May 9, 2023

SOUTH/SOUTHEAST GATHERING

INTERNATIONAL GATHERING

 “Global corporate capitalism, planetary patriarchy, autonomies in rebellion”

CIDECI-UNITIERRA / CARACOL JACINTO CANEK

May 7, 2023

To the General Command of the EZLN

To the National Indigenous Congress

To the Indigenous Governing Council

To the national and international organizations that fight and resist

To the free, alternative, independent media or whatever they are called

To the peoples of Mexico and the world

 From the Heart of the land where dignified rage was born, grew and reproduces itself, the rebellious peoples of the South Southeast geographies that walk the caravan El Sur Resiste 2023, Binnizá, Ayuuk, Nahua, Nuntajiyi (Nuntajuyi), Maya, Chol, Zoque, Tzeltal, Tojolabal, Tsotsil peoples and mestizos, convened by various organizations of this geography and by the National Indigenous Congress, we toured the territories affected by the interconnected military megaprojects, the Misnamed Maya Train and the Interoceanic Corridor. 

We arrived at the Zapatista territory of CIDECI-UNITIERRA / Caracol Jacinto Canek in San Cristóbal de las Casas, Chiapas, where we met with many other indigenous peoples and organizations and the urban areas of the south-southeast of the country and many other regions of our Mother Earth to share the pain, hopes and articulation strategies, learn from the struggles of other geographies and continue weaving solidarity networks of resistance and planetary rebellion.

From April 25 to May 4, the members of the El Sur Resiste Caravan traveled through communities and towns in eight states of the Mexican Republic; starting at the community of El Progreso, municipality of Pijijiapan, with a stopover in Tonalá, we traveled along the coast of Chiapas and crossed the Isthmus of Tehuantepec, from the Binniza community in resistance of Puente Madera, municipality of San Blas Atempa, passing through the rebel campsite “Tierra y Libertad” in the Aayuuk community of Mogoñe Viejo, municipality of San Juan Guichicovi, both communities in the state of Oaxaca and reaching the Nahua community of Oteapan in southern Veracruz. 

From there, we set out for the Mayan territories of the Yucatan peninsula, crossing the State of Tabasco through Villahermosa and the coastal community of El Bosque, devoured by the sea due to global warming, arriving at Candelaria, Campeche, and following the route to the community of Zakí, today named Valladolid in Yucatán and the community of Noj Kaaj Santa Cruz, today Felipe Carrillo Puerto in Quintana Roo, returning through Xpujil again in Campeche territory to return to Chiapas and meet the Zoque, Chol, Tsotsil, Tojolabal and Tzeltal peoples, with a stop in Palenque, crossing the region of Los Altos to reach our final destination, Jovel, today San Cristóbal de las Casas.

Throughout this journey, our hearts, feelings and thoughts were open to listening and observing the multiple pains and destruction caused by the voracity of great global capitalism that we personally felt through the constant harassment of our caravan by the police and military forces of the Mexican State.

In these times of global geopolitical rearrangements where the big capitals of the Western and Asian blocs accelerate the process of this new stage of colonization war, disputing the territories of our planet, destroying Mother Nature, dispossessing, exploiting and expelling the peoples and murdering and disappearing those who oppose them, we confirm the complicity of the states and organized crime in its various forms, all of them bloody.

We affirm that we are facing the greatest expression of the patriarchal power system inherited from thousands of years ago and installed in our lands for more than 500 years with the genocidal European invasion. We witnessed its devastating effects in our territories, but we also felt the great strengths of our peoples’ resistance. They have safeguarded our very existence as original peoples.

In this global rearrangement, the Mexican Southeast and the Isthmus of Tehuantepec play a strategic role in the interests of world corporations to unite the Pacific Ocean with the Atlantic by land in just 200 kilometers and facilitate the transport of goods, hydrocarbons and other subsoil resources. The interoceanic corridor has been a place of transit since ancient times for the commercial routes of the peoples. During the colonial times and the dictatorship of Porfirio Diaz, as well as during the governments of the XX and XXI century, there have been several unsuccessful attempts to appropriate it. This is due to the historical resistance of the peoples of the region.

The current government that calls itself “the government of the fourth transformation” is no different, since it sees the modernization of the ports of Coatzacoalcos and Salina Cruz, the construction of a highway and the modernization of the railway for freight trains that will not only connect the two ports but it will also do so with the train so- called Maya in the Yucatan Peninsula.

That is why we say that the Interoceanic Corridor, the train misnamed Maya and the Morelos Integral Project in the center of the country are part of an interconnection and energy supply network for corporations that will operate in the south of the country and Central America, most of them them private and of foreign capital.

A high voltage line will be installed and the expansion of the isthmus gas pipeline intended to connect with the new maritime pipeline that will bring the fracking gas from Texas to our lands. This project will be built along the Veracruz coast, in the vicinity of the reef system, from Tuxpan to Coatzacoalcos and with another maritime branch to the new Dos Bocas refinery, also part of this megaproject.

This infrastructure reflects the deepening of a model, based on the extraction of fossil hydrocarbons, which during the 20th century accelerated, in a way never seen before, the indicators of pollution and global warming, reinforced by supposedly clean energy in the hands of big foreign capital that does not represent any just energy transition for the peoples.

Indeed, the project not only includes the construction of these infrastructures, but also the opening of new territories for the extraction of hydrocarbons, mining, and the implementation of industrial and wind farms, as well as the construction of new urban centers for semi-enslaved mexican workers, but mostly migrants who by order of the master of the North will be detained at the Isthmus, making this territory a new wall of human containment.

In the Mayan territories of the Yucatan Peninsula and the states of Chiapas and Tabasco, a new territorial reorganization is being developed to put it at the service of the large capitals of tourist and industrial developments.

The Caravan witnessed the devastation of the jungle to make way for the train tracks, hundreds of kilometers and millions of trees cut down where the deer and the jaguar used to walk. The flows of the sacred water are being modified with catastrophic consequences for the peoples that will be named in the future as natural disasters.

Today the train and the megaprojects, both illegally imposed, are part of the new genocidal practices in Mayan territories that were victims at the beginning of the 20th century of the Genocide promoted by the State during the Mayan Social War. 

The construction of this train is accompanied by the installation of 21 stations and tourist development zones, wind and photovoltaic parks, thermoelectric plants, breweries, pig farms, palm, soybean and other monoculture crops, as well as large real estate developments, hotel complexes , shopping centers, casinos, restaurants and everything necessary for the large masses of tourists expected to arrive on the peninsula, causing dispossession, voracious extractivism and the destruction of the ways of life of the Mayan peoples.

Both on the peninsula and on the Isthmus, through misinformation and false promises of well-being linked to the deceptive management of concepts such as progress and development where social programs have played a fundamental role. For fear of violence, separation of the community and the possible loss of social programs, many people remain silent and do not organize, even knowing and seeing the growing violence and destruction of the territories.

But the evils that come with these mega-projects of death are becoming more evident every day. All these infrastructures represent the dispossession of our territories for the benefit of big capital as part of a project operated by the Mexican military forces: army, navy, and national guard in coordination with the police and immigration department, all of them in collusion with the cartels of the organized crime and the consequent expansion of capitalist and patriarchal criminal economies.

We listened and witnessed that the first of the dispossessions is that of ancestry and communality, because when they strip us of the sense of belonging to Mother Earth we stop feeling her, listening to her and feeling her pains. First they strip us of our memory and our spirituality in order to be able to strip us of our way of life, of our roots and of the land, because whoever no longer sees in her as a mother, but as a merchandise that can be bought and sold, will get rid of her without thinking about what those who only want to exploit it, uproot its trees and poison it, will do to it without caring about the destruction of our communities and our ceremonial centers, the pollution of the air, the land and the waters, springs, rivers, lagoons, seas and the cenotes that are the waters of the entrails of our mother.

We saw how the sea is literally and tragically swallowing the community of El Bosque in Tabasco, as a consequence of climate change caused by planetary mega-contamination, particularly by the energy model based on the extraction of hydrocarbons, which this government and big capital reinforce.

We also note the terrible increase in a culture of violence that has permeated the entire society from the communities to the city neighborhoods with drug trafficking, extortion, specially by charging for “protection and right” to housing/shelter (cobro de piso), particularly affecting youth, women,  migrants, and environmental and human rights defenders.

More and more youth from indigenous communities and poor city neighborhoods fall victim to drug trafficking networks, as one of the few “alternatives” to overcome poverty in the midst of this disaster, destroying their own brains with cheap drugs such as crystal meth, becoming hitmen and ending up murdered.

In particular, we note the increase in gender violence, from family violence to femicides, with the terrifying figure of 13 women murdered daily in our country and a clear increase in repression against those who oppose megaprojects, defend the territory and denounce the impunity and chains of complicity, repression ranging from threats, forced displacement, imprisonment, disappearances and murders.

We identify the racist policies, the strategy of persecution and the stigmatization of the National Institute of Migration against our migrant brothers and sisters that were used to deny entry to the country to our compañer@s from Honduras, Guatemala and El Salvador.

We corroborated the systematic violation of the rights of indigenous peoples and particularly the right to self-determination and autonomy, the exercise of which is essential to rebuild, from our ancestral cultural roots, a free and dignified life based on communality from decision-making in assemblies, with full respect for women, trans-gender, youth, childhood and the elderly, in harmony with nature.

We note the pressure from all government agencies, starting with the agrarian attorney’s office, so that the agrarian nuclei and indigenous communities pass into full control and thus put an end to the social ownership of the land that represents the strength of our struggles.

But in contrast to all these calamities, the Caravan also allowed us to travel through hope and life, to meet the countryside and its native seeds that are being protected by peasant hands. Feel the joy of rebellious music that fires hearts and inspires resistance. We enjoy art as a fighting front that with its colors, sounds and merriment allows us to continue in joyful rebellion.

The Caravan allowed us to meet the jungle that resists. Where the trees are cut down, life springs up again. We listened to the birds and their messages, we drank the crystalline water from the wells and we breathed the clean air of rurality. We found peoples and communities that organize, resist and do not allow dispossession or even the entry of companies into their territories. They also take measures to recover ways of life that build hopeful autonomies for humanity. On the other hand, we found rebellious cities that build collectivity and autonomy in the midst of urban monsters where love for the land and territory flourishes again.

We offered to Mother Earth, we invoked the spirit of fire, water and air, recognizing that long struggles are sustained by the spirituality linked to the territory and our ancestry. Knowing that we are not looking for a final victory but that we fight just like our grandparents and grandmothers did and before them, our ancestors and as our children and grandchildren will continue to do so. As we reaffirmed in the 10 working groups of the South/Southeast meeting on May 5, we build other possible worlds by celebrating what we are reaping and recognizing that our strength comes from memory and wisdom as struggling peoples. We have reflected that we resist by embracing the values of a full and dignified life close to the land, such as the cultivation of our food, traditional medicine and the protection of our pueblos with community guards.

We recognized that even in the midst of all the destruction of the capitalists, there are many achievements that we are reaping: The first and most important thing is that after 500 years of attempts to exterminate us, we are still here, the organization from the community against dispossession, in the same way the lands recovered in different towns, the struggle of women for the recognition and exercise of their rights, the defense of water, the release of political prisoners, the relocation of the train stations in Mérida and Campeche, the establishment of free zones of extractive projects, the conservation of languages and traditional festivities and the construction of autonomies.

After the caravan and our internal gathering, 940 people from 40 original peoples of the world, from 27 Mexican states, from 30 countries and from 10 autonomous regions gathered at the International Meeting “Global Corporate Capitalism, Planetary Patriarchy, Autonomies in Rebellion”. We listened to the words of 5 speakers to analyze and study the geopolitical situation of the world, of Mexico, specifically of the south-southeast and the global south. We also listened to the sharing of experiences of struggle from all these regions as well as the proposals to continue the construction of autonomy.

The sisters and brothers of Abya Yala from Guatemala, El Salvador, Costa Rica, Honduras, Colombia, Ecuador, shared with us the situation that they have to face and we verified that this predatory capitalist system is acting in the same way in all the geographies where the peoples still  protect natural and cultural assets and life itself. But in the same way we confirmed the joy, the strength and the living organization of the organized peoples.

Denouncements:

We denounce the violent eviction of the Tierra y Libertad campsite as well as the imprisonment of 6 compañer@s perpetrated by the navy and the state police on April 28, one day after our caravan passed through. We demand that the government of Oaxaca and the federal government immediately cease the harassment against defenders of land and territory, particularly in the case of the land and freedom camp on the Isthmus, and the withdrawal of arrest warrants against 17 members of the community of Puente Madera, San Blas Atempa and the acquittal of compañero David Salazar linked to the process.

We repudiate the racist immigration policy that violates the rights of this government that prevented the entry of the daughter of compañera Berta Cáceres, prohibiting her from flying to Mexico City with all the papers in order, and the harassment of 7 Central American compañeras at the post border of Tapachula, Chiapas.

We demand that the illegal assembly of March 5, 2023 be revoked in the Nicolás Bravo ejido, where the whereabouts of the misnamed Mayan train was illegally approved in favor of the Azcarraga group, owners of Televisa and that will damage more than 100 Mayan ceremonial centers.

We demand the cancellation of the eviction order of the community of Emiliano Zapata III municipality of Candelaria Campeche promoted by the alleged owner Fernando Oropeza Arispe and ordered by a civil judge of first instance of the state of Campeche. In the same way, the cancellation of the arrest warrants of the community members.

Immediate cancellation of the work on the badly named Maya train, especially the illegal construction of section 7, the installation of the military casino and the tourist development in the community of Xpujil since despite the definitive suspension granted by a federal judge, SEDENA continues its construction in contempt of the federal order.

Cessation of pressure from the Agrarian Attorney’s Office on the communities and ejidos to convert the lands from social property to freehold, ending the collective lands of the country’s indigenous communities.

Urgent and immediate relocation of the El Bosque community in the municipality of Centla, Tabasco who are environmental displaced victims of global warming produced by the voracious extractive system that continues to depredate and deforest the territories.

We demand the immediate freedom of all the political prisoners in this country, political prisoners in solidarity with the voice of the amate, Fidencio Aldama, the prisoners of Eloxochitlan de Flores Magón, Oaxaca, all those unjustly imprisoned for defending water and territories and the support base compañero of the EZLN Manuel Gómez Vázquez and the revocation of the sentence of 50 years against the compañero Miguel Peralta Betancourt, persecuted politicians from Eloxochitlan.

We accompany and firmly join the demand of the relatives of victims of femicide violence in Mexico to achieve truth, justice, reparation and non-repetition, not only for women who have been violated but particularly for children (daughters, sons, sisters and brothers), collateral victims of this infamous violence in this country that insists on sowing fear, death and impunity. No forgiveness, nor oblivion! Punish the guilty! (Facebook: @FeminicidiosCrimenesdelesahumanidad, @FatimaVariniaEnTuHonorYRecuerdo, @JusticiaParaLupitaBastida)

In the case of the common land of Tila, Chiapas, we demand the execution of the RAN ruling favorable to the recovery of the 130 hectares that the municipality has taken from them.

We demand a live appearance for the thousands of disappeared in the country, of the community member Antonio Díaz Valencia and the lawyer Ricardo Lagunes Gasca who were disappeared due to a conflict between the community of Aquila, Michoacán and the Canadian mining company Ternium.

Justice for the 43 disappeared normalistas in Ayotzinapa. Because they were taken alive, we want them alive!

We affirm loud and clear and from our hearts that fight and organize, that we will continue to meet and articulate them with other struggles throughout the world.

Neither with the National Guard, nor with the navy, nor with the army. They will not stop us!

While you destroy, we build.

El Sur Resiste Caravan and International Gathering

#ElSurResiste