Guidxi Rucaalú
The subject of historical knowledge is the oppressed class itself when it fights, says W. Benjamin’s twelfth thesis of history. Indeed, what would become of this region, inserted in the geopolitical interests of the farmers, without those women and men who did not wait for this – our – generation to thank them for their actions, but left in their memory the memory that they were killed, persecuted and threatened for the defense of Layú Nabee.
In the Sierra de Santa Marta the memory of the Acayucan rebellion (1906) is preserved. An uprising in which nahuas together with the tannundajïïyi (popolucas) confronted the territorial reordering, which had led to the speculation and dispossession of more than 80 thousand hectares of land for the construction of railroads in their territory. Contrary to what the official history tells, our Nahua and Tannundajïïyi sisters defended their territory together with the members of the Mexican Liberal Party. And they knew that the defense of the territory could not be separated from the historical moment, the impulse and the victory of the political and economic revolution that the PLM proclaimed to the last consequences.
Meanwhile, in the coastal plain, one of the most important rebellions of the 19th century is whispered from one generation to another, which opposed the construction of an inter-oceanic road that implied the dispossession of the land, possession of the peoples of the region, as well as the privatization of the salt mines as payment for the loans that financed the war against France. This rebellion is not inserted in the official history, but in the memory of the struggle led by Che Gorio Meledre transmitted through oral history and memory.
In Juchitán, it is still remembered from voice to voice that movement that fought for the recovery of communal lands, which were in the hands of landowners; it is kept in the memory the constant recovery of the salt mines and the historical struggle for the appointment of agrarian authorities, which led to the taking of the municipal power by the arduous mobilization of the population which meant in first instance the popular will to lead their community. How can we forget those 70’s that marked the lives of men and women binnizá and that today are transmitted as knowledge from generation to generation.
Again, the history that power tries to deny. We cannot forget the meeting in which more than 30 communities, ejidos and towns of Oaxaca and mainly from the Isthmus, such as the Ayuujk (Mixe), Tannundajïïyi, Binnizá, Ikoots and Angpon (Zoque), gathered in the community of Matías Romero. There those subjects that are part of history, our history, met to analyze and see the ways and means to combat the then Zedillo’s mega-project “Integral Program of Economic Development for the Isthmus of Tehuantepec”, the same one that today has been recycled under a new name and a new foreman. Since 1997, the people gathered in Matias Romero declared that “The Isthmus is Ours”, not the governments’ or the companies’.
Perhaps forgetfulness is a quality of the new foreman and his followers. But what would become of us without that memory that has to remind us that we are peoples with history? What would become of our present if we forget that battle fought by our Ikoots and Binnizá brothers and sisters? The year 2012 was the scene of the battle that our peoples fought against what was intended to be the largest wind energy generation park in Latin America, promoted by the Calderon and Peña Nieto governments in collusion with the multinational Mareña Renovables (with Spanish, Dutch and Japanese capital). What would now become of the upper and lower lagoons, sacred to those who live along the coastline, without the arduous struggle undertaken by the peoples of the sea and wind against one of the largest undertakings of green capitalism.
This is not the whole story of those who left their mark for the historical knowledge of Layú Nabee, they are only fragments of the various memories that as women, men and others we have kept from generation to generation. To make the past ours does not mean to know it as it really was, to make it ours “means to seize a memory as it shines in an instant of danger”. Today the danger is deposited in the ears of the followers of the foreman, ears that become deaf to the whispers of those who yesterday faced the same monster that today presents itself with a new name and a different color.
Today the danger has dressed up as a leftist and from his podium he convinces his followers that the indigenous peoples have not been subjects of history in past regimes; today the foreman has made his followers believe that our history as peoples begins with him; he has wanted to erase that as indigenous peoples we have been the first to confront dispossession; the foreman has convinced his followers that the defense of the territories begins with him at the front and is guaranteed by his client institutions. Today the danger threatens the permanence and continuity of the memory, as well as the recipients of it, which has led many to turn themselves into instruments of the foreman’s replication.
Now, more than ever, it is necessary to wrest memory from the hands of conformism, because memory is being subdued every morning from a podium. Because the foreman not only comes as a redeemer and messiah, but intends to end as a victor. To make the past our own is a spark of hope that only the people know how to take advantage of, because if the foreman wins, our dead will not be safe from him either. The spark of hope that our memory brings us today is present again, because the consciousness of making the continnum of each epoch jump is proper to the indigenous peoples at the moment of their action.
Did he think that the silence of the oppressed would reign during his government? Undoubtedly, violence continues to be his weapon of response to those collective demands that he promised to solve and today he has left in oblivion. We, the people who fought in the past, are the same people who maintain the struggles for the present and the future. We are there, we were there and we will be resisting firmly, regardless of the change of foreman, because we know that the parties will not resolve the grievances that we have historically suffered. Without fear of being wrong, we say that there was not the end of a political era, nor the beginning of another, but the continuity of a predatory capitalism.
Today, the spark of hope is acting, speaking and thinking in Ayuujk with machete in hand, expelling on more than thirty occasions the company La Peninsular of Grupo Hermes, who have been awarded the bid for the “modernization” of 50 km of FIT railroad tracks in the section that crosses the territory of those who live in the northern zone of the Layú Nabee. This same spark is present in the south, where Binnizá women defend their territory in the name of the totopo, corn and wind, from the action and reflection in diidxazá against the installation of an agro-industrial, textile and metallurgical cluster of more than 400 Ha, which is intended to be erected on their Pitayal mountain.
But in order to break the continnum of this time, it will be necessary the solidarity of all of us who inhabit this territory and of those who, from other diverse geographies, listen to our whispers. Because although we are geographically dispersed, dispersed and dispersed, in a world interconnected by Capitalism, the State and Patriarchy, everything that concerns a geostrategic territory also affects other regions of the globe.
If they interconnect the world for dispossession and capital accumulation, we must interconnect our worlds for resistance.
In this Train called “Fourth Transformation” with its cars named “Interoceanic Corridor of the Isthmus of Tehuantepec” and “Mayan Train”, it is time to meet not to give an emergency brake to this Train, but to generate the conditions to bring down the stations of the train. And in this sense, to be the indigenous peoples, together with the solidarity of our brothers and sisters of the many worlds that fit in this world, the protagonists of the locomotive of history.
This is why we CALL on nations, tribes, peoples, communities, organizations and collectives, indigenous, social, popular, free media or whatever they call themselves and all those who struggle and resist in Oaxaca, Mexico and the World to collaborate, support and participate in the Caravan and International Meeting “EL SUR RESISTE” to be held in the territories threatened by the megaprojects Interoceanic Corridor and the Mayan Train, during the spring of 2023, with the objective to meet again after three years of pandemic and articulate our experiences, feelings, ways of fighting and resisting. This call is extemporaneous and urgent, given the devastation, dispossession and looting that is occurring at this time, while the doomsday clock is ticking and the ravages of the climate crisis are impacting our territories.
For them we will be conducting and inviting to meetings of preparation, organization and articulation in various territories of Mexico and the world, so we invite you to be aware of the next calls, whispers and steps to be taken among all of us.
Undoubtedly there are more veins that unite us,
than the cracks that divide us,
from Layú Nabee this is our word:
Assembly of Indigenous Peoples of the Isthmus in Defense of Land and Territory – APIIDTT.
P.S. More than 60% abstention in the gubernatorial elections in Oaxaca.
Did you hear? It is the sound of your world collapsing. It is the sound of ours rising and flourishing. In the retreat from the ballot box we build resistance.