Guerrero México, March 30, 2020.
To the Zapatista Army for National Liberation
To the National Indigenous Congress
To the Indigenous Governing Council
To the peoples of Guerrero
To the peoples of Mexico and the world
To the national and international Sixth
To the networks of resistance and rebellion
To the CIG support networks
To the honest media
We are from the Indigenous and Popular Council of Guerrero-Emiliano Zapata (CIPOG-EZ), made up of Na savi, Me pháá, Ñamnkue, Nahua, Afro-Mexican, and mestizo peoples from the State of Guerrero. We coordinate with our brothers from the National Liberation Front of the Peoples’ (FNLP) and Peasant Organization of Sierra del Sur OCSS, and at the national level we are part of the National Indigenous Congress (CNI) and the Indigenous Governing Council (CIG), the home of all the Indigenous peoples of Mexico, created in October 1996, as a space of debate, reflection, and solidarity to understand the struggle of all the peoples that re-encountered and embraced before the tragedies that capitalism sends to our peoples.
We inform you that due to the expansion of coronavirus we are deploying within our communities to prevent the spread of the pandemic in the face of the consequences that it may cause to our peoples, since with immense pain we read in the news that the Coronavirus-19 pandemic continues to spread and is razing everyone to the ground, killing human life. We have seen that modern countries, despite their health and safety infrastructure, in a matter of days have turned into a lethal and heartbreaking nightmare. If this happens over there with the best budgets that they manage, what will happen if this pandemic arrives in our towns and communities, made up mainly of original and mestizo peoples living in poor conditions? Because of this situation we are concerned about the lack of a budget for public health and it is unpleasant because some families do not even have enough for beans, much less for disinfectants.
As original peoples, we have understood that coronavirus disease is a reason to exercise control towards our peoples and our territory. Apparently, the coronavirus goes after not only human health/life, but also after the resources and the peoples in resistance that still survive in the indigenous territories and the world. Even with all this we will continue resisting as our ancestors have always done against the death that this pandemic represents today, as they did 528 years ago when the city of Tenochtitlán fell and with the disease that the Spanish brought to our Mesoamerican peoples, as well as the genocidal invasion of our territory in the colonial era.
On the other hand, we want to tell you that those of us who live in this southern land know that Guerrero has been an important factor in the processes of construction of the Mexican state, where many of our brothers gave their lives and blood to develop the movements for the struggle for independence, we were the cannon fodder in the Mexican revolution that gave birth to this country. This southeastern land is witness to the fact that great fighters for social justice have been forged throughout the history of Mexico, from that date until today, an endless number of activists have been assassinated and disappeared. That is why it has become clear to us that for the capitalist system we are objects of rights, because we are the ones who have paid with the highest number of deaths as well as the repression, unjustified imprisonment just to impose their evil projects that for us represent death for all.
Our peoples have always been in the struggle without interruption. On the contrary, we find the example of historical struggle that we inherited from the efforts of workers and peasants, such as Genaro Vázquez Rojas and Lucio Cabañas Barrientos, who died in more recent years for wanting to live in better and unexploited conditions. These humble men who came up from the pueblo gave their lives trying to get a better world.
In Guerrero and at the national level, wealth is concentrated in a few hands, which for us, the original peoples, continue to dispossess and plunder our natural resources. Today again, just as they did 528 years ago, they dare to force us to leave the land and territory where we were previously pushed into in the worst regions, for the wealth it contains.
To achieve their purpose of invading our land, they use drug trafficking to terrorize our communities in order to take over the spaces that are ours. We ask ourselves over and over why the high rate of marginalization and poverty in our towns? We have understood that for five centuries they have been robbing us, practicing corruption to enrich themselves with the taxes of the peoples and the underground privatization with which they conduct themselves. With this result, it shows that our country has a handful of oligarchies that have caused hunger, misery, disease, millions of unhoused families, malnutrition, illiteracy, lack of water, and electricity.
Their methods of staying in power are fraud, traps, and tricks. Abuses of all kinds multiply throughout all regions of the country and in all sectors of our society. Violations of human rights continue, militarizing the peoples in resistance, while organized crime operates in complete freedom. From there, insecurity arises: every two hours a Mexican disappears, thousands of cars are stolen and thousands of abductions and acts of extortion are committed. It is the visible face of the war that they want to hide. We call it the reality we are going through, and nobody escapes from it.
All around new government measures, such as the implementation of foreign investment and privatization of the communal and agrarian nucleus have been developed, without respecting our mountains, sacred places where the spirit and memory of our ancestors are preserved. In the face of these threats, our peoples have organized to defend their land and territory, and the state response is to respond with murder, repression and imprisonment of leaders and fighters for social justice.
The transnational corporations or companies are the new subject of the expansion of capitalism, this way they control the life and economy of millions of people. With this method and strategy they also fragment, divide, and confront our peoples, a clear example of this are all kinds of political parties, whatever color they are, they have damaged the social fabric and community life in an attempt to exercise power and control over the population.
That is why we, the Na Savi, Me Pháá, Ñamnkue, Nahua, Afro-Mexican, and mestizo peoples who are part of the CNI, make a call to your hearts to continue resisting, whether you are workers, rural farmers in the city, teachers, students, homosexuals, transsexuals, lesbians, artists, intellectuals, militants, activists, feminists, athletes, housewives, settlers, men, women, children, young people, the elderly. This is why we tell you that only when we’re organized can we stop this capitalist war that is already among us.
In the course of historical times, those who are in power today are the same ones who committed the crime against humanity in the massacre of Aguas Blancas and El Charco, where today a silent impunity is found under the complicity of the three levels of governments.
Today there is a true example of how capitalism has turned our nation into a cemetery and bloodbath due to the illegal growth of the drug market, turning our country into a crisis of insecurity and injustice, which has led indigenous peoples in some towns to decide to create Community Security and over the years the proliferation of self-defense groups. If something has forced these peoples to defend themselves against crime, it is because there is a power vacuum; the heads of state do not care what happens to us, the people below, and this demands that a reconfiguration in the state structure is necessary. We have seen that the death toll has increased and, even worse, femicide is multiplying.
Even to disseminate and report what happens represents a threat to the media since they suffer harassment and persecution on a daily basis. Currently the level of risk for journalists has increased, constantly suffering acts of intimidation, harassment, blockades, physical attacks, and many more grievances. This shows that there is no freedom of expression.
In this sense, it is a lie from the bad governments, Federal, State, and Municipal, when they say that Mexico has entered into a process of change, since their statements are really far from the reality of our community, neighborhood, and barrios. It is under this oligarchic conduct and mandate that the Fourth Transformation [1] has been carried out.
With the reform to constitutional Article 27, the issuance of the Agrarian Law and the implementation of the PROCEDE program, ejido or communal lands were incorporated into the neoliberal market, where the benefits are more in favor of large capitals and the peasants are once again exploited and forgotten in the agricultural fields like in colonial times or during porfirismo. Where the banker continues to lead the destiny of this country, without caring who it crushes along the way.
The reconstruction of the Mexican countryside will only be possible if returning the land to the peasant and obtaining the freedom that for centuries has been aspired to become a reality. To make it real, the unity of displaced landless peasants, community members, small ejidatarios, and medium owners is necessary. Because if we are separated we will lose what little remains of the land that we inherited from our Mesoamerican ancestors.
We have realized that the bad governments of whatever color are not interested in the land producing or in helping those most in need to get out of poverty. They continue to be in the slavery of the 21st century. They are more interested in helping out the bankers.
Examples of their government policy of invading land and territory are the Mayan Train project, the Isthmus of Tehuantepec corridor, the Thermoelectric Plant and the Gas Pipeline in Huesca, among others. All of these death projects are in the territory of original peoples.
For the original peoples there are only two options: to resist or allow for so-called modernization, which in the end, if we allow it, will bring with it many tragedies and more death. Those of us who oppose this project of death are the original peoples who live in adobe houses, wooden walls, low walls and cardboard roofs and all kinds of scarce resources.
For this reason, as the National Indigenous Congress, we keep walking to meet and come together against extermination, violence, domination, and exploitation so that together we will continue building another possible world.
Fraternally
Justice for our dead brothers and murdered women in Mexico and in the world
Freedom for our women and men political prisoners in Guerrero, Mexico and the World
No more death nor repression to the CNI-CIG!
They ripped out our fruits
They cut our branches
They burned our logs
But they could not
Kill our roots.
Never again a Mexico without us!
Notes
[1] López Obrador refers to the political movement under his administration as the Fourth Transformation or “4T” following other so-called transformations of Mexican politics: the War of Independence from Spain (First Transformation), the Reforms Period under Benito Juarez (Second Transformation), and the Mexican Revolution (Third Transformation).
Original Communiqué: https://www.congresonacionalindigena.org/2020/03/31/comunicado-conjunto-del-concejo-indigena-y-popular-de-guerrero-emiliano-zapata-cipog-ez-frente-nacional-de-liberacion-del-pueblos-fnlp-y-organizacion-campesina-de-la-sierra-del-sur-ocss-ante-el-conte/