Communiqué from the Sexta Grietas del Norte network in solidarity with the call: Days of Action in Defense of Territory and Mother Earth “We Are All Samir”

February 11, 2020

To the Amilcingo Assembly of Resistance,

To the National Indigenous Congress (CNI)/Indigenous Governing Council (CIG),

To the Zapatista Army for National Liberation (EZLN),

To the peoples, communities, organizations, collectives, and individuals participating in the Forum in Defense of Territory and Mother Earth held December 2019 in the Caracol Jacinto Canek/CIDECI ,

To the groups and collectives fighting the Capitalist Hydra,

Sisters and brothers,

The Sexta Grietas del Norte network expresses our most complete solidarity with your call: Days of Action in Defense of Territory ad Mother Earth “We Are All Samir.”  We fully identify with your words, which help us understand the strong unity of the indigenous peoples’ struggles in defense of land and territory with the global struggles for human life and Mother Earth—against projects of war, extractivism, patriarchal violence, and death throughout the planet.

The urgency of your call before the multiple attacks suffered by communities that defend their lands, their waters, and their mountains against the megaprojects of death is accentuated after the cowardly detention of our brother Miguel López Vega, delegate of the CNI and member of the Zacatepec community radio station and the Front of Peoples in Defense of Earth and Water of Puebla, Morelos, and Tlaxcala on January 24. We celebrate the subsequent liberation of Miguel as a significant achievement of the resistance of his community, the CNI, and all who mobilized for his liberation. May the struggle and solidarity rescue more sisters and brothers from prison and death!

Dear compañer@s of the CNI: we feel and understand the rage and accuracy of your words when you denounce that the kidnappings, detentions, forced disappearances, and murders of your sisters and brothers, who are also ours, are the response of capital and its bad government against the original peoples who struggle to prevent their destruction and dispossession. We understand as you do that jail, torture, murder, and other forms of repression are punishment against the EZLN, the CNI, and the communities that oppose the “projects” and “megaprojects” of the Capitalist Hydra and their efforts to confiscate land, mountains, and water to consolidate businesses that threatens the existence of human life.

Sexta Grietas del Norte is a network of organizations and individuals in the US who are adherents of the Zapatistas’ Sixth Declaration of the Lacandon Jungle. We are committed to fighting capitalism and building networks of autonomous communities that resist racist, patriarchal, and colonial hierarchies in this country and fight independently of the party system. Our network advocates for solidarity with, and is inspired by, our sisters and brothers of the EZLN, CNI, CIG, and the Sexta networks in Mexico and beyond.

From the US we will follow and spread information about the Days of Action in Defense of Territory and Mother Earth “We are all Samir” and will try to carry out dislocated actions in the cities and regions where we are. We will also send delegates to walk with you on the February 21 demonstration in Mexico City, and to attend the peoples’ assembly in Amilcingo on February 22.

In solidarity,

Sexta Grietas del Norte

February 11, 2020