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Los Tercios Compa

Homage to the compañero DAVID RUIZ GARCÍA during the Exchange between Indigenous Peoples and Zapatista Peoples

Words of the National Indigenous Congress compañero Armando García Salazar, of the hñahñu´ people of San Francisco Xochicuautla, in homage to the deceased compañero DAVID RUIZ GARCÍA during the Exchange between Indigenous Peoples and Zapatista Peoples, August 4, 2014.

AND

TWO SHORT CHRONICLES OF THE HOMAGE.

I. Words of compañero Armando García Salazar on behalf of the family and compañeros of the deceased compañero David Ruiz García.

Good morning everyone.

Good morning brothers, sisters, grandparents, children, and all of the compas who represent this movement.

Two months ago a nephew, a son, came to these lands in support of our brother Galeano. Unfortunately he suffered an accident upon his return.

Out of eagerness to defend justice and indigenous rights, he had been part of this movement for eight years. He very much wanted to come meet the Zapatista brothers, and to be frank, shake the hand of Subcomandante Marcos. It was his greatest desire. And he fulfilled it. He came to La Realidad.

Unfortunately, destiny is like this. Today, despite this, we, his brothers and his relatives, are here again. We will not retreat; David would have wanted us to go forward.

(Continuar leyendo…)

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San Sebastián Bachajón

San Sebastián Bachajón greets encounter between CNI and EZLN

Sorry, this entry is only available in Mexican Spanish. For the sake of viewer convenience, the content is shown below in the alternative language. You may click the link to switch the active language.

EN EJIDO SAN SEBASTIAN BACHAJON ADERENTES A LA SEXTA DECLARACION DE LA SELVA LACANDONA. CHIAPAS. MEXICO. A 3 DE AGOSTO DE 2014

Al Comité Clandestino Revolucionario Indígena-Comandancia General del Ejército Zapatista de Liberación Nacional
A las Juntas de Buen Gobierno
Al Congreso Nacional Indígena
A l@s compañer@s adherentes a la sexta declaracion de la selva lacandona
A los medios de comunicación masivos e alternativos
A la Red contra la Represión y por la Solidaridad
Al Movimiento de Justicia por el Barrio de Nueva York
A los defensores de derechos humanos nacional e internacional
Al pueblo de México y el mundo

Compañeras y compañeros de la Comandancia General del Ejército Zapatista de Liberación Nacional y de las bases de apoyo del EZLN agradecemos la invitación a la compartición en el Caracol I La Realidad, lugar donde diera su vida por la madre tierra el compañero maestro Galeano, asesinado por grupos partidistas el 2 de mayo de 2014, así como nuestros compañeros caídos Juan Vázquez Guzmán el 24 de abril de 2013 y Juan Carlos Gómez Silvano el 21 de marzo de 2014.

Vemos con rabia como el mal gobierno sin verguenza esta cambiando la constitución mexicana y las leyes para despojarnos de nuestros territorios y explotar los recursos naturales a su gusto, su estrategia es desplazarnos de cualquier manera, es una política de genocidio para ganar mucho dinero para unas cuantas manos.

Enrique Peña Nieto y Manuel Velasco Coello, los diputados y senadores son títeres solo sirven a sus amos el dinero y trasnacionales, por eso meten a la carcel a nuestros compañeros y compañeras que les estorban para hacer sus negocios o los asesinan para sembrar miedo en nuestros pueblos.

Los de arriba siempre dicen que las resistencias somos una minoría y que no queremos el progreso y desarrollo para las comunidades, son unos cinicos mentirosos que engañan a la gente con sus migajas y falsas promesas aprovechándose de la necesidad y falta de información en que viven nuestras comunidades. Lo que ellos los de arriba llaman progreso y desarrollo nosotros lo llamamos despojo y muerte, pobreza, marginación, discriminación, porque a ellos los políticos y empresarios corruptos y asesinos compran y venden territorios con todo y las personas que vivimos en esos lugares sin consultar ni preguntar la opinión de nuestros pueblos. Cuando los pueblos y comunidades nos enteramos de que nuestras tierras fueron rentadas o compradas por una empresa para explotar durante más de 40 o 50 años, llega el gobierno con sus policías para según ellos garantizar el orden y el estado de derecho, otra mentira más de los de arriba que nosotros llamamos explotación, abuso de poder y traición al pueblo.

La clase política mexicana traidora seguramente se siente tranquila de la gran traición y despojo que hace a los pueblos de México porque tiene mucho dinero, propiedades y trabajo asegurado en las empresas a las que se esta vendiendo o también para irse a esconder a otro país y protegerse en sus grandes casas con policías para no dar la cara al pueblo, pero también es verdad que como son unos cinicos mentirosos sigan siendo diputados, senadores, gobernadores y presidente de la república para seguir robando al pueblo.

Lo único que los mantiene a estos políticos corruptos en su poder es la policía, el ejército, la represión, porque no tienen respaldo del pueblo. Es como en San Sebastián Bachajón los últimos Comisariados ejidales los impone el gobierno para hacerlos a su antojo y el mismo gobierno les da el poder para mandar asesinar a nuestros compañeros luchadores sociales y vender las tierras de nuestro pueblo, pero estos comisariados no tienen mayoría, solo tienen a su amo el gobierno.

Por eso nuestra organización del pueblo de San Sebastián Bachajón va seguir luchando por defender el territorio que nos heredaron los abuelos y abuelas, queremos caminar con los pueblos que aman su tierra y la defienden para hacer más grande nuestra lucha y decirle al mal gobierno que el que manda es el pueblo organizado y tiene que obedecer, respetar a los pueblos, ya basta de tanta discriminación y violencia contra nuestros pueblos.

Desde la zona norte del estado de Chiapas saludamos a los compañeros y compañeras del Ejército Zapatista de Liberación Nacional y todos los pueblos en resistencia que estarán presentes en la compartición en La Realidad del Congreso Nacional Indígena, para escucharnos y construir el camino de la justicia y libertad.

Nunca más un México sin nosotros.

Atentamente

¡Tierra y libertad! ¡Zapata Vive!
¡Hasta la victoria siempre!
Presos políticos ¡Libertad!
¡Juan Vázquez Guzmán Vive, la Lucha de Bachajón sigue!
¡Juan Carlos Gómez Silvano Vive, la Lucha de Bachajón sigue!
¡No al despojo de los territorios indígenas!

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Comandante Tacho - CCRI-CG EZLN

Inauguration of the First Exchange of Indigenous Peoples of Mexico with Zapatista Peoples

The words of Comandante Tacho, on behalf of the Indigenous Revolutionary Clandestine Committee – General Command of the EZLN, at the Inauguration of the First Exchange of Indigenous Peoples of Mexico with Zapatista Peoples.

August 3, 2014.

COMPAÑERAS AND COMPAÑEROS OF THE NATIONAL INDIGENOUS CONGRESS:

COMPAÑEROS AND COMPAÑERAS OF THE INDIGENOUS PEOPLES WHO ARE VISITING US:

We greet you hoping that everyone has arrived safely to these Zapatista lands.

You have made a long journey from distant lands to meet us here in this corner of rebellious Zapatista lands of the Mexican Southeast.

(Continuar leyendo…)

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Frayba

Zapatistas Displaced Facing Risk of Attack

Peace Camp in San Manuel
Peace Camp in San Manuel
(Photo: Chiapas Support Committee)

San Cristóbal de Las Casas, Chiapas, August
 4, 2014

Press Bulletin No. 22

Displacement of Zapatista Bases before the risk of attack

Thirty two people from the Egipto (Egypt) autonomous community, belonging to the Caracol of La Garrucha, were forcibly displaced.

Residents of the Ejido Pojcol invade recuperated lands of the Bases of Support of the Zapatista National Liberation Army (BAEZLN, their initials in Spanish)

The Fray Bartolomé de Las Casas Human Rights Center (Frayba) documented the forced displacement of 32 people from Egipto Community, of the Rebel Autonomous Municipality Zapatista (MAREZ) of San Manuel, belonging to the Good Government Junta “Path of the Future,” Caracol III, La Garrucha, Tseltal Jungle Zone, in Chiapas, (official municipality of Ocosingo).

(Continuar leyendo…)

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Subcomandante Insurgente Moisés

A Safe Arrival

Zapatista Army for National Liberation
Mexico

August 3, 2014

To the Sixth in Mexico and in the world:
To the free, autonomous, alternative, or however-you-call-it media:

Compas:

Zapatista greetings.

FIRST. I am writing to let you know that the participants of the National Indigenous Congress have arrived safely to this First Exchange of the Zapatista Peoples and the Indigenous Peoples of Mexico “Compañero David Ruiz García.” The compañeras and compañeros bases of support who will be sharing their history of struggle have also arrived.

Here I want to share some information with you:

1. From the National Indigenous Congress as well as other indigenous social groups, peoples, tribes, and nations of Mexico, 312 participants have arrived from the following groups:

NAHUA
PURÉPECHA
MAYA PENINSULAR
MAZAHUA
ZOQUE
WIXARIKA
MIGRANTE
TEPEHUANO
COCA
HÑAHÑU
PAME
TRIQUI
MIXTECO
BINNI ZAA
CHINANTECO
IKOOT
AFROMEXICANO
POPOLUCA
TZOTZIL
CHOL
TOJOLABAL
TZELTAL
TOTONACO
KUMIAI
AMUZGO
MESTIZO
HUARIJÍO
MIXE
ÑHATO
CHONTAL

2. On behalf of the Zapatista communities, we have the participation of:

-50 presenters (male and female)
-50 scribes (male and female)
-1200 listeners from the Zapatista communities

In total: 1300 Zapatista bases of support.

All have arrived safely. I am letting you know so that you can inform others where you live and that way the families of those who have come from far away do not worry.

SECOND. As proposed by the compañeras and compañeros of the National Indigenous Congress, the closing event of this first exchange, on Saturday August 9, 2014, will be open to the press in general.

THIRD. The compañeras and compañeros of the National and International Sixth are special invitees to the closing event.

FOURTH. The compañeras and compañeros of the free, autonomous, alternative, or however-you-call-it media are special invitees to the closing event.

FIFTH. The compañeras and compañeros of the National and International Sixth are welcome to arrive as of Friday August 8, 2014, and their departure is at their own convenience.

We ask the free, autonomous, alternative, or however-you-call-it media to see about staying one extra day after the closing event so that we can hold that cursed press conference that we’ve been promising you, and which we couldn’t hold last time because we saw that you needed to leave quickly because the paid media were stealing the material you produced at the Homage for our deceased compañero Galeano. Indeed that is how capitalism works, stealing what others produce. So let’s see if you can organize things so that you can report on the closing event and then later we will do the press conference.

And SupGaleano tells me to inform the free, autonomous, alternative, or however-you-call-it media to come prepared because we are going to interview you. He says we are going to include a section in our magazine REBELDÍA ZAPATISTA called “The ducks shoot at the rifles,” where we will print the interviews we do with you. SupGaleano says that you will understand why the section has that title.

Finally, the last thing for today, I am sending you some photos that SupGaleano took of the set-up that has been prepared here. We’ll see if they send because the internet here is really slow, it’s like a snail with a limp. He says the title of the photos is “The Zapatista Alternative to the International Monetary Fund and the Usurious Banks: The Zapatista Mobile Bank.”[i] If the photos don’t go through, you can see the Zapatista Mobile Bank when you come.

You will also be able to see how the reconstruction is coming along for the clinic and the school that were destroyed by the CIOAC-Histórica paramilitaries.

It would be good for you to take photos, video, or whatever of the construction so that the good people who supported this just cause can see in the free, autonomous, alternative, or however-you-call-it media that we are honoring our word, not like the bad governments who keep everything for themselves while they say they are making social improvements. Pure thievery is what they do.

Well that’s all for now, compañeras and compañeros of the National and International Sixth. Tomorrow, Monday, after the inauguration, the work of the exchange will begin. We will send you the inaugural speech that compañero Comandante Tacho will give in the name of all of the Zapatistas.

That’s all.

From the mountains of the Mexican Southeast.

Subcomandante Insurgente Moisés.
Mexico, August 2, 2014. In the twentieth year of the war against oblivion.

[i] The photo shows a large covered area with many rows of small, carved wooden stools referred to in Spanish as “bancos,” which also happens to be the Spanish word for bank. (Continuar leyendo…)

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Subcomandante Insurtente Moisés

Just so You Know

ZAPATISTA ARMY FOR NATIONAL LIBERATION
MEXICO.

July 2014.

To the compañer@s of the Sixth in Mexico and in the world:
To all those who supported us in the reconstruction of the school and the clinic that belong to the compañeros of La Realidad:

Compañer@s:

Greetings from the Zapatistas.

We want to inform you of the following:

1. Upon hearing that the National Indigenous Congress still lacks adequate funds to travel to the exchange in the Caracol of La Realidad, the Zapatista compañeros and compañeras from the community of La Realidad have decided to use part of the $958,646.26 Mexican pesos that they received for reconstruction in La Realidad to support this travel.

(Continuar leyendo…)

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Contralínea

Chiapas: militarization and looting threaten Indigenous

Below is an interview with Victor Hugo López, Director of the Frayba Human Rights Center in Chiapas. It gives a good overview of the current situation the Indigenous Peoples are facing.

By: Nancy Flores

chiapas____

With the “war” against drug trafficking, Chiapas was once again militarized. Tensions among the EZLN, the bases of support, civil society in general and the government have increased together with the criminalization of peaceful protest. In an interview, Victor Hugo López –director of the Frayba Human Rights Center– points out that the militarization has also increased dispossession of the state’s natural, mineral and energy resources.

During the PAN government of Felipe Calderón Hinojosa, members of the Mexican Army and Navy occupied rural roads and indigenous communities of Chiapas little-by-little but overwhelmingly. Today, still with a pretext of drug trafficking, military personnel have zones under their control that had been liberated during the presidency of Vicente Fox Quesada as an example of the “governmental will” to pacify the region.

Thus, the maximum achievement of the “Calderón War” in that state of Southeast Mexico was not exterminating organized crime, but repositioning military personnel to the point that the current situation is comparable to that which it lived in two decades ago, when the Zapatista National Liberation Army (EZLN) rose up.

In an interview with Contralinea, the director of the Fray Bartolomé de las Casas Human Rights Center (Frayba), Victor Hugo López, explains that, although “spectacular scenes of violence” and confrontations in the streets have not been seen in Chiapas, the strategy of the “war” against drug trafficking did have serious repercussions in the communities. In principle, because it achieved a repositioning of the Mexican Army and Navy in different indigenous territories and at all the border points of the state, characterized by its misery and marginalization.

The young human rights defender remembers that one of the conditions that the Fox administration attended to in order to maintain dialogue with the EZLN was demilitarization: some of the most important military zones were eliminated, he says. Nevertheless, “this situation was lost with the Calderón strategy: while members of the Army patrol and put up checkpoints throughout the territory, members of the Navy take custody of the border points, including that of Guatemala.”

Currently, he exposes, members of the Mexican Army are present in different rural communities and roads in which they had not previously been seen. “They are making rounds again; they are even making operations of disarming. Sudden, they say, discreet [operations], but they are just touching the border or the line of fire here in Chiapas. This is serious, because it seems to me that they are not measuring the possibility of once again registering an [armed] confrontation.”

Victor Hugo López observes that the anti-drug strategy had other grave repercussions in Chiapas. One of these refers to the state security policy, because now the state police are at the command of the soldiers.

He also refers to the criminalization towards society as a whole. He gives as an example the operations of mixed units (military personnel accompanied by state and municipal police). These, he indicates, are the ones that have been committing the greatest number of arbitrary detentions of young people (men and women) in the streets simply for their appearance; they also commit abuses and torture.

In that same sense, the laws were hardened and forms of violence and mechanisms for human rights violations were legalized: “for example, although arraigo was eliminated in Chiapas and it was publicized as an achievement of the previous government, the Attorney General’s [security] houses, where people are disappeared, tortured and illegally detained, have increased.”

And despite the fact that the police-military operations as much as the legal modifications have been justified as a strategy against drug trafficking, the human rights defender observes that the sale and consumption of all kinds of drugs and alcohol are not regulated.

“In contradiction of the discourse of combatting drug trafficking g and organized crime, we have seen the exponential proliferation of cantinas where indiscriminate consumption of drugs and even human trafficking has been authorized and is even being promoted in different communities, because in some cases the owners are the mayors.”

Victor Hugo López warns that the conditions to maintain a state of insecurity are being created. An example of that is the alliance between the governments of Mexico, the United States and Guatemala: “the argument is that the organized crime and drug trafficking groups do not operate between Chiapas and Guatemala; but these policies have hardened the measures not against crime, but against the population.” Particularly, he points out, against the migrants.

To us, the protection of the border, the reinforcement of security and the combat against organized crime have meant greater social control and a greater index of repression against the population as a whole. And that has impacted in a way to appear invisible, but present. It is very present here in the cases that we receive every day of arbitrary detentions.

“In the Frayba we are receiving today an average of between 900 to 1000 cases in general; but 3 years ago we received from 400 to 500 cases. Now, of those 900 to 1,000 cases, some 400, in other words 40 percent, have to do with themes of criminalization, access to justice, arbitrary detention, arbitrary deprivation of life, torture and legalization. In our analysis, we see that they are effects of the strategy of the war against drug trafficking and organized crime: we could say that 40 percent of those cases are derived from that strategy.”

Megaprojects, the other threat

Despite the evidence Frayba gathered with respect to the increase in human rights violations, the federal and state governments assure that those rights are respected in Chiapas. Those discourses not only seek to conceal the situation the communities confront, but also to promote foreign investment in the region.

Victor Hugo López explains that: “the Mexican State has done an impressive lobbying job at the international level of being a guarantor, promoter and of respecting human rights in Mexico, and concretely in Chiapas, in the indigenous populations; for that it has ratified, signed and proposed all kinds of laws, regulations, conventions and protocols that can generate protection of that discourse. Mexico is a promoter of the Universal Declaration of the Rights of Indigenous Peoples and once again began saying that it had to legislate and approve the San Andrés Accords. In Chiapas we have local laws like the indigenous law, a law for the protection of woman, etcetera. Then they have created all the legal-judicial scaffolding to be able to maintain in front of world governments and foreign agencies that they are guarantying conditions of respect, promotion and protection of human rights and that, therefore, the levels of life, social security, tranquility and peace are guarantied in our state.”

He adds that recently 12 members of the European parliament have visited Chiapas wanting to know the human rights situation, but, above all, to ascertain the security conditions the zone offers for investment.

“What they are saying is that the Mexican government is impelling or re-impelling projects for investment, ecotourist projects, for the companies that extract minerals and petroleum resources, saying that in Chiapas it is all the scaffolding of respect and promotion of human rights that guarantee security in their in vestment.”

The director of the Fray Bartolomé de las Casas Human Rights Center says that a map is being identified of social conflict in the state provoked by the megaprojects   of private investment. One of those conflicts, he details, is that of the Agua Azul zone,. In the area of the cascades, the campesinos are opposed to the governmental proposals for creating an ecotourist center.

“We see that the insult to the communities that defend their territories is being impelled again because they come in a decided manner to impel the projects that they have promised. And we have been able to corroborate it in this sense, because there is a security-investment-human rights conjoint that it is selling outside the country. They [foreign representatives] are coming to see if what they are selling is true. Then without a doubt it awaits us at this time and from her on once again processes of tension in which the communities will oppose those projects that come in a decided way to impose themselves.”

Within this context, Victor Hugo López warns that there is another actor in the territorial struggle: the National Crusade Against Hunger. This, he assures, has operated as a counterinsurgency mechanism: “the only thing that the Crusade seeks is to divide the communities, generate greater dependency and increase the conditions of extreme poverty in the state.”

Frayba: 125 years of Advocacy

On March 18, the Fray Bartolome de las Casas Human Rights Center turned 25 years old. Founded by the late Samuel Ruiz García – then Bishop of the Diocese of San Cristóbal de las Casas, Chiapas-, today is considered one of the most important Mexican organizations for the defence of the individual and collective rights.

With respect to these 2 and a half decades of work, its current director, Víctor Hugo López, reflects: “It has been 25 years of existence of the Center for human rights, but more than 500 years being influenced by indigenous peoples who have been insistent in generating proposals and alternatives to the crisis of the state and the system”.

The Frayba Center much appreciates that there are five autonomous regions, five good government juntas, which have the lowest rate of human rights violations. “They are people who have managed to cope with this system of structural violence and its consequences. “In this context is that we reach these 25 years: we recognize that the Frayba would not have had this success if it wasn’t thanks to the influence of these political actors and the subject that is the indigenous people”.

He adds that people who have known of the project and have collaborated on it are also fortunate in being in Chiapas territory. “Is a land where meaningful and highly visible contrasts arise: the undeniable wealth of energy, natural resources, but also the cultural wealth of policy proposal that we have been seeing born from the region, and that stems not only from 1994, but also from recognizing more than 500 years of history, with a major player which are the indigenous peoples.”

“We feel fortunate that our origin is essentially indigenous. The indigenous populations in Mexico are part of the population where violence and the violation of human rights come to impressive levels. In other words, if many mexicans are faced with the issues of corruption, discrimination and injustice, for indigenous peoples this type of violence is magnified, by their condition of being poor, indigenous people and peasants.

Víctor Hugo López mentions that violence in Chiapas has many fronts: Although the most visible is the image of the territory occupied by the military, there is territory occupied and cordoned off for “development” projects that are dividing communities.

However, he says, those conditions and those natural strains of the system are generating proposals and alternatives. Therefore, although for 15 years the state has been living what he calls a war against the population, there have been alternatives constructed mand of these autonomous, proposals of alternative justice models, reconstruction of the social fabric which, no doubt, can be guides in addressing the issues facing the current state of Mexico.

In Chiapas, there have been violent situations that subsequently reproduced their strategy or their effects at national level, such as the massacre of Acteal in 1997, which had a global impact: 45 people and four that were not born yet were massacred in a community. Today, the country has seen similar massacres that have occurred in different contexts and in various territories, including Michoacán, Tamaulipas and all states who are facing the strategy against organized crime.

At risk, 20 percent of the biodiversity of Mexico

Chiapas owns 20 percent of the biodiversity of Mexico and is the second nationally in biodiversity, this is accoriding to data from the state government, headed by Manuel Velasco Coello, the Green ecologist party of Mexico.

According to the official information, some of the most important natural resources are: 10 river basins and two of the largest rivers of the country: Grijalva and Usumacinta; 266 kilometers of coastline, two canyons; It has seven of the nine most representative ecosystems in the country and 46 protected areas (among these, Montes Azules biosphere, El Triunfo, La Encrucijada, La Sepultura, El Ocote and Lagunas de Montebello).

Currently, the local administration plans to exploit these resources through the “ecotourism” projects. Announcing that Chiapas will host the 2014 adventure tourism fair, this past May 12th is became known that the state administration is to “prepare a comprehensive plan of development of tourism in the region north and the jungle, having an axis starting at the city of Palenque and its archaeological zone. This plan will provide investment in infrastructure, signage, training and promotion, which will allow to consolidate tourist routes in the forest and other regions of the state.”

Four days later, the federal and state governments designated as “priority need” to carry out a formal territorial designation of the Selva Lacandona, Montes Azules biosphere reserve and protected natural areas:

“The government of the republic and of Chiapas expressed his conviction that territory is top priority to provide the necessary conditions for the full development of the Lacandona community and the adjacent towns to improve the quality of life of their inhabitants in accordance with the legal framework, favouring the consolidation of the protected natural areas and the sustainable development of these areas. Also, in accordance with the provisions of the general law of ecological balance and the protection of the environment, in its article 46, the letter says ‘in protected natural areas the foundation of new centers for populations will not be permitted’, you won’t be able to regularize the existing unauthorized settlements within the Montes Azules biosphere reserve, or any other protected area. Therefore no plan for compensation can be carried out since no resources will be allocated for those purposes.

————————————————————

Originally Published in Spanish by Contralinea

Translation: Chiapas Support Committee

June 17, 2014

En español:

http://contralinea.info/archivo-revista/index.php/2014/06/17/chiapas-militarizacion-saqueo-amenazan-indigenas/

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Raúl Zibechi

La muerte del SupMarcos. Un golpe a la soberbia revolucionaria

By: Raúl Zibechi

The illuminating farewell of Subcomandante Marcos

Artwork by Emma Gascó in DiagonalArtwork by Emma Gascó in Diagonal

The farewell communiqué of Subcomandante Insurgente Marcos, read in the early morning of 25 May in the Caracol of La Realidad, in front of thousands of bases of support and people in solidarity from around the world, in which he announced his death and reincarnation (unburying, in the words of EZLN,) is one of the strongest and most powerful texts he has released in the twenty years since his public appearance on January 1, 1994.

The murder of the teacher Galeano in La Realidad on May 2, by members of the Independent Central of Agricultural Workers and Campesinos – Historic (CIOAC-H), an organization that became a paramilitary group thanks to the counterinsurgent social policies that buy people and whole groups, precipitated a process of change that had been underway for some time. The massive silent march of 40,000 Zapatista supporters on December 21, 2012 in the major cities of Chiapas, and the subsequent Escuelita of ‘Freedom according to the Zapatistas’ were some of the axes of these changes that we could appreciate.

The third part of the communiqué of May 25, titled The Change of Guard, recounts very briefly the four internal changes that have been in process during these two decades. The first one mentioned is generational, the most visible change, since half of the Zapatistas are less than 20 years old and “were young or were not born at the beginning of the uprising.”

The second is that of class “from the enlightened middle class to the indigenous campesino.” And the third is that of race: “from mestizo to a purely indigenous leadership.” These two changes have been manifested for some time with the constant and increasing emergence of comandantes and comandantas at various public appearances of the EZLN. But the appearance of Subcomandante Insurgente Moisés, with the same military rank as Marcos, undoubtedly marked a turning point that is now complete, leaving Moisés as the spokesperson of the movement.

Marcos’ farewell communiqué emphasized that the most important of the changes was in thinking: “from revolutionary vanguardism to ‘ruling by obeying;’ from the taking of Power from Above to the creation of power from below; from professional politics to everyday politics; from the leaders, to the peoples.”

Finally, there was the issue of gender, as women moved from marginalization to direct participation, and the whole movement passed “from mocking the other to the celebration of difference.”

As can be seen, the anti-vanguardism goes hand in hand with the set of changes that can be summarized in the fact that the bases of the movement command and the commanders obey. There isno longer any doubt over who are the subjects. Somehow, these changes reduced the visibility from outside of the preponderant role already played by Moisés, whose figure was already standing out in his communiqués linked to the escuelita, but who now takes on his full relevance.

The EZLN completes a long lasting turn towards the common people, of huge strategic depth.

Thus, at a complex juncture in which the national Mexican government and the government of Chiapas launched a major offensive against the Caracoles and Zapatismo as a whole, –as part of the recovery of state power from the autodefensas (self-defense forces) in Michoacán and the Community Police in Guerrero– the EZLN completes a shift to the common people, which is long lasting, and of huge strategic depth, showing what those from below are capable of doing.

The media figure of Marcos disappears, appealing to the middle class and the mass media, the prominent personality capable of dialogue with intellectuals from around the world and of doing so on equal terms, being supplanted by the indigenous and campesinos, common and rebellious people. It is a political and ethical challenge of enormous magnitude, which places the analysts, the old left and the whole of the academic world against the wall. From now on, there will be no illustrious speakers but rather indigenous and campesinos.

“Personally –writes Marcos– I don’t understand why thinking people, who assert that history is made by the people, get so frightened in the face of an existing government of the people where ‘specialists’ are nowhere to be seen.” The answer he gives: “Because there is also racism on the left, above all among that left which claims to be revolutionary.”

Very strong! Very wise and very necessary! Zapatismo does not dialogue with the system’s politicians, or with those on the right or the left. It speaks to those of us who want to change the world, to those of us who aspire to build a new world and, therefore, decide not to walk the path of the institutions but to work below, with those from below. And we find that one of the major difficulties in these spaces is arrogance (pride), individualism, which it defines as perfectly compatible with vanguardism. With this step, the Zapatistas set the bar very high, higher than any political force has ever set it. Finally, individualism and vanguardism are two central expressions of Western culture; ways of doing things related to Colonialism and patriarchy, both of which we need to let go of in everyday life and in politics.

Originally Published in Spanish by Diagonal (Madrid) on June 14, 2014

English Translation: UK Zapatista Solidarity Network

Editing: Chiapas Support Committee

radio
Revista Anfibia

Marcos, el subcomandante innecesario

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Yes, there is a place called La Realidad (Reality).

Reality is a caracol (snail.) And caracoles, as everyone knows, are spirals. Like life, like death, like reality.

In the Caracol of La Realidad, in the early morning of May 25, 2014, Subcomandante Marcos, spokesperson and military leader of the Zapatista National Liberation Army for 20 years, revealed his own unreality and announced that, from then on, he would cease to exist.

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radio
Subcomandante Insurgente Moisés

A meeting in La Realidad a few days ago

ZAPATISTA ARMY FOR NATIONAL LIBERATION
MEXICO.

June 2014.

For: The Sixth in Mexico and the world

Compañeras and compañeros of the Sixth in Mexico and the world:
Brothers and sisters of Mexico and the world:

I want to tell you about a meeting that we had in La Realidad a few days ago.

The Zapatista compañeras and compañeros of La Realidad say that the three levels of capitalist governments who destroyed their autonomous school, autonomous clinic, and the hose that brings water to the compañeras and compañeros wanted to destroy the Zapatista struggle then and there.

It should not be forgotten that when the first Aguascalientes was destroyed, the Zapatistas built five more.

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