April 15, 2020
The Sexta Grietas del Norte network invites other groups and individuals to join us to stand in solidarity with our compañer@s from the Autonomous Wixarika and Tepehuana Community of San Lorenzo Azqueltán, in the county of Villa Guerrero, Jalisco, Mexico, who have united in a struggle to recover and protect their ancestral lands from invasion by mestizo cattle ranchers.
We denounce the persistent violence perpetrated by the invaders and their allies, who have links to organized crime. These attacks are in retaliation for the community’s efforts to protect their territory and to enact their rights to collective self-governance as an autonomous indigenous community, including the election of communal authorities and the recovery of invaded lands. Comuneros (members of the autonomous indigenous community) have endured kidnappings, savage beatings, stoning, armed attacks, and death threats, all meant to intimidate the members of the community to give up the lands that they have farmed for centuries. These lands legally belong to their community, having been granted to them by the Spanish Crown in 1777.
For years the government has refused to settle the question of land ownership and has done nothing to stop the aggressors. The impunity gives a green light to the violence, and effectively supports the illegal land invasions. The municipal authorities have actively supported the invaders.
This posture of the government at all levels is consistent with a racist, neoliberal capitalist state that has attempted through various means to dispossess originary peoples. Among other strategies for dispossession, the government tries to break up communal property and create individual private ownership so that the lands of originary peoples can be sold and made available for capitalist extractive projects that loot natural resources and leave the land destroyed and depleted. Autonomous indigenous communities such as the Autonomous Indigenous Community of San Lorenzo Azquetlán are on the front lines of the resistance to this process.
The violence against the comuneros has accelerated since the autonomous community bravely moved to assert its legal rights under the Mexican Constitution as an autonomous indigenous community. Despite the dozens of violent incidents that are supposedly under investigation by the State Attorney’s Office, no action has been taken. In recent months, cowardly acts include:
– On November 3, 2019, days before the planned celebration of the community’s sixth anniversary as an autonomous community, recently elected president of the security council, Noe Aguilar Rojas, and two other comuneros were savagely beaten, forcing the postponement of the celebration. When the injured arrived at the hospital, they were refused care until they presented papers of Public Health Insurance, even though one of them, Ricardo de la Cruz, had a wound in his right lung produced by a sharp weapon. The comuneros chose to postpone their celebration until their hospitalized compañeros were able to return to the community.
– On January 10, 2020, Jesus Manuel Aguilar Hernández, a land defender and member of the National Indigenous Congress was shot at with a 38-caliber weapon as he took his cows to drink by the river. The aggressor was identified as a person in the service of Flavio Flores alias “La Polla”, a local cattle rancher known as a ringleader of the landgrabbers. The comunero was able to avoid the bullets by hiding behind a tree.
– On January 25 and 26, despite this attempt at intimidation, the community celebrated its sixth anniversary as an autonomous indigenous community and elected new authorities. The company of 100 invited guests, included “Marichuy,” a member and international spokesperson of the Indigenous Governing Council (CIG), of the National Indigenous Congress (CNI). The Indigenous Guard of Azqueltán reaffirmed its commitment to continue defending Mother Earth at all costs.
– On March 22, there was another attack, perpetrated once again by persons in the service of Flavio Flores (“La Polla”) but this time also including an employee of the municipal government of Villa Guerrero: Teódulo Pérez Martinez, a municipal policeman in Villa Guerrero, Jalisco, along with Abram Pérez Bañuelos, Jairo Pérez Bañuelos, and Aldo Herrera González. They arrived at 11:15 pm at the home of Camerino Márquez Aguilar, an elder, throwing rocks at his doors and windows as they shouted, “The authorities, the comandante, and the topil are assholes” and “if anyone comes out we’ve got a pistol to use on him.”
After that they went to the home of Señor Genaro González Bañuelos, who is also elderly, where they also stoned his house saying that he should come out so that they could stone him to death, destroying his door and window, and stealing his donkey that he had tied up outside.
Despite the fact that these persons have been denounced on various occasions, they have been supported by the municipal government of Villa Guerrero, which has taken no actions to sanction them, but on the contrary has promoted violence and confrontation, for which we hold them responsible for these deeds, whose objective is repression and displacement.
This is happening as machinery of the municipal government, with the supposed objective of opening a road near the sacred site of Los Pilares, has been invading and destroying fences in the farm plots of various community members.
We, the undersigned, denounce the aggressions and the inaction of the government, and demand that the Autonomous Community be granted their legitimate ancestral lands and that their rights to self-government be respected and protected. We support our brothers and sisters of san Lorenzo Azqueltán for their courageous struggle in defense of their lands, and ways of life. We support the formation of autonomous communities as a form of resistance to capitalist privatization that paves the way to extractive industries and other forms of life that are so damaging and destructive of humans and our natural environment. We stand with all people who are fighting to preserve sustainable livelihoods, and especially originary peoples who are fighting to preserve their history and identity and their ancestral lands. We must protect all that remains of these sacred environments and resources for future generations to have a chance to survive against the civilization of death.
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