Words by Comandante Tacho, at the opening of the EZLN Encounter with the Ayotzinapa Caravan, November 15, 2014

Compañeras and compañeros:

Fathers and mothers of the disappeared students from the Escuela Normal[1]“Raúl Isidro Burgos” in Ayotzinapa, state of Guerrero, Mexico.

To the students and to all of those accompanying this caravan, and everyone gathered here.

In the name of the boys, girls, young people, men, women, and elderly of the Zapatista Army for National Liberation, we welcome you to this Caracol of Oventik, Caracol II, Resistance and Rebellion for Humanity.

Compañeras and Compañeros:

We the Zapatista Army for National Liberation want to hear your words of pain and rage, which we share.

We are not concerned with whether municipal presidencies are burning, nor with how many cars, doors, or palaces have been burnt.

What we want to hear is your pain, your rage, and the angst that comes from not knowing where your young students might be.

We also want to tell you that we Zapatisas have been accompanying you in the protests and mobilizations that have been held in Mexico and in the world. Though our acts of pain and rage do not appear in the paid media, we want you know that we have joined you with real and true actions.

This is why we want you to speak to us, and why we want to listen to you.

If we had known a few days earlier that you were coming, there would have been many of us here to greet and listen to you, many more than are here now. You can’t imagine the number of people who would have come.

Those of us who serve as representatives here today receive you with all of our hearts to listen to your pain and your rage.

That is all.

[1] The Escuelas Normales in Mexico are teaching colleges that principally train rural and indigenous young people to be teachers in their own communities.

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Words by Comandante Javier, welcoming the Ayotzinapa Caravan to the Caracol of Oventik, November 15, 2014

Brothers and sisters, parents of the 43 disappeared students, and Students and Teachers from the Escuela Normal[1]“Raúl Isidro Burgos” of Ayotzinapa, state of Guerrero:

A very good afternoon to everyone.

In the name of our thousands of compañero and compañera bases of support from the Zapatista Army for National Liberation, we warmly welcome you to this humble center Caracol II of Oventik, Resistance and Rebellion for Humanity, in the Highlands Zone of Chiapas, Mexico.

Those of us present here are representatives of our Zapatista communities, and we receive you with open arms in order to listen to your words.

Know that you are not alone! That your pain is our pain! That your rage is our dignified rage! And that with our actions we support the demand that the 43 students, disappeared by the bad governments’ criminal acts, be returned alive. May you feel at home here, because this place is home to all who struggle.

Thank you.

[1] The Escuelas Normales in Mexico are teaching colleges that principally train rural and indigenous young people to be teachers in their own communities.

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Joint Declaration from the National Indigenous Congress and the EZLN on the Cowardly Attack by Government forces against the Ñatho Indigenous Community of San Francisco Xochicuautla on November 3, 2014

To the Ñatho Indigenous Community of San Francisco Xochicuautla
To the National and International Sixth
To the Peoples of the World

Today once again, our brothers and sisters of the Ñatho Indigenous Community of San Francisco Xochicuautla have defended their territory against the destruction and voracious ambition of those above who want to impose their highway project at any cost and in violation of Mexican and international law.

Not content with having laid waste to the forests, the bad governments of Enrique Peña Nieto and Eruviel Ávila Villegas have kidnapped our sisters Felipa Gutiérrez Petra (67 years old), Rosa Saavedra Mendoza (54 years old), and Francisca Reyes Flores (28 years old), and our brothers Armando García Salazar (50 years old), Venancio Hernández Ramírez (57 years old), Domingo Hernández Ramírez (57 years old), Mauricio Reyes Flores (28 years old) and Jerónimo Flores Arcelino (73 years old).

We warn those above, in case they have forgotten, that as peoples and communities who have walked a long journey of resistance in defense of what we are, what we were, and what we will be, we will not tire of planting rebellion where they cut the flowers, oaks, and firs; we will not tire of building resistance where they impose the machinery of destruction.

(Continuar leyendo…)

Joint National Indigenous Congress – EZLN Declaration denouncing the invasion of the Communal Lands of the Ñatho Indigenous Community of San Francisco Xochicuautla and the attack on Indigenous Yaqui Lauro Baumea

To the Ñatho Indigenous Community of San Francisco Xochicuautla
To the Yaqui Tribe
To the National and International Sixth
To the Peoples of the World

Once more we express our pain and rage as the peoples in rebellion and resistance who make up the National Indigenous Congress. We unite our voices, our rage, and our pain in response to what is happening in the Ñatho Indigenous Community of San Francisco Xochicuautla and to the members of the Yaqui Tribe who are defending their water source.

Our brothers and sisters of Xochicuautla have defended their forests against the construction of the private highway between Toluca and Naucalpan, because they know that life itself emerges from these trees, mountains, and waters. They were granted legal protection prohibiting this work on communal lands, but since October 8 of this year, workers from the construction company under the protection of public “Citizen Security” Forces of the State of Mexico have been invading their lands and cutting down hundreds of trees. The bad government doesn’t care if we below use their laws to defend ourselves; they break those laws themselves in order to destroy us. They made them for the same reason.

(Continuar leyendo…)

Joint Declaration from the National Indigenous Congress and the EZLN on the crime in Ayotzinapa and for the liberation of the Yaqui leaders

(Note: this text was read by CNI members in one of the mobilizations held in Mexico on October 22, 2014, and not by EZLN representatives, as some of the paid press reported.)

Mexico, October 22, 2014

To the students of the Normal Rural[i] Isidro Burgos, in Ayotiznapa, Guerrero
To the Yaqui Tribe
To the National and International Sixth
To the peoples of the world

“Because those of us below hurt with rage and rebellion, not with resignation and conformity.”
EZLN, October 19, 2014

From our peoples in struggle, from within our resistance and rebellion, we send our words as a reflection of this part of the country that we have constitute and call the National Indigenous Congress. We are gathered by the pain and the rage that call to us because it is a pain and rage that we share.

The disappearance of the 43 student compañeros of the Normal Rural Isidro Burgos of Ayotzinapa, Guerrero, kidnapped and disappeared by the Bad Governments, imposes upon us a shadow of mourning, angst, and rage. Our hope for the reappearance of the compañeros is also the pain that unites us; our rage illuminates the candles that today light the way of mobilizations all over the country, raising the cry of dignity and rebellion in Mexico below.

(Continuar leyendo…)

Communiqué from the Revolutionary Indigenous Clandestine Committee—General Command of the Zapatista Army for National Liberation

Mexico

October 19, 2014

To the classmates, teachers, and family members of the dead and disappeared of the Escuela Normal[i] “Raúl Isidro Burgos” of Ayotzinapa, Guerrero, Mexico.

To the Yaqui people:

To the National Indigenous Congress:

To the National and International Sixth:

To the peoples of Mexico and the world:

Sisters and Brothers:

Compañeras and Compañeros:

The Zapatista Army for National Liberation joins the actions slated for October 22, 2014, at 6pm, in demand of  safe return for the 43 disappeared students; in demand of punishment for those responsible for the murders and forced disappearances; and in demand of unconditional liberation for our Yaqui brothers Mario Luna Romero and Fernando Jiménez Gutierrez,

(Continuar leyendo…)

COMMUNIQUE FROM THE INDIGENOUS REVOLUTIONARY CLANDESTINE COMMITTEE—GENERAL COMMAND OF THE ZAPATISTA ARMY FOR NATIONAL LIBERATION.

October 2014:

To the students of the Escuela Normal[1] “Raúl Isidro Burgos” in Ayotzinapa, Guerrero, Mexico.
To the national and international Sixth:
To the people of Mexico and the world:

Sisters and Brothers:

Compañeras and Compañeros:

To the students of the Escuela Normal of Ayotzinapa, Guerrero, Mexico, and to your family members, classmates, teachers, and friends, we simply want to let you know that:

You are not alone.

Your pain is our pain.

Your dignified rage is ours also.

-*-

To the compañeras and compañeros of the Sixth in Mexico and the world, we call on you to mobilize, according to your means and ways, in support of the community of the Escuela Normal in Ayotzinapa, and in demand of true justice.

-*-

We as the EZLN will also mobilize, within our capacities, on October 8, 2014, in a silent march as a signal of pain and outrage, in San Cristobal de las Casas, Chiapas, at 1700 hours.

Democracy!
Liberty!
Justice!

From the mountains of the Mexican Southeast.

For the Indigenous Revolutionary Clandestine Committee—General Command of the Zapatista Army for National Liberation.

Subcomandante Insurgente Moisés.

Mexico, October 2014. In the twentieth year of the war against oblivion.

[1] The Escuelas Normales in Mexico are teaching colleges that principally train rural and indigenous young people to be teachers in their own communities.

Translated by El Kilombo

(Continuar leyendo…)

September 2014

To the Yaqui Tribe:
To the People of Mexico:
To the National and International Sixth:
To the Governments of Mexico and the World:

“We demand the immediate cancellation of all arrest warrants and fabrication of crimes against members of the Yaqui Tribe, and we condemn the criminalization of their struggle. We say to the bad governments that come from the political parties: the Yaqui River has served as the historical carrier and ancestral continuation of the Yaqui Tribe’s culture and territory. We who make up the National Indigenous Congress reiterate that if you touch any of us, you touch all of us, and we will respond accordingly to any attempt to repress the Yaqui’s dignified struggle or any other struggle.” (Joint communiqué from the CNI-EZLN, July 7, 2013, Caracol of Oventic).

They have not been able to kill our peoples. Like seeds, we continue to grow. They tried to kill us with guns, and when they couldn’t, they tried to kill us with diseases, and again they failed. The powerful have tried many ways to kill off the indigenous.

Today they want to kill us with wind turbines, highways, mines, dams, airports, and narcotrafficking. Above all, today in particular, we feel the pain of the attempt to kill us in Sonora, with aqueducts.

This past Thursday, September 11, people who apparently belong to the Sonora State Attorney General’s office detained our brother Mario Luna, spokesperson for the Yaqui Tribe, falsely accusing him of crimes that they themselves planted.

(Continuar leyendo…)

Buenas tardes compañeros, compañeras del Congreso Nacional Indígena.

Compañeros, compañeras de La Sexta Declaración

Compañeros, compañeras, bases de apoyo, consejos autónomos, juntas de buen gobierno.

Compañeros, compañeras, milicianos, insurgentes, donde quiera que se encuentren.

Compañeros, compañeras, responsables locales, regionales.

Compañeros, compañeras, de los medios alternativos, nacional e internacional.

El día de hoy hemos llegado a la culminación de nuestro primer encuentro y compartición entre compañeros y compañeras del Congreso Nacional Indígena, y del Ejército Zapatista de Liberación Nacional.

(Continuar leyendo…)