Concejo Indígena de Gobierno
Invitation to Days of Action in Defense of Territory and Mother Earth “WE ARE ALL SAMIR”
INVITATION TO DAYS OF ACTION IN DEFENSE OF TERRITORY AND MOTHER EARTH
“WE ARE ALL SAMIR”
SISTERS AND BROTHERS OF MEXICO AND THE WORLD:
First: Today more than ever, capitalism grows through war and the ongoing dispossession of all forms of life. The bad governments and the big capitalist businesses, all of which can be identified by name, try to disappear our struggles in defense of territory and Mother Earth, even normalizing the murder of our brothers and sisters who defend that territory and our Mother Earth. Today our collective heart hurts for the murders of:
- Samir Flores Soberanes of the Nahua people of Amilcingo, Morelos.
- Julián Cortés Flores, of the Mephaa people of the Casa de Justicia in San Luis Acatlán, Guerrero.
- Ignacio Pérez Girón, of the Tzotzil people of the municipality of Aldama, Chiapas.
- José Lucio Bartolo Faustino, Modesto Verales Sebastián, Bartolo Hilario Morales, and Isaías Xanteco Ahuejote of the Nahua people organized as the Indigenous and Popular Council of Guerrero – Emiliano Zapata (CIPOG – EZ).
- Juan Monroy and José Luis Rosales, of the Nahua people Ayotitlán, Jalisco.
- Feliciano Corona Cirino, of the Nahua people of Santa María Ostula, Michoacán.
- Josué Bernardo Marcial Campo, also known as TíoBad, of the Populuca people of Veracruz.
Our compañeros were murdered for opposing the war the bad government is waging on our lands, hills, and waters in order to consolidate the dispossession which today threatens humanity’s existence.
We also feel the pain of the forced disappearance of our brother Sergio Rivera Hernández, Nahua of the Sierra Negra, Puebla, who also defended land and Mother Earth.
Second: The current neoliberal phase of capitalism takes on ever more monstrous forms, declaring open war on humanity and against the earth, our mother. Economic development today, based everywhere on finance capital and supported by the military and extractivist industries, dominates peoples, nations, and entire continents. It grows through real or fictitious wars and the proliferation of organized crime as well as invasions and coups d’état. Its insatiable consumptive and accumulationist capitalist logic has brought us to the brink of irreversible climate change and a limit at which the very conditions for human life on the planet are at risk.
Third: In addition, the current system’s patriarchal organization, inherited from previous systems and civilizations but deepened over the past several centuries, has been exposed as a violent enemy of humanity as a whole but especially of women and our Mother Earth. In other words, the exploitation of and profound structural violence against women is an integral part of capitalism, although it was born long before. Capitalist private property, the foundation of this system, cannot be explained or understood except as part of a patriarchal system of domination over women and the earth.
Fourth: In Mexico, the acceleration of mining, extraction, and hydrocarbon pipelines, the creation of the National Guard within the logic of the Merida Initiative, and the imposition, at all costs, of major megaprojects (The Salina Cruz – Coatzacoalcos Trans-Isthmus Corridor, The Mayan Train, the Morelos Integrated Project, and the New International Airport in Mexico City)—all of which are intended to reorganize territories, populations, and both the northern and Central American borders in a logic of capitalist displacement and exploitation—make a clearly anti-capitalist and anti-patriarchal defense of human life, of the territories of our peoples, and of the earth all the more urgent. For these reasons:
We invite: the peoples of Mexico and the world; organizations and collectives of workers of the countryside, city, and seas; women; students; children; elders; and those across the range of sexual diversity to:
DAYS OF ACTION IN DEFENSE OF TERRITORY AND MOTHER EARTH
“WE ARE ALL SAMIR”
On the following dates:
February 20, 2020: Local actions in Mexico and around the world in Defense of Territory and Mother Earth; in demand of justice for our dead, disappeared, and imprisoned; and against the megaprojects of death.
February 21, 2020: March for Justice for Our Brother Samir Flores Soberanes and for our dead, disappeared, and imprisoned, and in Defense of Territory and Mother Earth. Meet at the offices of the Federal Electricity Commission, Avenida Reforma, Mexico City, 4pm.
February 22, 2020: Assembly in Defense of Territory and Mother Earth, to take place in downtown Amilcingo, municipality of Temoac, Morelos State, starting at 10am.
Sincerely,
January 7, 2020.
For the Full Reconstitution of Our Peoples
Never Again a Mexico Without Us
AMILCINGO ASSEMBLY OF RESISTANCE
NATIONAL INDIGENOUS CONGRESS/ INDIGENOUS GOVERNING COUNCIL
ZAPATISTA ARMY FOR NATIONAL LIBERATION
PEOPLES, COMMUNITIES, ORGANIZATIONS, COLLECTIVES, AND INDIVIDUALS PARTICPATING IN THE FORUM IN DEFENSE OF TERRITORY AND MOTHER EARTH HELD DECEMBER 21-22, 2019, IN THE CARACOL JACINTO CANEK/CIDECI-UNITIERRA, SAN CRISTÓBAL DE LAS CASAS, CHIAPAS.
(Español) Foro en Defensa del Territorio y la Madre Tierra [audios y fotos]
El 21 y 22 de diciembre de 2019, en el nuevo caracol Jacinto Canek, en las instalaciones del Cideci/UniTierra, San Cristóbal de Las Casas, Chiapas, se realizó el Foro en Defensa del Territorio y la Madre Tierra, convocado por el Congreso Nacional Indígena, el Concejo Indígena de Gobierno y el Ejército Zapatista de Liberación Nacional.
En el evento estuvieron presentes 435 asistentes y 486 delegados e invitados, sumando un total de 921 personas de 25 estados de la república y de 24 países: Francia, Alemania, Argentina, Australia, Austria, Brasil, Costa Rica, Guatemala, Reino Unido, Canadá, Chile, Colombia, Dinamarca, Estado Español, Estados Unidos, Italia, Kenia, Perú, Uruguay, Cuba, Suiza, Irlanda, Nueva Zelanda y Portugal.
En el transcurso de esos dos días, las presentaciones de los pueblos y organizaciones a lo largo y ancho del país (además de testimonios de los pueblos originarios de Colombia, del pueblo Mapuche de Chile y de las mujeres Kurdas) constituyeron una valiosísima radiografía de la nación que no se encuentra en otros espacios y mucho menos en el discurso oficial.
El tema común a todas las presentaciones fue lo que muchos denominaron como una guerra del capital contra los pueblos originarios, por medio de megaproyectos que arrasan con el territorio y la Madre Tierra: extracción de hidrocarburos (incluyendo el devastador método de fractura hidráulica o fracking), gaseoductos, hidroeléctricas, termoeléctricas, eólicas, minería, agroindustria, megaproyectos turísticos, así como el corredor interoceánico en el Istmo de Tehuantepec y el mal llamado Tren Maya.
(Una fuente muy útil para entender el avance de los megaproyectos que amenazan la vida y los territorios en México y Centroamérica es la plataforma de Geocomunes México.)
El resultado de esta ofensiva del capital ha sido el despojo de territorios, la contaminación de tierras y aguas, el desplazamiento forzado de poblaciones y la amenaza no sólo a la supervivencia material de los pueblos, sino también a sus formas de vida, sus culturas, sus tradiciones, sus lenguas, su cosmovisión.
