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Cherán K’eri es una comunidad indígena pur’épecha ubicada en el estado de Michoacán, México. A partir del año 2000, el crimen organizado empezó a filtrarse en la comunidad. Con el tiempo, la presencia de los narcotraficantes y su poder de control sobre la comunidad se incrementaron substancialmente y empezaron a arrasar con los bosques más preciosos de la comunidad. Cuando los integrantes de la comunidad intentaban defenderlos, eran asesinados o desaparecidos. El bosque era devastado y la gente vivía aterrorizada; todo el mundo sentía que su vida estaba en peligro. Al atardecer, Cherán se convertía en un pueblo fantasma.

El 15 de abril de 2011, un grupo de mujeres decidió poner un alto a esa situación: empezó a tapar las calles para impedir el paso de los talamontes. Rápidamente, la comunidad entera reaccionó y se unió al levantamiento, quemando carros y levantando barricadas en todas las entradas del pueblo. Frente a eso, los políticos y policías municipales, llenos de miedo, huyeron de Cherán. La comunidad tomó las oficinas del gobierno municipal, así como los vehículos de la policía y sus armas, para empezar a brindarse seguridad. En paralelo, el pueblo decidió expulsar definitivamente a los partidos políticos, para retomar sus formas tradicionales de autogobierno.

A cuatro años de su levantamiento, comuneros y comuneras nos hablan de las distintas etapas por las que ya han pasado en la construcción de su nuevo mundo, en el que realmente se le da la voz al pueblo, en el que la que manda es la asamblea, mientras el gobierno está obedeciendo; el principio de un largo proceso de construcción de autonomía, del que todas y todos podemos aprender.

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The Word of Subcomandante Insurgente Moisés

May 8, 2015

Good afternoon compañeros, compañeras, brothers and sisters.

Perhaps by continuing our explanation of how resistance and rebellion are weapons for us you will better understand some of the things that our compañeros and compañeras here at the table have talked about.

Through our resistance and rebellion, we have come to understand that by putting resistance and rebellion into practice we confirm that we will not allow in our struggle what happened in 1910, when so many of our fellow Mexicans died. Who took advantage of that situation?

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Words by Compañera Selena, Listener,ⁱ

Good evening compañeros and compañeras of the Sixth.

Good evening brothers and sisters.

Good evening to everyone in general.

The topic that I will be explaining to you, actually I will read it to you, is the same topic the other compañera presented on, but with more information about the youth, both Zapatistas and non-Zapatistas.

We as Zapatista youth are facing a low intensity war that the bad government and the bad capitalists wage against us. They put ideas into our heads about modern life, like cellphones, clothes, and shoes; they put these bad ideas into our heads through TV, through soap operas, soccer games, and commercials, so that we as youth will be distracted and not think about how to organize our struggle.

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Words of Compañera Lizbeth, Zapatista base of support77

Good evening compañeros and compañeras, brothers and sisters.

We are going to explain a little bit of how we have been living and doing our autonomous work after the 1994 armed uprising.

We as Zapatista youth today, we are no longer familiar with the overseer, with the landowner, with the hacienda boss, much less with El Amate [a prison in Chiapas]; we do not know what it is to go to the official municipal presidents so that they can resolve our problems. Thanks to the EZLN organization, we now have our own authorities in each community, we have our municipal authorities, and our Juntas de Buen Gobierno [Good Government Councils], and they resolve whatever type of problem that might arise for a compañera or compañero, for both Zapatistas and non-Zapatistas.

(Continuar leyendo…)

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Good evening compañeros and compañeras, brothers and sisters.

I’m going to explain a little bit of what compañera Comandanta Rosalinda said.

Just as she explained, it is now my turn to talk about how we become authorities. From 1994 on, we knew that we had rights as women. That was when we woke up. This is how little by little we grew to understand the work of the compañeras.

In the communities, in the regions, we began the practice of organizing ourselves to fight for the good of the community, without having to have an education to do so.

In 1994, we realized that as women, as mothers and fathers, we had the courage to send our husbands, our sons, our daughters to fight, and we knew well that to confront the enemy is not easy and one can come back alive or dead. But we never dwelled on those things. We were clear that the women had the responsibility to raise whomever of our sons and daughters were left. This is when we understood that we thought the same way as the compañeros.

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Good evening compañeros and compañeras, brothers and sisters.

What compañera Comandanta Miriam just explained is all true. We were poorly treated, humiliated, and unappreciated because we never knew that yes, we did have the right to organize, to participate, to do all types of work; this is because no one had given us an explanation of how we could organize to get out of this exploitation.

At that time we were all in the dark, we didn’t know anything. But during the time of clandestinity, there came a day when some compañeras were recruited, and they went on to recruit other compañeras village by village.

Then came the time to name a compañera to be the local authority for each community. They named me as a local authority of my community. That is when I started going to meetings in order to bring more information back to the community. Later on we held meetings with the compañeras in the village to explain to them how the collective work could be organized, and to also to explain to them that its necessary to have compañeras who are insurgents and milicianas.^[i]

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Comandanta Miriam

Good evening compañeros and compañeras.

I also have the chance to talk to you a bit about what the situation was for women prior to 1994.

Women suffered through a very sad situation since the arrival of the conquistadors. They stole our land and took our language, our culture. This is how the domination of caciquismo [local despotism] and landowners came into being alongside a triple exploitation, humiliation, discrimination, marginalization, mistreatment, and inequality.

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Words by Subcomandante Insurgente Moisés

May 7, 2015 (evening session)

Good evening, compañeros, compañeras, brothers and sisters.

It seems like a splash of cold water on our faces was indeed what we needed, because now we are definitely getting some thought-provoking ideas.

So we will need to translate this from Spanish to Tzeltal, Tojolabal, Tzotzil, and Chol, and from there a joint response will arise, because there are some things proposed by the compañeros at this table that we are interested in discussing.

We continue with our words of explanation and discussion on what resistance and rebellion mean to us as Zapatistas.

For us, as an organization that resists and struggles in rebellion, we first need to be clear on why one would resist and rebel. If we are not clear on the “Why?” the “For what?” and the “From what?” we simply cannot go forward.

(Continuar leyendo…)

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Words of Subcomandante Insurgente Moisés
May 6, 2015

Good afternoon, compañeros, compañeras, brothers and sisters.

I am going to talk to you about how our resistance and rebellion are our weapons.

Before we begin talking about resistance and rebellion, I want to remind you that we are an armed group. We have our weapons, as one more tool in the struggle, that’s how we explain it now. Our weapons are a tool of struggle, just like the machete, axe, hammer, pick, shovel, hoe, and other such things. Each of these tools has its function, but the function of a weapon, well, if you use it, you kill.

So in the beginning, when we rose up at the dawn of the year 1994, a movement of thousands of Mexicans from all over the country emerged, grew to millions, and pressured the government, the baldy—that’s what we call him, Salinas the baldy—to sit down and dialogue with us, and at the same time urged us to sit down to dialogue and negotiate.

We understood the call of the people of Mexico. So we gave the order to retreat from violent struggle. It was then that we discovered, through the compañeras—because in combat our people died—but the compañeras were developing what we might call another way to struggle. Because the government, a month later, a year, two years later, wanted to buy us off, as we put it, they wanted us to accept aid and forget about struggle.

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