli army takes note and declares that the farm is an illegal security threat. Consequently, the dairy is forced to go underground, the cows continuing to produce their “Intifada milk” with the Israeli army in relentless pursuit. Recreating the story of the “wanted 18” from the perspectives of the Beit Sahour activists, Israeli military officials, and the cows, Palestinian artist Amer Shomali and veteran Canadian director Paul Cowan create an enchanting, inspirational tribute to the ingenuity and power of grassroots activism.
Speaker: Palestinian activist Leena Dallasheh has been active in the struggle for freedom and justice in Palestine for many years. She will share her experience in this struggle and also thoughts about her time in the Zapatista Caracol of Oventik this summer. Ms. Dallasheh will also share some thoughts about common challenges indigenous peoples experience in both places, commonalities between the Zapatista and Palestinian struggles and the potential for solidarity work between the two.
Members of the Chiapas Support Committee will present information on the recent major expansion of Zapatista autonomy.
All proceeds from this event support the Zapatista communities.
Contact information: Chiapas Support Committee – enapoyo1994@yahoo.com
The Zapatistas announce a gathering of women who struggle
THE EZLN CONVOKES A GATHERING IN DEFENSE OF WOMEN
By; Elio Henríquez
San Cristóbal De Las Casas, Chiapas
The Zapatista National Liberation Army (Ejército Zapatista de Liberación Nacional, EZLN) convoked the second International Gathering of Women who Struggle, to be held December 26 to 29 in the Caracol located in the ejido Morelia, autonomous municipality of November 17.
In a communiqué signed by the Zapatista women coordinators of the gathering, it said that only one theme will be addressed: Violence against women, in two parts: “One of denunciation and the other about what we’re going to do to stop that massacre that they are doing to us.”
It added: “the killing and disappearance of women continues, of all ages and of all social conditions. They murder and disappear us because we are women.”
It remarked: “The truth is not only that they are raping, murdering and disappearing us; that’s so, but the truth also is that we are not going to stay as if nothing is happening, well behaved and obedient. They attack us so much that it even seems like it’s a business of the system. If there are more women murdered or disappeared or raped, then there are more profits. Maybe that’s why this war against women doesn’t stop.”
Therefore, it added, “it would also be necessary to analyze if, at the same time that the number of women raped in the world goes up, the profits of the big capitalists also go up. So many beaten, so many disappeared, so many murdered, equal to so many millions of dollars or euros.”
The coordinators of the gathering recalled that: “some years ago, before our uprising and the start of the war against oblivion, here on the fincas (estates) a chicken was worth more than the life of an indigenous person. You don’t think so? Well yes, that’s what the finqueros (estate owners) said. Now they are saying worse things about women, because they whimper and are scandalized by a glass and a spot that tells the truth.”
They warned that: “nobody is going to obtain peace, freedom, or justice for us,” rather “we have to struggle. That’s why the invitation is not only to denounce, but also to say what is done or what was done or what can be done to stop those crimes.”
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Originally Published in Spanish by La Jornada
Friday, September 20, 2019
https://www.jornada.com.mx/2019/09/20/politica/014n1pol
Re-Published with English interpretation by the Chiapas Support Committee
From the Notebook of the Cat-Dog:
Preparations for the Puy Ta Cuxlejaltic Film Festival, a CompArte Focused on Dance, and the Second International Gathering of Women who Struggle
Twenty-six years ago, in 1993, the Zapatista women wrote the “Women’s Revolutionary Law.” In one of the articles of the law, they declared they had a right to study… “and even to be drivers,” as noted by SupMarcos in a public letter commemorating the anniversary of the law and the role of the late Comandanta Ramona and Comandanta Susana in the creation of the women’s law. Maybe someday we’ll learn why the indigenous Zapatista Women aspired to be drivers. But for now, the EZLN’s Sixth Commission presents an exclusive preview of the documentaries to be premiered by the Terci@s Compas [Zapatista media] on a still to-be-determined date. Here goes:
Title: “…And Even of being Drivers”
A documentary filmed entirely in the mountains of Southeastern Mexico in 2019. Written, directed, and produced by Zapatista women, this documentary compiles scenes of Zapatista compañeras learning to drive. Duration: undetermined. Format: unknown. Rating: Z (as it should be). It won’t come out on Netflix, nor on Amazon Prime, nor on Apple TV, nor on HBO, nor Fox, nor…what are the other options? Well, not on any of those either. Nor will it be shown in theaters. It will be shown exclusively in the Zapatista Caracoles… Oh, also at the Second International Gathering for Women in Struggle? Should I include that? Got it. But without any date or location? Okay. But people are going to complain that I’m leaving them hanging. Couldn’t we at least give them a hint, like a road sign? No, not for the actual road, I mean like an idea of potentially when and where… in December? Of this year? Hello? Helloooooo? Feeling low? Huh, well it looks like they left, but I can tell you they don’t look low at all… in fact they had a glint in their eye, in their gaze, like a goal, or a challenge—a rebellion, really. A Zapatista glint, that is.
Disclaimer: no men were hurt in the production of this documentary. Well actually there were, but only in the form of a few blows to the ego. Oh, and also a few who fell as they were running away from a compañera who got pissed because they were yelling stuff at the women learning to drive… no, it wasn’t me, I was watching from a ways away, I wasn’t going to find myself in the vicinity of that piece of lead pipe she was carrying… yee-haw…
Apocalyptic Synopsis: A virus produced in the laboratories of the Illuminati is released in the mountains of Southeastern Mexico. For some strange reason, it only affects those law-breakers who call themselves Zapatista women. The virus causes them to do strange and illogical things—they rebel, they resist, and they take over jobs and responsibilities that should be the exclusive domain of men. This documentary compiles evidence of this insubordination, and you can see exactly how the Zapatista women consider themselves not only to be free but also—you’re not going to believe this—even to be drivers. Didn’t I tell you? Nobody has any values anymore.
“No Happy Ending” Synopsis: A group of indigenous Zapatista women cry “Enough!”, rebelling and declaring their desire to be free and even to be drivers. A group of brave and daring party-affiliated men decide to challenge them, mocking and threatening them, demanding they go back to the kitchen and dedicate themselves to raising children. Those transgressors of patriarchal (and transit) law confront the men. The men lose, the women win. That’s it. Sigh. That’s why I said there’s no happy ending.
“And They Kept At It” Synopsis: (from an unpublished interview with one of the experienced men drivers teaching the driving lessons): The compañeros giving the driving lessons had said that they were only going to teach the women to drive the small Nissan pickups most common in their communities, but the compañeras said no way, that wasn’t enough, that they wanted to learn the mechanical aspects, too. So mechanics lessons it was. So far so good. The real scandal broke out when they said that they also wanted to learn to drive the “Guardián” and the “Guardiana,” which are 6-ton trucks—monster trucks the compañeras call them. And there’s where you’re really in for it, as the defunct [SupMarcos] would say, because not just anybody can drive a 6-ton truck. Even the compañero drivers have to battle with anything over a 3-ton truck, those things are no toys. But we thought, okay, fine, let them learn to start the thing up and that’ll be sufficient. But it wasn’t; the women insisted on learning not only to drive but to perform maintenance on the 6-ton trucks. They wouldn’t settle for less. Now they want to learn to drive logging trucks that can carry whole tree trunks. Where are we going to get one of those? That’s way out of our league. And what if then they decide they want to drive semi-trucks and trailers? (…) I mean it’s true those trucks would be helpful to bring supplies into the caracoles—that’s where they’re going to hold the film festival, they said, as well as the women’s gathering. They also said they’re going to hold a CompArte especially for dance and for dancing. Oh no, not me. I only know how to dance the moño colorado [a cumbia], but other than that, especially those dances where they jump around like deer or hang from big pieces of fabric, forget it. Those people can tell you a whole story, all through dance. Nah, I don’t know how to zapatear either. Only in the mud, really, and even then only when there’s a flat tire and no other choice, you gotta get out and zapatear. Yeah, the Tercias women were there too, making a film about the women drivers. The Tercias were telling the women drivers that they had to make jokes or something so that the film didn’t turn out sad, because rebellion is joyful. The Tercias were trying to get the women to pretend to crash into things and that kind of thing. What’s that? Oh, well no, the part where the compañera ran us off the road wasn’t part of the joke, I think she was tired of our jokes and that’s why she about ran over us. We all ran, not away from the car but because we saw the look in the eye of the compañera who was driving and we knew she was pissed, but strangely, also smiling. The compañeras are very “other.”
“Fucking Men” Synopsis: It turns out that during the second round of driving lessons, the compañeras said that when they practice with the community vehicles in their towns, the party-affiliated men mock them and yell stuff at them. So they told us that we men who were teaching them to drive were going to have to do the same, yell and make fun of them, with the idea that the women would also be training themselves to handle that. That is, we were acting, at least that’s how Teresa and the Cochiloco explained it to us.
(Note: the writer is referring to the actress Dolores Heredia and the actor Joaquín Cosío and their respective roles in Capadocia and El Infierno. Zapatistas refer to actors and actresses in films by their character names, not their real names. In the first film festival in November of 2018, Teresa and Cochiloco each took time to talk privately with the insurgentas and insurgentes, while stuffing themselves with tuluc tamales. They answered all the questions they were asked. What the women talked about with Teresa only the women know. What we do know is that they finished off the tamales completely, they didn’t even leave me a single one. End of note.)
Anyway, so that’s what Teresa and Cochiloco were explaining to us, how acting works—that it’s not real but you have to pretend that it is. So that’s what we did. Some of the compas even acted like they were drunk, but it was all an act. But when that compañera came out with a piece of pipe, that wasn’t acting, we ran for real, because what if the compañera forgets it’s not for real and that we’re compañeros and she let’s us have it. I had told them to just use a piece of cardboard or a rolled-up magazine but what did they do? Grabbed a lead pipe. And that thing hurts. What? Well they looked pretty happy to me, like they realized they could do it—drive that is—not just talk about it but really do it in practice. Now, the problem is going to be in their towns. Imagine when the supply truck pulls up to the community driven by a woman. Just picture it! The party-affiliated guys are going to have to eat their words and the compañeras can finally yell at them, “fucking men!” What? No, we’re compañeros, those other guys are fucking men. It’s not the same thing.
“Infiltration” Synopsis: Don’t write this down, but the men who were teaching the women to drive, well, we were feeling a little down because we had taught them to change the oil filter. And one compañera, in her traditional skirt and everything, did it really quickly. Then we teachers had to go change the filter on a truck that belonged to the Junta [Good Government Council]. Sonofa… there were 6 of us, half an hour later and we still couldn’t figure it out. We were about to go ask the compañeras for help. Thank god we didn’t have to in the end, imagine the embarrassment. I hope that part doesn’t make it into the film the Tercias are making.
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A few reviews from professional critics:
“We macho men lost again, oh well. We’ll be back, even if there are fewer of us each time. If yesterday there were thousands of us, today we are a motley contingent trying to avoid the unavoidable.” SubMarcos (from 6 feet underground), from the culture section of the unpublished magazine, “Bitter Pozol.”
“All is not lost. We’re still holding out hope that the Tercias compañeras won’t finish the documentary in time for the second film festival Puy Ta Cuxlejaltic. What would Pedro Infante and José Alfredo Jiménez say?! Not to mention the deceased SupMarcos. My god, what an embarrassment.” SubGaleano in the section “Popcorn lovers of the world, unite!” from the exclusive film critic magazine, “I’ve Already Seen That One.”
I bear witness.
The Cat-Dog at the wheel… which one was the brake and which one the accelerator? Oops! Run!
A little while later…
Insurgenta Erika: “Compañero Subcomandante Insurgente Moisés, there is a report that the Guardian and the Guardiana crashed into each other; no one knows who crashed them, but it looks like the Guardiana hit the Guardián and put a hefty dent in his defenses.”
SubMoy: “Where is SubGaleano?”
Erika: “He ran off with the Cat-Dog. I think it was them because I saw in their eyes that they were guilty of something.”
Meanwhile, at the top of the Ceiba tree…
El SupGaleano to the Cat-Dog: “I told you to put it in neutral first. Man. Now all we need is for it to rain, and we’ll really be screwed.
The Cat-Dog to SupGaleano: “Woof, meow, grrrr.”
And it began to rain, hard, as if the clouds were yelling at the Earth:
Wake up!
From the mountains of the Mexican Southeast, Chiapas, Mexico, Latin America, World, in September of 2019, and yes, it’s raining.
The Isthmus is ours
The Isthmus of Tehuantepec
By: Raúl Romero*
The road from Coatzacoalcos, Veracruz, to Juchitán, Oaxaca, is a true postcard of the “capitalist war:” the imposing oil wells are the prelude to the wind parks and their gigantic mills. At different points on the road, immigration agents and the National Guard stop automobiles and buses in search of migrants. The scenario becomes more dramatic when one finds out that clandestine graves with human bodies have been discovered in the surrounding area.
Now in Juchitán, the cultural wealth of the Binnizá people (people that come from the clouds) contrasts with the dozens of homes destroyed as a result of the 2017 earthquakes that are still observed. In that region of the country where reconstruction has not been finished, there is already talk of the destruction that will sharpen with the Interoceanic Corridor on the Isthmus of Tehuantepec.
The Isthmus of Tehuantepec, which crosses from Oaxaca to Veracruz and unites by land in just 200 kilometers the Pacific Ocean with the Atlantic, is a strategic territory. Its importance reaches global dimensions: it is the gateway to what Pablo Neruda called “the waist of America.”
In the 19th Century, Great Britain and the United States attempted to take control of that part of the national territory, history that can be traced through the treaties of La Mesilla, Clayton-Bulwer and McLane-Ocampo. In the 20th Century and what goes of the 21st, as Luis Hernández Navarro has well documented in these same pages, presidents Gustavo Díaz Ordaz, Luis Echeverría, José López Portillo, Miguel de la Madrid, Ernesto Zedillo, Vicente Fox and Felipe Calderón tried to reactivate the project in different ways. Now, Andrés Manuel López Obrador takes up the initiative and promises a difference: there will be exploitation and dispossession, but without corruption from the government.
In the 2019-2024 Plan National Development Plan it defines the Maya Train, the Trans-Isthmus and the free zone on the northern border as: “regional development projects that act as ‘curtains’ for capturing the migratory flow in their transit toward the north.” In other words, the much longed for wall of Donald Trump.
Meanwhile, in the decree with which legal certainty is given to the Trans-Isthmus, only the ports of Coatzacoalcos, Veracruz, and Salina Cruz, in Oaxaca, as well as the railway connection between them are indicated. Nothing is mentioned about the businesses that the corridor will serve: agribusiness, manufacturing, real estate, mining, the expansion of wind farms and the modernization of a gas pipeline, nor about the Ixtepec airport and the Trans-Isthmus Highway. Nor is there any news about the environmental impacts of the entire project.
For the United States, the Trans-Isthmus Corridor is not only a migrant containment curtain: it is, also a trade route that reinforces the Panama Canal with South America and opens new routes with Europe and Asia. This, in full dispute with China and Russia, is also a privileged military position.
Seen alongside the other priority projects of the current government, the Trans-Isthmus Corridor is part of a network of interconnection and energy supply for the corporations that operate in the south of the country, the majority of them with private and foreign capital. These are located in special economic zones –that still have legal life– or in the routes that connect them. Thus, the current administration constructs infrastructure so that, by means of the Morelos Integral Project, the Trans-Isthmus Corridor and the Maya Train, capitalist companies are articulated in a complex network that goes from Morelos to Yucatán, passing through Puebla, Tlaxcala, Veracruz, Oaxaca, Chiapas, Tabasco and Campeche.
For the original peoples of the Isthmus and those who live in regions where these kinds of megaprojects are already being executed or will be executed, these ate also about initiatives that threaten their material and cultural reproduction. That’s why they are the main resistance: life is played out in them. That was the evaluation shared in the “national assembly between the peoples of the Nacional Indigenous Congress /Indigenous Government Council and the adherents to the Sexta, Networks of Resistance and Rebellion, organizations and collectives that organize and struggle against patriarchy, capitalism and the bad governments,” held on September 6, 7 and 8 in Juchitán.
More that 500 people, representatives of 22 free media and of 107 organizations and collectives coming from 17 native peoples, 22 states in Mexico and 18 countries attended said assembly. There they embraced the struggle of the relatives of the 43 Ayotzinapa students, the widows of the Pasta de Conchos miners, the compañeros of Samir Flores… There the resistances continued weaving a regional, national and international network that in the future proposes to stop the politics of death and destruction that comes with capitalism. They know that the path is not easy or short, but they also know that it’s the only one: changing everything that has to change, from below, to the left and collectively. For now that network has already launched its first cry in the region: the Isthmus is ours, not that of capital.
*Sociologist
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Originally Published in Spanish by La Jornada
Sunday, September 15, 2019
https://www.jornada.com.mx/2019/09/15/opinion/014a1pol
Re-Published with English interpretation by the Chiapas Support Committee
Chiapas Support Committee 