“Where those from above destroy, we from below rebuild”

The Indigenous National Congress and the Zapatista Army of National Liberation, meeting together for 6 days in Caracol 1 of La Realidad, widely denounced the different dispossessions against the indigenous peoples throughout the national territory. “This dispossession has a name and that name is capitalism,” said Venustiano Vázquez Navarrete, delegate from the Wixarika people, who along with Miriam Vargas, read the first of the closing statements.

In this event Armando García Salazar, belonging to ñ’hañhú people, read a communiqué announcing the call to the First Great World Festival of Rebellions and Resistances, which will be held on the days from 21 December this year until 3 January 2015, in 6 states of the country.

Neither the long journeys made by some delegates to the Tojolabal host community nor the heavy heat managed to lower the spirits; the various participants from the 70 peoples attending listened attentively to the final words which containing detailed denouncements and gave the names and numbers of those responsible for the destruction of the country. They spared no time specifying the level to which capitalism has divided and has already allowed different levels of government to plunder the indigenous territories.

The communiqué, as well as denouncing the dispossession against the original peoples, built a reflection of their current struggles: “there are dispossessions which are happening now, and which have also multiplied in new ways and new corners which have made the struggles and resistances mirrors in which we see reflected the mirror which we are.” It was through 30 mirrors that they showed images of the resistances.

Érica Sebastián, Loxicha and daughter of the political prisoner Álvaro Sebastián, read the “Declaration on the repression against our people,” a document which summarizes one of the main themes addressed in the exchange of the CNI with the EZLN.

The Worldwide Festival of Rebellions and Resistances will be an unprecedented meeting, which will begin in the ñ’hañhú community of San Francisco Xochicuautla on 21 December and continue in Amilcingo, Morelos, until the 23rd; it will then continue, from the 24th to the 26th, as the Great Cultural Festival in Mexico City. On the 28th and 29th there will be exchanges in Juchitan, Oaxaca and in a state of the Yucatan Peninsula, which remains to be defined. After transfers, the event will continue with the Fiesta of Rebellion and Anticapitalist Resistance in Caracol 2, Oventic; Finally, on the 2nd and 3rd January the resolutions and closing ceremony will take place at University of the Earth-CIDECI, in the state of Chiapas.

In the exchange of La Realidad, Subcomandante Insurgente Moisés made a call to the national and international Sixth to strengthen social organization. He emphasized that there can be no real justice through governments and the capitalist system: “Nobody knows more how there should be a good justice in the world, not just in one country, than those of us who smell the sweat, who smell the poverty.”

Finally, Comandante David concluded the activities in the Zapatista Reality.

The Free, Autonomous and Community Media

Translated by Dorset Chiapas Solidarity