Zapatista Army for National Liberation
Mexico.

April 21, 2015

To the compas of the Sixth:

To the presumed attendees of the Seminar “Critical Thought Versus the Capitalist Hydra”:

We want to let you know that:

As of April 21, 2015, the number of people who have registered for the seminar “Critical Thought Versus the Capitalist Hydra” is approximately 1,074 men, women, others,i children, and elderly from Mexico and the world. Of this number:

558 people are adherents of the Sixth.

430 people are not adherents of the Sixth

82 people say they are from the free, autonomous, independent, alternative, or whatever-you-call-it media.

4 people are from the paid media (only one person from the paid media has been rejected, it was one of the three who were sponsored by the Chiapas state government to sully the name of the Zapatista compa professor Galeano and present his murderers as victims.)

Now then, we don’t know if among those 1,074 who have registered so far there might be a portion who have gotten confused and think that they have registered for Señorita Anahí’s weddingii (apparently she’s marrying somebody from Chiapas, I’m not sure, but pay me no mind because here the world of politics and entertainment are easily confused… ah! There too? Didn’t I tell you?)

Anyway, I’m sharing the number of attendees because it’s many more than we had expected would attend the seminar/seedbed. Of course now that’s CIDECI’s problem, so… good luck!

What? Can people can still register? I think so, I’m not sure. When questioned by Los Tercios Compas, doctor Raymundo responded “no problem at all, in any case the number of people who will actually pay attention are far fewer.” Okay, okay, okay, he didn’t say that, but given the context he could have. What’s more, not even the doc knows how many people are going to come to CIDECI.

(Continuar leyendo…)

On April 7, the Enlace Zapatista website suffered a service denial attack and it is currently unavailable. The attack, few weeks before the Seminar “Critical Thought before the Capitalist Hydra” and shortly after the registration procedures were published, demonstrates how much power fears critical thought. (Update 9 Apr 2015: the Enlace Zapatista webpage is back up.)

We share here the registration forms for the Seminar “Critical Thought before the Capitalist Hydra”:

• Form for adherents to the Sixth Declaration of the Lacandon Jungle
• Form for NON-adherents to the Sixth Declaration of the Lacandon Jungle
• Form for free media collectives
• Forma for paid media

To register, please download the appropriate form, fill it, and send it to the following email address: seminario.pensamientocritico15@gmail.com

More info:

The Storm, the Sentinel, and the Night Watch Syndrome

About the Homage and Seminar

Dear friends and enemies: so… err… umm… the thing is… well… remember that at the end of our March 19, 2015 text entitled “About the Homage and the Seminar,” we said that the organization of the seminar was a mess? Well, we have honored that claim: the email address to which we asked you to send your registration information is wrong, erroneous, in other words, that’s not the one. The correct email is: seminario.pensamientocritico15@gmail.com. Okay, okay, okay. It’s on me. Sincerely, yo merengues.

The Storm, the Sentinel, and the Night Watch Syndrome

April 2015.

To the compañeroas of the Sixth:

To all those interested:

Although it may not look like it, the following is an invitation… or is it a challenge?

If you are an adherent to the Sixth, if you are from the free, autonomous, alternative, independent media or whatever it’s called, if you are interested in critical thought, then accept this invitation to the seminar, “Critical Thought versus the Capitalist Hydra.” If in addition to accepting this invitation you would also like to attend the seminar, please follow this link: http://enlacezapatista.ezln.org.mx/registro-al-seminario-de-reflexion-y-analisis-el-pensamiento-critico-frente-a-la-hidra-capitalista/

If you are an invited speaker,[i] a similar letter will be sent to you via the same channels through which you have already been contacted. The difference will be that the invitation letter sent to the speakers will contain a “secret clause.”

Ok then, the invitation is really something like the wrapping paper.

Inside, further down below and to the left, you will find…

The Challenge

Oh, I know. The classic beginnings to a Zapatista reflection: disconcerting, anachronistic, silly, absurd. As if not really putting in any effort, as if just sort of putting it out there, a kind of “we’ll leave you to it,” or “see what you can do with it,” or something like “it’s on you.” It’s almost like they toss out a piece of a jigsaw puzzle and expect that people would understand that they are not just describing one part of reality, but have the entire image in mind. As if they saw the completed jigsaw puzzle, with its precise figures and colors in place, but with the border of each piece still visible, as if to point out that the whole exists because of all the parts, and of course, that each part acquires its meaning in relation to all the others.

(Continuar leyendo…)

ZAPATISTA ARMY FOR NATIONAL LIBERATION.

March 2015.

To the compas of the Sixth in Mexico and in the World:

Compas:

I have been asked to let you know that…

Despite the significant increase in military activity in the vicinity of the Zapatista Caracoles (aggressive patrols, intimidating checkpoints, threatening flyovers)—particularly in the caracoles of La Realidad and Oventik (the first has just opened a school-clinic, and the second will host the tribute to Don Luis Villoro Toranzo)…

Despite the growing belligerence of the paramilitary groups sponsored by the Chiapas government…

Despite the tired “new” lies in the paid media /no, there is not and there has not been any proposal for dialogue; no, not since 2001, that is to say that no federal official has approached the EZLN in the last 14 years for any reason other than in an attempt to assasinate the Zapatista leadership; no, the federal and state governments are not looking to improve the living conditions of indigenous people in Chiapas, rather, they are trying to divide communities; no, the only governmental approaches that Jaime Martinez Veloz claim for himself were not to Zapatistas but to the paramilitaries backed (before he took over) by Luis H. Alvarez, Juan Sabines Guerrero, Felipe Calderon Hinojosa, and now Manuel Velasco Coello, Rosario Robles Berlanga and Enrique Peña Nieto, one of whose groups (the CIOAC-H) is responsible for the murder of the compañero teacher Galeano; no, and so forth and so on/…

Despite the fact that truth and justice are still missing in Ayotzinapa…

(Continuar leyendo…)

CIDECI Unitierra

6 y 7 de marzo de 2015

Hemos visto la necesidad de formar un movimiento para impulsar la participación de las mujeres en las decisiones y para juntar nuestros esfuerzos, luchas y resistencias en defensa de la madre tierra y el territorio, ya que es donde vivimos, comemos y crecen nuestros hijos e hijas. Sólo así podremos hacer una lucha fuerte contra los empresarios y los gobiernos que nos oprimen y despojan.

Haz clic aquí para ver el programa completo

On the Bulletin Board

To the peoples of the world:

From Chiapas, Mexico, we send out our word to all those women and men from below, in the countryside and the city, in Mexico and throughout the world, all those who sow resistance and rebellion against the neoliberal capitalism that destroys everything.

We met in the Ñahtó community San Francisco Xochicuautla, State of Mexico, on December 21, 22, and 23; in the Nahua community of Amilcingo, Morelos, on December 22 and 23; in the space of the Frente Popular Francisco Villa Independiente in Mexico City on December 24, 25, and 26; in Moncolva, Campeche, on December 28 and 29; in the Zapatista Caracol of Oventik, Chiapas, on December 31 and January 1; and in CIDECI in San Cristobal de las Casas, Chiapas, on January 2 and 3. We met to hold “sharings,” which means not only to share, but also to learn and build together. These were “sharings” that were grown from the deep pain and rage that belongs to all of us due to the disappearance and murder of the students from the Rural Teacher’s College Raul Isidro Burgos in Ayotzinapa, Guerrero. This was a criminal act that reflects the politics of death that the bad government and the capitalists have pushed into every corner of the country and the world. These missing students are our disappeared, and we, as the National and International Sixth, the National Indigenous Congress, and the Zapatista National Liberation Army will not cease to struggle until they are found.

The capitalists and their overseers in the bad governments have left destruction in each of our individual hearts and great destruction in the collective heart that we make up as peoples, mothers and fathers of the young people who were taken from us, and solidarity organizations, all determined to reconstruct life where the powerful have sown death and mourning.

In the indigenous communities that we comprise, we suffer attacks by the capitalist system through the blood and pain of our children, who are also the only possible future for this planet we call Earth. Amidst the distances and different colors that make up our being and our existence, we maintain the certainty that Earth is our mother and she is alive. And in order to keep her alive, justice must be a demand that is woven by the actions and convictions of those of us who comprise the world of below, those who do not aspire to govern that world but rather construct it along our path.

From the oceans, beaches, mountains, cities, and countryside, we build and rebuild alongside the assemblies, organizations, and collectives that in diverse autonomous forms weave spaces and forms of organization and solidarity that are capable of containing the capitalist destruction that does not distinguish between peoples and colors and in its chronic blindness only recognizes what feeds the same production dressed as permanent war, unjust markets, and colossal profits for a few. These are values alien to our peoples and against the ancient agreements made with our Mother Earth that give meaning and sense to life in the world, that give us freedom and dignity, dignified in living and defending life.

But the capitalists who say they are governing but really are only trying to dominate, administrate, and exploit, have a limit—a very large barrier—when they come up against the dignity of a person, a family, a collective, a society who they have profoundly damaged, from whom they have snatched and killed a part of their heart, thus detonating an explosion of rebellion that has illuminated the World Festival of Resistance and Rebellion Against Capitalism which we call “Where those above destroy, we below rebuild.” Because we are below; from below we understand the world, from below we care for it, below we look at one another and from there, together, we rebuild the destiny that we believe is our own until the powerful snatch it from us and only then do we learn, do we know, that what is really ours is that which we can construct or reconstruct where capitalism has destroyed.

The pain that is converted into dignified rage in the families of the murdered and disappeared students of the Rural Teacher’s College Raul Isidro Burgos is the pain that has kidnapped and disappeared us also, and thus we will never stop struggling until they are found, along with all of the murdered, disappeared, tortured, exploited, disrespected, and dispossessed brothers and sisters, wherever they may be in this savage capitalist geography, on whatever border of the world, in whichever prison.

The walk of the peoples of the world in the countryside and the city, each with their path, are led by the footprints of their own ancestors, paths that divide, intersect, and cross with ours until they find one direction, marked by a rebellious dignity that speaks so many languages and has as many colors as nature itself, woven from small embroideries that together construct what we need to be.

So, brothers and sisters of this suffering world that is nonetheless happy because of the rebellion that nourishes us: we invite you to continue walking with a small but firm step, to continue to meet, share, construct, and learn along with us, to weave the organization from below and to the left of the Sixth that we comprise.

Only from our rebellion and our resistance will the death of capitalism be born and a new world brought to life, a world for all of us.

San Cristobal de las Casas, Mexico, January 3, 2015

NATIONAL INDIGENOUS CONGRESS, ZAPATISTA NATIONAL LIBERATION ARMY, and the NATIONAL AND INTERNATIONAL SIXTH

Originally Published in Spanish by Enlace Zapatista

En español: http://enlacezapatista.ezln.org.mx/2015/01/08/pronunciamiento-del-primer-festival-mundial-de-las-resistencias-y-rebeldias-contra-el-capitalismo/

Words of the relatives of the missing and murdered students from Ayotzinapa, during the inauguration of the final session of the 1st World Festival of Resistance and Rebellion against Capitalism “Where those from above destroy, us from below rebuild,” at Cideci/Universidad de la Tierra Chiapas, January 2, 2015.

(Continuar leyendo…)

Interviews conducted at Cideci/Universidad de la Tierra Chiapas, at the end of the World Festival of Resitance and Rebellion against Capitalism.

With spoke with Salvador Campanur Sánchez, Purépecha from Cherán, Michoacán, of the National Indigenous Congress, who explains the meaning of this great encounter:
(Descarga aquí)  

Rosa Elba Jiménez Gutiérrez and one of the authorities of the Yaqui Tribe speak of the forms of struggle and resistance in the face of the disposession and violence in the country:
(Descarga aquí)  

Evaristo Domínguez Ramos, from Santa María de Ostula, Michoacán, speaks about the community’s problems:
(Descarga aquí)  

Silvia Marcos and Jean Robert make a balance of 2014, in terms of death and repression as well as resistance and construction:
(Descarga aquí)  

We also asked several participants the same question: “After all that was shared in Xochicuautla, Amilcingo, and Campeche, after hearing all the different pains and rages lived by the peoples of Mexico and the world, and also the forms of struggle and resistance, what do you take from the Festival?”

• José Luis Fernández – Comunidad de Xochicuautla:
  (Descarga aquí)  
• Rosa Elba Jiménez Gutiérrez y autoridad de la Tribu Yaqui:
  (Descarga aquí)  
• Representante del pueblo coca de Mezcala:
  (Descarga aquí)  
• Juan Enrique Bobadilla, Unión de Pueblos y Comunidades Purépechas del DF:
  (Descarga aquí)  

Finalmente, these are the sounds of the Festival’s closure:
(Descarga aquí)