AS IMMIGRANTS, WE ARE ALSO SICK OF THIS SHIT.
We are Movement for Justice in El Barrio, an organization of Mexican immigrants that fights for human dignity and against neoliberal displacement in East Harlem, New York. We fight for the liberation of women, indigenous peoples, lesbians, gays, the transgender community, and immigrants. We, too, as immigrants are sick of this shit (estamos hasta la madre)… as are all those from below in our beloved Mexico.
Our pain and solidarity indignation is with all the people who, due to the bad government’s war – deceitfully disguised as a “war against narco-trafficking”—, have lost their sons, daughters, sisters, brothers, mothers, fathers, relatives, and friends.
As immigrants, we are also the targets of the bad government’s wars and we are being attacked from all sides. First, by the capitalist system and the political class of Mexico that, through the PAN, PRD, and PRI political parties, forms the bad government. They have launched a war against our Mexico. Like all our fellow Mexican immigrants who are here on the “other side,” we migrated for this very reason. It is a war against the poor caused by the multinational corporations and their political lackeys.
As immigrants, we are sick of this shit because the bad governments, from both sides of the border, and the transnational corporations are colluding in the destruction of our peoples and our lands by changing laws to allow the further exploitation and enslavement of humanity.
As immigrants, we are sick of this shit because unemployment and slavery jobs force us to leave our beloved people of Mexico.
As immigrants, we are sick of this shit because the bad government’s war is killing off our culture; they want to destroy every facet of us as a community and as human beings.
As immigrants, we are sick of this shit because the only option our country leaves for us is to risk our lives a thousand times over and leave everything behind in order to arrive in this country, the U.S., which plunders our natural resources and in this way enjoys a level of life infinitely higher than our country.
As immigrants, we are sick of this shit because it all occurs due to our corrupt governments, who are the lackeys of transnational corporations and who continue to kiss their feet so that they may get fat off of our poverty.
As immigrants, we are sick of this shit because the bad government of Mexico and its employees laugh in our faces as they force us to say goodbye to our families, our community, and our beloved Mexico, when those from above exile us.
As immigrants, we are sick of this shit because here on the other side, we are turned into cheap labor to the benefit of the bosses, the wealthy and, in the same way, in service of the State—all of which profit from the savage exploitation of our community.
As immigrants, we are sick of this shit because the political and economic system continues to degrade us as human beings.
As immigrants, we are sick of this shit because, in exchange for our labor, they implement new anti-immigrant and racist laws, murderous border walls, barriers on the Evros River, floating detention centers and armies in the Aegean Sea, assault battalions in the cities and large-scale deportations.
As immigrants, we are sick of this shit because we have seen how the politicians have degraded, exploited, looted, plundered, and murdered our people in Mexico and our fellow immigrant compañeros.
As immigrants, we are sick of this shit because the transnational corporations, aided by the bad government’s war, are destroying the lands and natural resources that belong to the original peoples of our Mexico.
As immigrants, we are sick of this shit because we are discriminated against, humiliated, marginalized, and oppressed for being women, lesbians, transgender, gays and indigenous peoples.
Movement for Justice in El Barrio holds the bad government of Mexico and the world capitalist system directly responsible for the war that keeps us in the conditions we face as immigrants; for the war that seeks to destroy our families, children, women, men, elderly, and youth who, in reality, sustain the economy of the big cities to the benefit of the transnational corporations and bad governments in power on both sides of the border.
As immigrants, we are sick of this shit because the war of those from above uses the mass media, controlled as they are by the bad government, to manipulate public opinion and to conceal the exploitation and true information, always to accommodate the interests of the corrupt governments.
As immigrants, we are sick of this shit because the political and economic system, which wages a war against our population to destroy us, is the root cause and culprit for the exploitation of human beings as cheap labor.
As immigrants, we are sick of this shit because the bad government’s war is degrading our humanity, is killing our culture, desires to enslave us in its image, and wishes to obliterate us in ever facet as a community and as human beings.
As immigrants, we are sick of this shit because the capitalist system moves its money from one country to another, from one continent to another, because for money there are no walls, there are no borders, there are no immigration laws. For money: freedom exists. For us: only persecution and exploitation.
As immigrants, we are sick of this shit because those from above want to convince workers that we represent a threat to them; that we are responsible for the oppression that their very own governments inflict upon them.
As immigrants, we are sick of this shit because they implement all of this to deny us our right to live a dignified life as human beings with all the rights that they don’t want us to exercise.
As immigrants, we are sick of this shit because we were displaced and evicted from our beloved Mexico and here we are now facing and fighting yet again displacement from our homes and community. Or, in other words, we are being doubly displaced, and for this reason, our struggle will not be stopped: it is strengthened together with our sisters and brothers of The Other Campaign.
As Mexican immigrants, we are part of The Other Campaign, the national Mexican movement – initiated by our Zapatista sisters and brothers from Chiapas, Mexico – that aims to unify all the struggles from below and to the left. This movement changes the way of doing politics by having the community as a base. We want to get rid of those thieving, corrupt, and dirty politicians from our Mexico, since all they do is plunder and leave our country in ruins. But, as our Zapatista sisters and brothers say, “If there is no world for us, by respecting our differences, we will build one in which many worlds fit.”
As immigrants, we are sick of this shit because whenever the people, those from below, unite and fight against the capitalist system and political class, those from above attempt to squash our struggles as organized and autonomous peoples with repression, as they have done to members of The Other Campaign, such as our beloved sisters and brothers Zapatistas and our beloved compas from San Sebastián Bachajón.
As immigrants, we are sick of this shit because instead of shelter, land, jobs, food, health, education, independence, democracy, freedom, and peace, there is superfluous brutality, violence, displacement, poverty, hunger, and repression. Instead of life, there is death.
Now, the bad government with the help of the capitalist mass media disguises this as a “war against narco-trafficking.”
As immigrants, we are sick of this shit because we know that the narco-trafficking, protected by the State, requires economic and social inequality to be able to exist, and it is precisely this inequality that has forced us to flee our country. In this way, the government makes its most subtle connection in its war against the people.
Because of all this, Movement for Justice in El Barrio, The Other Campaign New York, will join the actions that will take place from May 5-8 in Mexico and around the world against the violence perpetrated by the State.
Our protest will occur at the Mexican Consulate in New York, on Friday, May 6.
Responding to the call to name innocent victims, we name a dignified family that died while crossing the border:
Rosa Guzmán
Antonio Guzmán
Daniel Guzmán
This is the word of the simple and humble community of El Barrio, NYC.
Movement for Justice in El Barrio
The Other Campaign New York
STOP CALDERÓN’S WAR!
NO MORE BLOOD!
WE ARE SICK OF THE VIOLENCE PERPETRATED BY THE STATE, ITS CORRUPT MILITARY, ITS PARAMILITARIES AND THE ARMED NARCO-TRAFFICKERS!
