August 24, 2020
To the peoples of Mexico and the world.
The Indigenous Government Council-Indigenous National Congress repudiate the cowardly attack by members of the paramilitary group called the Regional Organization of Coffee Growers of Ocosingo (ORCAO), who on Saturday August 22 around 11:00 in the morning robbed and burned the facilities from the Nuevo Amanecer del Arcoiris Trade Center, which is located in the place known as the Cuxuljá crossroad, Lucio Cabañas Autonomous Municipality, within the official municipality of Ocosingo, Chiapas.
The paramilitary organization ORCAO has maintained constant pressure on and violence against the Zapatista communities for years; as is the case of the Moises Gandhi Autonomous Municipality, to stop the autonomous organization and to privatize the lands that have cost the struggle and organization of the original peoples, who are Zapatista support bases. They have intimidated and threatened the compañeros and compañeras that from below bet on hope, such as the various attacks against compañeros of the National Indigenous Congress, who were violated and kidnapped by paramilitaries from ORCAO, the Chinchulines, and people from the MORENA party.
We denounce the war that, from above, is being deployed against the Zapatista communities’ organizing, at the same time that above the bad governments seek to impose, throughout the country, megaprojects of death that we oppose and will oppose, because we are not willing to give up our territories and allow the destruction promised by the powerful.
We hold the paramilitary organization ORCAO, the MORENA party, the state government, and the federal government responsible for these events. They have not stopped sowing violence in the region in order to hit not only our sisters and brothers in the Zapatista communities, but to all the peoples who dream of fighting for life, of healing our mother earth and not letting her be privatized, so that the capitalist bosses and bad governments never return to the autonomous Zapatista territories, and may that light continue to flourish in the territories of the original peoples of the CNI-CIG and all of humanity.
We call on the compañeras y compañeros of support networks and networks of resistance and rebellion to speak out and mobilize against the war of extermination, which is dangerously sharpening against our sisters and brothers of the Zapatista peoples, who teach us to never stop sowing rebellion and hope.
Sincerely,
For the integral reconstitution of our peoples
Never Again a Mexico Without Us
National Indigenous Congress-Indigenous Governing Council