Autonomy and Resistance
CNI and EZLN: MAY THE EARTH TREMBLE AT ITS CORE
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:
Announcing the release of: Critical Thought in the Face of the Capitalist Hydra I
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.
