Autonomy and Resistance
Open letter on the aggressions against the people’s movement in San Cristóbal de las Casas, Chiapas
ZAPATISTA ARMY OF NATIONAL LIBERATION
MEXICO
July 21, 2016
To the current governor and the other overseers of the southeastern Mexican state of Chiapas:
Ladies (ha) and Gentlemen (double ha):
We do not send greetings.
Before it occurs to you to try (as the PGR[i] is already attempting in Nochixtlán) to blame the cowardly aggression against the people’s resistance encampment in San Cristóbal de Las Casas, Chiapas on ISIS, we would like to provide you, at no charge, the information we have collected on the subject.
The following is the testimony of an indigenous partidista[ii] (PRI) brother from San Juan Chamula, Chiapas, Mexico:
“At 9am (on July 20, 2016) the Verde party followers were called to the governor’s palace. They went and were told to do again what they had done the other day.”
(NOTE: he is referring to the incident in which a group of indigenous people affiliated with the Partido Verde Ecologista (Green Ecology Party) put on ski masks and went to create chaos at the [teachers’] blockade between San Cristóbal and Tuxtla Gutiérrez, the capital of Chiapas. When they were detained by the CNTE’s [teachers’ union] security, they first said they were Zapatistas (they weren’t, aren’t, and never will be), and later admitted they were partidistas.
But this time they were supposed to dialogue so that the people at the blockade would let the trucks from Chamula that do business in Tuxtla go through. The municipal president (who belongs to the Verde Ecologista Party) sent police patrols and local ambulances. The municipal president of San Cristóbal sent some more police. The governing officials in Tuxtla sent a bunch more. See, they [the people from Chamula] had made a deal with the police—they already had a plan. So they went in there like they were going to dialogue but one group went into the blockade’s encampment and started destroying things, stealing or burning everything they found. Then they started shooting—the Verdes are indeed armed—but shooting like a bunch of drunks and druggies. The police were acting like their security detail, their backup. We don’t agree with what the Verdes did. Now the tourists are scared to come to the municipal center (of San Juan Chamula) and this screws everybody over because it really hurts our businesses. It’s not the blockade but rather the fucking Verdes that are fucking us over. Now we’re going to go protest in Tuxtla and demand they remove that asshole of a president. And if they won’t listen to us, well then we’ll see what we have to do.”
With regard to that clumsy attempt to dress paramilitaries in ski masks and say they were Zapatistas, it was a total failure (in addition to being a tired old trick that has been tried before by Croquetas Albores).[iii] Questioned on whether they thought it had been Zapatistas who destroyed the blockade and committed these outrageous acts, here are the comments of two townspeople, without any known political affiliation:
(Español) CompARTE Bahia día 1: Sarau Bem Black
Salvador, Bahia, Brasil, 20 de julio de 2016. El Festival CompARTE por la Humanidad, sede Bahia, dio inicio con el Sarau Bem Black, recital poético organizado por el colectivo Blackitude y el poeta Nelson Maca. Después de un intervalo de año y medio, el Sarau Bem Back regresó al Pelourinho, centro histórico de Salvador, celebrando el primer día del fetival CompARTE Bahia. El Sarau Bem Black fue el primer “sarao” de Bahía, y desde su creación se ha vuelto un punto de encuentro y referencia de poetas, escritores y otros creadores de todo el país, enfocado en la poesía y la literatura divergente negra y periférica.
Exu, orixá de las encrucijadas, del enigma de la palabra que nos impulsa a reflexionar, del misterio que nos lleva a percibir lo que está oculto tras la superficie de la realidad, el que comunica el mundo de los seres humanos con aquello que se encuentra más allá, se hizo presente en la encrucijada de las calles Maciel de Baixo y J. Castro Rabelo, donde lxs poetas homenajearon al guardián y protector del sarau con poesía combativa desde los sótanos de la negritud digna y resistente. ¡Laroiê!
(Descarga aquí)¿Poesía comprometida es panfleto? Contra el juicio academicista de quienes defienden “el arte por el arte” y condenan la poesía que denuncia, propone y crea, Nelson Maca hace una declaración de amor y rabia, escrita con la gramática de la ira y la caligrafía de la dignidad, y presenta el Sarau Bem Black.
(Descarga aquí)El primer libro lanzado en el Sarau Bem Black fue La reina del Cine Roma, novela sobre la infancia en las calles de Salvador, la violencia, el abuso, la prostitución infantil. El poeta Nelson Maca y el público dialogaron con el autor Alejandro Reyes.
(Descarga aquí)Y después, poetas, unx tras otrx, animaron la noche con pensamiento, provocación y dignidad hecha metáfora en la noche de esas calles con sus cinco siglos de opresión y resistencia, de lucha constante y perennemente renovada, por la creación de mundos otros labrados con esperanza y dignidad.
(Descarga aquí)
