To To the People of Mexico,
To the Peoples of the World,
To the Media,
To the National and International Sixth,
We send our urgent word to the world from the Constitutive Assembly for the Indigenous Governing Council, where we met as peoples, communities, nations, and tribes of the National Indigenous Congress: Apache, Amuzgo, Chatino, Chichimeca, Chinanteco, Chol, Chontal of Oaxaca, Chontal of Tabasco, Coca, Cuicateco, Mestizo, Hñähñü, Ñathö, Ñuhhü, Ikoots, Kumiai, Lakota, Mam, Matlazinca, Maya, Mayo, Mazahua, Mazateco, Me`phaa, Mixe, Mixe-Popoluca, Mixteco, Mochó, Nahua or Mexicano, Nayeri, Popoluca, Purépecha, Q´anjob´al, Rarámuri, Tének, Tepehua, Tlahuica, Tohono Odham, Tojolabal, Totonaco, Triqui, Tseltal, Tsotsil, Wixárika, Xi´iuy, Yaqui, Binniza, Zoque, Akimel O´otham, and Comkaac.
THE WAR THAT WE LIVE AND CONFRONT
We find ourselves in a very serious moment of violence, fear, mourning, and rage due to the intensification of the capitalist war against everyone, everywhere throughout the national territory. We see the murder of women for being women, of children for being children, of whole peoples for being peoples.
The political class has dedicated itself to turning the State into a corporation that sells off the land of the originary peoples, campesinos, and city dwellers, that sells people as if they were just another commodity to kill and bury like raw material for the drug cartels, that sells people to capitalist businesses that exploit them until they are sick or dead, or that sells them off in parts to the illegal organ market.
Then there is the pain of the families of the disappeared and their decision to find their loved ones despite the fact that the government is determined for them not to, because there they will also find the rot that rules this country.
Sorry, this entry is only available in Mexican Spanish. For the sake of viewer convenience, the content is shown below in the alternative language. You may click the link to switch the active language.
Pueblos, organizaciones y comunidades integrantes del CNI del estado de Chiapas: Ejido Tila, San Sebastián Bachajón adherentes a la Sexta Declaración de la Selva Lacandona, Las Abejas de Acteal, Semilla Digna, San Felipe Ecatepec C.N.P.I., 5 de Marzo, PUDEE, Frente Cívico Tonalteco y Concejo Autónomo regional de la Costa, Xinich y San Pedro Ocosingo, convocamos a integrantes del CNI Chiapas, registrados como “Delegados participantes” (con acta de acuerdo presentada en la segunda etapa del 5° Congreso Nacional Indígena llevada a cabo en diciembre pasado), a una reunión en las instalaciones del CIDECI-UniTierra en San Cristóbal de las Casas, el sábado 13 de mayo del año en curso, para analizar la convocatoria de la conformación del Concejo Indígena de Gobierno del CNI con la presencia de la Coordinación Provisional, con los siguientes puntos del ORDEN DEL DÍA:
9.00 am Registro.
10:00am Bienvenida y presentación.
Análisis de la convocatoria a la conformación del consejo indígena de gobierno del CNI
2:00 pm Comida.
4:00 pm Mesas de trabajo por regiones.
5:00 pm Presentaciones de acuerdos.
7:30 pm Clausura.
8:00 pm Cena.
¡¡¡Por la reconstitución integral de nuestros pueblos!!!
Sorry, this entry is only available in Mexican Spanish. For the sake of viewer convenience, the content is shown below in the alternative language. You may click the link to switch the active language.
Denuncia del CNI del 13 de abril de 2017
A la Sociedad Civil en General
A los Medios de Comunicación
A las Organizaciones de Derechos Humanos
Denunciamos que desde el día de ayer 11 de abril del presente año, a las 10:50 de la noche un grupo de personas de nombres Juan Gómez Jiménez, Juan Pérez Pérez y Antonio Méndez Sántiz por órdenes de Manuel Sántiz Vázquez, agente municipal del barrio Río Jordán, municipio de Chenalhó, llegaron a la casa de los compañeros Alonso Ruiz López, Alonso Jiménez Méndez y Manuel Jiménez Méndez, a quienes pidieron que salieran de sus domicilios y al hacerlo fueron privados de su libertad en el ejido Los Chorros, donde permanecen retenidos hasta que paguen 5mil pesos por cada uno de los ellos.
Los compañeros retenidos y otras familias, como parte de la Organización Civil Las Abejas, miembros del Congreso Nacional Indígena se han negado a participar con proyectos del mal gobierno como lo son una clínica y de drenaje que imponen los malos gobiernos, por lo que han sido presionados y amenazados para tomar cargos de gestores de este proyecto, a lo que se han negado por contar con sus propios promotores de salud. Además de esto no contaban con el servicio de electricidad que les fue cortado desde hace un año y cuatro meses, por lo que habían acordado el reconectar la electricidad y el agua potable para las familias de los compañeros José Ramón Vázquez Entzin y Antonio Ramírez Pérez.
Señalamos que del ejido Los Chorros salieron los grupos paramilitares que perpetraron la masacre de Acteal del 22 de diciembre de 1997, quienes además de gozar de impunidad, desde entonces presionan a los compañeros de Las Abejas para aceptar los programas del mal gobierno, como es el caso de los compañeros hoy retenidos y las familias afectadas por el corte de servicios, quienes debieron salir de sus domicilios por las amenazas de agresiones físicas existentes en su contra.
Repudiamos la agresión a nuestros compañeros de la Sociedad Civil Las Abejas de Acteal y exigimos la inmediata e incondicional liberación de los retenidos por no aceptar los proyectos del mal gobierno.
Exigimos respeto absoluto a las decisiones autónomas tomadas por la asamblea delas Abejas y nos pronunciamos en contra de la simulación que ha hecho el mal gobierno para proteger a los mandos políticos y militares responsables de la muerte de 45 compañeros y 4 no nacidos en 1997.
Desde el Congreso Nacional Indígena saludamos la campaña Acteal: Raíz, Memoria y Esperanza que levantan los hermanos de Las Abejas en el contexto de los 20 años de la masacre en Acteal y en contra la impunidad que prevalece en favor de los autores materiales e intelectuales del terror y la muerte a manos de paramilitares.
Atentamente
Abril de 2017
Nunca Más Un México Sin Nosotros
Congreso Nacional Indígena
Joint Communique from the CNI and the EZLN Denouncing the Repression Against the Purépecha community of Arantepacua, Michoacán
To the Purépecha Community of Arantepacua, Michoacán,
To the alternative media,
To the peoples of the world.
The peoples, nations, and tribes who make up the National Indigenous Congress express our outrage at the bad government’s cowardly attack against the Purépecha community of Arantepacua, Michoacán, on April 4 and 5 of the present year.
As a commission of community members sought dialogue with the bad government of the state of Michoacán, the governor Silvano Aureoles Conejo betrayed them: first, by obstructing their path with hundreds of riot police and dozens of trucks as they made their way to Morelia to try to come to agreements on the resolution of an old agrarian conflict; and again when, as the commission negotiated with government, large contingents of the Michoacán Police and the State Ministerial Police together with federal forces attacked the community, sowing terror, entering houses to detain community members, and opening fire indiscriminately, killing three Arantepacua community members:
José Carlos Jiménez Crisóstomo (age 25)
Luis Gustavo Hernández Cuenete (age 15)
Francisco Jiménez Ajejandre (approximately age 70)
In addition, an unspecified number of community members were injured, two of whom are in critical condition, as well as 38 arrested by the Michoacán government on April 4 and 18 more on April 5 on fabricated charges that seek to criminalize their demand for their rights.
Brothers and sisters of Arantepacua, your pain over the murder of your compañeros is ours. We struggle because we are certain that punishment for the guilty will come from the dignity, resistance, and rebellion of our peoples. Sowing truth and justice amidst the destruction brought upon us by the powerful is what our peoples know how to do.
The bad governments think that by spreading terror in the indigenous territories of Michoacán and across a large part of the nation they will be able to silence the peoples and their voice, but this will not happen, because the words shouted collectively today by the originary peoples are born precisely of our rage, our frustration and the decision to not allow ourselves be killed, dispossessed, divided, or bought off.
We pronounce jointly with the communal assembly of Arantepacua our demands for:
An immediate halt to the escalated repression against Arantepacua and the Purépecha communities of the region.
The immediate release of the compañeros detained by the bad government.
Justice for the victims of this cowardly aggression and indemnification for all damages caused.
Punishment of governor Silvano Aureoles and all those responsible, materially and intellectually, for the crimes committed.
The withdrawal of the police and military forces from Aratepacua, given that as long as they are present the harassment of the community members will not cease.
Attentively
April 6, 2017
Justice for Arantepacua Justice for the Purépecha People For the Full Reconstitution of our Peoples Never Again a Mexico Without Us National Indigenous Congress Zapatista Army for National Liberation
Convocation to the Constitutive Assembly of the Indigenous Governing Council for Mexico
NATIONAL INDIGENOUS CONGRESS
CONVOCATION
Given the decision made in the second phase of the Fifth National Indigenous Congress December 29, 30, and 31, 2016 and January 1, 2017, during which it was agreed:
FIRST: “…to name an Indigenous Governing Council with men and women representatives from each one of the peoples, tribes, and nations that make up the CNI. This council proposes to govern the country. It will have an indigenous woman from the CNI as its spokesperson, which is to say, a woman of indigenous blood who knows her culture. This indigenous woman spokesperson from the CNI will be an independent candidate for the presidency of Mexico in the 2018 elections.”
SECOND: “…[to call] on the originary peoples of this country, the collectives of the Sixth, workers, coalitions and committees who struggle in the countryside and the city, students, intellectuals, artists, scientists, the elements of civil society that are not organized, as well as all good-hearted people to close ranks and go on the offensive. We call on you to dismantle the power of above and to reconstitute ourselves now from below and to the left, not only as peoples but as a country, to come together in a single organization where dignity will be our final word and our first action. We call on all of you to organize with us to stop this war, and to not be afraid to sow our seeds and build ourselves upon the ruins left by capitalism.”
THIRD: “…[to convoke] a constituent assembly of the Indigenous Governing Council for Mexico in the month of May 2017…to make the earth tremble at its core, to overcome fear and recuperate what belongs to humanity, what belongs to the earth, and what belongs to the peoples, to recuperate the territories that have been invaded or destroyed, for the disappeared of this country, for the freedom of all political prisoners, for truth and justice for all of those who have been murdered, for the dignity of the countryside and the city…making dignity the epicenter of a new world.”
We have agreed to convoke the authorities, representatives, delegates, and councilpersons named by the indigenous peoples, nations, tribes, barrios, communities, and organizations that participate in the CNI to celebrate the:
CONSTITUTIVE ASSEMBLY OF THE INDIGENOUS GOVERNING COUNCIL FOR MEXICO
To be held May 26, 27, and 28 of 2017 at the facilities of the Indigenous Center for Integral Learning (CIDECI-UNITIERRA) in San Cristóbal de las Casas, Chiapas, Zapatista territory, in accordance with the following schedule:
Sorry, this entry is only available in Mexican Spanish. For the sake of viewer convenience, the content is shown below in the alternative language. You may click the link to switch the active language.
Anunciamos las redes del Congreso Nacional Indígena así como su sitio oficial
El Congreso Nacional Indígena con el propósito de crear un espacio de información y comunicación en las redes sociales, hemos generado la página, el Facebook y la cuenta en Twitter oficiales. son espacios que nos permitirán establecer un diálogo con todas las personas, organizaciones, colectivos y pueblos que estén interesados en el proceso del CNI.
También serán espacios en donde difundiremos nuestra palabra, nuestro sentir y caminar a lo largo de toda la iniciativa que estamos desarrollando a través del Concejo Indígena de Gobierno y la Vocera del CNI.
Esperamos que las redes sociales nos permitan abrir un camino de acercamiento con las y los otros, un camino de información generado desde nosotr@s, y que será el espacio en el que se irán anunciando las diferentes actividades y acontecimientos concernientes al camino que recorreremos en los próximos meses como CNI.
To the national and international Sixth
To the free media
To civil society in general
Compañeros, compañeras, as our peoples continue to organize ourselves, each in our own ways and forms, analyzing and making agreements in order to form a Concejo Indígena de Gobierno [Indigenous Council of Government], the war against our peoples doesn’t stop. The three levels of bad government continue to act against our mother earth, our peoples, and our autonomous organizations through plunder and repression.
In the state of Oaxaca
We denounce and condemn with outrage the events in the community of San Francisco del Mar in the Isthmus of Tehuantepec region, Oaxaca, where violent actions were carried out, including the use of firearms, in order to try to impose approval of wind power projects that would dispossess the community of a good part of their common use lands and seriously affect the rich and delicate ecosystem there.
These events unfolded during the assembly of the comisariado de bienes comunales [communal resources or the commons] of San Francisco del Mar which was convoked to discuss authorization of the use of over 15,000 hectares for shrimping projects in Pueblo Viejo in the zone known as bocabarra. Various speakers expressed their opposition to the authorization, giving evidence that its true purpose was for wind power projects. They explained that bocabarra is a vital area for thousands of fishermen, that approval of the project would remove their source of livelihood, and that such an important decision required the participation and decision of the whole population.
Bocabarra is part of the Isthmus lagoon system and a vitally important area for its role as a key fishing zone and for its sacred and spiritual sites. In this part of the region, fishing provides the most important source of economic livelihood and food for the population. It is also a highly coveted zone for wind power companies because of its powerful winds, and there has already been an attempt by Mareña Renovables to construct a wind power plant in the Barra of Santa Teresa which provoked large mobilizations in opposition from the surrounding communities.
It is necessary to add that what happened in San Francisco del Mar is not an isolated event but rather a comprehensive plan of plunder and dispossession to be applied to the territories of the communities of the Isthmus in order to allow the imposition of megaprojects in the region via the Special Economic Zone of the Tehuantepec Isthmus [ZEE by its Spanish acronym] which undergirds this second phase of wind power development.
In the state of Michoacán
On February 24, in the community of Calzonzin, the bad government of the state of Michoacán in complicity with the federal government savagely repressed the P’urhépecha people of Caltzontzin who were protesting in defense of their right to restitution of communal territory.
That day the repressive forces of the Mexican State laid siege to the community of Caltzontzin, not allowing anyone to enter or exit, and then proceeded to launch tear gas bombs from a helicopter over the community and invaded community territory to arbitrarily arrest 17 community members, of which 13 are still being held and one of which is mentally disabled. At the same time, they entered various homes in the community without search warrants, destroying what they found and violating human rights in their mission to defend the privileges of the transnational railroad company Kansas City Southern.
We demand the immediate release of the political prisoners of the originary peoples of Michoacán, in particular the 13 community members detained in Caltzontzin whose only crime is the defense of communal property, of dignity, and of life for their communities and for future generations.
On the coast, the Nahua community of Santa María Ostula is under attack by criminal organizations which have penetrated the territory to the southeast of the municipality of Aquila and, through death and looting, attempt to dismantle the community’s autonomous organization and community security in order to bring back to the area terror and the extraction and exploitation of natural resources and communal lands.
On February 5 of this year, five community police from San Pedro Naranjestil, to the south of the municipality of Aquila affiliated with the municipal police, were kidnapped by members of the Marines who later turned them over to the organized crime groups led by Jesús Cruz Virrueta (alias Chuy Playas), Fernando Cruz Mendoza (alias El Tena), José María Cruz (alias el Tunco), Federico González Medina (alias Lico) and Mario Álvarez López (alias El Chacal). This act has been followed by actions impeding operations by the self defense groups of the Aquila, Chinicuila, and Coahuayana municipalities to detain members of organized crime.
To the former we must add the frequent instances in which the armed forces of the bad government have acted in coordination with criminal gangs against the indigenous community of Santa María Ostula, which has contributed to the collective grief and the demand for justice for the 34 community members who were murdered and the 5 who are disappeared.
In the state of Querétaro
The bad government is unjustly holding prisoner the indigenous Ñhañhú compañero Raymundo Pascual García, of San Ildefonso, Amealco, Querétaro, who was detained along with other compañeros for participating with his community in the protests against the gas hikes. We also denounce the continued plunder of the lands of the Fundo Legal of the Galeras and La Peñuela communities in the municipality of Colón though the corrupt actions of the bad governments and political parties.
As a consequence, the peoples, nations, and tribes who make up the National Indigenous Congress declare that:
We hold the municipal president and the commissioner of the bienes comunales of San Francisco del Mar responsible for the violent acts in Ikoot territory and the attempt at land dispossession. We denounce the complicity between well known state and federal authorities and politicians and we demand clarification of the events and punishment of those responsible for the shots fired during the assembly. We demand respect for the legitimate right of the people of San Francisco del Mar to determine the destiny of their lands and natural resources.
We demand that the autonomy and communitarian organization of Santa María Ostula be respected. We demand the arrest of Jesús Cruz Virrueta (alias Chuy Playas), Fernando Cruz Mendoza (alias El Tena), José María Cruz (alias el Tunco), Federico González Medina (alias Lico), and Mario Álvarez López (alias El Chacal), the dismantling of the political and economic structure that sustains them, the punishment of the soldiers and politicians responsible for the murder of the child Hidelberto Reyes Garcia and all of the murdered community members, the cancellation of arrest warrants for the [community police] commanders in Ostula and the Sierra Costa region, the return of the disappeared, and absolute respect for the communal territory of Ostula.
We demand immediate and absolute freedom for the compañero Raymundo Pascual García from San Ildefonso, Amealco, Querétaro, who was detained for protesting with his community against the gas hikes imposed by the bad government, a halt to land dispossession in the communities of Galeras and La Peñuela in the municipality of Colón, Querétaro, and punishment of those responsible for the unjust imprisonment of over 3 years of the Ñhañhu indigenous compañeras of Amealco, Querétaro, Jacinta Francisco Marcial, Alberta Alcántara Juan and Teresa González.
We say to our brothers and sisters of the Ikoot, P´urhépecha, Nahua and Ñhañu peoples in these regions and the rest of the country who everyday sustain our hope, rebellion, and dignity with their struggle: you are not alone. In the colors, tongues, and geographies that make up the CNI, we are you; your yearning for justice is ours, your pain is ours, and your demand, which brings into bloom the birth of another world, is our heart and our unwavering certainty.
Until dignity becomes tradition
Freedom for all of the political prisoners
Return of the disappeared
Justice for San Francisco del Mar
Justice for Calzonzin
Justice for Santa María Ostula
Justice for the Ñhañu people of Querétaro
Attentively,
For the Full Reconstitution of Our Peoples
Never Again a Mexico Without Us
March 2017
Stop the assassinations of Rarámuri Indigenous Compañeros Defending Their Territory!
Indigenous Territories of Mexico
February 4, 2017
To the people of Choreachi,
To all of the Rarámuri People,
To the Indigenous Peoples,
To the people of Mexico,
To the peoples of the world,
We learned today of the murders of Indigenous Rarámuri compañeros Juan Ontiveros Ramos and Isidro Baldenegro, both of the community of Choreachi in the municipality of Guadalupe y Calvo, Chihuahua, yesterday February 2, and 15 days ago, respectively.
We urgently denounce these new acts of barbarity against compañeros known for their commitment to the struggle of their people for the recuperation of their territory, which was taken over 40 years ago by large landowners/ranchers and organized crime.
As the National Indigenous Congress and the Zapatista Army for National Liberation, we are in solidarity with the Rarámuri People who have been so hurt by these murders, now totaling 18 homicides committed against their communities since 1973, four of them in the last year.
Compañeros and compañeras, you are not alone! We accompany you in your pain, we open our hearts to the tireless struggle you are waging against organized crime and the landowners backed by the bad governments, and we offer you our support as indigenous peoples of this country who are organizing ourselves to defend our lives and our territories.
STOP THE ASSASSINATIONS OF INDIGENOUS PEOPLE IN STRUGGLE!
NEVER AGAIN A MEXICO WITHOUT US!
NATIONAL INDIGENOUS CONGRESS
ZAPATISTA ARMY FOR NATIONAL LIBERATION
OF OUR MAPUCHE SISTER MACHI FRANCISCA LINCOLAO HUIRCAPAN
To the Mapuche People:
To the Chilean People:
To the International Sixth:
To the Media:
We peoples, nations, and tribes of the National Indigenous Congress send a fraternal greeting of solidarity to Machi Francisca Lincolao Huircapan, of the Mapuche People, in Chile, imprisoned since March 30, 2016. We know that compañera Machi Francisca is on a hunger strike to demand the justice that the bad government of Chile has denied her by keeping her imprisoned for the crime of continuing to defend the natural resources, sacred places, and cultural rights of her people. They are letting her health deteriorate to the point that it threatens the life of the compañera, whose state of health is summarily delicate.
We denounce the fact that while the Chilean government represses Machi Francisca, they blatantly protect transnational capitalists and bosses such as the landlord Alejandro Taldriz, with his illegal logging that the corrupt state works to protect.
The National Indigenous Congress and the EZLN demand:
1. The immediate release of compañera Machi Francisca Lincolao Huircapan.
2. An end to the repression against the dignified Mapuche people and the revocation of the racist and repressive Anti-terrorist Law that is meant to criminalize the territorial defense of the Chilean Originary Peoples.
3. Absolute respect for the Mapuche territory.
January 2017
For the Full Reconstitution of our Peoples
Never again a Mexico without us
NATIONAL INDIGENOUS CONGRESS
ZAPATISTA ARMY OF NATIONAL LIBERATION
To the Originary Peoples of Mexico:
To Civil Society of Mexico and the World:
To the National and International Sixth:
To the Free Media:
Brothers and Sisters:
This is the time of the originary peoples, the time for us to replant and rebuild ourselves. It is time to go on the offensive and this is the agreement that we have laid out for how to do so, from our perspective as individuals, as communities, as originary peoples, and as the National Indigenous Congress [CNI]. It is time for dignity to govern this country and this world and for democracy, liberty, and justice to flourish in its step.
We are announcing here that during the second phase of the Fifth National Indigenous Congress we meticulously analyzed the results of the consultation process that we held among our peoples during the months of October, November, and December of 2016. In that process, we issued agreements from communal, ejidal, collective, municipal, inter-municipal and regional assemblies in all of the ways, forms, and languages that represent our peoples in the geography of this country, once again bringing us to understand and confront, with dignity and rebellion, the situation that we face in our country and the world.
We appreciate the messages of support, hope, and solidarity that came from intellectuals, collectives, and peoples in response to our proposal entitled “Let the Earth Tremble at its Core,” which we made public during the first phase of the Fifth National Indigenous Congress. We also acknowledge the critical voices, many of them making fundamentally racist arguments, that expressed indignant and contemptuous rage at the idea that an indigenous woman would aspire not only to contend for presidential election, but would propose to truly change, from below, this broken country.
To all of them, we say that the earth indeed has trembled, and we along with her, and that we intend to shake the conscience of the entire nation, and that, in fact, we intend for indignation, resistance and rebellion to be present as an option on the electoral ballots of 2018. But we also say that it is not at all our intention to compete with the political parties or with the political class who still owe this country so much. They owe us for every death, disappearance, and imprisonment, and every dispossession, repression, and discrimination. Do not mistake our intentions. We do not plan to compete against them, because we are not the same as they are. Unlike them, we are not filled with lies and perverse words. We are instead the collective word of below and to the left, that which shakes the world and makes it tremble with epicenters of autonomy, and which makes us so proudly different from them that:
While the country is submerged in fear and terror born from the thousands of dead and disappeared, in the municipalities of the mountains and the coast of Guerrero our peoples have created conditions of real security and justice. In Santa María Ostula, Michoacán, the Nahua people have united with other indigenous communities to ensure that security remains in the hands of the people. The epicenter of the resistance there is the communal assembly of Ostula, the guarantor of the ethic of a movement that has already permeated the municipalities of Aquila, Coahuayana, Chinicuila, and Coalcomán. In the Purépecha plateau, the community of Cherán has demonstrated that by organizing to eliminate the politicians from their bad government structure and by exercising their own forms of security and government they could not only construct justice, but also, as in other geographies across this country, they showed that only from below, from rebellion, can a new social pact be constructed that is autonomous and just. And we have not and will not stop constructing from below the truth and justice denied to the 43 disappeared students from the teacher’s college of Ayotzinapa, Guerrero, the 3 student compañeros who were murdered, and their compañeros who were injured, all by the Mexican narco-government and its repressive forces. Meanwhile, all levels of the bad governments criminalize social struggle and resistance and rebellion, persecuting, accusing, disappearing, imprisoning, and murdering the men and women who struggle for just causes.
While destruction reaches every corner of the country, knowing no limits and distancing people from their land and from that which is sacred, the Wixárika people, together with the committees in defense of life and water from the Potosinoaltiplano, have shown that they can defend a territory and their environment and can create an equilibrium based in an identification with nature, with a sacred vision that recreates, every day, the ancestral links with life, land, the sun, and the ancestors, reaching across 7 municipalities in the sacred ceremonial territory of Wirikuta in San Luis Potosí.
While the bad governments deform State policies on education, placing education at the service of capitalist corporations such that it ceases to be a right, the originary peoples create primary schools, secondary schools, high schools and universities with their own educational systems, based in the protection of our mother earth, in defense of territory, in production, in the sciences, in the arts, and in our languages. Despite the fact that the majority of these processes grow without the support of any level of the bad government, these institutions are meant to serve everyone.
Meanwhile, the paid media – spokespeople for those who prostitute every one of the words that they circulate and fool the people in the country and the city so that they don’t wake from their slumber – criminalize those who think and defend what is theirs, making them out to be delinquents, vandals, and misfits, while those who benefit from ignorance and alienation are the ones with high social status. Those who oppress, repress, exploit and dispossess are always made out to be the good guys, the ones who deserve to be respected and allowed to govern so that they can serve themselves. While all of this is happening, the communities have made their own media, creating ideas in different ways so that conscience cannot be overshadowed by the lies that the capitalists impose, and instead using them to strengthen organization from below, where every true word is born.
While the representative “democracy” of the political parties has been converted into a parody of the popular will, where votes are bought and sold like any other commodity and poverty is used to manipulate people so that the capitalists can maintain the division between the people of the countryside and the city, the originary peoples continue to care for and strengthen their forms of consensus and to cultivate assemblies as organs of government where through the voice of everyone together profoundly democratic agreements are made, across entire regions, through assemblies that articulate with agreements of other assemblies, which themselves emerge from the profound will of each family.
While the governments impose their decisions to benefit the few, supplanting the popular will of the people and criminalizing and repressing whoever opposes their projects of death which they impose at the cost of the blood of our peoples—such as the New Airport of Mexico City, pretending to consult them while actually imposing death—we originary peoples have consistent ways and forms for free, prior and informed consent, however small or large that may be.
While the bad governments hand energy sovereignty over to foreign interests through privatization, and the high cost of gasoline reveals the face of capitalism which in fact only opens a road toward inequality and the rebellious response of the indigenous and non-indigenous peoples of Mexico, the powerful can neither hide nor silence this rebellion. We peoples unite and fight to stop the destruction of our territories through fracking, wind farms, mining, oil wells, and gas and oil pipelines in the states of Veracruz, Sonora, Sinaloa, Baja California, Morelos, Oaxaca, Yucatán and the entire national territory.
While the bad governments impose their toxic and genetically modified food on consumers across the countryside and in the cities, the Mayan people continue their indefatigable struggle to stop the planting of genetically modified seed on the Yucatan peninsula and across the country in order to conserve the ancestral genetic wealth that also symbolizes our life and collective organization and is the basis for our spirituality.
While the political class only destroys and makes empty promises, we peoples build, not only in order to govern but also in order to exist with autonomy and self-determination.
Our resistances and rebellions constitute the power of below. We don’t offer empty promises or actions, but rather real processes for radical transformation where everyone participates and which are tangible in the diverse and enormous indigenous geographies of this nation. This is why, as the National Indigenous Congress, which brings together 43 peoples of this country in this Fifth Congress, WE AGREE to name an Indigenous Governing Council with men and women representatives from each one of the peoples, tribes, and nations that make up the CNI. This council proposes to govern this country. It will have an indigenous woman from the CNI as its spokesperson, which is to say a woman who has indigenous blood and who knows her culture, and this indigenous woman spokesperson from the CNI will be an independent candidate for the presidency of Mexico in the 2018 elections.
That is why we, the CNI, as the Home for All Indigenous Peoples, are also the principles that configure the ethic of our struggle. In these principles there is room for all of the originary peoples of this country. Those principles that house the Indigenous Governing Council are:
To obey, not command
To represent, not supplant
To serve others, not serve oneself
To convince, not defeat
To go below, not above
To propose, not impose
To construct, not destroy
This is what we have invented and reinvented, not simply because we want to, but because it is the only way that we have to continue existing – by following new paths forged from the collective memory of our own forms of organization and that are the product of resistance and rebellion, in order to confront, every day, the war that has not ended and yet has not been able to do away with us. Using these forms it has not only been possible for us to build a path toward the full reconstitution of our peoples, but also toward new civilizational forms. In other words, it has been possible to build collective hope that is transformed into communities, municipalities, regions, states, and which is able to respond precisely to the real problems that the country is facing, far away from the political class and their corruption.
From this Fifth National Indigenous Congress, we call on the originary peoples of this country, the collectives of the Sixth, the workers, the coalitions and committees who struggle in the countryside and the city, the students, intellectuals, the artists, and scientists, the elements of civil society that are not organized, as well as all good-hearted people to close ranks and go on the offensive. We call on you to dismantle the power of above and to reconstitute ourselves now from below and to the left, not only as peoples but as a country. We make a call to come together in a single organization where dignity will be our final word and our first action. We call on all of you to organize with us to stop this war, and to not be afraid to build ourselves and sow our seeds on the ruins left by capitalism.
This is what humanity and our mother earth demand of us. It is the time for rebellious dignity. We will make this a material reality by convoking a constituent assembly of the Indigenous Governing Council for Mexico in the month of May 2017. From there we will build bridges toward the compañeros and compañeras of civil society, the media, and the originary peoples in order to make the earth tremble at its core, to overcome fear and recuperate what belongs to humanity, what belongs to the earth and what belongs to the peoples. We do this so that we can recuperate the territories that have been invaded or destroyed, so that the disappeared of this country can be returned, so that all political prisoners are freed, so that there can be truth and justice for all of those who have been murdered, so that there can be dignity for the countryside and the city. That is, have no doubt, we are going for everything, because we know this might be the last opportunity we have as originary peoples and as Mexican society to peacefully and radically change our forms of government, making dignity the epicenter of a new world.
From Oventik, Zapatista Territory, Chiapas, Mexico
