What other system has declared war on humanity in such a methodical and complete way? What other system systematically practices genocide and extermination of entire portions of youth, women and children?
What role are the states and the governments that administer them playing, which are unable and unwilling to stop the violence against peoples and individuals?
It is time to name this system: capitalism. We must understand that violence has no other objective than the accelerated accumulation of capital. To this end, those sectors that are an obstacle to the enrichment of the one percent are displaced and exterminated.
It is not a question of isolated facts or mistakes, but of a plan that they have been perfecting in the last decades and that more recently we have seen unfold in to the fullest extent, in the vast geography that goes from Gaza to Mexico, as the indiscriminate bombings against schools and hospitals show, as the crematorium ovens of Teuchitlán (Mexico) show.
The same pattern, with some variations, can be observed in other geographies of the Middle East, and particularly in the territories of native and black peoples, from Wall Mapu to Chiapas. In the south of Argentina, big businessmen burn forests while the State does not extinguish them, criminalizes the Mapuche people and displaces communities in order to profit from their lands. The alliance between the State, the businessmen and their militias, the mass media and the judiciary is lubricated by the presence of Israeli soldiers in these territories.
The population around the mine in Chicomuselo, Chiapas, bears witness to the alliance between the State, business, paramilitaries and organized crime, with the sole objective of displacing and controlling the population that obstructs the expansion of the business of destroying Mother Earth, in order to convert common goods into commodities.
We find very similar cases when the Brazilian Military Police enter the favelas, when armed narco-paramilitary gangs attack the Garifuna people in Honduras; the repressive bodies that shoot from helicopter gunships at the crowds that mobilized in the Andean region of Peru, and so many other cases impossible to describe in this space.
Let us not fool ourselves: these are not excesses or occasional deviations, but a vast four-handed militarization project (armed and police forces, judges, leaders and organized crime), which supports the extractive companies. When we see mothers and search warriors using their own hands because they have no resources, but are still able to unearth the horror, we can only understand that the authorities have put themselves at the service of this war of dispossession, guaranteeing impunity for the perpetrators.
Pain and only pain is the source of knowledge. We cannot forget when parents of the Ayotzinapa students raised the banner “It was the State”, written in the blood of their children and the psychological torture of their absence and the way in which they were disappeared.
Now that pain tells us that we are facing a criminal network capable of the greatest atrocities, as the Mexican journalist Jonathan Avila, from CEPAD (adondevanlosdesaparecidos.org) pointed out a few days ago.
We know that there is not and will not be political will to stop the violence from above. So the question is, what are we going to do? As movements, peoples and society as a whole to do what those at the top do not want to do. Because to stop the violence there is only one requirement: to put an end to this predatory and genocidal capitalist system that sees the adelitas, the panchos and the emilianos(the poor at the bottom) as its enemies.
The first point is to understand that we are all in the sights of capital. In the 1970s, if you were a guerrilla fighter, a student, a worker or an organized peasant who fought, they would disappear you. That logic has changed radically. Now the simple fact of existing, of breathing and living being from below makes you a potential victim. That is why more than ever it is necessary to shout: we are all Ayotizinapa. We are all Gaza. We are all Teuchitlán.
The second thing is to follow the example of the seekers and warriors. To organize ourselves. To put our bodies, hands and hearts. To stand shoulder to shoulder to protect and rescue our own, to become collective barricades to stop barbarism, that is, the barbarians. There is no other way, no shortcuts, no laws and no government that will take care of our lives in the midst of exterminations.
I understand that these are very harsh and extreme lessons, which involve overcoming fear, loneliness, insults and, worse, indifference and attempts to profit politically and materially from our pain. But let us be clear that we can expect nothing but our collective efforts, here and now, for as long as we can.
Original text by Raúl Zibechi published in La Jornada on March 21st, 2025.
Translated by Schools for Chiapas.