Joint National Indigenous Congress – EZLN Declaration denouncing the invasion of the Communal Lands of the Ñatho Indigenous Community of San Francisco Xochicuautla and the attack on Indigenous Yaqui Lauro Baumea

To the Ñatho Indigenous Community of San Francisco Xochicuautla
To the Yaqui Tribe
To the National and International Sixth
To the Peoples of the World

Once more we express our pain and rage as the peoples in rebellion and resistance who make up the National Indigenous Congress. We unite our voices, our rage, and our pain in response to what is happening in the Ñatho Indigenous Community of San Francisco Xochicuautla and to the members of the Yaqui Tribe who are defending their water source.

Our brothers and sisters of Xochicuautla have defended their forests against the construction of the private highway between Toluca and Naucalpan, because they know that life itself emerges from these trees, mountains, and waters. They were granted legal protection prohibiting this work on communal lands, but since October 8 of this year, workers from the construction company under the protection of public “Citizen Security” Forces of the State of Mexico have been invading their lands and cutting down hundreds of trees. The bad government doesn’t care if we below use their laws to defend ourselves; they break those laws themselves in order to destroy us. They made them for the same reason.

There are currently acts of provocation, persecution, harassment, as well as illegal invasion of communal territory in this community. The construction company Autovan S.A. of C.V. run by one Fernando Ambriz invaded their territory, circulating the rumor that anyone attempting to obstruct their work would be arrested. But the company does not have legal authorization for its presence in that territory, as there is a court injunction (48/2014) nullifying the assemblies held to grant “permission” to the project and invalidating the previous permit and any other matters related project permission. This injunction was issued by Judge Jorge J. de Silva Cano of the Agrarian Tribunal headquartered in Toluca.

Once again the Mexican state, through governor Eruviel Ávila Villegas, is in flagrant violation of our rights and of the judicial orders handed down from the courts, constituting yet another misuse of power. They are against us as indigenous peoples because we pose an obstacle to their plans—plans that favor companies and capitalism but go against life.

We are also pained by what is happening to the ancient and heroic Yaqui Tribe, which is also defending life and water.

There has now been an attack on the life of Lauro Baumea; two cars parked at his house were set on fire, and the attackers said that the next time it would not be cars that they set alight.

These attacks on life and against our lives happen throughout this country, because the dangerous mafias that compose the Mexican State are against all of us who defend the land and its resources. They employ fear and terror because they think this will paralyze us, that it will keep us from organizing. But this war that we suffer will not annihilate us.

Rather, the pain and rage that we feel unites us, feeding our construction of rebellion and resistance and the dignity that nourishes our struggle.

We demand respect for the Otomí-Mexica Forest and the Ñatho Indigenous Community of San Francisco Xochicuautla!

We demand the cancellation of the Private Highway Project between Toluca and Naucalpan, and compliance with the injunction that protects Ñatho territory!

We demand safety for Lauro Baumea and the liberation of Mario Luna and Fernando Jiménez, our brothers of the Yaqui Tribe!

Never Again a Mexico Without Us

October 28, 2014

National Indigenous Congress
Indigenous Revolutionary Clandestine Committee—General Command of the Zapatista Army for National Liberation