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AMLO in Guadalupe Tepeyac
Guadalupe Tepeyac 1994
By: Luis Hernández Navarro
The Tojolabal community of Guadalupe Tepeyac in Chiapas is emblematic. Not in vain, President Andrés Manuel López Obrador sent a message to the Zapatistas from there last Saturday. Before some 300 campesinos, the president expressed his respect for the rebels and called for unity.
The presidential appeal occurred in the context of an increase in the militarization of Zapatista territories. Moreover, the movement of troops into the community preceded the President’s arrival in Guadalupe Tepeyac. For two or three days before, the patrols increased in number and frequency. Soldiers came to speak with the hospital workers.
According to the Fray Bartolomé de las Casas Human Rights Center, since the end of 2018 the number of Army incursions into the seat of the Caracol of La Realidad doubled, including flyovers of communities. The actions of paramilitary groups that murder and displace the population also increased. The president denies that the Fray Bartolomé de las Casas denunciation is true.
To understand the symbolism of Guadalupe Tepeyac we have to do a little history. The ejido represented the hope for a peaceful and profound transformation of the country. But, it later became an emblem of government betrayal and repression.
At the root of the EZLN Uprising, the community functioned as the rebels’ informal capital, a symbol of the global revolt against neoliberalism. It was a kind of a libertarian Mecca to which political figures traveled to meet with the rebel commanders. As the President reminded, he was there years ago to converse with the deceased Subcomandante Marcos, now Galeano.
Located in the municipality of Las Margaritas, the Guadalupe Tepeyac ejido was founded in 1957. Four months before the 1994 insurrection, hundreds of Zapatistas without uniforms surrounded, without him knowing it, the then president Carlos Salinas, who was there to inaugurate a hospital to uselessly try to stop the armed uprising.
On February 16, 1994, its inhabitants, migrants that colonized the jungle, introduced themselves to the world during the delivery of General Absalón Castellanos Domínguez. In December of that year, the EZLN re-named it San Pedro Michoacán.
During July 1994, a ship painted with the colors of hope was built on these lands: the first Aguascalientes. In August of that year, around 6,000 delegates from almost the entire country held the National Democratic Convention (Convención Nacional Democrática, CND), an effort for transitioning to democracy and opening pathways to peace, convened by the Zapatistas.
The CND ship attempted to navigate in the waters of peaceful transition. However, it shipwrecked on February 9, 1995. That day, the EZLN awaited the arrival of the then Interior Secretary (and now the 4T’s Secretary of Education), Esteban Moctezuma, to continue talking about the peace process. Instead of the official, thousands of soldiers came to arrest Subcomandante Marcos. A betrayal! One of the rebels’ demands was a re-run of the Tabasco elections, in order to repair the electoral fraud perpetrated against Andrés Manuel López Obrador.
One day later, the Army entered the ejido. Fifteen minutes before 10 o’clock in the morning the first military helicopters were heard flying over Guadalupe Tepeyac, first four, then 20. Many of the men in the village had been in the jungle since the night before. Their orders were to retreat.
Minutes later, 2,500 soldiers arrived in about 100 armored and armed vehicles, with the support of planes and helicopters. Two hours later, General Ramón Arrieta Hurtado arrived, chief of the Parachutist Section and the one responsible for the operation. He found a desolate village, with part of its inhabitants sheltered in the hospital.
On February 23 and 24, 1995 dozens of soldiers under the command of General Guillermo Martínez Nolasco demolished the Aguascalientes. They built a military barracks in that same place that functioned until April 20, 2001. Guadalupe Tepeyac then became the incarnation of public shame. In response, the Zapatistas built five Aguascalientes in other regions of the state.
From which of the two Guadalupe Tepeyacs did President López Obrador send his message to the EZLN: from the symbol of emancipatory struggle or from the emblem of governmental betrayal? Imagine how it would be interpreted if Donald Trump were to send a message of friendship with Mexico from the Alamo!
In his speech, the President talked about the two ways to transform the country: the peaceful-electoral way and the armed way, and placed the EZLN as an example of the second way. Certainly, the Zapatistas rose up in arms and, thanks to that, the country turned to look at the indigenous peoples. However, ever since the truce was declared, although the rebels keep their weapons, they have not used them. Instead, they have turned to constructing an exemplary and unprecedented experience of self-management and indigenous autonomy. Precision is not artifice.
It’s important that the President speak directly to the EZLN. But it doesn’t seem like enough. To relax the relationship, other substantive steps in the right direction need to be taken.
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Originally Published in Spanish by La Jornada
Tuesday, July 9, 2019
https://www.jornada.com.mx/2019/07/09/opinion/017a1pol
Re-Published with English interpretation by the Chiapas Support Committee
Gramsci, Fanon and after
Antonio Gramsci
By: Raúl Zibechi
Not so long ago someone wrote that what’s important is not who speaks, but rather from where he does it. Recently I was able to understand the central aspects of the Antonio Gramsci’s thinking about the campesino communities of his native Sardinia, where I am participating in debates with the Coordination of Sardinian Committees that bring together 60 grassroots organizations.
The concept of “subalternity,” the founding of a whole anti-colonial theoretical current (although they name it in more sophisticated forms), would not have been formulated by Gramsci if he had not been born on an island colonized for centuries by foreign powers that converted it into an “exploitation colony.”
In lazy thinking, from which we are never safe, there is a belief that the whole West is a colonizer and the whole South is colonized. When in reality, there are peripheries in both parts of the world, and formidable resistances.
In 1906, when Gramsci was 15, Sardinia was shaken by workers struggles and campesino revolts, which were taking a stand about the strong North-South imbalances, the relentless repression implacable of the Italian State and a broad Sardinian movement that the youth carried in his suitcase and in his heart when he migrated to proletarian Turin. He was able to understand Soviet and campesino Russia because of his experience in Sardinia, including the role of intellectuals in the process of emancipation.
Although I was never affiliated with Gramsci’s thinking, due to prejudices and mistrust, I can see that he planted a milestone in critical thinking with his anti-colonial gaze and his commitment to the role of the “subalterns.”
The next stage, to say it in a mechanical and surely unjust way, corresponds to Frantz Fanon, in the period of decolonization and third world revolutions. If Gramsci owes part of his feelings and ideas to Sardinia, Fanon is indebted to the Algeria that rose up to shake off the French colonial yoke.
He understood as few did the “inferiorization” that domination provokes, because of his experience as psychiatrist in the Blida hospital and, later, in active militancy in the National Liberation Front to which he gave his life and his dreams. In this stage of critical thought, the subjects of de-colonization are those “most below,” campesinos and the unemployed, bearers of the collective energy that impels changes. He criticizes the role that the left, in the colonized countries, concedes to the working class, through the mechanical transfer of the experience in the metropolis.
Frantz Fanon
Those of us born to militancy in the 1960s are in deep debt to Fanon, since he could climb the most difficult slope, which led him to debate how to shake off the internalization of the dominator that has caused so much damage to revolutionary processes. This invaluable contribution alone should place him in a prominent place in our world.
But it’s in the third time when the most amazing and hopeful changes are recorded. It is the current moment, let’s say, the one that takes place since the end of real socialism and that has one of its centers in Latin America. Anti-colonial critical thought begins to get intertwined with anti-patriarchal thought, fertilizing a radical anti-capitalism, rooted in collective subjects that, from now on, we will call “peoples in movement.”
The concept came to me by means of a young Quechua student from Abancay (Peru), Katherin Mamani, in a debate in which we reject the Eurocentric idea of “social movement.” I mention it because it embodies the nucleus of the current moment.
First, it’s impossible to separate ideas from practices. The massive and constant actions of the peoples are the fuel of critical thinking, which becomes sterile when one only looks in the mirror of intellectual self-satisfaction.
Second, it’s the imprint of the women from below. This is so obvious that it exempts me from further comments. Although it would have to overcome the concept of thought when we refer to the word of the women that struggle, something that we are still far from achieving.
The third thing is that we are facing collective, communitarian thoughts, which make it almost impossible to determine who coined this or that concept, which overcomes patriarchal/colonial legacy inherited by the academies. Ideas that are germinating outside the institutions, although they always try to co-opt them, and that are the fruit of “sharing” among those below when they debate and fight.
Finally, the new developments are only valid if they show some usefulness for strengthening collective emancipations; and, above all, for constructing the new. Because what it’s about, besides putting limits on the projects from above, is constructing and creating life where the system, the right and the left, only produce death.
It’s not a little thing in the times that run. The path traveled in little more than a century is notable. We are facing collective thoughts that are born putting body to the system and its repressions.
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Originally Published in Spanish by La Jornada
Friday, June 21, 2019
https://www.jornada.com.mx/2019/06/21/opinion/016a2pol
Re-Published with English interpretation by the Chiapas Support Committee
Amilcingo obtains total suspension of the Morelos Gas Pipeline
No thermoelectric plant! No gas pipeline!
Last weekend, the Amilcingo ejido was informed of the total suspension granted by the Ninth District Judge in the State of Morelos about the operation of the Morelos Gas Pipeline. This is a victory that had not been obtained in the 7 years of the social and legal struggle against this megaproject and that our brother Samir promoted from the start in the community of Amilcingo. Now his struggle begins to have legal results to protect the community.
Not only is the community of Amilcingo protected with this suspension, but also the 60 communities affected by the Morelos Gas Pipeline, because by not being able to send natural gas through Amilcingo, the gas pipeline cannot operate in the rest of its trajectory to feed the thermoelectric plant in Huexca.
And even when in January 2019 the First Collegiate Tribunal in Administrative Matters in Puebla confirmed the injunction (amparo) for 4 communities of Atlixco to the effect that they must be consulted, there was no suspension of the Morelos Pipeline until now. With the present suspension, which would last for the duration of the amparo and the appeals that are impelled in it, the more than 80 communities affected by the Morelos Integral Project, we can have a new respite that we will not be dispossessed of our natural assets, health and security, unless the Federal Government intends to violate the federal judicial order and start, like previous governments have attempted, the operation of the Morelos Integral Project.
Despite the fact that there are 10 injunctions promoted by 11 indigenous communities that are members of the Peoples Front in Defense of Land and Water of Morelos, Puebla and Tlaxcala, where they claim violation of the right to self-determination of the Nahua peoples of the Volcano, despite the CNDH Recommendation 003/2018, wherein it documents violation of the right to a consultation and the lack of security of the Morelos Integral Project around the Popocatépetl Volcano.
None of the injunctions of the indigenous peoples or the CNDH Recommendation had sufficient force to stop the activities of transporting hydrocarbons that, according to the State, is in the social interest, even when there are imminent security deficiencies in its installation. Only the agrarian rights of an ejido, the Amilcingo ejido, have had sufficient legal force to stop this project, because the rights of an ejido still have a certain constitutional protection facing the danger of dispossession of their rights. That’s why in 2014 the Ejido Commissioners that didn’t fall into acts of corruption with the CFE, were persecuted, criminalized and incarcerated as in the case of Enedina Rosas in Atlixco, a prisoner for 11 months and the ejido commissioners of San Lucas Tulcingo and San Juan Amecac, legally persecuted for 4 years.
That demonstrates the lack of guarantees that the protection of indigenous rights has in our country, where the right to consultation is seen as a right that can be violated and that, once violated, there is no way of restoring and the communities have to subject themselves, like 500 years ago, at the yoke of the owner, of the badly named “progress.”
The total suspension is granted due to the illegal occupation of land that the Morelos Gas Pipeline carried out in the Amilcingo ejido, where the pipe was installed with the presence of the state, federal and army public forces, resulting in 5 compañeros shot on April 13, 2014. This suspension of the Morelos Gas Pipeline is added to the definitive suspension achieved by Huexca so that the Cuautla River cannot be contaminated with the water discharged from the thermoelectric plant, to the total suspensions of at least 3 ejidos of Ayala against the operation of the aqueduct and the amparo won in Atlixco by the 4 communities that set a precedent for the rest of the communities not consulted.
That’s why, even when the President of the Republic says that starting and imposing the Morelos Integral Project is pending, we say that what’s pending is that he listen to us publicly, clarify the murder of Samir, punishment of those responsable for torture, justice for those incarcerated and persecuted, dismantling of the shock groups and that our rights embodied in the San Andrés Accords are recognized and respected. Restoring the social fabric of our peoples is pending, respecting their autonomy and self-determination and punishing whoever may violate the rights of the indigenous peoples of Mexico, the poorest, the most dispossessed, the historical defenders and founders of this country.
We demand that the CFE, the President of the Republic and the companies involved in the transportation of natural gas in Morelos, respect the judicial decision and cease their intention to impose the Morelos Integral Project on Zapatista lands.
We hold the government and the companies responsible for any act of intimidation or repression that the communities affected and its defenders may suffer because of the PIM, either directly or indirectly by means of shock groups, criminals linked to the government and companies, criminalization or repression of any other kind.
Justice for the defender of territory and human rights Samir Flores!
Samir and Zapata live, the struggle continues!
Peoples Front in Defense of Land and Water Morelos, Puebla, Tlaxcala
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Originally Published by congresonacionalindígena.org
Tuesday, July 2, 2019
Re-Published with English interpretation by the Chiapas Support Committee
For life, peace and justice in the Mountains of Guerrero
We want a world where many worlds fit.
By: Gilberto López y Rivas
The National Indigenous Congress-Indigenous Government Council (Congreso Nacional Indígena–Concejo Indígena de Gobierno, CNI-CIG) and the Zapatista National Liberation Army (Ejército Zapatista de Liberación Nacional, EZLN) recently convoked the Campaign for life, peace and justice in the Mountains of Guerrero in order to break “the circle imposed by criminal groups that, allied with the bad governments, seek to end the power from below with terror and violence, because they know that is where they will be defeated.”
This call, of an urgent nature, urges carrying out the necessary actions, parallel and simultaneous, to dismantle the considered war of the powerful against the life of humanity and the entire planet, and what they call “the narco-paramilitary war against the peoples and communities that are members of the National Indigenous Congress.”
Last May 4, the Nahua councilor José Lucio Bartolo and the delegate Modesto Verales Sebastián, from the indigenous communities of Xicotlán and Buenavista, respectively, were kidnapped and murdered. On May 23, near Chilapa, Guerrero, two members of the community police of the Nahua communities of Tula and Xicotlán, Bartolo Hilario Morales (comandante), and Isaías Xanteco Ahujote, promoters of the Indigenous and Popular Council of Guerrero Emiliano Zapata (Concejo Indígena y Popular de Guerrero Emiliano Zapata, CIPOG-EZ) were deprived of their freedom, murdered and dismembered. In a comunicado, the CIPOG-EZ specifies: “It is important to point out that our murdered compañeros and their communities have been organizing their community police for years to resist the violence, extortion and imposition of poppy growing on the part of two criminal groups, the Ardillos and the Rojos, who control the municipal presidencies of the region, count on the Mexican Army’s complicity and that of state and municipal police…”
It’s clear to the CIPOG-EZ the relationship between the pro-development stance of the current government with its megaprojects, and the different types of armed actors that operate in indigenous territories, as well as the role of autonomy as an essential instrument of anti-capitalist resistance and rebellion: “The peoples, nations, tribes and indigenous barrios, are resisting not only the megaprojects with which the owners of power appropriate nature and land, but also against death, fear and desolation that their armed groups impose on the whole country. Although they may have the shirt of los Rojos, los Ardillos or the repressive forces of the bad government, the power of money and the ambition to make profits based on the suffering of the peoples, makes them the very same. Constructing that peace and autonomy for the peoples of Chilapa and the region is the horizon for which our murdered brothers struggle because of neoliberal capitalism.”
The CNI-CIG-EZLN is convoking a caravan that will depart from Amilcingo, Morelos, on July 12, and will spend July 13 and 14 in Acahuehuetlan, Chilapa, Guerrero. At the same time, it invites a collection of food, medications and economic resources in the places and the [bank] account of the CNI-CIG that they specify in the call. The purpose is to make visible the humanitarian crisis in entire regions, in which no food or medicines can enter, nor can they sow the land “given the risk of being killed on their plot, or keep their schools open for fear of a possible attack on our sons and daughters.”
But the war against the CNI-CIG not only takes place in the state of Guerrero. The strategy of irregular war described in the manuals of the Sedena [1] is applied throughout the national geography. In a letter against the militarization and in solidarity with the communities of Zapatistas and of the indigenous peoples of Mexico, recognized intellectuals of Mexico and global ambit, expressed their concern over the growing military activity in Zapatista territories, and they point out: “It worries us to find out about the recent homicides of members of the National Indigenous Congress and the Indigenous Government Council. The possibility worries us that this new administration, like its predecessors, liberal or conservative, once again place the indigenous peoples at the edge of extermination.”
Zósimo Camacho counts at least 117 members of the CNI murdered since its foundation in 1996, and he emphasizes: “Andrés Manuel López Obrador completes half a year of having assumed the Presidency of the Republic, a time in which 10 cases were added to the long list of murders and disappearances against indigenous activists of this organization (…) No one has been arrested for these murders and the investigations don’t advance. Death, so far in the “fourth transformation” has permission if we’re talking about indigenous peoples.”
Because of action or omission, the Mexican State should answer for these crimes.
[1] Sedena is the acronym for the Secretariat de Defensa Nacional, Mexico’s Defense Department
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Originally Published in Spanish by La Jornada
Friday, June 28, 2019
https://www.jornada.com.mx/2019/06/28/opinion/024a1pol
Re-Published with English interpretation by the Chiapas Support Committee
Surrendering to la migra, “the new normal” at the southern border of Chiapas
The Suchiate River is part of the almost 1,000 kilometers of border with Guatemala, seen yesterday from Tapachula, Chiapas. Photo: Alfredo Domínguez
By: Hermann Bellinghausen
Tapachula, Chiapas
In the shadow of the Viva México vehicular bridge, at this city’s northern exit towards Mexico City (in fact, towards the whole country), a group of seven citizens of India, young men, seated on the rails of the lower bridge over a stream that runs under the highway, wait docilely while they make room for them in a National Institute of Migration (INM) van, since the only one, for now, is completely full of migrants intercepted by the Federal Police and INM agents in plain view of three members of the National Guard (NG) wielding their weapons tranquilly. Or are they marines? These days you don’t know which one is which.
On the other side of the highway, half hidden behind acrylic shields and gray raincoats, a dozen members of the NG doze seated along the ample box of a truck belonging to the Military Police of the Navy Secretariat. They wait for their turn to monitor the immigration checkpoint, as along the entire highway towards Oaxaca, all public transportation vehicles are required to stop so that INM agents appear, scrutinize all the passengers and in case of suspicion ask for documents. The migra has been known for identifying Central American migrants (the least obvious) at a single glance.
It’s also true that many migrants travel willing to surrender and be taken to detention centers. This is usually the case for Pakistanis and Indians, generally men, traveling in groups.
A grilled INM paddy wagon arrives that is parked at the side of the full van. The agents open the front doors of the two vehicles, as a barrier, and transfer a dozen Central Americans to the paddy wagon, including a complete family from Honduras. They will be driven to the 21st Century Immigration Station. Immediately, Federal Police escort the young men from India to the interior of the recently vacated truck, to be taken at once to the detention center at the Mesoamerican Fair.
Given this endless movement of migrants lacking a visa, can we talk about normality? Routinely yes, although yesterday, perhaps due to the publicized deployment of the NG and the Mexican president’s visit on Thursday, is a rather “low” day, and even so interception of travelers is incessant.
The same thing can be said about the Chiapas border of the Suchiate River, especially in the early hours, when the night is barely ended. We’re not talking about a continuous flow, but there are always one or more inflatable boats with planks that transport citizens of Haiti (such was the case yesterday morning) or of any other origin. Most likely, these Haitians will spend the night inside the 21st Century Station (if they capture them or they surrender), or in the streets of Tapachula.
Meanwhile, outside the station, yesterday at noon a hundred Congolese and Haitians, including a significant number of pregnant women and small children, were hanging around, resting or making a line in front of the bars waiting for some document.
Such is the new every day life in the most important border region of Chiapas. But let’s not forget that the state shares around a thousand kilometers of land, river and lake border with Guatemala. According to what officials and observers predict, to the extent that the controls increase on the usual routes, migrants look for less obvious and more dangerous ways, like the Petén jungle, the Usumacinta River or the mountains to the north of the Soconusco.
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Originally Published in Spanish by La Jornada
Saturday, June 22, 2019
https://www.jornada.com.mx/2019/06/22/politica/004n1pol
Re-Published with English interpretation by the Chiapas Support Committee
Kana’antik k-lu’umo’ob: The Maya horizon
“Propose, don’t impose” is one of the 7 Zapatista principles of governing.
By: Francisco López Bárcenas
June 21 is a very important day for the Mayas of the Mexican [Yucatan] Peninsula. It’s the date on which the Saq’ Q’ij, known as the Summer Solstice among the mestizo population, an epoch that denotes clear, bright and resplendent days, when father sun stops his journey to announce the N’imla’j, the longest day of the year. Among the Mayas, the event is the occasion for big ceremonies and fiestas to thank the Sun God for all the wealth he has given, but above all so that the peoples are aligned with the stars and the energy they radiate and the world’s balance can continue. Perhaps that’s why, the peninsula Mayas say, three different events converged there last June 21 around an issue on which their future depends: the construction of the Maya Train.
One of those events was led by the President who, on a tour through the peninsula visited the three states that comprise it promising public works and delivering fiscal resources to beneficiaries of his social programs. It started on June 21 through the Yucatán and ended two days later in Quintana Roo, just the three days on which the Maya Saq’ Q’ij. In Yucatán he participated in a meeting called to inform the public about the benefits that construction of the Maya Train will have, only about its benefits, nothing about its negative impacts. That day 18 productive, cultural and ejido organizations and different collective made publics a manifesto, the product of two days of deliberation in the city of Merida, to analyze the Fourth Transformation government’s policy. In its conclusions, among other things, they noted:
“Waves of promises of change flow in the paths of our peoples, in our assemblies and our families; stories that talk about a bright future, about the arrival of development and the benefits to our communities with the Maya Train. The land of the Mayas on the Yucatán Peninsula is being, more than ever, offered and auctioned to the highest bidder, the one who deceives our people and ravishes and dismembers our territories with the zeal to increase their capital. Agro-industry, mass tourism, wind and solar megaprojects and the real estate developments grow enormously, repeating the dispossession and insatiably devouring life, our life. In this way, the project of ‘complete reordering’ of our Mother Earth is driven by foreign hands and seeks to change the face of the Yucatán Peninsula and its Maya inhabitants, still the legitimate and legal owners of the land that was recognized as theirs thanks to the struggle of our ancestors.”
Another group of Mayas met on June 21 in the municipality of Carrillo Puerto, Quintana Roo. Kana’antik k-lu’umo’ob, was the slogan under which they dialogued and according to one of the women participants, it means “preserving our territory.” There were axes of their discussion: the construction of indigenous autonomies and the defense of territory as a way of constructing a different future. Critiques of the governments surfaced everywhere, warning how quickly he is forgetting his campaign promises to run to the right of those who supported them because they believed his promises. Regarding the Maya Train, they regretted that the plan for its construction was not announced, that what mostly abound are rumors about the work and threats to the ejido owners to sell their lands, as happens in the areas surrounding the Bacalar Lagoon.
Given this situation, both meetings concluded that it’s necessary evaluate what they have and start from that to organize the defense of their existence that, according to their expression, passes through living with honor and dignity, something that doesn’t currently happen because everyone despises them and doesn’t take them into account for the construction of the future. Much’ Ximbal was heard around the venue where the meeting was held and everyone nodded because, they say, it means walking together. In order to achieve this they propose rescuing their culture and creating the conditions for it to flourish, so that the Maya peoples become strong again, defending what exists because they have constructed it with the wisdom of their grandparents, “with the tenacity and rebelliousness of the men and women who have permitted the maintenance of a culture around the Maya milpa, a generating and unifying space for our thought and our wisdom, food and reproduction of life; a universal referent of coexistence with the land and the source of family nutrition.”
Much’Ximbal and Kana’antik k-lu’umo’ob united and strengthened each other in the N’imla’j. United for the preservation of territory, form and essence on how the Mayas trace their horizon. A process very distant from the government actions of the Fourth Transformation proclaimed by the government, because it’s not the path of the peoples and no one has invited them to walk it. The Saq’ Q’ij, they say, sent its signals. It is up to men and women to know how to interpret them.
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Originally Published in Spanish by La Jornada
Thursday, June 27, 2019
https://www.jornada.com.mx/2019/06/27/opinion/024a1pol
Re-Published with English interpretation by the Chiapas Support Committee
Farewell to neoliberalism?
By: Raúl Romero*
Neoliberalism is a phase of capitalist social organization which, in a very general way, can be characterized by 1) the destruction or contraction of the social State; 2) the deregulation and expansion of the financial sector; 3) the extinction and privatization of state and para-state industries; 4) the liberation of borders to capital and the increase of immigration restrictions for people; 5) the adoption of “militarized security” models that guaranty the protection of the “strategic sectors” and regional integration; 6) the expansion of transnational corporations; 7) predominance of the extractive economies and of dispossession, and 8) the growth, on a global scale, of organized crime. Some of these phenomena are prior to neoliberalism, but they reach their predominance in this stage.
As in all social formation, in neoliberalism social relations and common senses are modified. Discourses that promote “entrepreneurship,” competition, efficiency and the effectiveness and that argue in favor of the private over the public fill neoliberal rhetoric. Rights are being replaced by “opportunities,” while asocial and ahistorical “explanations” are reinforced as responses to structural problems. These discourses are often accompanied by disqualifications against organizations of the peoples: los unions are the favorite adversaries, but also the original peoples that, in the language of the power, “refuse progress.”
Although capitalism in its neoliberal phase is a global system, it unfolds in different forms in different territories. In third world or dependent countries, the State is modified and the few social conquests are annulled to facilitate the process of accumulation of the imperial centers.
In the case of Mexico in particular, modification of the State included legal and economic reordering. In the economic it meant fiscal reforms, rationalization of public spending, commercial openings and an aggressive program of extinctions and privatizations of banks, credit societies, iron and steel, fertilizers, sugar mills, auto parts, trucks, bicycles, cinemas, airports, airlines, hotels, telephones and railroads. The data are very representative: of the 1,155 para-state companies that Mexico had in 1982, less than 200 are left today.
In legal matters, the reordering of the Mexican State translated into 86 constitutional reform decrees between 1982 and 2009 (See https://bit.ly/2UlJzhF), among which those in Article 27 stand out, which put an end to agrarian redistribution and social ownership of land, opening the way to the dispossession and privatization of ejido lands and natural resources; the reforms to Article 28, which expanded tax exemptions and allowed private investment in satellite communications and railways, and those of Article 3, which prioritized education as an individual right and not as a social right, while it opened the door for churches and entrepreneurs to intervene in plans and programs of study.
It’s also worth noting the counter-reform to Article 2 that, contrary to the agreements signed with the indigenous peoples, refused to recognize them as entities of public right with full right to the enjoyment of their territories, or the reforms to Article 123, which ended up leaving the working class totally helpless versus the ambition of employers and their new forms of exploitation.
As a result of the restructuring of the Mexican State, extractive economies and organized crime came to occupy key places, submerging our society in one of the most violent crises of contemporary Mexico. The thousands of people murdered and disappeared, as well as the dispossession and ecocide that currently characterize our country must be understood not as the result of corruption, but rather as the direct effect of neoliberal capitalism.
Is it possible that some of this will change in the short term? Sadly, no! The signals that the new administration gives point to neoliberal continuity, even though the president has decreed its end. We should no longer undertake a constituent process that, as happened in some Latin American countries, aids in discussing a new social pact. Nor is the suspension or renegotiation of the external debt or reversing the most significant counter-reforms, such as energy on the short-term public agenda. To the contrary: the dispossession projects, which also accelerate integration with the United States, have become a priority for the president.
Neoliberalism will not end by decree. Nor should we deceive ourselves with the nostalgia of a better past that didn’t exist for everyone. Limiting alternatives inside the margins of capitalism would be, besides suicidal, accepting “the end of history.” Re-discussing and proposing forms of social organization without exploitation or domination is urgent. A lot of political imagination and deep and critical study of past and present experiences would be required. Ending neoliberalism and capitalism will be the job of the peoples and their organizations.
*Sociologist
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Originally Published in Spanish by La Jornada
Sunday, June 16, 2019
https://www.jornada.com.mx/2019/06/16/opinion/010a1pol
Re-Published with English interpretation by the Chiapas Support Committee
Individualized support: counterinsurgency or social containment?
By: Peter Rosset*
The Mexican countryside is full of struggles and alternative projects. It has a long history of agrarian struggle, territorial defense, appropriation of productive processes and commercialization through peasant cooperatives and other forms of ejidal companies and social enterprise.
There is a rich community and organizational fabric, and many collective constructions of alternatives to the dominant capitalist model. It is regrettable that for AMLO and the 4T all this is reduced to the embezzlement of peasant organizations and their corrupt leaders. It is painting everyone with the same brush.
We can divide the peasant organizations into two broad categories: on the one hand, there are the Zapatistas and a significant part of the CNI and the indigenous movement, whose strategy goes back to the construction of autonomies. The Zapatistas, for more than two decades have rejected all government programs, because they think that resources corrupt and vitiate organizations, leaders and communities, and make people move only when there are money, dispensations, projects, candidacies, and positions at stake. The result is the demobilization and permanence of poverty. They say that a “new way of doing politics” is necessary, without the intermediation of money and other resources. That’s why they do not accept programs that qualify as “alms.”
On the other hand there is a wide range of organizations in dispute over public resources that demand “a budget for the agricultural sector”. They consider that because they are citizens and taxpayers they have the right to their fair share of State resources. They seek to strengthen the organizational, territorial, productive and marketing processes with investments and credits from the public sector. The relative historical success of the peasant-indigenous coffee sector is proof of this.
Within this category there are the good, the bad and the ugly.
However, the President effectively disqualifies all as corrupt. The policy of the 4T is based on this disqualification that AMLO does. The head of the Executive has promised “no más moche” (no more bribes) for the peasant organizations; that not a penny will go through the organizations; everything will be direct to families. In other words, only individual aid deposited in Banco Azteca plastic cards (http://tiny.cc/melf7y). Considering them incapable of building their own processes, this takes away the agency of organizations and peoples.
Now they will be poor in need of alms. It is a policy promoted by the World Bank for at least two decades, with two purposes: to reduce intermediary expenses and possible sources of corruption, and achieve greater social containment in the face of structural changes in favor of capital: land grabbing, mining, plantations, hydro and thermoelectric dams, etcetera.
Social containment, because the direct transfer of money demobilizes people. Who would go to a meeting of the organization if they have money in their pocket? This is a policy of organizational breakdown. (http://tiny.cc/r9kf7y).
A breakdown directed at the two types of organizations. Against Zapatismo and the autonomies because, according to them, money is the hook to “take away bases” from the autonomic movements. It’s an old counterinsurgency tactic. And it goes against cooperatives, social enterprises, alternative projects of other types of organizations. It will be the coup de grace for many organizational spaces in the communities and territories.
Calculated as a measure of social containment, because only with good organizational fabric would they be able to defend their territories from the “megaprojects of death,” such as the Trans-Isthmus Corridor, the Maya Train, the hydroelectric and thermoelectric plants, the mining concessions and other mechanisms of dispossession.
*Doctorate from the University of Michigan. Agro-ecology specialist
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Originally Published in Spanish by La Jornada
Saturday, June 1, 2019
https://www.jornada.com.mx/2019/06/01/opinion/012a1pol
Re-Published with English interpretation by the Chiapas Support Committee
Zibechi: The US-China war and the movements below
As Trump heads to Japan for the G20 and prepares to meet with Xi Jinping…
Chinese labor unions protest.
By: Raúl Zibechi
We are facing a war for global geopolitical supremacy, a technological and military war that assumes (for now) the form of a trade conflict. The hypothesis that we manage is that the war is going to deepen until skirting on the dangerous abyss of nuclear conflict, and that it will be the mark of the 21st century, since it will extend in time until one of the rivals (probably China) rises up with victory.
As the conflict between the declining power and the rising one that challenges it will dominate the worldwide and regional scenario in this complex historical period, it seems necessary to draw some general ideas that can orient us to those below. I don’t intend to establish “lines,” but rather to just sketch ethical-political horizons that I believe the so-called anti-systemic movements should debate.
The first is to consider that it is a war for the domination of the planet, not for the liberation of the peoples. We see that a part of the professionals of the left maintain that we must choose between the United States and the China-Russia alliance, because it’s necessary to defeat the former and walk hand-in-hand with the latter. On the contrary, I believe that although the hegemonic power is very harmful and must be confronted and defeated by the peoples in every place on Earth, we cannot lose sight of the fact that the other two nations are also imperialists.
Therefore, I think that the situation is more similar (not identical) to that which occurred in the First World War that to what happened in WWII. In this, the national interests of the then Soviet Union led Stalin to impose an alliance with the Western powers on the movements. Meanwhile, Lenin and the Bolsheviks, in the first war, came out in favor of “defeatism” of their nation, betting on converting the imperialist war (that’s how they defined it) into class war to make the revolution.
During the Second World War, the Chinese communists dared to challenge Stalin’s directives and took their own path, separated from the Kuomintang and from the Western powers and fought against them. Thanks to that line of action, they were able to win. In short, the forces of change must take advantage of the conflict between those above to make our own project advance, with autonomy, but without discarding specific agreements providing that they don’t neutralize us.
The second question is to learn from the experience lived by our peoples during the wars of independence. The conflict between creoles and Spanish (and Portuguese), supported by England, was resolved against the peoples that suffered as much, or more, with the republics as with the monarchies that colonized them. The defeat of the revolutionaries from below (from Tupac Amaru and Tupac Katari to José Gervasio Artigas, Tiradentes and Morelos), carpeted the installation of republics that put an end to the colony and opened the way to internal colonialism.
In not a few cases, the rebels from below were used as cannon fodder by the creoles to put into effect their own nation project.
The third issue revolves around what the new global hegemony represents: an impressive technological deployment of artificial intelligence and 5-G technology, which will have disastrous consequences as to the concentration of global power and in each country. The executive and artificial intelligence expert, Kai-Fu Lee, assures that this deployment “will produce unprecedented economic inequalities and will even alter the global balance of power.” (https://nyti.ms/2HLsysU)
Different from the industrial revolution and from computers, now some jobs will not be replaced by others, but rather “will bring with it the annihilation of jobs on a grand scale.” What will happen with those millions, to which are added those that already are unnecessary to capital, the very same China teaches, with its system of large-scale video-surveillance: an enormous mass of people subjected (the 9-9-6, they work from 9 am to 9 pm six days a week), controlled 24 hours a day.
The concentration of power will increase; China and the United States will be the big beneficiaries. But it calls to attention that the professionals only mention the Yankee companies (Google, Facebook, Amazon and Microsoft) and don’t cite the Chinese (Baidu, Alibaba Group, Tencent Holdings), or the concentration camps in the Xinjiang Uigur Autonomous Region, majority Muslim (https://bit.ly/2VPSM7s). In every nation the social divide will grow between those who have access to the new technologies and those who do not have access or do it in a situation of dependency.
The Chinese hegemony can be worse for those below, as is happening since the dawns of capitalism and modernity. Believing that Yankee hegemony made us freer than that of the British, and that this was more beneficial than the Spanish, is like looking at the world from the side of the privileged. Recent history teaches us that among those who struggle, one part aspires to insert itself well above and to the right.
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Originally Published in Spanish by La Jornada
Friday, May 24, 2019
https://www.jornada.com.mx/2019/05/24/opinion/018a1pol#
Re-Published with English interpretation by the Chiapas Support Committee
CNI-CIG-EZLN CALL TO JOIN THE CAMPAIGN FOR LIFE, PEACE AND JUSTICE IN THE MOUNTAINS OF GUERRERO
The peoples, communities, nations, collectives, neighborhoods, and native tribes that make up the National Indigenous Congress and the Indigenous Governing Council, as well as the Zapatista National Liberation Army call for actions to dismantle the ongoing war by the powerful against the life of humanity and the entire planet. More specifically, we call for actions that will dismantle the structure and paramilitary siege that maintains the ongoing violence against our peoples who, with dignity, have decided to confront and end that structure.
For this reason and:
- Considering that the capitalist narco-paramilitary war that is conducted with the complicity of the bad government and criminal gangs against the peoples and communities that belong to the National Indigenous Congress is expanding throughout much of the country, and that today, through terror, these actors threaten to exterminate the life and peace that we defend so that they can complete their violent neoliberal projects.
- Considering that the impunity continues for the cowardly assassination of our brother Samir Flores Soberanes from the Nahua indigenous community of Amilcingo, Morelos, and that the intentions of the big moneyed interests to complete the criminal thermoelectric project in Huexca, Morelos remain unchanged.
- Considering that the Indigenous and Popular Council of Guerrero-Emiliano Zapata (CIPOG-EZ), who are members of the CNI-CIG, have made a call to break the narco-paramilitary siege that criminal organizations have imposed on the low mountains of Guerrero.
- Considering that the permanent aggression against our compañeros is creating a humanitarian crisis, it has made the introduction of food and medicine to the region difficult, it has made it nearly impossible for people to work their land due to the fear that they will face assassination in their fields, and it has made it so that these communities cannot open their schools for fear of a possible attack on our children.
WE CALL ON
Networks of support for the Indigenous Governing Council
Networks of Resistance and Rebellion
The National and International Sixth
Human rights organizations and networks and
On conscious civil society in solidarity to participate in:
THE CAMPAIGN FOR LIFE, PEACE AND JUSTICE IN THE MOUNTAINS OF GUERRERO
The campaign will be leaving from the Indigenous Nahua community of Amilcingo, Morelos on July 12, 2019 and will arrive in Acahuehuetlan, municipality of Chilapa, Guerrero where it will remain on July 13 and 14.
Along with this initiative, we call for parallel and simultaneous actions in every organizational space possible that will help put an end to the capitalist war against the peoples of Guerrero. With these actions we will break through the siege imposed by these criminal gangs who, along with the bad government, hope to put an end to the power that we have below through terror and violence. They do this, because they know that is where they will be defeated.
We call on everyone to participate in the COLLECTION OF FOOD, MEDICINE, AND ECONOMIC RESOURCES THAT WILL TAKE PLACE AT CALLE DR. CARMONA Y VALLE NO. 32, COLONIA DOCTORES, CUIDAD DE MEXICO, BETWEEN THE HOURS OF 10:00 AND 17:00 IN THE AFTERNOON.
We would also like to invite people to make donations directly to the bank account of the National Indigenous Congress. THIS ACCOUNT IS UNDER THE NAME OF ALICIA CASTELLANOS GUERRERO, AT THE BBVA BANCOMER BANK, ACCOUNT NUMBER 0471079107, CLABE BANCARIA [Standardized Bank Code] 012540004710791072, SWIFT CODE BCMRMXMM, ABA [Routing number]: 021000128. PLEASE SEND A COPY OF THE DEPOSIT SLIP WITH YOUR NAME, TELEPHONE NUMBER AND ADDRESS TO THE FOLLOWING EMAIL: aliciac.2145@gmail.com; with a note that you would like your donation directed to the communities that belong to the Indigenous and Popular Council of Guerrero-Emiliano Zapata (CIPOG-EZ).
All of the money that is raised will be managed directly by the Indigenous and Popular Council of Guerrero-Emiliano Zapata (CIPOG-EZ) and distributed according to their collective agreements.
In sum, our call is to defend our collective life and existence. We will not resist by simply waiting for death. On the contrary, we will reconstruct the ancient world, the present, and the future that will defeat this offensive against our existence, because the life of the world, of our mother earth, and of our indigenous peoples is non-negotiable.
Sincerely,
For the Full Reconstitution of Our Peoples
Never Again a Mexico Without Us
June 2019
National Indigenous Council
Indigenous Governing Council
Zapatista National Liberation Army
TO DONATE
The Chiapas Support Committee is accepting donations to add to our own donation to this campaign. If you would like to respond to the above request with a contribution, you can do so via our PayPal donate button. Contributions will be acknowledged. You can also mail a check payable to the Chiapas Support Committee to the address below. Deadline for receiving donations, which will be sent by wire transfer to the above-mentioned CNI account, is July 1, 2019.
Chiapas Support Committee
PO Box 3421
Oakland, CA 94609
Chiapas Support Committee 