Communiqué from San Sebastián Bachajón, 28th of May, 2013
To the people of Mexico and the world
To the compañer@s adherents to the sixth declaration of the Lacandon Jungle
To the mass and alternative media
To national and international human rights defenders
To the Good Government Juntas
To the indigenous peoples in resistance
To public opinion
We come with dignified rage to give our word in Mexico City, we want to denounce once again the great injustices and dispossessions that the three levels of bad government, headed by the major criminals Enrique Peña Nieto, Manuel Velasco Coello and Leonardo Guirao Aguilar, continue to commit against our people. These corrupt governments displace indigenous peoples from their territory to develop transnational projects and make themselves rich at the expense of our suffering. They say that their projects are to provide work for the indigenous so they can get out of poverty, but the only thing they want is to keep our lands and for us to return to the time of slavery. It is these same corrupt governments who sent people to cowardly assassinate our compañero in the struggle, Juan Vázquez Guzmán, during the evening of April 24, 2013, while he was resting at his home in the settlement of Bachajón.
The bad government buys ejidal[i] and community authorities[ii] who have no conscience to defend their people, they sell themselves for a few pesos and become faithful servants of the bad government, because they only see their personal interests. An authority who governs without obeying and defending his people is not really an authority, but simply has the name, so the people have the right to defend themselves. In our community the officialist[iii] ejidal authorities are manipulated by the government to consummate the theft of our lands. The former commissioners Pedro Alvaro Hernández and Francisco Guzmán Jiménez now have good cars and live off the fat of the land because they no longer work the fields. They have allowed the government to militarize and fill our communities with state preventive police. They signed documents handing over our land to the government, without the authorisation of our highest authority the General Assembly, and instead of being punished and sent to prison, they are rewarded and protected by the bad government. But the indigenous who fight for their people are tortured and punished in jail, serving unjust sentences, like our prisoners Antonio Estrada Estrada (prisoner in CERSS 17, Playas de Catazajá, Chiapas), Miguel Vázquez Deara (prisoner in CERSS 16, Ocosingo, Chiapas) and Miguel Demeza Jiménez (prisoner in CERSS 14, El Amate).
The theft of our lands has been prepared, since the end of 2010, by the general secretary of government Noé Castañón León himself, at his offices in Tuxtla Gutierrez, together with the former ejidal commissioners Francisco Guzmán Jiménez, Carmen Aguilar Gómez Primero, Juan Alvaro Moreno, Manuel Jiménez Moreno and Miguel Ruiz Hernández. On February 2, 2011, they came to violently evict the compañeros of our organization from the toll booth[iv] we built with much effort to benefit the people, they stole building materials and cash, and the next day they arrested 117 of our compañeros.
The bad government has strongly repressed our movement because they want us to disappear, they do not like the people to organize and defend what is theirs, they just want to get rid of us and for nobody to say anything. These same bad governments say we live in a democracy, but they repress us with state forces and order assassination to silence our movement which fights for justice, land, freedom and democracy.
On March 2, 2011 compañero Mariano Moreno Guzmán, who is one of the founders of the ejido and a former ejidal commissioner who obtained the documents for our people, presented an amparo[v] on account of the eviction. The amparo was allotted to the Seventh District Judge in Tuxtla Gutierrez, Chiapas with the number 274/2011. On January 30, 2013, the corrupt Judge José del Carmen Constantino Avendaño gave judgement and dismissed the amparo. On May 16, 2013, the Third Collegiate Court of Tuxtla rejected the judgment of the Seventh Court as being illegal and ordered the reinstatement of the procedure. Now the Seventh Judge must notify the claim for amparo to the General Assembly of Ejidatarios through the officialist Ejidal Commissioner, who is from the government. The skill of the government can be clearly seen, as they could not cancel the amparo with the judgment of Judge Constantino Avendaño, they now want to use an Act of Assembly, similar to those they like to fabricate with the complicity of the Chief Resident of the Agrarian Prosecutor of Ocosingo, Engineer Luis Demetrio Domínguez López, the Municipal Presidency of Chilón and the government authorities of Chiapas.
We will not allow the theft of our lands and the abuse of our people to continue, despite the cowardly assassination of our compañero Juan Vázquez Guzmán, we will keep fighting and defending with energy and organization, we will not be silent as the bad government wants us to be. Juan Vázquez Guzmán lives, the Bachajón struggle continues!
We join the week of worldwide action: Juan Vázquez Guzmán lives, the Bachajón struggle continues! convoked by our compañeros from Movement for Justice in El Barrio, Dorset Chiapas Solidarity Group, Committee of the True Word from Kolkata, India and Committee of the True Word from Alisal, for the days from June 25th to July 2nd.
From the northern zone of Chiapas, receive an embrace from the women and men of San Sebastián Bachajón. May 28, 2013.
Respectfully
Land and Freedom!
Hasta la victoria siempre!
[i] From ejido, a communal landholding
[ii] Authorities are people with positions of responsibility in the community
[iii] Officialist here means government-supporting
[iv] Toll booth is where tickets are sold to visitors to the waterfalls of Agua Azul
[v] Amparo is a form of legal protection
