Convocation to the Events:
“Zapata Lives, Samir Lives, The Struggle Continues”
on the 100^thAnniversary of the Assassination of General Emiliano Zapata Salazar

Given that:

Our brother Samir Flores Soberanes was murdered by the neoliberal regime—we don’t know if it was the government, big business, their criminal cartels, or all three together.

The so-called “Fourth Transformation” began with Miguel de la Madrid Hurtado, was intensified by Carlos Salinas de Gortari, continued as a war of conquest by Ernesto Zedillo Ponce de León, Vicente Fox Quezada, Felipe Calderón Hinojosa, and Enrique Peña Nieto; and is now extended through the long-term project of Andrés Manuel López Obrador and the Party of National Regeneration [MORENA]. For the originary peoples, the only “real change” will be an increase in lies, tricks, persecution, threats, imprisonment, displacement, murder, mockery and disrespect, human exploitation and natural destruction—in sum, the annihilation of the collective life that we are.

The current neoliberal government headed by Andrés Manuel López Obrador has its sights set on our peoples and territories. Using its “National Institute for Indigenous Peoples”, it has put into place a web of cooptation and disorganization that clears the way for a war whose principal front will be industrialization. This war will be implemented via infrastructure projects and violence and backed by the armed forces and the soon-to-be National Guard, casting a dark shadow of death and destruction over the originary peoples of our country.

We restate our firm opposition to the neoliberal policies of old and new governments; to the referendums or whatever they choose to call them whose only purpose is our displacement from and dispossession of our territories; to mining, to the damming of our rivers, to highway construction and the acceleration of real estate speculation throughout our lands, to the construction of neoliberal megaprojects of death like the Integral Project for Morelos, the Trans-isthmus Corridor, and the Mayan Train.

We have not forgotten that the struggle led by General Emiliano Zapata Salazar and the Liberation Army of the South and Center represented and continues to represent the interests and aspirations of our peoples and of millions of the exploited in Mexico and the world. This upcoming April 10 is the 100^thanniversary of the cowardly murder of General Emiliano Zapata Salazar by the political regime that, despite its “transformations”, continues to govern today.

Given this, we convoke a National Assembly of the indigenous peoples of the National Indigenous Congress/ Indigenous Governing Council, adherents to the Sixth Declaration of the Lacandón Jungle, the Support Networks for the Indigenous Governing Council, and collectives and organizations organized in struggle against capitalism, to take place on April 9 of this year in the indigenous community of Amilcingo, municipality of Temoac, Morelos, from 10:00am-6:00pm.

We also convoke a national and international mobilization to mark the 100^th anniversary of the murder of General Emiliano Zapata Salazar. The mobilization’s epicenter will be Chinameca, Morelos, on April 10, 2019, beginning at 9:00am.

The schedule of activities will be published shortly.
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SAMIR LIVES! THE STRUGGLE CONTINUES!
Declaration from the Third National Assembly of the National Indigenous Congress, the Indigenous Governing Council, and the EZLN

To the peoples of the world:
To those organizations and collectives acting in resistance and rebellion:
To the national and international Sixth:
To the media:

As Ayuuk, Binizza, Chinanteco, Chol, Chontal, Guarijío, Maya, Mayo, Mazahua, Mazateco, Mixteco, Nahua, Nayeri, Otomí, Popoluca, Purépecha, Raramuri, Tepehuano, Tlapaneco, Tojolabal, Totonaco, Tzeltal, Tsotsil, Wixárika, Yaqui, Zoque, and Quichua (Ecuador) peoples, we have come together for the Third National Assembly of the National Indigenous Congress and the Indigenous Governing Council. Today, almost 100 years after the assassination of General Emiliano Zapata, we now face the pain and rage brought by the war waged against our peoples and the murder of our compañero Samir, killed for defending the land and his people. As a national assembly, we send our embrace of solidarity and struggle to his family and the community of Amilcingo, Morelos. As the CNI-CIG and the EZLN, for whom compañero Samir will always be a glimmer of light, we send our solidarity and collective embrace.

Samir was killed by the neoliberal regime—we don’t know if it was the government, the business class, their criminal cartels, or all three together. The path was laid for this cowardly murder by the new federal executive, Andrés Manuel López Obrador [AMLO], through his offers of support not to those below, but rather to the owners of money and power, while making veiled threats against those of us who defend and fight for life. AMLO has promised to hand over to big business and the military elite what neoliberal capitalism and all of its various bad governments never could: our land. His administration’s new Agrarian Development Law aims to dismantle collective organization and collective property forms, deeming as “development” what is actually shameless theft and destruction. This is accompanied by military threats to our peoples via his “National Guard” in what amounts to the total reconfiguration of our country.

What above they call “transformation” has always mean the same thing for our peoples: we give our lives so that powerful and oligarchic interests, fewer and fewer but bigger and bigger, can live off of oppression, exploitation, and destruction. The so-called “Fourth Transformation”[i] follows the same path as the previous three, although more brutally and cynically, if such a thing is possible.

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CNI/CIG/EZLN Denunciation of the Murder of Samir Flores Soberanes
February 20, 2019

To the people of Mexico and of the world:
To the CIG Support Networks:
To the Networks of Resistance and Rebellion:
To the National and International Sixth:
To the media:

With pain and rage we denounce the cowardly murder of our compañero Samir Flores Soberanes, community leader in Amilcingo, Morelos, and key figure in the opposition to the “Integral Project for Morelos”. Soberanes was a long-time delegate to the National Indigenous Congress.

On February 20^th at approximately 5:40 am, armed individuals in two vehicles showed up at Soberanes’ house and knocked on the door. When he answered they shot him four times, including two bullets to the head that would end his life within minutes.

Just the day before, Samir had presented arguments against the “Integral Project for Morelos” at an event in the Jonacatepec municipality organized by Hugo Erick Flores, representative of the bad government at the federal level. The event was connected to the supposed “referendum” that the government intends to use in order to justify building a thermoelectric plant and associated industrial projects in Huexca, Morelos, which will require territorial dispossession and pose a risk to all life in the region.

We hold the bad government and its bosses—corporations and armed groups that operate both legally and illegally—responsible for this crime, through which they intend to rob us blind, kill us off, and extinguish the glimmers of light that give us hope, which is what our compañero Samir was to us.

Attentively
February 2019

For the Full Reconstitution of our Peoples
Never Again a Mexico Without Us

National Indigenous Congress
Indigenous Governing Council
Zapatista Army for National Liberation

(See also: Letter to the Zapatista women from the women who struggle in Mexico and the world)

ZAPATISTA ARMY FOR NATIONAL LIBERATION
MEXICO

February 2019

To: Women in struggle everywhere in the world
From: The Zapatista Women

Sister, compañera:

We as Zapatista women send you our greetings as the women in struggle that we all are.

We have sad news for you today, which is that we are not going to be able to hold the Second International Encounter of Women in Struggle here in Zapatista territory in March of 2019.

Maybe you already know the reasons why, but if not, we’re going to tell you a little about them here.

The new bad governments have said clearly that they are going to carry forward the megaprojects of the big capitalists, including their Mayan Train, their plan for the Tehuantepec Isthmus, and their massive commercial tree farms. They have also said that they’ll allow the mining companies to come in, as well as agribusiness. On top of that, their agrarian plan is wholly oriented toward destroying us as originary peoples by converting our lands into commodities and thus picking up what Carlos Salinas de Gortari started but couldn’t finish because we stopped him with our uprising.

All of these are projects of destruction, no matter how they try to disguise them with lies, no matter how many times they multiply their 30 million votes. The truth is that they are coming for everything now, coming full force against the originary peoples, their communities, lands, mountains, rivers, animals, plants, even their rocks. And they are not just going to try to destroy us Zapatista women, but all indigenous women—and all men for that matter, but here we’re talking as and about women.

In their plans our lands will no longer be for us but for the tourists and their big hotels and fancy restaurants and all of the businesses that make it possible for the tourists to have these luxuries. They want to turn our lands into plantations for the production of lumber, fruit, and water, and into mines to extract gold, silver, uranium, and all of the minerals the capitalists are after. They want to turn us into their peons, into servants who sell our dignity for a few coins every month.

Those capitalists and the new bad governments who obey them think that what we want is money. They don’t understand that what we want is freedom, that even the little that we have achieved has been through our struggle, without any attention, without photos and interviews, without books or referendum or polls, and without votes, museums, or lies. They don’t understand that what they call “progress” is a lie, that they can’t even provide safety for all of the women who continue to be beaten, raped, and murdered in their worlds, be they progressive or reactionary worlds.

How many women have been murdered in those progressive or reactionary worlds while you have been reading these words, compañera, sister? Maybe you already know this but we’ll tell you clearly here that in Zapatista territory, not a single woman has been murdered for many years. Imagine, and they call us backward, ignorant, and insignificant.

Maybe we don’t know which feminism is the best one, maybe we don’t say “cuerpa” [a feminization of “cuerpo,” or body] or however it is you change words around, maybe we don’t know what “gender equity” is or any of those other things with too many letters to count. In any case that concept of “gender equity” isn’t even well-formulated because it only refers to women and men, and even we, supposedly ignorant and backward, know that there are those who are neither men nor women and who we call “others” [otroas] but who call themselves whatever they feel like. It hasn’t been easy for them to earn the right to be what they are without having to hide because they are mocked, persecuted, abused, and murdered. Why should they be obligated to be men or women, to choose one side or the other? If they don’t want to choose then they shouldn’t be disrespected in that choice. How are we going to complain that we aren’t respected as women if we don’t respect these people? Maybe we think this way because we are just talking about what we have seen in other worlds and we don’t know a lot about these things. What we do know is that we fought for our freedom and now we have to fight to defend it so that the painful history that our grandmothers suffered is not relived by our daughters and granddaughters.

We have to struggle so that we don’t repeat history and return to a world where we only cook food and bear children, only to see them grow up into humiliation, disrespect, and death.

We didn’t rise up in arms to return to the same thing.

We haven’t been resisting for 25 years in order to end up serving tourists, bosses, and overseers.

We will not stop training ourselves to work in the fields of education, health, culture, and media; we will not stop being autonomous authorities in order to become hotel and restaurant employees, serving strangers for a few pesos. It doesn’t even matter if it’s a few pesos or a lot of pesos, what matters is that our dignity has no price.

Because that’s what they want, compañera, sister, that we become slaves in our own lands, accepting a few handouts in exchange for letting them destroy the community.

Compañera, sister:

When you came to these mountains for the 2018 gathering, we saw that you looked at us with respect, maybe even admiration. Not everyone showed that respect—we know that some only came to criticize us and look down on us. But that doesn’t matter—the world is big and full of different kinds of thinking and there are those who understand that not all of us can do the same thing and those who don’t. We can respect that difference, compañera, sister, because that’s not what the gathering was for, to see who would give us good reviews or bad reviews. It was to meet and understand each other as women who struggle.

Likewise, we do not want you to look at us now with pity or shame, as if we were servants taking orders delivered more or less politely or harshly, or as if we were vendors with whom to haggle over the price of artisanship or fruit and vegetables or whatever. Haggling is what capitalist women do, though of course when they go to the mall they don’t haggle over the price; they pay whatever the capitalist asks in full and what’s more, they do so happily.

No compañera, sister. We’re going to fight with all our strength and everything we’ve got against these mega-projects. If these lands are conquered, it will be upon the blood of Zapatista women. That is what we have decided and that is what we intend to do.

It seems that these new bad governments think that since we’re women, we’re going to promptly lower our gaze and obey the boss and his new overseers. They think what we’re looking for is a good boss and a good wage. That’s not what we’re looking for. What we want is freedom, a freedom nobody can give us because we have to win it ourselves through struggle, with our own blood.

Do you think that when the new bad government’s forces—its paramilitaries, its national guard—come for us we are going to receive them with respect, gratitude, and happiness? Hell no. We will meet them with our struggle and then we’ll see if they learn that Zapatista women don’t give in, give up, or sell out.

Last year during the women’s gathering we made a great effort to assure that you, compañera and sister, were happy and safe and joyful. We have, nevertheless, a sizable pile of complaints that you left with us: that the boards [that you slept on] were hard, that you didn’t like the food, that meals were expensive, that this or that should or shouldn’t have been this way or that way. But later we’ll tell you more about our work in preparing the gathering and about the criticisms we received.

What we want to tell you now is that even with all the complaints and criticisms, you were safe here: there were no bad men or even good men looking at you or judging you. It was all women here, you can attest to that.

Well now it’s not safe anymore, because capitalism is coming for us, for everything, and at any price. This assault is now possible because those in power feel that many people support them and will applaud them no matter what barbarities they carry out. What they’re going to do is attack us and then check the polls to see if their ratings are still up, again and again until we have been annihilated.

Even as we write this letter, the paramilitary attacks have begun. They are the same groups as always—first they were associated with the PRI, then the PAN, then the PRD, then the PVEM, and now with MORENA.

So we are writing to tell you, compañera, sister, that we are not going to hold a women’s gathering here, but you should do so in your lands, according to your times and ways. And although we won’t attend, we will be thinking about you.

Compañera, sister:

Don’t stop struggling. Even if the bad capitalists and their new bad governments get their way and annihilate us, you must keep struggling in your world. That’s what we agreed in the gathering: that we would all struggle so that no woman in any corner of the world would be scared to be a woman.

Compañera, sister: your corner of the world is your corner in which to struggle, just like our struggle is here in Zapatista territory.

The new bad governments think that they will defeat us easily, that there are very few of us and that nobody from any other world supports us. But that’s not the case, compañera, sister, because even if there is only one of us left, she’s going to fight to defend our freedom.

We aren’t scared, compañera, sister.

If we weren’t scared 25 years ago when nobody even knew we existed, we certainly aren’t going to be scared now that you have seen us—however you saw us, good or bad, but you saw us.

Compañera, hermana:

Take care of that little light that we gave you. Don’t let it go out.

Even if our light here is extinguished by our blood, even if other lights go out in other places, take care of yours because even when times are difficult, we have to keep being what we are, and what we are is women who struggle.

That’s all we wanted to say, compañera, sister. In summary, we’re not going to hold a women’s gathering here; we’re not going to participate. If you hold a gathering in your world and anyone asks you where the Zapatistas are, and why didn’t they come, tell them the truth: tell them that the Zapatista women are fighting in their corner of the world for their freedom.

That’s all, compañeras, sisters, take care of yourselves. Maybe we won’t see each other again.

Maybe they’ll tell you not to bother thinking about the Zapatistas anymore because they no longer exist. Maybe they’ll tell you that there aren’t any more Zapatistas.

But just when you think that they’re right, that we’ve been defeated, you’ll see that we still see you and that one of us, without you even realizing it, has come close to you and whispered in your ear, only for you to hear: “Where is that little light that we gave you?”

From the mountains of the Mexican Southeast,

The Zapatista Women
February 2019

Partial aereal view of the deployment, on 31 December 2018, of zapatista troops belonging to the 21st Infantry Division (the same one that, 25 years earlier, took the municipal seats of Altamirano, Oxchuc, Huixtán, Chanal, Ocosingo, Las Margaritas, and San Cristóbal de Las Casas, in the southeastern Mexican state of Chiapas — now reinforced with combattants from the 2nd and 3rd generation, zapatistas who were children or had not been born in 1994, and who grew in resistance and rebellion against the militarization, paramilitary atacks, and lies, slander and treason by the bad governments of the right or the progressive “left” and the “Marxist-Leninist” “revolutionary” “vanguards”). The material is a courtesy of the free, autonomous, independent, alternative media or whatever they’re called “Regeneración Radio” (https://www.regeneracionradio.org/); the edition showed was done by the Support Teams of the Sixth Commission of the EZLN. January 3, 2019. The EZLN thanks the compas from Regeneración Radio for sharing their communication work.

Words of the EZLN’s CCRI-CG to the Zapatista Peoples on the 25th Anniversary of the Beginning of the War Against Oblivion

Words by Subcomandante Insurgente Moisés

Words by the Indigenous Revolutionary Clandestine Committee

Words by the Good Government Council “Towards Hope”

Words by Subcomandante Insurgente Moisés:

Listen in Spanish: (Descarga aquí)  

December 31, 2018

To our compañeros and compañeras who are Zapatista bases of support:
To our compañeras and compañeros who are Zapatista Autonomous Authorities:
To our compañeras and compañeros who are part of the Indigenous Revolutionary Clandestine Committee [CCRI] and those who are Regional and Local Authorities:
To our compañeras and compañeros who are milicianas and milicianos:
To our compañeras and compañeros who are insurgentas and insurgentes:

I speak in the name of the Zapatista Army for National Liberation.

I speak in your name, as it is my job to be your voice and your gaze.

Our hour as Zapatista peoples has come, and we see that we are alone.

I want to tell you clearly that this is what we see, compañeras and compañeros who are support bases, milicianos, and milicianas: we are alone, just as we were 25 years ago.

Alone we rose up to awake the people of Mexico and of the world, and today, 25 years later, we see that we are still alone. But we did try to tell them, compañeras and compañeros, you were witness to the many gatherings we held as we tried to wake others, to speak to the poor of Mexico in the city and in the countryside.

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Al pueblo mapuche
Al pueblo chileno
A los pueblos originarios de América
A la Sexta Internacional

Hermanos y hermanas del digno pueblo mapuche,

Los pueblos, naciones, tribus y barrios que conformamos el Congreso Nacional Indígena, el Concejo Indígena de Gobierno y el EZLN abrazamos solidariamente la familia del compañero mapuche Camilo Catrillanca, quién fue asesinado durante una operación de un grupo táctico de Carabineros de Chile ocurrido el 14 de noviembre de 2018 en la comunidad de Temucuicui en la región de la Araucanía. Conocemos la lucha centenaria que el digno pueblo mapuche ha hecho para defender sus bosques y ríos así como la represión y montajes que los cuerpos policiales del mal gobierno chileno efectúan sobre territorios mapuches para acabar con la defensa de la vida.

Los pueblos, naciones, tribus y barrios del CNI, el CIG y el EZLN condenamos el cobarde ataque de mal gobierno chileno y de sus fuerzas policiales chilenas. Exigimos que cese la represión y criminalización en contra de los pueblos mapuches que defienden sus territorios. Exigimos también que la muerte del comunero mapuche Camilo Catrillanca no quede impune. Al pueblo mapuche reiteramos nuestra respeto y solidaridad. Saludamos su digna lucha por la defensa de la vida y el territorio.

ATENTAMENTE
Noviembre de 2018
Por la reconstitución integral de nuestros pueblos.
Nunca más un México sin nosotros
Congreso Nacional Indígena – Concejo Indígena de Gobierno
Ejército Zapatista de Liberación Nacional.

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Los Subcomandantes Insurgentes Galeano y Moisés cuentan la “historia del cine en las montañas del sureste mexicano” durante el Festival de Cine Puy ta Cuxlejaltic, Caracol de Oventic, 3 de noviembre de 2018.

Escucha en audio: (Descarga aquí)  

Invitation to the 25th Anniversary Celebration of the Zapatista Uprising, and to a Gathering of Networks

ZAPATISTA ARMY FOR NATIONAL LIBERATION
MEXICO

November 17, 2018

To all of the individuals, groups, collectives, and organizations of the CIG Support Networks:
To the Networks of Resistance and Rebellion or whatever you call them:
To the National and International Sixth:

Given that:

It’s the middle of the night.

And that:

It’s cold out.

And that:

At this crux in time—when it is neither day nor night, neither inside nor outside, neither shadow nor light—you find yourself unable to sleep, in that uncomfortable state of insomnia that makes you vulnerable to memories: the piercing memories of all the things you did and didn’t do, the long list of your failures and the much shorter list of successes.

Given that:

You ask yourself, not without cause, what this is all about…

You’re still trying to grasp the meaning of that phrase, “Everything is impossible right up until it isn’t,” which you heard-read in that disconcerting nano-mini-micro short film at the so-called “cinema for reading.” That film (?) was kept tightly lidded for the last 30 years (literally, it was in a sardine can) and was presented at the impossible cinema by an equally disconcerting beetle dressed as a knight-errant. Its title (of the film, that is), “The 69^th Law of the Dialectic,” is hardly rational either. It’s a film consisting of a single phrase, without images or sounds, leaving everything else to the imagination of whoever attends its…showing?

In any case, everything is absurd here. Here? Where the hell are you? You don’t really have time to ponder that because somebody rushes you along: (Continuar leyendo…)

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Fuente: Enlace Zapatista

Comisión Sexta del EZLN.
México.

Octubre del 2018.

Programa de exhibiciones en el festival de cine “Puy ta Cuxlejaltic”

Atención: Por causas de fuerza menor, las fechas de este primer festival se extienden hasta el 9 de noviembre inclusive.

Se exhibirán los siguientes filmes (en su categoría respectiva):

Categoría Ah, ¿te cae?

Sección Especial: “Una colonia ciudadana en las montañas del sureste mexicano”.

Roma. Dirección: Alfonso Cuarón.

Categoría Caer y levantarse:

Bayoneta. Dirección: Kyzza Terrazas.

Rudo y Cursi. Dirección: Carlos Cuarón.

Batallas Íntimas. Dirección: Lucía Gajá.

No les pedimos un viaje a la luna. Dirección: María del Carmen de Lara.

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