San Marcos Avilés: Forced Displacement and the Hope of Solidarity

San Marcos Avilés: Forced Displacement and the Hope of Solidarity

Human rights organizations and solidarity activists warn that the Tzeltales of San Marcos Avilés are at risk of a displacement equivalent to that of 2010.

Published by Nacla: https://nacla.org/Zapatista-Displacement-and-Solidarity

For the Zapatista support bases of San Marcos Avilés, the nightmare of displacement has no end. After the end of the international campaign which had prevented the evictions, the government and the political parties renewed the threat, and there are now again fears of an imminent displacement.

The ejido San Marcos Avilés is located in a mountainous region of the official municipality of Chilón, in the Highland region in the north of Chiapas. The population of around 140 families of indigenous Tzeltales grows maize, beans, coffee, sugar cane, and bananas, and keep a few cattle, horses, pigs, and chickens. Within the community live families of Zapatista bases of support (BAZ) alongside supporters of the Mexican political parties of the Institutional Revolutionary Party (PRI), the Party of the Democratic Revolution (PRD), and the Green Party of Mexico (PVEM).

On the morning of Saturday February 23, 2013 came the news those in solidarity with the Zapatistas throughout the world had feared to hear again: “Urgent: Imminent risk of forced displacement of the support bases of the Zapatista Army of National Liberation in the San Marcos Avilés ejido.” This article will try to give the background to the nightmare situation which has been endured by the BAZ of this community since 2010, and to show the difference that international solidarity can make at a time of a resurgence of the Zapatista movement.

The eviction

In August 2010, as part of the Zapatista Autonomous Rebel Education system and their fight for dignity, freedom, and justice, the BAZ of San Marcos Avilés constructed their own autonomous school, “Emiliano Zapata.” Education is one of the main pillars of Zapatista autonomy and self-determination, since it is completely independent from the state. Their autonomous schools are non-hierarchical and rooted in local indigenous culture and worldviews. Education is seen as a fundamental right of the people and a form of resistance. “We want a good education for our children,” say the BAZ about the foundation of the school, “good learning, a good example. We see that the government has its schools, but it is not good education, nor do they teach our children well; they do not provide good learning, and what they teach has nothing to do with us. So we opened our school.”

A group of the political party supporters in the community, in conjunction with the local police and authorities, began acts of aggression, harassment, and intimidation as soon as the building of the school started. These acts included the theft and destruction of food and belongings, physical and death threats, and land grabs. Within days 29 hectares of land and crops had been stolen from the BAZ. Less than three weeks after the construction of the school, 30 heavily armed men affiliated with the PRI, PRD, and PVEM broke into the houses of the Zapatistas and attempted to rape two women. They displaced 47 men, 50 women and 77 children who, so as not to respond to this aggression, took refuge in the woods and in the mountains, where they remained without food or shelter for 33 days—enduring cold, wet, and hunger, forced to sleep in the mud under plastic sheeting. “They treat us like animals, like dogs. This is what I felt when my son was born on the mountain,” said one of the women.

The return

Supporters from throughout the world mobilized quickly in response to the eviction and organized a solidarity caravan to bring food, clothing, blankets, and medicine to the displaced people. After an accompanied return to the community on October 12, 2010, the BAZ found that the aggressors had looted their homes and stolen their possessions, taken over their lands, broken down their fences, killed their animals, and burned their crops. Moreover, the death threats, bullying, and harassment from the political party supporters continued, preventing members of the community from performing their daily activities, and severely undermining their mental and physical health. The attacks can be clearly seen as another attempt to put an end to the Zapatista autonomous process and force the BAZ to give up the struggle and submit to the projects of the “bad government.”

The JBG of Oventic, Caracol II made a statement: “If anything happens to our brothers and sisters now that they are back in their community, it will be the municipal, state, and federal governments who are responsible, by advising, financing, and arming paramilitaries and manipulating the poor and miserable.

“We the Zapatistas do not bother anybody, we do not evict our compas from the political parties, we do not persecute anyone, we do not steal the land of our brother and sister farmers, nor do we take any other property from other poor people; we only defend what is ours, what are our rights; we live and eat through our own work and sweat, and we want to fight for true democracy, freedom, and justice for everyone. These are our crimes as Zapatistas”.

An enduring nightmare

In August and September 2011, an Observation and Solidarity Brigade visited this and other threatened communities and reported acute malnutrition and an outbreak of fever which took the life of a child. One member of the brigade explained, “The women in particular express the suffering resulting from their displacement, and the pain caused by having no security of any kind, either for themselves, or, above all, for their children. As a direct result of asserting their legitimate right to education, they do not have food, shelter, or water for their children.”

However, they also commented: “We see that, in fact, the Zapatista autonomy project asserts the rights that are enshrined in the declarations, conventions, and treaties relating to the rights of indigenous peoples, especially those relating to autonomy and free determination. We witnessed terrible humiliations perpetrated by the bad government, but we also saw with our own eyes that despite the threats of repression, suffering, pain, and poverty, not one of the compañeros wants to give up. This belief in the process of liberation means that the Zapatista movement is stronger than ever.”

A second displacement?

Threats of another displacement, by the same armed actors, remained recurrent. As a result, in November 2011, the Fray Bartolomé de las Casas Human Rights Center (Frayba), in conjunction with Movimiento por Justicia del Barrio, an organization of Mexican migrants struggling for dignity and against displacement in New York, issued the “Worldwide Declaration in Support of the Zapatista Support Bases of San Marcos Avilés,” which groups, individuals, and organizations from all corners of the world signed. Over 1,000 protestors from Occupy Wall Street signed a further Declaration of Support.

Then, in 2012, the situation of threats and aggressions intensified to the point that the BAZ sent out an urgent call for help to the national and international community. Movimiento por Justicia del Barrio again responded, sending out an urgent message to the “Compañeros of the world” in July 2012, along with an extraordinarily moving and powerful video message from the BAZ themselves. “In the video message, our Zapatista comrades from San Marcos Avilés send special messages to the world…. They issue an urgent call for national and international support and solidarity with their community, in light of the alarming escalation of threats and hostility…. The culprits remain an attack group of political party members, who have stated that they will kidnap authorities of the Zapatista community, and in this way, forcefully displace the support base members from the ejido…. It is feared that another wholesale displacement of the community, similar to the one that took place in 2010, will occur.”

The BAZ explain, “We cannot enjoy the fruits of our labor with our children, because members of the political parties are eating them on the orders of bad government….The parties do not want the Zapatista organization in the ejido San Marcos. According to them, we set a bad example. They showed they want the organization to disappear. We will continue our struggle … because we have the right to be taken into account. Freedom, justice, and peace are what we are asking for. But we are not afraid because we know quite clearly what we are looking for and how we want to live”.

The Echo Campaign

Having grabbed attention from all corners of the world to the situation of the BAZ of San Marcos Avilés, Movimiento por Justicia del Barrio went on to launch the campaign “Worldwide Echo in Support of the Zapatistas,” on July 27, 2012. This initiative was in two phases—the first, “Walking the True Word,” was one of education and awareness-raising, and the second, “From Truth to Action: Stopping the Repression,” focused on holding protests led by the same communities who learned and became aware during the previous stage. As a result of this effort, “Committees of the True Word” began organizing in support of the Zapatistas in 29 countries, many of them composed of people who were new to the Zapatista struggle.

Although the Campaign was one of solidarity with all the Zapatista communities under threat and their political prisoners, the continual dissemination of information through video messages, events, declarations, letters, articles, statements of support from well-known thinkers, and a great range of activities and actions, combined to keep San Marcos Avilés in the public eye.

“These attacks,” wrote the Peruvian fighter for social justice, Hugo Blanco, in support of the Echo Campaign, “are the spearhead of the attempt to crush the zone liberated from neoliberalism, where the people govern themselves through the Good Government Juntas. These are seen as the great enemy by the transnational corporations…as they are a living example of the fact that Another World is Possible, A World where Many Worlds Fit….It is in the direct interests of humanity to defend the island of freedom that is the Zapatista area.” The Campaign left no doubt that the attacks are part of the war of attrition that has been conducted by the Mexican state against the Zapatistas since 1995, with the aim of eradicating the whole movement and the hope it embodies, from the face of the earth.

In her second letter of support for the Campaign, the great Mexican feminist Sylvia Marcos explored further the reasons behind the paramilitary attacks, “What are they afraid of to make them deploy such destructive force? What is the danger from the proposal, the resistance and the survival of the Zapatistas for the prevailing capitalist order? Is it because they show positively that other forms of life, in justice and dignity, are possible? That the satisfactions of life and the joy of being need not be governed by consumerism and commodification? That we can “live well,” as they say in the Andean communities of South America, with other ways of organization, government, and campesino production, in which the best way of living is not the accumulation of material goods, but community solidarity and sharing what there is?”

The women of Filipinas for Rights and Empowerment (FiRE) added their own insights, “The Mexican government targets these indigenous communities because Zapatistas are building an alternative form of living where people have sovereignty over the land and pursue justice for indigenous people. To our compañeras and compañeros of San Marcos Avilés who were displaced for over a month from their community, we stand together with you in your fight against the corrupt government that imposes such cruelty.” Meanwhile, members of South Africa’s largest grassroots movement, Abahlali baseMjondolo, the Shack Dwellers Movement, pointed out that the primary goal of all repression is to break our bonds as movements and communities, so we must stay united and firm in our commitments and see our struggles as one.

Throughout the duration of this intense period of organizing, inspiration and awareness-raising, from July to November 2012, the situation in San Marcos Avilés remained relatively quiet and no attempts at displacement were made. The aggressors knew the situation was being watched. This can give us all hope that national and international organizing can actively help to prevent repression, that we can make a difference, and that all the hard work is worth it. Most importantly, these campaigns help the Zapatista compañer@s to know that they are not alone, that they have allies everywhere, and what is more, knowledge and understanding of their struggle is spread more widely. They help us find one another.

The new threats of displacement

There has been an intensification of the repression in San Marcos Avilés since February 2013, raising concerns about a new attack. There are now fears that another displacement of the BAZ is imminent, following a demand from the authorities and police of the community for the BAZ to pay the local (predial) tax. They replied, “We have suffered very much as a result of all these aggressions from groups of (political) party members, and the government has done nothing. Now is not the time to pay, because we are in resistance and we demand respect for our right to our lands. If we do not receive anything from the government, we are not going to pay taxes.”

The party supporters threatened to arrest the BAZ, take them to the authorities, and cut off their light and water. They then put in motion the process of eviction in conjunction with the Municipal President of Chilón, Leonardo Rafael Guirao Aguilar, and the Agrarian Procurator in Ocosingo, Luis Demetrio Domínguez López. The threat is imminent, and the ejido is filled with growing terror.

In the words of Frayba, “This Center for Human Rights expresses its concerns about the imminent risk to life, personal integrity, and security faced by the BAEZLN, inhabitants of the ejido San Marcos Avilés, stemming from the death threats and harassment which have increased during recent weeks. In addition, their forced displacement and dispossession from their lands, which are their means of subsistence, and which they have not been able to work since April 9, 2010, has led to a food crisis and constant threats against their process of autonomy. We point out the responsibility of the government of Chiapas who, by deliberate omission, has not acted to ensure the integrity and personal security of the BAEZLN and their access to the land, despite several interventions submitted.”

Zapatista resurgence

A great sign of hope that may affect the situation in San Marcos Avilés is the recent re-emergence of the Zapatistas from a period of silence. A massive silent march of as many as 50,000 masked BAZ took place on a highly significant day, December 21, 2012, the end of Baktun 13. This day marked the end of one cycle of the Maya calendar and the beginning of another—a time when traditionally worlds change and power is transformed. “Did you hear?” wrote Subcomandante Insurgente Marcos, “It is the sound of your world crumbling. It is the sound of our world resurging. The day that was day, was night. And night shall be the day that will be day. Democracy! Liberty! Justice!” Since then, 25 communiqués have been released (to date), and the Zapatista Word has been reborn.

Cultivating hope and action

Recently, solidarity campaigning has been seen to have contributed significantly to the release of the Zapatista political prisoner, Francisco Sántiz López. As a result of very effective organizing, the name of San Marcos Avilés is now well-known. There are people who have never visited the ejido who care about what happens there. Although the Echo Campaign may be over, the Committees of the True Word are still active. Frayba’s release of the Urgent Action brought a rapid response in the form of reports, letters, statements, and articles. Any eviction could not happen quietly, without being noticed and protested against. People are urged to write to the Municipal President of Chilón immediately, as well as the governor of Chiapas, Manuel Velasco Coello, and the President of Mexico, Enrique Peña Nieto, holding them responsible for any aggressions that may occur.

It is essential to remain vigilant, to keep organizing actions, writing letters, and spreading information, while we make sure we keep the name of San Marcos Avilés, our solidarity with the BAZ, and, of course, hope, alive.

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Urban Zapatismo, from East Harlem to Chiapas

Those from below are organizing………

Zapatistas in New York?  Another way of doing politics

The Zapatista movement isn’t only growing in Chiapas. Its example and its ways are contagious, and they even reach places as inhospitable to non-capitalist ways as New York. There, Mexican migrants are organizing from building to building. This is their powerful story.

The Movement for Justice in El Barrio (MJB) has 750 members and 72 committees, one per building. It is an adherent to the Zapatista Sixth Declaration

 

Marta Molina, March 7, 2013

A young girl breaks the “neoliberal piñata” at the end of an encuentro hosted by the Movement for Justice in El Barrio. (Huffington Post / Michael Gould-Wartofsky)Listening is an essential skill for an organizer. In 2004, a group of migrant Mexican women began listening to their neighbors in the New York City neighborhood of East Harlem, more commonly known as El Barrio. The women went door to door, building by building, listening to people’s problems and thinking together about ways they could be solved.

These women had never participated in social struggles in Mexico, and they did not speak English. But they did know that a great many of their neighbors were in the same situation, and their act of listening created the Movement for Justice in El Barrio, which now has 750 members and 72 committees — one per building. Eight years later, these women are still fighting for dignified housing and against displacement, so that they won’t be forced — like they were in their home countries — to leave.

The Movement for Justice in El Barrio is focused on local housing issues, but it identifies itself as part of a much larger movement across international borders. The group defines its struggle as urban Zapatismo, drawing inspiration from the Zapitista movement in the Mexican state of Chiapas.

“In 2005, the Movement for Justice in El Barrio decided to adhere to the Sixth Declaration of the Lacandon Jungle, written by our Zapatista brothers and sisters,” explained Juan Haro, an organizer who traveled to Chiapas, Mexico, in February to speak at an international conference on social movements and Zapatismo. “We did so because after understanding [the declaration], we saw ourselves in it. We saw that the Sixth Declaration is the option of making a new world for everyone.”

In 2005, when the Zapatista National Liberation Army released the Sixth Declaration of the Lacandon Jungle, which invited people from around the world to join the movement to value humanity over money, the document was read in East Harlem. The Movement for Justice in El Barrio decided to ask to become a part of the Other Campaign, a Zapatista initiative to connect the movement in Chiapas to other resistance groups throughout Mexico.

To Haro and other members of the Movement, Zapatismo is not something that is specific to a particular struggle in Mexico. Instead, he sees it as a vehicle for all of those from below — those who have been hurt most by the capitalist system and by their governments — to achieve dignity in their communities.

Sharing stories internationally

Members of the Movement for Justice en El Barrio see the present as a moment for exchange, an opportunity to create a different means of political engagement, and a time for groups to share their struggles and learn from each other. At the conference in February, Oscar Flores and Diana Morales, two Mexican migrants now living in East Harlem and organizing with the Movement, shared their experiences through online testimonies.

“They want to take us out of our housing in El Barrio,” said Flores. “We are the most screwed over, and we are tired of living in these conditions, with broken windows, collapsing roofs, leaking kitchens and bathrooms, without heat or hot water in the winter. The property owners and the local government force us to live so poorly until we get desperate and move elsewhere, so that then the landlords can renovate their buildings and rent them to rich people.”

The group is not only organizing against bad housing conditions, but for an entirely new idea of housing that does not depend on profit.

One of the slogans of the Movement is, “We fight so that the hills and mountains belong to those who live in them and care for them. Similarly, housing should be for those who inhabit and care for the space. No one should own more housing than what they can inhabit.”

At the conference, Haro made the connection between migration from Mexico to the United States and housing discrimination inside U.S. cities. Both, he said, were caused by the same forces.

“Being immigrants, we know that the political and economic system that forced us from our country is the same one that now wants to displace us from our homes, and we will fight against multinational corporations, against politicians and those ‘from above,’” said Haro. “We will organize so that we won’t be displaced.”

Inspiration from the Zapatistas

One of the inspirations for the Movement for Justice in El Barrio was the struggle of the Young Lords, a movement of Puerto Ricans living in Chicago, Philadelphia and New York City who organized against poverty, racism and indecent housing throughout the late-1960s and 1970s. The group’s other organizing inspiration, of course, was Zapatismo.

Through Zapatista-style consultations — gatherings where problems are discussed and are made based on consensus — the main problems in the neighborhood are discussed, and these discussions create the basis for all of the group’s strategies.

“We are practicing real democracy,” said Haro. “Our form of struggle is based on the decisions made by the people, and it is the community that has the final word.”

The Zapatistas taught them how to work at the local level with their neighbors while also looking beyond their community. The group began to carry out a series of encounters with other collectives that work for justice, dignity and democracy, an organizing model that was inspired by the Zapatistas’ Interncontinental Encounters for Humanity and Against Neoliberalism.

“For us it is essential to know our neighbors, to unite and fight together, to make decisions horizontally,” said Haro. “But it’s also essential to create bridges with other marginalized communities of migrants, women, gays, lesbians, transsexuals, people of color, and to build relationships with those organizations.”

At these encounters in East Harlem, everyone participates, including the children, who end the encounters with the symbolic act of breaking the “neoliberal piñata.”

Victories motivate the struggle

Member of El Barrio protest against displacement in East Harlem in 2010. (WNV / Movement for Justice in El Barrio)

When a social movement wins a battle, it gains the respect and trust of others who also want to win their own battles. This happened for the Movement for Justice in El Barrio in 2006, when a large landowner tried to displace hundreds of low-income renters from their apartments in order to rent them at a higher rate. The group struggled over the course of two years, and it finally forced the landowner to sell his 47 properties instead of forcing the renters out of their homes.

The victory gained the Movement recognition in the city, and energized the members of the group to keep fighting, as Haro said, “against neoliberalism, multinational corporations and capitalist property owners.”

But the first landowner was replaced by an British corporation that specialized in flipping buildings in gentrifying neighborhoods. The sale sparked another intense campaign during 2008. Drawing on the group’s international perspective, the movement organized a delegation to five countries in Europe to meet with more than 30 local groups that also worked on housing justice. These groups put local pressure on the company, which crumbled as the economic recession set in.

The Movement for Justice in El Barrio doesn’t only win battles; it also wins committed organizers, such as Diana Morales, an indigenous Mixteca who now organizes in East Harlem. Originally from Guerrero, Mexico, she explained, “Because of bad government, I had to leave my country. Now in New York, I face daily discrimination for being a migrant. That’s why I decided to join my neighbors and fight for justice.”

Her story demonstrates the global nature of both capitalism and anti-capitalist resistance. Morales moved from Mexico to New York City after her mother explained that a corporation was trying to displace her and her neighbors from their homes in East Harlem. Upon arriving in New York, she joined the struggle, and she learned for the first time about the Zapatistas fighting in her own country.

“During our first meeting with El Barrio, I heard our companions speak about the Zapatistas, and I learned that they continue their struggle, and that they live autonomously, without depending on the government,” she said.

She was surprised not only about the movement in her own country, but also by the fact that Mexican migrants would dare to protest on the streets of New York City. She became a spokesperson for the Movement for Justice in El Barrio.

“I never imagined that one day I would fight alongside my community, but now I’m doing it. Collective struggle is the way we will be heard and the way we will change the world,” said Morales.

The Movement for Justice in El Barrio also carries out solidarity campaigns to support struggles in Mexico and beyond. In 2006, the group organized against violent repression in San Salvador Atenco, using the slogan “We are all Atenco.” The Movement also helps spread the word about Zapatismo by organizing groups in dozens of countries that educate the public about the situation of the Zapatistas. Last year, the group organized campaigns to demand freedom for political prisoners in Chiapas. 

Continuing to listen

Today, the neighbors in the Movement for Justice in El Barrio are still fighting displacement. It is their daily struggle.

“When you organize, you realize very quickly that you have a whole family, so if one is affected, all of us are affected,” said Haro.

The group is currently in the process of forming new committees in three apartment buildings that want to join the movement. The only criterion for membership is that people first organize their entire building. Haro explains how people can often feel uncomfortable knocking on doors, so more experienced members of the Movement often go and accompany these newcomers to help them become organizers.

We asked Juan Haro what the recent Zapatista communiqués and the silent Zapatista march on Dec. 21, 2012, meant to members of the Movement.

“It was a show of dignity from our compañeros,” he said. “They showed their moral and organizational capacity, their ability to do. We still haven’t met with them to talk about it, but we will in good time. Those of us in El Barrio listened, and we are waiting for what’s next.”

http://otramerica.com/temas/zapatistas-nueva-york-la-otra-forma-hacer-politica/2871

http://wagingnonviolence.org/feature/urban-zapatismo-connects-east-harlem-to-chiapas/

http://seminarioscideci.org/videos/

 

 

 

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