May 10, 2023
The international caravan and Encuentro “El Sur Resiste!”, (The South Resists)are a historic effort that both informs and makes visible the destruction of the Interoceanic and Tren Maya megaprojects in the multicultural region they traverse. The main agreements reached focus on the indigenous youth besieged by drug trafficking. Given the urgency of the devastation of these territories, it was also a joyful reinforcement of shared horizons. Attendees from Central America gave an account of the interconnectedness of megaprojects in their countries.
Tw: @Dal_air
Chirro launches a rebellious verse as the final message of the Encuentro El Sur Resiste, although he is not accompanied by the typical jaranas of his hometown in the Veracruz Isthmus:
“El agua,
water is life
take care of it, it is coming to an end
we do not want fracking
neither do we want the mine
the territory is ours
they want to take it from us
and we are not willing
to allow ourselves to be trampled
to let ourselves be trampled”.
He is a young man in a peasant hat, a member of the Altepee Collective. His verse reflects the joyful atmosphere of the Caravan of the South Resists, which toured 10 states in the south-southeast where the mega-projects of the Interoceanic Corridor and the “Mayan Train” have an impact. Chirro and the caravan, like a river, flowed into the Caracol Zapatista Jacinto Canek, Chiapas, for this encounter.
With microphone in hand and the auditorium full, Chirro gives a message to the young people:
“Don’t get discouraged, this has to go on. Because sometimes most of the people who resist in our country are older. But we must be the offshoot, like the trees that shed their leaves. Our struggle needs to change its leaves, there must be young leaves to continue. Back in my village, we didn’t really have much information, not much contact. In less than two months, we got the caravan to visit, and in this way found out more about what was happening.
In the Caracol, previously and currently also site of the University of the Earth, 940 people express their consent and make agreements to make “intense” information campaigns translated into several languages (indigenous and foreign), along with other disparate actions on October 12, 2023, mapping of megaprojects, companies, academies, resistances, and alternatives of rebel autonomies; to monitor and visibilize the towns where the caravan passed and to hold regional meetings.
The agreement that seems most interesting to me is to focus the regional meetings on young people; to use art and creativity for the struggle in defense of land and water, to share with workshops, political training, and other pedagogical efforts to share knowledge of sowing the milpa, because this is being lost.
“Young people need to raise the flag of life,” said Bettina Cruz, a Binnizá woman from Juchitán, member of the Assembly of Peoples of the Isthmus in Defense of Land and Territory.
One constantly hears something that before I did not hear in such a pronounced way in these meetings before: drug trafficking co-opts young people throughout the south-southeast region, it poisons them.
It adds to the fact that people are extremely divided by the handouts of social programs and differences in the tactics of struggles. The caravan witnessed how the majority want the trains but remain unaware of what these mega-projects will bring, as they are more than just trains.
“The passage of the caravan in Felipe Carrillo Puerto was very important, because it shook many consciences. We began to talk about something that is not being talked about, which is the devastation of the rainforest caused by the construction of the train,” says Ángel Sulub, a young Mayan from the peninsular, member of the U kúuchil k Ch’i’ibalo’on Community Center.
According to Angel, one of the most important points is that the caravan allowed them to meet more people from their own town of Felipe Carrillo Puerto who do not want the train or to join.
“We were able to feel the hostility of the community as well, no? In other words, the people who defend to the hilt a project that they call a project of the nation or a political project or a personage that people don’t necessarily know all the implications of the decisions that are being made,” says Angel Sulub, a Mayan from the peninsula.
The three main local radio stations, which never talk about the discontent, this time had to talk about the train and its consequences. The caravan helped to break the information blockade, because throughout the tour through Chiapas, Oaxaca, Tabasco, Campeche, Yucatan, Quintana Roo, they became aware of the lack of information about the consequences and what these mega-projects are about.
“Six people in Mexico, whose names and surnames we can mention, have incomes eight times higher than the more than 60 million Mexicans living in poverty and extreme poverty. This is a global and civilizational crisis never seen before that forces us to have the courage to try something no small thing. The destruction of this capitalist and patriarchal system cannot really be half over,” says Carlos Gonzalez, member of the coordinating committee of the CNI, in his analysis.
El Sur Resiste is a historic effort to confront the destruction. It is now the seed of something bigger, because it provokes consciences, information, an awakening, which will have continuity beyond the inauguration of the mega train projects, as the government said in December.
“The war of dispossession has just begun and will last for a long time”, assures Raúl Zibechi, journalist and popular educator, who gives an analysis during the meeting, and assures that the wars of dispossession are structural and thus make the structure of capitalism. He emphasizes the militarization experienced by peoples from Mexico to Wallmapu in Chile, and the incongruence of its imposition by governments of the left, which has always been anti-militarist.
“The EZLN’s diagnosis of the Fourth World War has been made more than two decades ago. It seems to us to be totally accurate and totally correct. We are living through a war of dispossession against the peoples to cleanse the territory,” emphasizes Zibechi, who adds that drug trafficking is systemic. The people who enter the drug trade, seen from below, are poor, without a future, where inequality has blocked social ascent and they see a shortcut.
Carlos Gonzalez is concerned about militarism as a source or as a mechanism of capital accumulation that with neoliberalism that thins the State, it becomes an active agent of the process of capitalist accumulation and profit, to impose megaprojects. He points to the long hand of the Pentagon to impose megaprojects.
He sees with sadness and concern the complicity of cartels and government institutions, which does not diminish, “it grows again in a pre-electoral year, in this year 2023 and they are not going to let me lie because here in Chiapas they had never lived what they heard that was lived in Tamaulipas, in Sinaloa, in Jalisco, in Guanajuato, in Guerrero, in Michoacán, in Jalisco, in Colima, now it is being lived here”.
The South Resists puts spirituality, women, traditional medicine, ceremonies, midwifery at the center of the tactics of the struggle for life.
“Autonomy has already become common sense. And this seems to me to be an important conquest”, assures Zibechi, who points out the importance of the spirituality of the peoples, as a horizon to sustain the struggle for the land, which is a long-lasting one. “There is no final struggle”, he says.
And it is transboundary… In Central America they contemplate at least 7 trains that will connect with the Mexican megaprojects. International activists participated in the Caravan and the Encounter, and those from this region were fundamental to observe the mega-projects in the Mesoamerican region up to Panama and how they connect with Mexico, all in the energy, agro-industry, railroad and commercial order of transfer of merchandise.
There are outstanding delegations of allies from 30 countries and various parts of the world, the participation of large European delegations stands out, since the call is also the result of the alliances that were woven with the Zapatista Journey for Life.
For the Chicano activist Natalia Toscano, member of the Sexta Grietas Norte network in the US, the caravan is historic. She traveled through it. Now she is more aware that the migration of Mexicans to the gringo country is because they were dispossessed of their land and their way of life, like her relatives, and that is why she lives there.
Natalia assures that in the United States nothing is known about the destruction of the megaprojects in the south southeast, and now witnessing the destruction allows her to spread beyond the activist networks, as she was shocked by what she saw along the caravan.
“It was very shocking where they are building the train in several states, you could see where they were removing all the trees and were preparing the land, not for the train to start building the tracks. The roots of the dead trees outside the ground. in the air. Drying up. It is important to make this visible because it not only affects Mexico, it is going to affect us all over the world,” says the activist who uses some English words from time to time.
The idea is reinforced by José Luis Santillán of the Centro de Investigación en Comunicación Comunitaria, who also toured the southeast and now participates in the Encuentro El Sur Resiste.
“There was a lack of information. I think this is a great achievement of this caravan. I think it is a communication milestone for the social movement in Mexico and the world, which is seeing the magnitude of what the Mayan and inter-oceanic train megaprojects imply,” shares José Luis.
All the people interviewed agree: there is a bittersweet feeling in the caravan, on the one hand the pain and sadness of seeing on the ground the environmental devastation and the tearing of the social fabric.
But on the other hand, to see the joy and spirituality, the food and traditions of the people who made up the 10 points of the route. The horizon becomes hopeful when we meet. The Cideci Caracol Jacinto Canek looks full of activists as it has not happened for at least four years. A marimba entertains the free time at the work tables.
According to Mario from APIIDT, who participates in the organization of the events of El Sur Resiste, the plurality of forces, organizations, communities, peoples and collectives that participated stands out. This for him is very valuable, since the caravan showed the capacity of articulation of different actors.
Abigail López Ramírez, a Nahua woman under 18 years of age from Santa María Zacatepec, traveled through the Caravan and now, since the meeting, she assures that integrating young people is fundamental in the face of the devastation.
She emphasizes that in Oteapan there were many young people who welcomed them, and that for her was encouraging since in her town it is difficult to integrate young people into the struggle for land and water.
“People are in favor of these projects because the system has convinced them that this is good, that this is progress for their communities. However, we know that it is not progress. As comrade Marichuy said: ‘if that is progress, then we don’t want it,'” says Abigail with a shy look on her face.
It is time for the youth to raise the banner of life as a horizon and hope for the world.
