Mexico Clash Over Pipeline Leaves 1 Dead in Yaqui Community
Published 22 October 2016
The community of Loma de Bacum opposes the pipeline over safety and environmental concerns.
An Indigenous leader accused “provocateurs” of inciting violence in a Yaqui community in the northern Mexican state of Sonora that is at the heart of a conflict over the construction of a hydrocarbon pipeline that will cross their territory.
Teodulo Gonzalez, commissioner for the defense of land, water and human rights of the Yaqui tribe, said a group of people descended on a site where land defenders have set up a camp to prevent the construction of the pipeline and started a physical confrontation.
The clash reportedly lasted three hours and ultimately left one dead and eight injured. AP reported the man was killed as a result of gunfire.
“It was a provocation by the state government and the IENova company to finish with the defense of the territory,” Gonzalez told Proceso magazine.
State security officials descended on the community but according to witnesses did nothing to contain the violence.
Adolfo Garcia Morales, head of public security in Sonora, said the clash, involving a total of 400 people, was between members of the Yaqui people.
Mario Luna, a spokesman for the Yaquis, told AP that disagreements within the tribe have been ongoing, with some communities refusing to allow the pipeline to cross their territory.
“They have the agreement from the majority of the towns. However, here the decisions are not made by a majority, but rather by consensus,” Luna told AP.
The clash took place in Loma de Bacum, one of the holdout communities, where leaders have opposed the pipeline over safety and environmental concerns.
The concession to build the pipeline was granted by the Mexican government in 2012.
The proposed pipeline, being built by IENova for Mexico’s Federal Electric Commission, is designed to bring natural gas from across the border in Arizona to the Mexican states of Sonora and Sinaloa.
One dead and 8 injured in a fight between residents of Sonora
By: Cristina Gómez Lima, correspondent
Hermosillo, Sonora. One dead, eight injured and twelve vehicles burned was the result of a confrontation between residents of the Lomas de Bácum and Lomas de Guamúchil communities, who disagree over construction of the Northwest gas pipeline, which is projected to cross territory that the Yaqui tribe inhabits in southern Sonora.
The Secretary of state Public Security, Adolfo García Morales reported that municipal, state and federal agents cordoned off the zone of the confrontations, as well as members of the Secretariat of National Defense, who activated the code red in the southern community of Sonora.
“Armored vehicles entered conflict zone and through loudspeakers they ordered them to put down their weapons, we are going to be very alert in order to avoid new confrontations now that the security bodies are there, as well as the Mexican Army and the Federal Police,” García Morales stated.
For their part, leaders of the Lomas de Bácum Tribe assured that there were two confrontations, one after the arrival of members of the Army; in their numbers they count 7 indigenous Yaquis dead, 30 injured and their governor José Bacaumea and their secretary Martín Valencia disappeared.
The TransCanada Corporation is in charge of the project.
. Calendar for the 5th Congress of the CNI and the Gathering “Zapatistas and ConSciences for Humanity.”
ZAPATISTA ARMY FOR NATIONAL LIBERATION
MEXICO
October 26, 2016.
To the invited and attending Scientists of the Gathering “Zapatistas and ConSciences for Humanity”:
To the compañeras, compañeros, compañeroas of the National and International Sixth:
Brothers and sisters:
We send you greetings. We write to inform you of the following:
First: Per instructions from the National Indigenous Congress, which at the moment is consulting with the originary peoples, barrios, tribes, and nations throughout Mexico on the proposal made during the first phase of the Fifth Congress, we inform you that the permanent assembly of the CNI will be reinstated December 29, 2016, at CIDECI-UNITIERRA in San Cristóbal de las Casas, Chiapas.
There the CNI will hold roundtable sessions on December 30 and 31 of this year. During these sessions, or before then if the CNI so chooses, the results of the consultation will be made known. On January 1, 2017, the plenary assembly will take place in Oventik, Chiapas, Mexico, and any agreements necessary will be made there.
The compañeras and compañeros of the originary peoples, barrios, tribes, and nations who make up the National Indigenous Congress inform us that they have financial difficulties that impede their travel to this meeting, and so they request solidarity donations from the national and international Sixth, as well as from any honest people who want to support them in this way. To offer this support, the compas of the CNI ask that people communicate directly with them at the following email: info@congresonacionalindigena.org. From there they will explain where and how to send support.
Of course, if you think that by meeting, thinking, and deciding collectively on their path and destiny the compas of the CNI are playing into the hands of the right and endangering the u-n-s-t-o-p-p-a-b-l-e advance of the institutional left, you can make your support conditional on their obeying you, or add a note to your contribution saying something like, “I’m going to give you these 2 pesos, but don’t let yourselves be fooled and manipulated by that sockhead.”[i]
Or you can just make your donation and try, like the rest of us, to learn from them.
Second: We also take this opportunity to confirm that the Gathering “Zapatistas and ConSciences for Humanity” will be celebrated at the times and places originally announced:
From December 25, 2016 to January 4, 2017 at the facilities of CIDECI-UNITIERRA in San Cristóbal de las Casas, Mexico, with an intermission on December 31, 2016 and January 1, 2017. If you are interested in attending as a listener or observer, you can register to attend at this email: conCIENCIAS@ezln.org.mx
Thus the presentations about the exact and natural Sciences and the work sessions of the National Indigenous Congress will take place simultaneously.
That’s all for now.
Subcomandante Insurgente Moisés.
Subcomandante Insurgente Galeano.
Mexico, October 2016.
From the Notebook of the Cat-Dog, section titled “neither stories nor legends”:
What Doctor John H. Watson will not tell.
Mountains of the Mexican southeast. It is raining a lot. You can just barely make out the shouts of those who continue working to make holes in the wall, giving each other instructions. There are some who have poorly protected themselves from the downpour with plastic ponchos, but most are just wearing soaked shirts, blouses, skirts and pants, raining once again over the earth.
The wall extends as far as the eye can reach. Despite its apparent strength, every so often there is a crease along its long curtain. It is said that those who inhabit these lands claim that the wall is capable of regenerating itself, and so they must not cease their efforts to keep a crack open. After consulting histories and legends that circulate among the inhabitants, it is concluded that the purpose of the wall is not just to keep them from seeing or crossing to the other side; it also convinces those who encounter it that there is nothing beyond it, that the world ends there, at the feet of its solid base and in the face of the infinite expanse, in length and height, of its surface.
Outside one of the huts near the wall, a little girl watches with her chin resting on one of her hands. Her eyes aren’t focused on the arrogant wall, but rather on the feet of those who strike and scratch at the wall. Or really, she is looking at the ground covered in mud and puddles.
A little behind her, a strange being, similar to a dog, or to a cat, shelters itself in the threshold of the hut. The little girl turns to look at it and says: “Hey you, cat-dog, what, you scared of the rain? Not me. They don’t call me ‘Defensa Zapatista’ for nothing. You think that if we’re in the middle of a game and it starts raining we’re going to say, “oh no, I better get off the field or I’ll get wet?” No way. You can just fix your hair with your hand, and since it’s wet it stays smooth and forget about the rest. But it’s not like I fix it like that so I can go around flirting with fucking men. It’s so I can see when the ball comes and goes. If I don’t fix it, I can’t see. And it doesn’t matter if you’re in the hut, even if you’re a cat or a dog, you’re still going to get wet. Look, I just got an idea.”
The little girl enters the hut and then comes out with some pots, buckets, and empty tin cans. She starts placing them beneath the little streams of water dripping from the edges of the tin roof. It would seem as if she was positioning them randomly, but no. Every little bit she changes their location. The being whom the little girl calls the “cat-dog” barks and meows. The little girl looks at it and says: “Just wait, you’ll see what I’m doing.”
The little girl keeps changing the location of the pots and cans and, with each change, she mutes the sound of the raindrops hitting their surface. The little girl listens for a moment and then goes back to changing the places and sounds of this strange symphony.
She is immersed in this task when a pair of men arrive. One is tall and gangly, the other is shorter in stature, of average build. Both carry fine umbrellas and the taller one wears an elegant coat, some type of cap, and a curved pipe between his lips. They say nothing, they just watch the little girl come and go. At some point, the gangly one with the elegant overcoat coughs and says: “Excuse me miss, will you allow me to shelter you with my umbrella? That way you won’t get wet while you…while you do whatever it is you’re doing.” The little girl stares at him with hostility and responds, “My name isn’t ‘miss,’ it’s ‘Defensa Zapatista’ (the little girl puts on her best “get away from my pots and cans or you die” face). “And what I’m doing is making a song.” The man comments as if to himself: “hmm, a song, how interesting my dear Watson, how interesting.” The other man just affirms with a nod while he shelters himself in the doorframe, eyeing the dog suspiciously…well, the cat…well, whatever it is that’s next to him in the threshold.
The man with the strange cap observes attentively the coming and going of the little girl. All of a sudden his face lights up and he exclaims, “Of course! Elementary. A song. It couldn’t be any other way.”
And, turning to the person who now shares the small space out of the rain with the cat-dog, he says, “Pay attention, Watson, here you have something which could never be found in one of those vulgar popularizations of the detective’s science with which you torment your few readers, that is, if you have any at all. Observe carefully. What the young miss…cough…cough…I meant to say, what ‘Defensa Zapatista’ is doing is combining the principles of mathematics, physics, biology, anatomy and neurology. By changing the positions of these strange metal receptacles and placing them beneath different rivulets of water, she obtains different individual sounds which together produce distinct combinations of notes which, I infer, will become a melody. Then, changing the rhythms, she will have music and from there, elementary my dear Watson, a song. Bravo!” The man has passed his umbrella to the other man under the doorframe and applauds with enthusiasm.
The little girl has left her work for a moment and stopped to listen to the man. After the applause, the little girl asks, “you mean a ton[ii] right?”
“A ton?” repeats the man, and then after thinking about it a bit exclaims: “Of course! Ton, tune. Yes, miss, a tune and not a ton, although it’s true that there are some tunes that are very heavy.”
The little girl furrows her brow and clarifies, “I already told you my name is not ‘miss,’ my name is ‘Defensa Zapatista.’ And what’s your name?
The man responds, “You are right, what bad manners that I have not introduced myself,” and, with a brief bow, introduces himself, “My name is Sherlock Holmes, consulting detective. And my companion, who is currently shivering from the rain and the cold, is Doctor John H. Watson, a debaser of science.” Extending his hand toward the little girl, he adds “And you are…yes, of course, you told me before, ‘Defensa Zapatista.’ Strange name for a little girl. Well, it seems everything is strange in these lands.”
The little girl ignores the extended hand, but appears interested. “Consulting detective…what’s that?” she asks.
“I combat crime, miss, I investigate by observing, analyzing and applying science,” responds the man with poorly feigned modesty.
“Ah, like Elías Contreras, the Zapatista investigation commission,” interrupts the little girl. The man tries to clarify, but the little girl continues:
“Well, look, I already talked to Elías so he would join our team, but it turns out he’s already dead and tending to the bad and the evil, that is, he’s investigating the fucking capitalist system. I told him he can still join the team, even though he’s deceased, but he says that supmarcos sends him off on investigations and so he wouldn’t make it to practice. The funny thing is that supmarcos is dead too. I think that’s why they understand each other. Of course, right now we can’t really practice that much because the field is all muddy and the ball doesn’t roll, it just gets stuck and no matter how much it gets kicked it doesn’t move, or it moves just a little and then gets lazy again. So you get all muddy for nothing and later your moms comes with her ‘you have to wash up’ and then off to the river. Do you like to bathe? I don’t like it. Only if there’s a dance, then I like it, because you can’t be all muddy when they start playing the song ‘la del moño colorado’ [the girl with the colourful bow]. Do you know that one, ‘la del moño colorado’? That’s a good song because you dance to it like this (the little girl hums while balancing lightly on one foot and then the other). Youdon’t just jump around like the young people these days who like that music and end up muddier than if they hadn’t bathed at all. But you know mothers, what do they care if there’s no dance? Nothing, you still have to bathe and if you don’t, there’ll be hell to pay. Do you have a mom? Well, look, just think about whether moms know or not. They definitely know. I still don’t know how it is that they know, but they know. You should investigate how it is that they know. I told Elías to investigate it, but he just laughed, the jerk. And SupMoy is even worse, you think he helps? If he’s around and your mom gives the order to bathe, you think he’ll defend you? Forget it, you have to obey your mom, he says. I complained to him one day about why it’s like that, if the struggle says to rule by obeying, it should be that the little girls rule and the moms obey. But he just laughed, the jerk. Well, look, pay attention because I’m going to explain something to you: it turns out we haven’t filled up the team. Why not? Well, because there’s no discipline, that is, they don’t understand the organization of the struggle. One minute they tell you they’re in and the next, they’re out, they took off on another path, for one reason or another. They’re all just excuses. Or if not, they say it’s because of the work of the struggle. As if playing wasn’t part of the work of the struggle? The deceased supmarcos would say children’s work is to play. Well, he would also say it’s to study, but don’t publish that, eh? So given that, we can’t complete the team, there’s no seriousness, as someone says. But don’t you worry, don’t despair because the team didn’t fill up quickly. We know it takes time, but one day there will be more of us. Since we can’t practice right now and they don’t let me join the work of making holes in the wall because it’s raining and I’ll get wet… can you believe they say that? As if I wasn’t going to get wet bathing anyway. The other day I wanted to give my moms a political lecture and I told her it’s not good for me to bathe because I’ll get wet, and in the autonomous school they say it’s not good for little girls to get wet because what if they get sick with a cough, right?
But my moms just laughed, I think she didn’t understand the political lesson because she was just like, get yourself down to the river and make sure to wash behind your ears and this, that, and the other. Well, don’t you get distracted, whatever your name is. It turns out that, since I can’t practice and I can’t make holes in the wall, I started thinking and thinking. And now I just keep thinking and thinking. Not about silly things though, but rather about the struggle. So I thought that we need music for when we win the game. Because if there’s no music, we won’t be happy that we won, you understand? What are you going to understand, if you’re just standing there staring? Okay, I’ll explain. Look, the moms know, we don’t know how they do it, but they know. If you have a difficult question, you go to your moms and boom, they know the answer. Well, so it turns out that my moms told me something like a story the other day. She said that the deceased one said that the struggle needs science and art. I don’t know what science and art are, so then my moms explained it to me. I think I’ll explain it to you because you definitely don’t know. Look, science and art aren’t just that you do things however you want, half-assed, but rather that first you imagine how what you want to make will turn out, then you study how you’re going to do it, and then you go and do it. But not just any old way; rather you make it happy, with lots of colours and lots of music, you understand? Well, so I thought and imagined what our music should be when we win a game. Yes of course really happy music but not like for dancing, because it’s serious to win the game, even more so since my team is full of lumps, like the cat-dog here who barely obeys, it just runs and runs, and since its paws are a little twisted well, it tends to veer off to the side. So the song has to be cheerful but serious. It should be enjoyable and make your heart happy. Well so I was sitting here thinking about the music, I mean the ton of the song, and then my idea came. I was listening to the sound the rain makes when it falls, and I saw that it sounds different in each little puddle. So, I took out my mom’s pots and some cans and buckets from our women’s collective and now I’m here listening to how each one sounds and how they sound in collective. Because it’s not the same as an individual as in a collective, you see. In a collective, it’s happier, it sounds good. But each individually, it’s all the same, even if you change the bucket. Now if you put them together, it’s something else. Of course, the issue is how you put them together so that they sound good. You understand? I mean that’s where you bring in science and art and it comes out just right. Not like Pedrito who thinks he knows how to sing, but all he knows are Pedro Infante songs. You think he knows any about love? No, all songs about horses and drunks. And for nothing, because Pedrito twice over doesn’t drink, that is, he doesn’t drink because he’s a little boy, and he doesn’t drink because he’s a Zapatista. You think you’re going to find a wife if you sing to her about horses? No, never, never ever. And even worse if you sing to her about drunkards. If somebody sang to me about horses, it’d be for nothing because I already have one, it’s just that he’s one-eyed, which means that he sees out one eye but not the other. Well, the truth is that the horse isn’t mine, because he doesn’t have an owner. No one knows where he came from, he just appeared all of a sudden in the pasture. I quickly recruited him, as they say, for the team and made him goalie, but since he doesn’t see well I had to put myself on defence. But if somebody sings to me about drunkards, well yeah then, that calls for some smacks and to hell with them. My moms say that alcohol is no good, that it makes men dumb. Well okay, dumber than usual. And then they beat the women. Of course, now it’s different because we defend ourselves as the women that we are. I, as Zapatista defence, also train so that men don’t bother me when I grow up, that is when I grow into a young single woman. But don’t get distracted, write down what I explained to you in your notebook, write that science and art are really important…”
At that, the cat-dog begins to bark and meow. The little girl turns around to look at him and asks, “Now?” The cat-dog purrs and growls. The little girl hurriedly enters the house, just as the rain lifts its wet skirt and the sky clears.
It’s no longer raining when the little girl runs out of the house with a ball in her hands. The cat-dog runs out behind her.
As she gets further away, the little girl manages to shout: “When you finish writing your notes, come. Don’t worry if the team isn’t full yet. It might take a while, but there will be more of us.”
The man who is called “Doctor Watson” closes his umbrella and reaches his hand out to make sure that, in fact, it has stopped raining.
The man with the absurd cap keeps watching the little girl as she moves away. Then he takes a magnifying glass from his raincoat and stops to analyze each of the containers, now mute, without rain to make them sing.
“Interesting, my dear Watson, very interesting. I believe it would be worth spending some time in these parts. The atmosphere is clean and the fog keeps reminding me of the London of Baker Street,” says the tall thin man as he stretches out his arms to better breathe in the air of the mountains of the Mexican southeast.
“Spend some time, Holmes? Why?” asks the other man while he shakes off some lingering raindrops. “I don’t think we’d be much help, although this little girl seems to suffer from verbal diarrhoea, a tranquilizer would help…whoever has to listen to her.”
“No, Watson, we’re not going to help anyone. I only came to find an old acquaintance. But I think it will be difficult to find him…at least alive,” says the man as he puts away the magnifying glass and begins walking.
The other man rushes to catch up to him, asking, “Then what are we going to do here, Holmes?”
“Learn, my dear Watson, learn,” says the man as he takes out the magnifying glass again and stops to look at an insect.
As the two figures fade into the fog, once can hear in the distance barks, meows, and a child’s laughter, a laugh like a song.
Then, although nearly imperceptibly, the wall shudders…
From Baker Street to the mountains of the Mexican Southeast.
Music: “Baker Street” by Gerry Rafferty, with Raphael Ravenscroft on saxophone. 1978. Photographs of Sherlock Holmes and Doctor Watson from the British television series “Sherlock” made by the BBC, featuring Benedict Cumberbatch (as Sherlock Holmes) and Martin Freeman (as Doctor Watson). Coproduced by Hartswood Films and WGBH, the series was created by Steven Moffat and Mark Gatiss. Accompanied by embroidery (first outlined and then finished) made by Zapatista insurgents for the CompArte Festival, 2016, with the theme “Defensa Zapatista and the Hydra.” The image of the little doll on the foosball table was taken in 2013 by a 9-year-old boy who attended the Zapatista Little School. He saw the foosball table and put the little doll there just as you see it. The illustrations at the end of the video are by the CVI support team, “Tercios Compas” section.
Embroidery and drawings by EZLN insurgents for the CompArte Festival
Embroidery and drawings made by Zapatista insurgents for the CompArte Festival.
Music: “Resistencia,” from the album LDA V The Lunatics, Los de Abajo.
[i] “Sockhead” [cara de calcetín, or, alternatively, cara de trapo] is a derogatory term used by critics to deride members of the EZLN (and their use of masks) and, in this instance, refers to Subcomandante Insurgente Galeano.
[ii]Defensa Zapatista characteristically says “tonelada,” or ton, instead of “tonada,” or tune.
Filed under: sipaz, Women — Tags: femicide — dorsetchiapassolidarity @ 11:36 am
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National Women’s Strike
Event against violence against women, San Cristobal de Las Casas, October, 2016 @SIPAZ
On October 19, demonstrations were held in different countries of Latin America to protest against femicide and violence against women. In San Cristobal de Las Casas, Chiapas, the event brought together about 200 people.
The trigger for these demonstrations were several recent femicides in various locations: the young Argentinan Lucia Perez, 16 years old, who was drugged, raped and murdered in Mar del Plata, Argentina. The case of Paola, a transsexual woman, which occurred on September 30 in Buenavista colony, Mexico City; the attack on the house of Itzel Duran, which resulted in the murder of the 19-year-old in Comitan, Chiapas, on October 8, and the femicide of the member of the Youth Network Trans, Alessa Flores, activist and sex worker, found dead in a hotel at Calzada de Tlalpan in Mexico City on the 13th. From Argentina, the brother of Lucia Perez states: “This time it was Lucia … but next time it can happen to you, or the person you love most in the world.”
The call for a women’s strike was spread regionally, promoted by networks encouraging the taking of public spaces in marches or demonstrations involving men and women.
In the demonstration in Naucalpan, Mexico State, women participating in the event were suppressed: according to Radio Zapote, a municipal police patrol car arrived at the town hall, where two uniformed policemen got out and arrested two women who were demonstrating against sexist violence at gunpoint.
According to the Citizens’ National Observatory of Femicide (OCNF), there are seven murders of women a day in Mexico and of “3,892 cases documented by the OCNF between 2012 and 2013, only 613 (15.75%) were investigated as femicide.”
The CNI and the EZLN have been talking to each other a lot.
By: Gustavo Esteva
In the midst of war, as part of the general campaign of dispossession, they have also taken from us the word, the words. And that’s how they want to bury Tlatlaya or Ayotzinapa or make the No win in Colombia.
Words are doors and windows of our perception; the words that we use depend on our experience in the world. And it’s that which is immediately threatened and it affects our ability to speak… and to know what happens. Instead of being an autonomous form of relationship, language is being converted into a device for isolation and an instrument of manipulation and control.
The field of language is as rich and varied as nature… but the war that is unleashed against it makes linguistic diversity decline. Government and the market completely destroy languages, eliminate them and annul the vernacular and creativity of language; they are the promoters of the global unification projected by capital, which organizes the current war and can condemn us to blindness and silence. Some 5,000 languages still exist in the world. One hundred of them are distributed in 95 percent of the global population, the rest, the immense majority, in the other 5 percent. Of the living languages, 30 percent are spoken in Asia and Africa, 20 percent in the Pacific Region, 16 percent on the American continent; only one percent is spoken in Europe, 67 languages. One of those living languages dies every week; a civilization dies with it, a way of being and thinking.
Amoeba-words have invaded us. But maybe we shouldn’t associate this innocent transparent little animal, with fuzzy contours, with the verbal monstrosities that we suffer. The term “plastic words” is preferable, as the German linguist Uwe Porksen proposes. He has listed and characterized them with rigour. According to him, they are “the master key of daily life;” easily accessible, “they infiltrate entire fields of reality and re-order their own likeness.” They are words like identity, development, communication, information, solution, energy, or resource. They have an aura. Their definition has been lost or is entirely imprecise, but they are full connotations, generally positive. They are often born in the common language, emigrate to scientific dominion and are returned to their place of origin with enormous colonizing … and destructive force.
“Development” is one of those words. It means almost anything, from building skyscrapers to installing latrines, the same as drilling oil wells that look for water. It’s a concept with monumental emptiness… that has dominated public discussion for more than half a century. In these years, it has been used systematically for packing all the works and actions that dispossess the peoples of their lands, their waters, their territories, and for disqualifying those who resist them: they are retrogrades, opponents of development and progress.
“Energy” is the same. It’s seldom used with its vernacular meaning, which still appears in dictionaries, when one says that someone is very energetic for alluding to a vigorous and active person. The word is used daily for referring to themes like the cost of gasoline or renewable energy. If anyone asks us what energy is we’ll vacillate a little and confess technical ignorance, confident that the specialists will be able to give a good definition. When they inform us that it’s the mass multiplied by the square of the speed of light we are perplexed; we’re not talking about that. Helmholtz and others used its vernacular meaning for their investigations and when the word returned to daily language it produced a vacuum. We tell each other nothing by using them, but operate as signs of a sect.
This is not an academic issue. We habitually suffer the consequences of this destruction of language that makes political discourse a faithful expression of Orwell’s neo-language. In his dystopia, peace is war, as Big Brother incessantly repeated. Like Goebbels did for Hitler. Procedure is an indispensable ingredient of the authoritarian exercise: it is its condition of existence. One cannot govern with bayonets; one can govern with words.
In recent days, the promoters of the No in Colombia revealed the refined propaganda techniques that they used to get their proposition. In certain zones, they encouraged indignation; in others, the need for subsidies. In each one they were seeking to induce abstention or rejection. And they attained it.
Procedure has ruled among us for a long time. Tomorrow the Senate is voting on an initiative that destroys the right to strike, but it is called labour justice. An authoritarian dispositive that has nothing to do with education is even named an education reform. Or an enormous lie is presented as “historic truth,” with which they attempt to cover up the Ayotzinapa crimes.
The uses of neo-language in Colombia, for influencing the plebiscite, or what surrounds what is relative to Ayotzinapa, for uncovering the guilty and those responsible in the government and in the Army illustrate well what this operation is about. Against what and who we are fighting… and how language is also territory that we must defend faced with fulfilled threats of dispossession.
Government failures are denounced in the “struggle” for land in Chiapas
Desinformémonos, 28th October, 2016
Mexico City | Desinformémonos. Members and adherents to the Sexta from the ejido San Sebastián Bachajón, Chiapas, denounced the false struggle for land that the officialist (ie government-supporting) ejidal commissioner, Manuel Guzmán Álvaro, promised to lead when he was a candidate for the position, because “so far he has not fulfilled and respected his word, because his actions have been completely contrary to this.”
They recalled that last September 23rd, Guzmán Álvaro came, together with a group of ejidatarios, to the area where the access to the waterfalls of Agua Azul is located, in order to evict those who confront his ideas, and that immediately after his arrival, the State Preventive police took over the headquarters of the Sexta in Bachajón.
Just a week after this happened, Guzmán Álvaro and his supervisory board issued a communiqué designed to convince people that their struggle is for the defence of the land and demanding that the government recognize them as an authority, “but not explaining the background of their true intentions to hand over the lands to the bad government”, they said.
In addition, on October 18th the officialist commissioner organised roadblocks in different parts of the ejido to ask for government intervention, ostensibly to solve internal problems, but actually to hand over their natural resources and ratify an agreement signed in 2011 to benefit transnational corporations. That same day, Domingo Pérez Álvaro, Tseltal member of the adherents to the Sexta from the ejido, was assaulted physically and subsequently arrested.
Pérez Álvaro was attacked when he was returning to his home after visiting Santiago Moreno Pérez, indigenous political prisoner imprisoned since 2009 in Playas de Catazajá on false charges with which he was incriminated in order to remove him from his position on the board of autonomous vigilance.
“This permanent presence of the bad government in our territory totally violates the rights of our people to autonomy and self-determination,” they said, and repudiated the “servile” attitude of the ejidal commissioner and the supervisory board that makes possible a policy of dispossession, through the support of civil human rights organizations, and the pretence that their movement is a struggle for the defence of the territory.
Now, in addition to giving land to the government, he is committing violent acts against social activists.
Finally, they denounced that members of the Commission of Guzmán Álvaro threw trees on to the roads and burned a municipal police patrol car, in order to call the government to intervene, so they are “solely responsible for any arrest and detention of the authorities and members of the sixth declaration of the ejido Bachajón.”
Communiqué from San Sebastián Bachajon, 20th October, 2016
Community Leaders of the Sexta Bachajon receive threats of detention and kidnapping
FROM THE EJIDO SAN SEBASTIAN BACHAJON ADHERENTS TO THE SIXTH DECLARATION OF THE LACANDON JUNGLE, 20 OCTOBER 2016
To the General Command of the Clandestine Revolutionary Indigenous Committee of the Zapatista Army of National Liberation
To the Councils of Good Government
To the National Indigenous Congress
To all compañer@s in Mexico and the World, adherents to the Sixth Declaration of the Lacandon Jungle
To the mass media and alternative media
To the Network against Repression and for Solidarity
To Movement for Justice in el Barrio, New York
To national and international human rights defenders
To the people of Mexico and the world.
Compañer@s, people fighting for social justice and autonomous organisations, the women and men of San Sebastian Bachajón send you greetings.
Today, the 20th of October, early in the morning, the ejido authorities of the Sexta Bachajón were again threatened. The leaders, including compañero Domingo Pérez Álvaro, the community’s human rights promoter, were threatened that they would be detained or kidnapped by the people from the ejido commission headed by C. Manuel Guzmán Álvaro. The news was delivered by third parties from the village of Xanil, members of Manuel Guzmán Álvaro’s ejido commission, who said that compañero Domingo Pérez Álvaro is first on the list of people to threaten followed by the rest of the authorities of the Sexta Bachajón. They also reported that 50% of the police were currently in the village of Xanil, in the home of C.Carlos Jiménez Gómez, whose two sons are state police; Carlos Jiménez Hernández and Rafael Jiménez Hernández, members of the state police who are also taking part in this harassment.
We state that any detention or deprivation of freedom that occurs to the authorities of the sixth declaration of the ejido Bachajón will be the responsibility of the ejidal commissioner. This is exactly what they did to our compañero Emilio Jiménez Gómez, an adherent to the Sexta; they illegally detained him, and turned him over to the police, who invented crimes and then sent him to prison, and today he is a prisoner in Playas de Catazaja.
As members of the ejido Sexta Bachajón we state clearly that we had nothing to do with the acts organised and committed by C. Manuel Guzmán Álvaro’s ejidal commission. These people threw trees in the road, they burned a municipal police patrol vehicle near Jolamaltzak on the Ocosingo-Palenque highway. These social disturbances were committed by the ejidal commissioner C. Manuel Guzmán Álvaro and his group, and used as a way to invite the intervention of the state authorities.
This same day in the morning the principal of the ejido commission, C. Agustín Saragos Gómez, the agent of the El Paraiso community, C. Jerónimo Moreno Gómez, and a direct representative from the El Paraiso ejido commission, C. Manuel Jiménez Álvaro, threated our compañero Domingo Pérez Álvaro with death; this death threat was on the orders of the ejido commissioner C. Manuel Guzmán Álvaro, who told his collaborators that compañero Domingo Pérez Álvaro would be finished off as they had done to the late Juan Vázquez Guzmán, murdered 24th April 2013, for defending Mother Earth until the bad government sent its hitmen to kill our compañero.
We make clear this threat against our compañeros, adherents to the Sexta and we hold C. Manuel Guzmán Álvaro and his people responsible for any detention, kidnapping and/or deprivation of liberty that may befall the Bachajón Sexta ejido authorities, including all members of this autonomous organisation.
We will keep you informed of any incident or act committed by the ejido commissioner Manuel Guzmán Álvaro.
Never again a Mexico without us
Land and Freedom
¡Zapata Lives!
¡Hasta la victoria siempre!
Freedom for Political Prisoners!
Juan Vázquez Guzmán Lives, the Struggle for Bachajón continues!
Juan Carlos Gómez Silvano Lives, the Struggle for Bachajón continues!
No to the Dispossession of Indigenous Lands!
State Police Out of Our Indigenous Territory!
Immediate return of our disappeared and murdered compañeros from the Teachers School – Normal Raúl Isidro Burgos de Ayotzinapa!
Long live the Chol compañeros and compañeras from the Ejido Tila’s dignified struggle!
Long live the compañeros and compañeras from San Francisco Xochicuautla’s dignified struggle!
Long live communities that fight for autonomy and freedom!
Justice for our compañero JUAN VAZQUEZ GUZMAN, AYOTZINAPA, ACTEAL, ABC, ATENCO!
Translated by the UK Zapatista Translation Service.
La Sexta Bachajón: Press conference October 27, 2016 in El Paliacate Cultural Centre
FROM EJIDO SAN SEBASTIÁN BACHAJÓN, ADHERENTS TO THE SIXTH DECLARATION OF THE LACANDON JUNGLE, CHIAPAS, MEXICO 11 OCTOBER 2016
To the General Command of the Clandestine Revolutionary Indigenous Committee of the Zapatista Army of National Liberation
To the Councils of Good Government
To the National Indigenous Congress
To all compañer@s in Mexico and the World, adherents to the Sixth Declaration of the Lacandon Jungle
To the mass and alternative media
To the Network against Repression and for Solidarity
To Movement for Justice in el Barrio, New York
To national and international human rights defenders
To the people of Mexico and the world.
Compañeros and compañeras, members of the communications media present at this press conference, receive militant greetings from the adherents to the Sixth Declaration of the ejido San Sebastian Bachajón, and our thanks for accepting our invitation to this press conference in which we want to let you know the word of our organization about the latest developments of dispossession and violence in our territory, occasioned by the bad government and the officialist ejidal Commissioner Manuel Guzmán Álvaro.
We share our outrage at the recent acts of the officialist ejidal Commissioner Manuel Guzmán Álvaro, elected at the General Assembly of ejidatarios on 18th April this year. Before the election he presented himself to our organization and we listened to him because we are pueblo and brothers and sisters and this is our custom and the way of working of our organization which is struggling and seeking for the unity of our people. This was how we heard the word of the then candidate for Commissioner, who at that time was speaking of wanting to struggle and to defend the land of the ejido; he said he was aware of how previous Comissioners had not respected the autonomy and rights of the people of San Sebastian Bachajón and said that he would defend the land and respect the organization of la Sexta. But so far he has not fulfilled and respected his word, because his actions are completely contrary to what he said.
On 23rd September 2016 the officialist ejidal Commissioner C. Manuel Guzmán Álvaro entered the area of ejidal endowment where the access to the waterfalls of Agua Azul is located with a group of landowners, to evict the group of ejidatarios who were in a confrontation with them, concerning questions about the election of the Commissioner, led by CC. Manuel Jiménez Moreno, Juan Álvaro Moreno, Daniel Moreno Gómez, Carmen Aguilar and others who were claiming the access to the Agua Azul Waterfalls, located at the site of the headquarters of our organization, which was burned down on 21st March 2015. Immediately after the arrival of the Commissioner Manuel Guzmán Álvaro, the State Preventive Police took over our headquarters.
On 30th September, 2016, the officialist ejidal Commissioner Manuel Guzmán Álvaro and his supervisory board issued a communiqué through the website “Chiapas
denuncia pública” (http://chiapasdenuncia.blogspot.mx/2016/09/ejido-san-sabastian-bachajon-exige.html) ) trying to pretend that their struggle is for the defence of the land and demanding that the government recognise them as an authority, but not explaining the background of their true intentions to hand over the land to the bad government.
On 18th October, 2016, the officialist commissioner organised roadblocks in different parts of the ejido to request the intervention of the bad government to supposedly resolve internal problems in the ejido, but actually designed to hand over our natural resources, to ratify the agreement made in 2011 and signed by Francisco Guzmán Jiménez alias Goyito with Juan Sabines Guerrero, all this for the future benefit of transnational corporations. On that day, people who are supporters of the Commissioner detained, beat and stole belongings from the compañero Domingo Pérez Álvaro.
On 20th October, 2016, the authorities of the ejido la sexta Bachajón again received threats, these were threats of arrest or kidnapping by the people who are supporters of the officialist ejidal Commissioner Manuel Guzmán Álvaro. Members of the group of the ejidal commissioner Manuel Guzmán Álvaro said they have a list of those threatened from la Sexta Bachajón. They verbally warned our compañero Domingo Pérez Álvaro that they would finish him off, as they did to the compañero Juan Vázquez Guzmán, executed at his home on the night of 24th April, 2013.
At the request and insistence of the ejidal Commissioner, the bad government gladly took the opportunity to send police troops to protect the area of Agua Azul, the police requested by the Commissioner changed places, 50% of them went to Xanil village, to the home of C. Carlos Jiménez Gómez, father of the two members of the state police: Carlos Jiménez Hernández y Rafael Jiménez Hernández, belonging to the state police, who are also involved in this harassment.
This permanent presence of the bad government in our territory completely violates the rights of our people to autonomy and self-determination, which is why we repudiate the subservience of the Ejidal Commissioner and his Supervisory Board who continue to allow this policy of dispossession, obtaining the backing of civil human rights bodies and pretending that their movement is a struggle for the defence of territory when it is the opposite and also intends to hand over the land to the government, and commit violent acts against social activists.
We clarify as members of la Sexta Ejido Bachajón, that we deny all connection with all acts committed and organized by the officialist ejidal Commissioner Manuel Guzmán Álvaro towards civil society, because they have put trees onto the roads and have burned a patrol of the municipal police at the height of jolamaltzak, on the section of the road Ocosingo-Palenque, these acts were committed by the officialist ejidal Commissioner Manuel Guzmán Álvaro and his group, this was the manner in which they requested intervention from the state authorities; and we are making you aware that the sole responsibility for any detention and deprivation of liberty of the authorities and members of the sixth Declaration of the ejido Bachajón lies with the ejidal Commissioner Manuel Guzmán Álvaro.
We thank for their national and international solidarity all the compañeros and compañeras who remain alert as to what happens in San Sebastián Bachajón. We salute and express our solidarity to the Yaqui Tribe who are going through difficult times in their struggle and resistance, which is also ours.
From the northern state of Chiapas we send combative greetings from the women and men of San Sebastián Bachajón.
Never again a Mexico without us
Land and Freedom
Zapata Lives!
Hasta la victoria siempre!
Freedom for Political Prisoners!
Juan Vázquez Guzmán Lives, the Struggle for Bachajón continues!
Juan Carlos Gómez Silvano Lives, the Struggle for Bachajón continues!
No to the Dispossession of Indigenous Lands!
State Police Out of Our Indigenous Territory!
Immediate return of our disappeared and murdered compañeros from the Teachers School – Normal Raúl Isidro Burgos de Ayotzinapa!
Long live the Chol compañeros and compañeras from the Ejido Tila’s dignified struggle!
Long live the compañeros and compañeras from San Francisco Xochicuautla’s dignified struggle!
Long live the communities that fight for autonomy and freedom!
Justice for our compañero JUAN VAZQUEZ GUZMAN, AYOTZINAPA, ACTEAL, ABC, ATENCO!
Statement from Las Abejas on the Monthly Anniversary of the Acteal Massacre
On October 22, to mark the monthly anniversary of the Acteal Massacre (1997), Las Abejas Civil Society released a statement in which they recalled key dates in October: October 2, 1968, the day of a “government crime recorded in the memory of the people,” even while the current government continues “to commit other crimes against young students such as the forced disappearance of 43 students from Ayotzinapa”; and October 12, 1492, “what was the beginning of the pillage of the resources of our continent, a pillage that has not ended. This is what we saw just eight days ago when we were present at the Fifth National Indigenous Congress (CNI) where an endless [list of] testimonies of grievances and dispossessions from a range of peoples throughout Mexico, from Sonora to the Yucatan Peninsula the lands of campesinos have been invaded, to be exploited and destroyed by transnational companies, while the real owners are imprisoned, killed or disappeared “. Las Abejas said that, “a thing that gives us great sadness and indignation is to see that this pillage that foreigners did in the past is now carried out by the same governments that claim to represent Mexicans.”
On this same date, Las Abejas also launched an invitation issued to commemorate the nineteenth anniversary of the Acteal Massacre framework in which they will hold a meeting to be held on December 21 and 22 this year in Acteal, Chenalho municipality.
Following the attack on Domingo Pérez Álvaro, comrade and adherent from San Sebastíán de Bachajón.
Today, 20th of October 2016, we read with anger and concern the third denunciation in three days by our comrades and adherents to the Sixth from the ejido of San Sebastián Bachajón.
For three days they have faced aggressions, disproportionate police, military and paramilitary presence, and threats of eviction, imprisonment and death.
Our comrades, the women and men of the Ejido of San Sebastián Bachajón have spent 11 years fighting for the defence of their territory, nature and the earth. They demand their right to enjoy and make use of their territory in the heart of the forest. The waterfalls of Agua Azul, which are in indigenous lands, are a treasure which is being kept for a choice few, as is the [hydroelectric] dam, about which there is financial speculation, which will benefit only the touristic elite. And which will “serve” equally few; those who can bear the moral and financial cost of staying in the luxury rooms of their hotels and playing on the golf course they want to build on the back of the blood, livelihoods, dispossession and displacement of those who are not disposed to bow their heads in the face of death and contempt for their life and history.
In these years of fighting and resistance, against dispossession and the eco-tourism project of the Palenque tourist trail, they have had to overcome the death of two comrades and now the imprisonment of another three members of the ejido, as well as continual repression, day after day.
We have in front of us the latest denunciations by the women and men, adherents of San Sebastián de Bachajón, about the bad governance of the ejidal commisioner Manuel Guzmán Álvaro, his direct collaboration in the provoking clashes and authorising the entry and installation of Preventative State Police and paramilitaries to halt the process of autonomy by the women and men, comrades of Bachajón. On the 17th of October, said commissioner led a group of thugs who brutally assaulted our comrade Domingo Pérez Álvaro, leaving him gravely injured.
Our comrade Domingo Pérez was violently set upon by said group on his return from visiting the political prisoners in Playas de Catazaja.
This new aggression forms part of the terror strategies that the aforementioned official commissioner has imposed in order to dispossess the people of these lands and hand them over to the economic interests of big business.
From a different corner of the dignified world, we wish to identify those responsible for all this violence – murders, the incarceration of political prisoners, police repression – and denounce all of these acts, making public the names of:
The official commisioner, MANUEL GUZMÁN ÁLVARO. The municipal president, FELIPE GUTIÉRREZ MIRANDA. The governor of the State of Chiapas, MANUEL VELASCO COELLO. And above all, the president of Mexico, ENRIQUE PEÑA NIETO, all of them puppets in the hands of corporate interests, and perpetrators of a politics of death and dispossession.
From this part of the world we wish to express our total solidarity with the autonomy that is being built in San Sebastián de Bachajón, and with the comrades and adherents, women and men, who keep these natural spaces far out of reach of the greedy hands of criminal corporate interest.
We hold them and all three levels of government responsible for the aforementioned and all further aggressions that may occur.
From here we will remain vigilant to what is happening to our comrades, men and women of Bachajón and with dignified rage we cry out to this bad, criminal government, NO MORE AGGRESSIONS IN BACHAJÓN!
Juan Vázquez Guzmán lives, the fight in Bachajón continues!
Juan Carlos Gómez Silvano lives, the fight in Bachajón continues!
No to the dispossession of indigenous territories!
State police out of indigenous territory!
Immediate freedom for our imprisoned comrades from San Sebastián Bachajón!
CGT-Estado Español
Les trois passants, Toulouse, Francia.
CEDOZ
Associazione Ya Basta! Milano
La Pirata
Espiral de solidaridad, semilla de resistencia
Asamblea libertaria autoorganizada Paliacate Zapatista. Grecia
Associació Solidaria Cafè Rebeldía-Infoespai, Barcelona
Union syndicale Solidaires
ASSI (Accion Social Sindical Internacionalista)
MutVitz 13
Colectivo Caracol – Marseille
Comitato Chiapas “Maribel” – Bergamo
20ZLN
Chiapasgruppa
Latin-Amerikagruppene i Norge (Grupo de Chiapas del Comité Noruego de Solidaridad con América Latina)
UK Zapatista Network:
Dorset Chiapas Solidarity Group
Edinburgh Chiapas Solidarity Group
Kiptik (Bristol)
London Mexico Solidarity Group
Manchester Zapatista Collective
Meso-America Solidarity Action Liverpool
UK Zapatista Education, Culture and Communication Team
UK Zapatista Translation Service
Zapatista Solidarity Group – Essex
Individual members of the network
CSPCL (Comité de Solidaridad con los Pueblos de Chiapas en Lucha,
CNI and EZLN support the Dignified Resistance of the Yaqui Tribe
JOINT COMMUNIQUE FROM THE CNI AND THE EZLN SUPPORTING THE DIGNIFIED RESISTANCE OF THE YAQUI TRIBE
October 2016
To the Yaqui Tribe,
To the peoples and governments of the world,
As the originary peoples who make up the National Indigenous Congress and the Zapatista communities, we send our simple words in solidarity with the Yaqui Tribe, its traditional government, and its troops. We are with you in these difficult moments after the confrontations this past October 21 in Lomas de Bácum.
We condemn the conflict and discord that are planted and promoted in the communities by the bad governments and their overseers, national and international corporations, who want to take control over the gas, water, and minerals of the Yaqui territory. To this end, the powerful sow division as a tool to impose death and destruction in our territories. For them, we are merely a path to more power and more money. As the peoples, nations, and tribes of the National Indigenous Congress and the Zapatista peoples, we salute the Yaqui Tribe’s defense of their territory. We call for unity in the face of a common enemy which aims to take everything that we as peoples have and which makes possible our collective organization, our history, our language, and our life.
In the various geographies of resistance of the originary peoples of this country, the bad governments are using our own people to generate violence among us in order to guarantee their ability to impose extractive projects of death, structural reforms, the destruction of communitarian organization, and terror among those who struggle. For those who struggle, in contrast to the capitalists, the life and future of the people is everything.
We call on national and international civil society, on the originary peoples, on the national and international Sixth, and on the free media to be attentive and demand the respect deserved by the indigenous peoples in their autonomous organization and self-determination.
Worldwide Pronouncement in Solidarity with Domingo Pérez Alvaro and the community of San Sebastián Bachajón, adherents to the Sixth Declaration
We energetically denounce the fierce aggression against Domingo Pérez Alvaro, indigenous Tseltal, ejidatario and adherent to the Sixth Declaration of the Lacandon Jungle from the ejido San Sebastián Bachajón, which took place on Monday, October 17th, at approximately 4 pm, at the top of the crossroads of Alan Sajcun in the territory of the ejido.
According to a statement from the ejidatarios, the aggressors are people belonging to the group of supporters of the officialist Ejidal Commissioner, who are government supporters and enemies of the struggle carried out by the ejidatarios for their land and territory, which the bad capitalist government wants to take away from them in order to build a luxury tourist resort. This group of supporters of the officialist Ejidal Commissioner of San Sebastian Bachajón, Manuel Guzman Alvaro, detained compañero Domingo Pérez Alvaro and physically attacked him with heavy blows so that today he is still in a very delicate state of health.
The supporters of the Ejidal Commissioner accuse Domingo Pérez of taking part in collective works on the lands of the neighbouring community of Bolom Ajaw and of participating in La Sexta Bachajón. In fact, compañero Domingo Pérez Alvaro has participated since the founding of La Sexta Bachajón, he has walked in promoting human rights and participated in the National Indigenous Congress; he also took part in the 20th anniversary of the CNI. On the day of the attack, Domingo was returning from the prison of CERESO 17 in Playas de Catazaja, where he went to visit one of the political prisoners of Bachajón, Santiago Moreno Pérez, on behalf of the organization.
The brutal and serious attack on compañero Domingo Pérez Alvaro certainly took place because of his participation in the struggle of his people to defend their territory. As the ejidatarios say about the attackers: “We reject their actions of dispossession which only serve to confirm their agreements with the bad government to hand over ejido lands to them …. We condemn the actions of the Ejidal Commissioner Manuel Guzmán Álvaro who we hold responsible for the integrity of our colleague Domingo Pérez Alvaro and any attack on the compañeros and compañeras of La Sexta Bachajon.”
Compas of good heart all around the world, we hereby ask for your solidarity with and support for La Sexta Bachajón. Please denounce these acts and disseminate this information, because it is reported that the compañero is in a grave condition following this attack.
We ask you to remain alert as to the situation in the ejido San Sebastián Bachajón.
Land and Freedom!
¡Hasta la victoria siempre!
Juan Vázquez Guzmán lives, the Bachajón struggle continues!
Juan Carlos Gómez Silvano lives, the Bachajón struggle continues!
Compas of the ejido San Sebastián Bachajón, you are not alone!
Signatories:
Hermann Bellinghausen, Mexico
Movement for Justice in El Barrio, United States
Raúl Zibechi, Uruguay
Sylvia Marcos, Mexico
Jean Robert, Mexico
Gustavo Esteva Figueroa, Mexico
Hugo Blanco Galdos, Peru
Malú Huacuja del Toro, United States
Circulo de las Primeras Naciones, Canada
UK Zapatista Solidarity Network:
-Dorset Chiapas Solidarity Group
-Edinburgh Chiapas Solidarity Group
-Kiptik (Bristol)
-London Mexico Solidarity Group
-Manchester Zapatista Collective
– Meso-America Solidarity Action Liverpool
-UK Zapatista Education, Culture and Communication team
RvsR Following the attack on a member of the Sixth from San Sebastián Bachajón
Yesterday, October 17th, our comrade Domingo Pérez Álvaro, a member of the Adherents to the Sixth from San Sebastián Bachajón, was stopped by a gang of thugs led by the official commissioner of San Sebastián Bachajón, Manuel Guzmán Álvaro. He was beaten up after having visited the political prisioners in Playas de Catazaja. Our comrade is seriously injured.
Since May of this year, our comrades, women and men of San Sebastián Bachajón, have denounced the bad administration of the official commissioner, how his administration has collaborated in the destabilization of the area, provoking clashes with the partisans and accusing the men and women who are adherents to the Sixth of holding road blocks and other actions in which they have never participated. The official commissioner has also allowed the Preventative State Police to estabish itself in the area, in spite of promises not to allow its presence in Bachajón. It is clearly a strategy that intends to slow down the process of autonomy being undertaken by our comrades; this is the real threat to those on ‘top’, since we know the area’s juicy economic potential for ecological tourism and big hotel businesses. The dispossession strategy is also evident.
Sadly, police repression, the incarceration of political prisoners and murders have accompanied the autonomous process of our comrades, women and men, of San Sebastián Bachajón. It pains us once more to hear the news of this attack on Domingo, our comrade Domingo. It fills us with indignation and anger towards those responsible: the official commissioner MANUEL GUZMÁN ÁLVARO, the municipal president of Chilón, the governor of the State of Chiapas MANUEL VELASCO COELLO, the president of Mexico ENRIQUE PEÑA NIETO, all of them puppets in the hands of corporate interests in the area, those interested in building a new Cancun in Agua Azul, with dispossession, repression and death.
Let us remain vigilant, spread the word, demonstrate our solidarity with the Tzeltal dignity being constructed in San Sebastián Bachajón.
STOP THE AGGRESSIONS IN BACHAJÓN!
JUSTICE FOR OUR COMRADE DOMINGO!
LONG LIVE THE AUTONOMIES!
LONG LIVE BACHAJÓN!
Against dispossession and repression: Solidarity!
Network for Solidarity and against Repression (RvSR)
Translated by Ruby Zajac for the UK Zapatista Solidarity Network
Zapatistas Respond to Criticism Regarding Election Proposal
EZLN Subcomandante Marcos, now known as Galeano, in Chiapas in 1996. | Photo: Creative Commons
The Zapatista response appeared to reaffirm that their goal in presenting a candidate would be to expose the contradictions of the Mexican political system.
Not long after the Zapatista National Liberation Army and the National Indigenous Congress resolved to present an Indigenous woman as an independent candidate for the 2018 presidential elections, the rebel group began to receive criticism.
The decision made at the Fifth National Indigenous Congress caught many by surprise, as the Zapatistas had long rejected any formal participation in electoral politics.
One of the first to respond was leftist former Mexico City Mayor Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador who suggested the EZLN, as the Zapatistas are also known, were trying to divide the left.
Lopez Obrador is widely expected to run for president a third time in the upcoming election and an “independent candidate” could draw away votes that might otherwise go to him.
In the 2006 election, Lopez Obrador lost in a disputed, though tightly contested, election. That year the Zapatistas organized “The Other Campaign,” which called on Mexicans to participate in political activity that went beyond voting.
During “The Other Campaign,” Zapatistas — including the group’s most recognizable figure, Subcomandante Marcos — travelled throughout Mexico meeting with activists and social movement leaders in order to build a broad front against capitalism.
In a letter posted online, Marcos, now known as Subcomandante Galeano, responded to the criticism.
“How solid can the Mexican political system be, and how well-founded and reliable the tactics and strategies of the political parties, if, when someone says publicly that they are thinking about something, that they are going to ask their peers what they think of what they are thinking, the entire political party system becomes hysterical?” read the letter.
When the decision to consider running a candidate was first announced by the Zapatistas, they specified that it was not being done as a means of securing power.
“We confirm that our struggle is not for power, we do not seek it,” read the joint statement from the National Indigenous Congress and the Zapatistas.
Galeano’s letter appeared to reaffirm that their goal in presenting a candidate would be to expose the contradictions of the Mexican political system.
Referring to Margarita Zavala, the wife of ex-president Felipe Calderon and likely candidate for the presidency in 2018, Galeano presented a juxtaposition.
“You who are reading this: would you be bothered by watching and listening to a debate between the Calderona (Zavala) from above, with her ‘traditional’ luxury brand clothing, and a woman below, of Indigenous blood, culture, language, and history? Would you be more interested in hearing what the Calderona promises or what the Indigenous woman proposes? Wouldn’t you want to see this clash of two worlds?” asked Galeano.
The letter gave no indication the EZLN and the National Indigenous Congress intend to withdraw their proposal.
The idea of running a candidate must still, however, be approved by the grassroots of the organization.
From October 9 to 13, within the framework of the 20th anniversary of the founding of the National Indigenous Congress (CNI), the “Fifth National Indigenous Congress” was held at CIDECI-Unitierra in San Cristobal de Las Casas. About 500 delegates from 32 nations, peoples and indigenous tribes of Mexico, as well as members and support bases of the Zapatista Army of National Liberation (EZLN) and other guests participated. It worked in thematic working groups around the following themes: dispossession and repression; our resistances and rebellions; a review of the CNI; proposals for strengthening the CNI. On October 12, Columbus Day, a political-cultural event in Oventik Caracol was also held.
Zapatista militia on the arrival of the CNI at Oventik, October 12, 2016 (@SIPAZ)
On closing the event, the CNI and the EZLN published a statement entitled “May the Earth Tremble at its Core” (paraphrasing the national anthem), in which they reported 27 grievances dispossessions indigenous peoples in the country are facing. What created the biggest stir was the announcement of the start of a consultation to examine the convenience of appointing an indigenous council of government and inviting an indigenous woman to participate in the upcoming presidential elections to be held in 2018. The statement says: “Given all of the above, we declare ourselves in permanent assembly and we will consult in each of our geographies, territories and directions the agreement of the Fifth CNI to appoint an indigenous council of government whose word will be materialized by an indigenous woman, a delegate of the CNI as an independent candidate who contends on behalf of the National Indigenous Congress and the Zapatista Army of National Liberation in the 2018 election for the presidency of this country.”
The statement says that “It’s time to attack, to go on the offensive” and clarified that “our struggle is not for power, we do not seek that; but we will call on indigenous peoples and civil society to organize to stop this destruction, to strengthen us in our resistance and rebellion” the Zapatistas said in a statement in which they made a call to organize “from below.”
The joint statement ends by emphasizing “It is time for rebel dignity, to build a new nation for all people, to strengthen the power from below and the anti-capitalist left, and for those who are to blame for the pain of the people of this multicolor Mexico to pay.”
A little behind her, a strange being, similar to a dog, or to a cat, shelters itself in the threshold of the hut. The little girl turns to look at it and says: “Hey you, cat-dog, what, you scared of the rain? Not me. They don’t call me ‘Defensa Zapatista’ for nothing. You think that if we’re in the middle of a game and it starts raining we’re going to say, “oh no, I better get off the field or I’ll get wet?” No way. You can just fix your hair with your hand, and since it’s wet it stays smooth and forget about the rest. But it’s not like I fix it like that so I can go around flirting with fucking men. It’s so I can see when the ball comes and goes. If I don’t fix it, I can’t see. And it doesn’t matter if you’re in the hut, even if you’re a cat or a dog, you’re still going to get wet. Look, I just got an idea.”
Event against violence against women, San Cristobal de Las Casas, October, 2016 
Photo
The CNI and the EZLN have been talking to each other a lot.
EZLN Subcomandante Marcos, now known as Galeano, in Chiapas in 1996. | Photo: Creative Commons
CNI at Oventik Caracol (
Zapatista militia on the arrival of the CNI at Oventik, October 12, 2016 (
dorset chiapas solidarity 