Megaprojects
Invitation to Days of Action in Defense of Territory and Mother Earth “WE ARE ALL SAMIR”
INVITATION TO DAYS OF ACTION IN DEFENSE OF TERRITORY AND MOTHER EARTH
“WE ARE ALL SAMIR”
SISTERS AND BROTHERS OF MEXICO AND THE WORLD:
First: Today more than ever, capitalism grows through war and the ongoing dispossession of all forms of life. The bad governments and the big capitalist businesses, all of which can be identified by name, try to disappear our struggles in defense of territory and Mother Earth, even normalizing the murder of our brothers and sisters who defend that territory and our Mother Earth. Today our collective heart hurts for the murders of:
- Samir Flores Soberanes of the Nahua people of Amilcingo, Morelos.
- Julián Cortés Flores, of the Mephaa people of the Casa de Justicia in San Luis Acatlán, Guerrero.
- Ignacio Pérez Girón, of the Tzotzil people of the municipality of Aldama, Chiapas.
- José Lucio Bartolo Faustino, Modesto Verales Sebastián, Bartolo Hilario Morales, and Isaías Xanteco Ahuejote of the Nahua people organized as the Indigenous and Popular Council of Guerrero – Emiliano Zapata (CIPOG – EZ).
- Juan Monroy and José Luis Rosales, of the Nahua people Ayotitlán, Jalisco.
- Feliciano Corona Cirino, of the Nahua people of Santa María Ostula, Michoacán.
- Josué Bernardo Marcial Campo, also known as TíoBad, of the Populuca people of Veracruz.
Our compañeros were murdered for opposing the war the bad government is waging on our lands, hills, and waters in order to consolidate the dispossession which today threatens humanity’s existence.
We also feel the pain of the forced disappearance of our brother Sergio Rivera Hernández, Nahua of the Sierra Negra, Puebla, who also defended land and Mother Earth.
Second: The current neoliberal phase of capitalism takes on ever more monstrous forms, declaring open war on humanity and against the earth, our mother. Economic development today, based everywhere on finance capital and supported by the military and extractivist industries, dominates peoples, nations, and entire continents. It grows through real or fictitious wars and the proliferation of organized crime as well as invasions and coups d’état. Its insatiable consumptive and accumulationist capitalist logic has brought us to the brink of irreversible climate change and a limit at which the very conditions for human life on the planet are at risk.
Third: In addition, the current system’s patriarchal organization, inherited from previous systems and civilizations but deepened over the past several centuries, has been exposed as a violent enemy of humanity as a whole but especially of women and our Mother Earth. In other words, the exploitation of and profound structural violence against women is an integral part of capitalism, although it was born long before. Capitalist private property, the foundation of this system, cannot be explained or understood except as part of a patriarchal system of domination over women and the earth.
Fourth: In Mexico, the acceleration of mining, extraction, and hydrocarbon pipelines, the creation of the National Guard within the logic of the Merida Initiative, and the imposition, at all costs, of major megaprojects (The Salina Cruz – Coatzacoalcos Trans-Isthmus Corridor, The Mayan Train, the Morelos Integrated Project, and the New International Airport in Mexico City)—all of which are intended to reorganize territories, populations, and both the northern and Central American borders in a logic of capitalist displacement and exploitation—make a clearly anti-capitalist and anti-patriarchal defense of human life, of the territories of our peoples, and of the earth all the more urgent. For these reasons:
We invite: the peoples of Mexico and the world; organizations and collectives of workers of the countryside, city, and seas; women; students; children; elders; and those across the range of sexual diversity to:
DAYS OF ACTION IN DEFENSE OF TERRITORY AND MOTHER EARTH
“WE ARE ALL SAMIR”
On the following dates:
February 20, 2020: Local actions in Mexico and around the world in Defense of Territory and Mother Earth; in demand of justice for our dead, disappeared, and imprisoned; and against the megaprojects of death.
February 21, 2020: March for Justice for Our Brother Samir Flores Soberanes and for our dead, disappeared, and imprisoned, and in Defense of Territory and Mother Earth. Meet at the offices of the Federal Electricity Commission, Avenida Reforma, Mexico City, 4pm.
February 22, 2020: Assembly in Defense of Territory and Mother Earth, to take place in downtown Amilcingo, municipality of Temoac, Morelos State, starting at 10am.
Sincerely,
January 7, 2020.
For the Full Reconstitution of Our Peoples
Never Again a Mexico Without Us
AMILCINGO ASSEMBLY OF RESISTANCE
NATIONAL INDIGENOUS CONGRESS/ INDIGENOUS GOVERNING COUNCIL
ZAPATISTA ARMY FOR NATIONAL LIBERATION
PEOPLES, COMMUNITIES, ORGANIZATIONS, COLLECTIVES, AND INDIVIDUALS PARTICPATING IN THE FORUM IN DEFENSE OF TERRITORY AND MOTHER EARTH HELD DECEMBER 21-22, 2019, IN THE CARACOL JACINTO CANEK/CIDECI-UNITIERRA, SAN CRISTÓBAL DE LAS CASAS, CHIAPAS.
Words of the Indigenous Revolutionary Clandestine Committee-General Command of the EZLN, in the voice of Subcomandante Insurgente Moisés, on the 26th Anniversary of the Beginning of the War Against Oblivion
Source: Enlace Zapatista
Audio: Radio Pozol
Words of the Indigenous Revolutionary Clandestine Committee-General Command of the EZLN, in the voice of Subcomandante Insurgente Moisés, on the 26th Anniversary of the Beginning of the War Against Oblivion
.
December 31, 2019.
January 1, 2020.
Good afternoon, good morning, good evening, good day to everyone, [todas, todos y todoas]:
To the compañeras and compañeros who are Zapatista bases of support:
To the compañeras and compañeros who are Zapatista comandantas and comandantes:
To the Zapatista autonomous authorities:
To the compañeras and compañeros who are milicianos, milicianas, insurgentas and insurgentes:
To the National Indigenous Congress – Indigenous Governing Council:
To the National and International Sixth:
To the Networks of Resistance and Rebellion:
Brothers and sisters in Mexico and throughout the world:
Through me, the Zapatista Army for National Liberation speaks.
“Canek said:
I read in a book that in the old days, the rulers wanted to call together armies to defend the lands they governed. First, they called up the cruelest men because they supposed that these men were accustomed to blood. So they drew their armies from the prisons and the slaughterhouses. But it turned out that when these people stood face to face with the enemy, they turned pale and threw down their arms. Then the rulers turned to the strongest men – the stone masons and the miners. To these men, they gave armor and heavy weapons and sent them out to do battle. But again, the mere presence of the enemy instilled weakness in their arms and dismay in their hearts. The rulers wisely then turned to men who were neither strong nor fierce nor bloodthirsty, but were simply brave and had something rightly to defend – the land they worked, the women they slept with and the children whose laughter delighted them. And when the time came, these men fought with so much fury that they drove off their enemies and were forever free of their threats and persecution.” [i]
Sisters, brothers, hermanoas:
It was 26 years ago, on an afternoon like this one, that we came down from our mountains to the big cities in order to challenge those in power. At that time, we had nothing more than our own death – a double death, because we were dying a physical death and also a death of oblivion. We had to choose: whether to die like animals or die like human beings who struggle for their lives.
So it was that when dawn broke on that January 1, we had fire in our hands.
The big boss we faced then is the same one who despises us today. He had another name and another face, but he was and is the same ruler.
We rose up and a space was opened for the word. So we opened our heart to the hearts of other sisters and brothers and compañeros, and our voice was met with support and comfort from all the colors of the world from below.
