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.

(Continuar leyendo…)

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.

October 2016

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

National Indigenous Congress
Zapatista Army for National Liberation

Source: Enlace Zapatista

Questions without Answers, Answers without Questions, Councils and Counsels.
(Pages from the Cat-Dog’s Notebook)

October 20, 2016

To Whom It May Concern:

Questions without answers:

—So what about the women murdered for the grave crime of being women? Will the fact that they have demanded that the attacks stop and, with their blood, raised the topic not just to the national agenda but the global one, make them the object of mockery, disdain, and accusations that they are playing to the right? Because they aren’t dying, they are being killed. What if they refuse to accept that this is a problem that can be solved by addressing corruption? And if they dare to say that the origin of this murderous hate is located in the system itself? What if they come up with the crazy idea to sideline men with regard to the most vital decisions (yes, as in questions of life of death)? And if they decide to take their destiny into their own hands? Would any part of that, or all of it, be a governmental maneuver to avoid… etcetera?

—What about the others (loas otroas)? Must they wait for the political class to turn its haughty gaze on one of the most vilified peoples below? Must they resign themselves to be knocked off until the murder rate finally gets high enough to attract attention? And what if they organize themselves and demand respect, if they decide they’ve had enough of the fact that being disrespected means being killed? Would they be told that their problems are not a priority, that their position is not generally politically correct and is in fact counterproductive with regard to the electoral race, and that their demands should unite and not detract?

(Continuar leyendo…)

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San Cristóbal de Las Casas, Chiapas. Reunidos en el CIDECI/Universidad de la Tierra Chiapas en el Quinto Congreso Nacional Indígena, delegados de 33 pueblos, naciones y tribus originarios de México y la Comandancia General de EZLN decidieron en asamblea iniciar una consulta “en cada una de nuestras geografías, territorios y rumbos” para nombrar un Consejo Indígena de Gobierno “cuya palabra sea materializada por una mujer indígena” como candidata independiente para las elecciones del 2018, para contender a nombre del CNI y el EZLN. En otras palabras, un gobierno indígena, anticapitalista y antipatriarcal, horizontal y colectivo, cuya voz se haga escuchar por medio de una mujer indígena, para ejercer el “mandar obedeciendo” a nivel nacional.

En la asamblea se aclaró que la lucha no es por el poder, sino por la organización de los pueblos originarios y la sociedad civil para detener la destrucción que se vive en nuestro país y “construir la paz y la justicia rehilándonos desde abajo, desde donde somos lo que somos”.

La decisión surge de un análisis de la situación que se vive en el país, reflejada en los espejos que son los pueblos organizados en el CNI. En el pronunciamiento final de la asamblea, acordado la noche del 13 de octubre, se documentan los mecanismos de despojo, violencia y represión que sufren los pueblos originarios del CNI a manos de los gobiernos, empresas y la delincuencia organizada, así como las formas de resistencia y de construcción y reconstitución de la vida: “fortalecimiento en los espacios colectivos para tomar decisiones, recurriendo a recursos jurídicos nacionales e internacionales, acciones de resistencia civil pacífica, haciendo a un lado los partidos políticos que sólo han generado muerte, corrupción y compra de dignidades, se han hecho alianzas con diversos sectores de la sociedad civil, haciendo medios propios de comunicación, policías comunitarias y autodefensas, asambleas y concejos populares, cooperativas, el ejercicio y defensa de la medicina tradicional, el ejercicio y defensa de la agricultura tradicional y ecológica, los rituales y ceremonias propias para pagar a la madre tierra y seguir caminando con ella y en ella, la siembra y defensa de las semillas nativas, foros, campañas de difusión y actividades político culturales”.

La decisión de lanzar un Consejo Indígena de Gobierno en la figura de una mujer indígena para la presidencia del país es la respuesta de los pueblos originarios ante la violencia y el despojo, para “construir una nueva nación por y para todas y todos”.

Es el tiempo de la dignidad rebelde… ¡Que retiemble en sus centros la tierra!

Lee el pronunciamiento aquí.

MAY THE EARTH TREMBLE AT ITS CORE

To the people of the world:
To the free media:
To the National and International Sixth:

Convened for the commemoration of the 20th anniversary of the National Indigenous Congress and the living resistance of the originary peoples, nations, and tribes of this country called Mexico, of the languages of Amuzgo, Binni-zaá, Chinanteco, Chol, Chontal de Oaxaca, Coca, Náyeri, Cuicateco, Kumiai, Lacandón, Matlazinca, Maya, Mayo, Mazahua, Mazateco, Mixe, Mixteco, Nahua, Ñahñu, Ñathô, Popoluca, Purépecha, Rarámuri, Tlapaneco, Tojolabal, Totonaco, Triqui, Tzeltal, Tsotsil, Wixárika, Yaqui, Zoque, Chontal de Tabasco, as well as our Aymara, Catalán, Mam, Nasa, Quiché and Tacaná brothers and sisters, we firmly pronounce that our struggle is below and to the left, that we are anticapitalist and that the time of the people has come—the time to make this country pulse with the ancestral heartbeat of our mother earth.

It is in this spirit that we met to celebrate life in the Fifth National Indigenous Congress, which took place on October 9-14, 2016, in CIDECI-UNITIERRA, Chiapas. There we once again recognized the intensification of the dispossession and repression that have not stopped in the 524 years since the powerful began a war aimed at exterminating those who are of the earth; as their children we have not allowed for their destruction and death, meant to serve capitalist ambition which knows no end other than destruction itself. That resistance, the struggle to continue constructing life, today takes the form of words, learning, and agreements. On a daily basis we build ourselves and our communities in resistance in order to stave off the storm and the capitalist attack which never lets up. It becomes more aggressive everyday such that today it has become a civilizational threat, not only for indigenous peoples and campesinos but also for the people of the cities who themselves must create dignified and rebellious forms of resistance in order to avoid murder, dispossession, contamination, sickness, slavery, kidnapping or disappearance. Within our community assemblies we have decided, exercised, and constructed our destiny since time immemorial. Our forms of organization and the defense of our collective life is only possible through rebellion against the bad government, their businesses, and their organized crime.

We denounce the following:

(Continuar leyendo…)

Announcing the release of:

Critical Thought in the Face of the Capitalist Hydra I

Contributions by the Sixth Commission of the EZLN

​

Published by PaperBoat Press, Durham, NC
360 pp. $20

What unites the grave situation of Greece with that of the tens of thousands of killed and disappeared in Mexico? What might explain the recurring failure and seeming betrayal, in country after country, of the electoral left? How might gentrification of urban centers across the world be inextricably connected to the pipelines of an unhinged extractivism (from Bolivia to Standing Rock)? How can we explain that on a daily basis, an ever-greater proportion of humanity is expelled from production and abandoned to its fate as simple surplus? In this daring book, the Zapatistas put forth the hypothesis that a rigorous application of critical thought shows us that the inner connection of these phenomena can be found in the historically unprecedented crisis of capitalism that today gathers steam and in the near future promises to engulf all of humanity in a perfect storm.

In May of 2015, the Zapatista Army for National Liberation (EZLN) hosted a seminar in Chiapas, Mexico, titled “Critical Thought in the Face of the Capitalist Hydra,” in which they invited thinkers from across the world to join them in analyzing the economic instability, unceasing war, mass displacement, and ecological devastation that today characterize our world. This book presents the complete set of interventions made by the EZLN at that seminar. Rescuing critical thought from both the trendy relativism of contemporary academia and the tweets and facebook posts that now stand in for it, the EZLN outlines the contours of this crisis as well as the innovative practices of politics that have allowed Zapatismo to survive and constitute one of the few large-scale anti-capitalist struggles in the world today. Yet the Zapatistas don’t offer themselves as a model to be followed, but rather insist that each of us analyze this crisis from our own locations in order to adequately confront the monumental task before us. The volume closes with poetry and art solicited by the EZLN from various artists and authors as their contribution to the seminar.

This text is a translation of the book, El Pensamiento Crítico Frente a la Hidra Capitalista I, published in Mexico by the EZLN in July of 2015. That text and this English translation include several texts not publicly presented at the seminar. In addition, various theorists, intellectuals, and militants from around the world were invited to offer presentations to the more than 2,600 seminar attendees. Their contributions can be found in Spanish in Volumes II and III of this series, published in Mexico.
Order online at: http://www.paperboatpress.org/bookstore/

Proceeds from the sale of this translation will go to the Zapatistas.

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Oventic, Chiapas

Aniversario del Congreso Nacional Indigena

Al Caracol de Oventic llegaron hoy, 12 de octubre de 2016, los delegados indígenas de 32 pueblos, naciones y tribus organizados en el Congreso Nacional Indígena, para celebrar el 20 aniversario del CNI. Llegó también un gran número de zapatistas de las cinco zonas del territorio rebelde y una centena de adherentes a la Sexta Declaración de la Selva Lacandona.

Los delegados del CNI y demás invitados fuimos recibidos por los zapatistas con la generosidad y el cariño de quienes caminan la misma senda en búsqueda de un país y un mundo mejor. Entre cientos de zapatistas formados en dos filas a ambos lados del camino que conduce de la entrada del caracol a la cancha, bajaron los delegados, siguiendo a la formación de milicianos que marchaban con impecable organización. ¡Viva el Congreso Nacional Indígena!, ¡Viva el EZLN!, se escuchaban las consignas.

En la cancha se llevó a cabo la celebración, que inició con las palabras del Comandante David, de Maribel Cervantes del CNI y del Subcomandante Insurgente Moisés, y continuó con un acto cultural en el que participaron artistas, músicos y poetas zapatistas de los cinco caracoles.

Palabras del Comandante David
(Descarga aquí)  

Palabras de Maribel Cervantes Cruz – CNI
(Descarga aquí)  

Palabras del Subcomandante Insurgente Moisés
(Descarga aquí)  

Acto Cultural

Obra de teatro “La vida de las mujeres antes y después del 94” – Caracol I de La Realidad

Canción “Despierten hermanos” – Caracol I de La Realidad
(Descarga aquí)  

Bailable “Danza del trabajo colectivo del maíz” – Caracol II de Oventic

Poesía “Resistencia” – Caracol II de Oventic
(Descarga aquí)  

Bailable “La Adelita” – Caracol II de Oventic

Bailable “Derechos de las mujeres” – Caracol III de La Garrucha

Canción “Resistencia” – Caracol III de La Garrucha
(Descarga aquí)  

Obra de teatro “Con la luz del arco íris avanza nuestra economía” – Caracol IV de Morelia

Canción “Luchando y resistiendo” – Caracol IV de Morelia
(Descarga aquí)  

Canción “Juntos vamos a luchar” – Caracol V de Roberto Barrios
(Descarga aquí)  

Poema “Madre Tierra” – Caracol V de Roberto Barrios
(Descarga aquí)  

El acto terminó con una demostración de disciplina y organización de las tropas milicianas, bajo la dirección de un mando insurgente del EZLN.

Bajo una ligera llovizna y la niebla característica de Oventic, los delegados y demás invitados fuimos despedidos, después de una generosa comida, con la misma formación de zapatistas a ambos lados del camino, con rostros sonrientes cuya alegría los pasamontañas no lograban disimular.

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Zapatistas en el Caracol de Morelia, Chiapas. Foto: RZ

Haciendo Historia. Notas de Radio Zapatista. Nota 4.
Por: Eugenia Gutiérrez, colectivo Radio Zapatista.
México, 12 de octubre 2016.

Hacía calor aquel sábado en la gran Tenochtitlan. Habían pasado 504 años desde que Europa tropezó con esta isla gigante, cuna de civilizaciones. Era 12 de octubre de 1996. Una multitud se reunía en el zócalo de la Ciudad de México para escuchar a la comandanta Ramona. Mirando directo hacia la catedral y el Templo Mayor, su voz dudaba en español y se afirmaba plena en tzotzil. “Queremos un México que nos tome en cuenta como seres humanos, que nos respete y reconozca nuestra dignidad”, nos dijo. (Continuar leyendo…)

Listen here (Spanish): (Descarga aquí)  

ZAPATISTA ARMY FOR NATIONAL LIBERATION
MEXICO

October 11, 2016

Compañeros and compañeras of the National Indigenous Congress,

Wirrarikarri Brothers and Sisters,

Nahua Brothers and Sisters,

Purépecha Brothers and Sisters,

Raramuri Brothers and Sisters,

(Continuar leyendo…)