The CNI’s Position on the Wave of Repression Waged against the People

To the original peoples of Mexico and the World;

To the National and International Sixth;

To the Zapatista Army of National Liberation;

And to the memory of Don Félix Serdán Nájera, our leading brother.[1]

Gathered in the Amatlán de Quetzalzoatl community in the Tepoztlán municipality of Morelos, the peoples and tribes that make up the National Indigenous Congress [CNI] have analysed the repressive wave which has been launched against us by the narco-capitalist governors who seek to take control of our homelands.

We wish to make clear first of all that the aforementioned onslaught has nothing to do with the party colours that govern from above, nor with the way in which they have been elected or imposed upon us. For, in short, each political party in government simply administrates the dispossession ordered from higher up the chain of command. Therefore, the government’s repressive wave also has nothing to do with the electoral lie that they call democracy (which is essentially no more than a reflex of the decomposition at the core of the bloody system that is neoliberal capitalism) or with the so-called ‘structural reforms’ that it spawns (which are imposed at the expense of the well-being, freedom, and livelihoods of the suffering peoples of both the countryside and the cities).

In reality, the brutally oppressive offensive carried out against our peoples by the Bad Government has come as a response to our decision to continue with our determined resistance (which hopes to safeguard life in the face of a vicious war of extermination). In other words, it is not simply an example of political persecution but a manifestation of reactionary distress from those governing from above (who design elaborately violent operations in order to consolidate their economic interests, which are based on exploitation, dispossession, repression, and disdain). And, as we will outline below, this reaction has come in a number of different forms:

• First of all, we still feel today the absence of the 46 comrades from the Raúl Isidro Burgos teacher training college in Ayotzinapa who were killed or disappeared on the orders of the three levels of the Bad Government (and on behalf of all of the political parties, which have turned terror into a business and a means of governing). However, while the criminal State bets on oblivion, the peoples of Mexico bet on reconstruction, and on neither forgetting nor forgiving those responsible for the crimes committed against the People. For what is at play is the past and the future – which both belong to us.
• We also remember how the repressive forces of the Bad Government have tried to dispossess the Tzeltal community of San Sebastián Bachajón (in the Chilón municipality of Chiapas) of the Agua Azul waterfalls, which they have hoped to hand over to capitalist interests. In fact, on March 21 of this year, more than six hundred members of government ‘security forces’ burned down the San Sebastián regional headquarters.[2] Furthermore, the comrades of San Sebastián and the free press (which has stood by them in solidarity with their struggle) have been assaulted frequently by public security forces while the state police and Mexican army have also escalated their occupation operations in the territory (in support of the paramilitary groups present there).
• The Nahua community of Santa María Ostula (on the coast of Michoacán), meanwhile, has faced attacks from groups thought to be both linked to organised crime and in cahoots with each level of the Bad Government. The cost of this onslaught has been the disappearance of five community members and the murder of thirty-two more. Additionally, on March 16, 2015, the Mexican Navy tried to dislodge and disarm the community police that had controlled a checkpoint on the main coastal road near the settlement of Xayakalan since recovering the territory in 2009.[3] In response to the government attack, the community closed the road, aware of the fact that disarmament would mean handing their territories over to narco-paramilitary groups and exposing themselves to further dispossession (which would pave the way for the megaprojects of death like mining, multinational tourism, and drug trafficking). And all of this, of course, is both defended and sponsored by all three levels of the Bad Government.
• At the same time, our comrades Mario Luna and Fernando Jiménez in Sonora, who are the spokespeople of the Yaqui tribe, remain in prison. The reason for their imprisonment is that they stand accused of having committed serious crimes (which have been fabricated by forces that refuse to recognise the ancestral forms of organisation and traditional government of the Yaqui people). Furthermore, an arrest warrant is still out on Tomás Rojo (which represents an attempt to use division and treachery as a mechanism of war), and Lauro Baumea has received numerous death threats (in addition to actual attempts on his life). In fact, the latter has also had his vehicle burnt outside of his house, and his family members’ lives are also said to be at risk. And all of this criminal activity has simply sought to ensure the trouble-free robbery of the water of the River Yaqui.
• Likewise, the Loxicha comrades in the State of Oaxaca (who were kidnapped eighteen years ago by the Bad Government as part of its terrorist and counterrevolutionary policies aimed at protecting large multinational mining projects) also continue to find themselves in prison. Similarly, the Nahua brothers of San Pedro Tlanixco in the State of Mexico have been in prison for twelve years for having defended their water supplies against the capitalist theft of the precious resource for large agro-industrial complexes.
• Meanwhile, the dispossession of communities and ejidos in the states of Morelos, Puebla, and Tlaxcala (through the so-called ‘Proyecto Integral Morelos’ (PIM)[4]) is still being accompanied by a widespread persecution of the peoples of the Popocatépetl volcano who are opposed to the planned handover of their territory, security, and water to multinational corporations (which seek in turn to build roads, aqueducts, gas pipelines, and thermoelectric plants – all with the protection of the Bad Government’s forces of repression). In fact, there are currently numerous arrest warrants out against those who have dared to raise their voices against the destruction that has arrived along with the police and army officers protecting the machinery (as has recently been seen with the pipelining of the River Cuautla, where the thermoelectric plant of Huexca was supported to the detriment of the ejidos of the Ayala municipality).
• We also empathise with the San Francisco Xochicuautla community in the State of Mexico, whose fight against the construction of a private motorway (which would see them dispossessed of their own territory) has even seen them lose the freedom to speak in their own communal assemblies (which have been occupied by dozens of riot police officers seeking to consolidate the capitalist takeover of the land).
• In addition to all of these cases of resistance against dispossession, thousands more of our comrades have migrated elsewhere in order to survive, with many of them arriving at concentration camps like that of San Quintín in Baja California Sur, where they are exploited and treated like slaves. In this case in particular, for example, the different levels of the Bad Government have supported plantation owners by repressing workers’ mobilisations (which have demanded better working conditions for the thousands of day labourers employed there – most of whom are of indigenous origin).

We are convinced that, in order to stop this war against our communities, slogans are not enough. Nor, we believe, are the calendars, geographies, and techniques of those governing or hypothesising ‘from above’ adequate for bringing about change. Instead, we consider that we need to forge a new country, and a new world. And the powerful are aware that we know about the need for the construction of a new global system from the grassroots up.

In fact, it is precisely because the Bad Government understands our revolutionary position that it has stepped up its military harassment of the Zapatista Caracoles of La Realidad and Oventik, bolstered by the paramilitary aggressions carried out by groups it has fostered, financed, and trained (like Pojcol, the CIOAC-H[5], and ORCAO). The latter, in particular, have been carrying out a campaign of systematic violence against the Zapatista bases of support in an attempt to destroy their autonomous forms of organisation (which, with their roots in the ancient cultures of our original peoples, brighten up the horizon with a civilizational hope).

Therefore, with all of the aforementioned points considered, we declare that:

1. We will not stop fighting for the reconstruction and reconstitution of our original peoples, because that is a struggle for both life and survival.
2. We will intensify our battle for the freedom of all political prisoners, for the presentation of the disappeared, and for justice for those who have been murdered.
3. The repressive wave in progress is a response to our relentless resistance against dispossession, which is ancient and unnegotiable.
4. We will continue the possible and necessary task of weaving a new world from below and to the left, because only in this way will peace shine down upon our peoples and end the incessant repression that plagues us.
5. We welcome the realisation of a homage to the comrades Luis Villoro Toranzo and the Zapatista teacher Galeano, which will take place in the Oventik Caracol in Chiapas on May 2, 2015.

For the Total Reconstitution of Our Peoples!

Never Again a Mexico without Us!

The National Indigenous Congress

Amatlán de Quetzalcoatl, Tepoztlán, Morelos

March 22, 2015

[1] The right-hand man of Rubén Jaramillo, who fought under Emiliano Zapata in the Mexican Revolution and fought for the rights of workers until his death in 1962, having been forced into a guerrilla struggle starting in the 1940s because of his advocacy in favour of social justice. He died on February 22, 2015. Also see the letter from the Zapatistas to Serdán’s widow (translated into English): http://enlacezapatista.ezln.org.mx/2015/03/02/letter-from-the-ezln-to-dona-emilia-aurora-sosa-marin-companera-of-honorary-major-insurgent-felix-serdan-najera/ and La Jornada’s tribute to him (in Spanish): http://www.jornada.unam.mx/2015/02/28/opinion/021o1pol

[2] As seen at https://dorsetchiapassolidarity.wordpress.com/2015/03/22/communique-from-san-sebastian-bachajon-21st-march-2015/

[3] See http://www.borderlandbeat.com/2015/03/mexican-navy-attempts-to-dismantle.html and https://compamanuel.wordpress.com/2014/03/13/ostula-autonomy-self-defense-natural-resources-and-narcos/

[4] https://ososabiouk.wordpress.com/2014/06/02/the-peoples-front-and-the-struggle-against-the-proyecto-integral-morelos-pim/

[5] See https://ososabiouk.wordpress.com/2014/05/08/the-war-against-zapatistas-and-the-role-of-the-media/, https://ososabiouk.wordpress.com/2014/05/12/pain-and-rage-the-zapatista-response-to-aggression/, https://ososabiouk.wordpress.com/2014/05/25/the-transformative-power-of-the-struggle-dignity-and-autonomy-of-the-zapatistas-galeanolives/, and https://ososabiouk.wordpress.com/2014/05/28/the-gaps-the-galeanos-and-the-dignified-rage/

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