SAMIR LIVES! THE STRUGGLE CONTINUES! Declaration from the Third National Assembly of the National Indigenous Congress, the Indigenous Governing Council, and the EZLN
SAMIR LIVES! THE STRUGGLE CONTINUES!
Declaration from the Third National Assembly of the National Indigenous Congress, the Indigenous Governing Council, and the EZLN
To the peoples of the world:
To those organizations and collectives acting in resistance and rebellion:
To the national and international Sixth:
To the media:
As Ayuuk, Binizza, Chinanteco, Chol, Chontal, Guarijío, Maya, Mayo, Mazahua, Mazateco, Mixteco, Nahua, Nayeri, Otomí, Popoluca, Purépecha, Raramuri, Tepehuano, Tlapaneco, Tojolabal, Totonaco, Tzeltal, Tsotsil, Wixárika, Yaqui, Zoque, and Quichua (Ecuador) peoples, we have come together for the Third National Assembly of the National Indigenous Congress and the Indigenous Governing Council. Today, almost 100 years after the assassination of General Emiliano Zapata, we now face the pain and rage brought by the war waged against our peoples and the murder of our compañero Samir, killed for defending the land and his people. As a national assembly, we send our embrace of solidarity and struggle to his family and the community of Amilcingo, Morelos. As the CNI-CIG and the EZLN, for whom compañero Samir will always be a glimmer of light, we send our solidarity and collective embrace.
Samir was killed by the neoliberal regime—we don’t know if it was the government, the business class, their criminal cartels, or all three together. The path was laid for this cowardly murder by the new federal executive, Andrés Manuel López Obrador [AMLO], through his offers of support not to those below, but rather to the owners of money and power, while making veiled threats against those of us who defend and fight for life. AMLO has promised to hand over to big business and the military elite what neoliberal capitalism and all of its various bad governments never could: our land. His administration’s new Agrarian Development Law aims to dismantle collective organization and collective property forms, deeming as “development” what is actually shameless theft and destruction. This is accompanied by military threats to our peoples via his “National Guard” in what amounts to the total reconfiguration of our country.
What above they call “transformation” has always mean the same thing for our peoples: we give our lives so that powerful and oligarchic interests, fewer and fewer but bigger and bigger, can live off of oppression, exploitation, and destruction. The so-called “Fourth Transformation”[i] follows the same path as the previous three, although more brutally and cynically, if such a thing is possible.
