Below, please find the English translation to a petition put together by the Red de Resistencia y Rebeldía Ajmaq, expressing collective indignation regarding the assaults, threats, and the serious harassment directed at the autonomous Zapatista community of Moises Ghandi. Collectives and individuals in support of this statement may sign up until October 15, 2020.
Valley of Jobel, September 20, 2020
The undersigned organizations, collectives, and individuals express our indignation regarding the assaults, threats, and the serious harassment directed at the autonomous community of Moises Ghandi, of the Lucio Cabanas Autonomous Municipality, 10th Caracol, Floreciendo la Semilla Rebelde en Resistencia y Rebeldía por la Vida y la Humanidad, based in the town Patria Nueva. These lands were reclaimed in 1994 by the Zapatista Army of National Liberation (EZLN). Despite constant attacks from the Regional Organization of Coffee Farmers of Ocosingo (ORCAO), the collective work to sustain autonomy continues to flourish.
Background
On April 3rd, 2019, militants of ORCAO from the community of San Felipes in the Ocosingo municipality, entered the autonomous community and began putting up barbed wire fences. The aggressions continued on October 15th in the community of El Progreso, when they arrived to divide the reclaimed lands into lots.
On December 17, about 235 ORCAO militants coming from communities of Siete de Febrero, San Felipe, Sacrificio La Esperanza, San Antonio Las Flores, Campo Virgen, Santiago, Abasolo, San Francisco, and Cuxulja, raided the reclaimed lands, damaging homes in the autonomous community of Emiliano Zapata, and damaging barbwire and posts in the community of San Isidro.
Between January and September 2020, there have been approximately 65 assaults against autonomous communities, including: Moises Ghandi, La Resistencia, 31 de Julio, San Isidro, and the Emiliano Zapata ejido. These attacks have consisted in cutting down trees that are later sold as wood or firewood and cutting down, burning, and selling crops. Also destroying wire fences and posts, fumigating workers, and burning down hives.
Other actions include the destruction of houses during raids on autonomous communities, armed assaults against the autonomous school, arrests, and beatings of support bases and, in Moises Ghandi, the presence of armed people dressed as military. Springs and water pipes in Moises Ghandi were damaged and, at night, vehicles without headlights have blocked the roads to the autonomous communities. The store Arco Iris was looted, money and merchandise were stolen. In the early hours of August 22nd, an armed paramilitary-style attack forced women, children, and elderly people to flee and seek refuge, inciting fear in the population. The attack culminated with the arson of Compañera Lucha restaurant, two stores, and one storage room.
These aggressions are carried out by ORCAO militants from the communities of Siete Febrero, Sacrificio La Esperanza, San Antonio Las Flores, Campo Virgen, San Felipe, Santiago, El Progreso y San Francisco, all of which are a part of the municipality of Ocosingo, Chiapas.
The ORCAO bases have carried out multiple attacks that have escalated into armed raids on autonomous territories with long-range, high-caliber weapons, and paramilitary tactics.
What we think about what’s happening
In Chiapas, the violence we see today is the product of 26 years of harassment, attacks, and slander by warlords against the EZLN and the people who struggle for autonomy. One of the strategies has been the formation of groups like the Chinchulines, Paz y Justicia, Máscara Roja, OPDDIC, ORUGA, URPA, UCIAF, the Aguilares. In addition to these paramilitary groups, are several organizations co-opted during the government of Pablo Salazar, like ORCAO and CIOAC- Historica (responsible for the assassination of the teacher Galeano on the 2nd of May, 2014, in the Caracol de Realidad) and the CIOAC-Independent. These paramilitary groups exist to provoke confrontation which, given the current climate, will increase with the upcoming elections. The government of the 4T [Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador’s “Government of the Fourth Transforation“] will do everything it can to preserve and amplify its power. All the possible ruses, from buying votes in exchange for social programs, to disqualifying or eliminating opponents, to, as we’ve already seen, the reactivation of paramilitary groups.
We know that today’s armed groups have inherited the violent practices of the low-intensity war initiated in 1994, either through continuity, or because they receive the same training and operate in the same manner.
Whether they are continuation, or a derivation of the same training and operating format of these groups, we know that today’s armed groups have inherited the violent practices of the low intensity warfare of 1994. This has led to attacks, deaths, and forced displacement in communities of the Chiapas highlands like Aldama y Chalchihuitán. They are also the same ones who attack the communities of the National Indigenous Congress (CNI), like our compañeros of the communal lands of Tila. All this occurs with an obvious complicity of the state and its politics of the 4T, which is a continuation of the war to get rid of all those who block their path of looting and displacement. They continue devastating Mother Earth with their megaprojects: the Maya Train, the Trans-isthmic Corridor, the Proyecto Integral Morelos. Our compañero Samir Flores was assassinated because of this, for defending life and land.
Today, the slander circulating, that the EZLN is connected to the Jalisco Nueva Generacion Cartel as well as the previous cartel, is calculated to justify the further militarization of communities that oppose the megaprojects of Obrador’s government. With more than 11,968 military personnel, Chiapas is the most militarized state in the country. The National Guard has opened barracks left and right despite the fact that Chiapas is one of the states with lower crime rates, particularly within Zapatista territory.
For this reason we reiterate that the attacks we denounce here are not the product of intra-community conflicts, like they want us to think. Rather, they reflect two completely opposing visions: one for humanity and life, where Zapatistas and the people of the CNI build systems of health, education, production projects, and everything needed to develop self-governance in their territories; and the other, an insatiable capitalism, constantly accelerating the destruction and death and turning life itself into a commodity. Even government programs like Sembrando Vida promote the exploitation and extractivism of the land, by pressuring communities to parcel communal lands so they can become clients of the federal government.
The contingency of COVID-19 uncovered and further clarified what capitalism has destroyed, but it also came at an opportune moment for the regime. We saw how in a few months the world transformed itself for the worse. We also saw that it was imperative to change everything in order to protect life. The EZLN and the CNI-CIG have shown time and time again that it is possible to fight for a different world, a world where the priority is the preservation of forms of life, a world where nature is not just another commodity. Their actions showed us that there are other ways to govern ourselves, to organize, to be, to defend land and territory, to use our bodies, to fight for life, in order to build other possible worlds that are more human, more dignified.
Faced with this dark panorama, we speak out. It is these anti-systemic organizations that are proposing and building an alternative world, a necessary alternative to this one, an alternative that is increasingly urgent for everyone, and that makes it urgent and necessary to support and struggle together, even with our lives if necessary.
Signed,
Red de Resistencia y Rebeldía Ajmaq
Dear compañeros and compañeras:
We share with you these denunciations from Jobel, Chiapas against the assaults that Zapatistas, the CNI, and other communities are experiencing due to the reactivation of armed groups, which have gone down the path of counterinsurgency and sustain an armed war of attrition. We ask that you sign separately as organizations/collective, and as individuals if you’d like.
Please input your data in the form using the link below. The deadline is October 15th. Your entries will be added and published on October 19th. Please help us spread the word:
https://share.mayfirst.org/apps/forms/MMMpoETKKMSssGc3
With a big rebellious embrace from Chiapas we salute you in this joint action of solidarity and denouncement against the onslaught of assaults on our compañeros and compañeras.
Compas of the Sixth from Jobel, Chiapas, México