To the Mexican people:
To the peoples of the world:
To the Sixth in Mexico and abroad:
To the media:
We denounce that on February 15 at approximately 1:20hrs, the repressive agents of the bad government including the National Guard, the state police of Puebla and the municipal police of Juan C. Bonilla, invaded and dismantled the space of resistance and organization of the Altepelmecalli People’s House, an autonomous political and cultural space that until March 22, 2021 was a factory owned by Bonafont. Bonafont is a transnational corporation that has for years stolen and hyper-exploited the aquifers in the Cholulteca region.
We fervently condemn the heightened repression by the capitalist government, which calls itself the “4T,”[i] of the resistance and struggle for life waged by our brothers from the United Peoples of the Cholulteca and Volcanos Region [Pueblos Unidos de la Región Cholulteca y de los Volcanes], who converted that landscape of death into a space of encounter and exchange despite determined efforts to impose the Integral Project for Morelos in the states of Morelos, Puebla and Tlaxcala[ii]. That megaproject would put a natural gas pipeline through the territories of the peoples of the volcano, where old and new forms of organization are sprouting seeds of hope and rebellion.
We are on high alert given the possible persecution of our brothers and sisters from the Altepelmecalli People’s House. We hold the Federal Government responsible for using its armed National Guard thugs to intensify the war of money against life. We hold the government responsible for protecting the Bonafont company, which displaces, steals, privatizes and immorally profits off our people’s waters, creating harm in the form of sinkholes and the running dry of wells, springs, rivers and gullies. This is what has happened to the Metlapanapa river, which the People’s Front of the Cholulteca and Volcano Region [Frente de Pueblos de la Región Cholulteca y los Volcanes] has defended against the river’s exploitation and pollution by industry.
We denounce this repressive offensive on the part of Mexico’s neoliberal bad government against our compañeros and compañeras who are raising the flag of organization from below in their geographies and convoking us to struggle for life. We condemn the following:
- The assassination of our compañero, Francisco Vázquez, president of the ASURCO Monitoring Counsel[iii], who raised his voice against the theft of water from the ejidos of the Ayala region as part of the operations of the thermoelectric plant in Huexca, Morelos.
- The criminalization of the Otomí people, and of our compañero Diego García by the head of that shadowy institution of the bad government called INPI [National Institute for Indigenous Peoples], which has served to extend the indigenist and clientelist control of our peoples, and whose offices used to be located in what is today the Samir Flores Soberanes People’s House.[iv]
- The persecution of the Indigenous Supreme Council of Michoacán for their recent mobilizations against disrespect, racism, and dispossession and for the removal of the appalling monument known as Los Constructores (The Builders) in Morelia, Michoacán[v].
- The indifference and criminal complicity of the National Guard in the face of violence in Guerrero where drug cartels attack the communities of the Indigenous and Popular Council of Guerrero- Emiliano Zapata who oppose the extractive megaprojects and denounce the governments’ complicity with narco-paramilitary groups that kill and disappear our brothers[vi].
- The militarization of the Isthmus of Tehuantepec in order to impose the Salina Cruz-Coatzacoalcos Interoceanic Corridor megaproject[vii] as well as the illegal occupation of our communities’ lands for this project like what’s happening in the Binnizá community in Puente Madera[viii] belonging to the commons of San Blas Atempa, Oaxaca.
- The utilization of the National Guard and armed state and municipal groups to stifle the demands of normalistas[ix] students in Ayotzinapa, Tiripetío and Mactumatzá for justice[x] and for recognition of their terms for the escuelas normales.
We hold the Mexican federal government responsible for the escalation of repression against our peoples, and we demand that the National Guard and police forces cease actions against those who oppose the exploitation and destruction of nature and the plundering of the territories and community heritage of originary peoples in order to impose megaprojects of death promoted by the Mexican State.
We call on the peoples, nations, and indigenous tribes of Mexico, as well as on allied organizations and collectives, to be on alert for this wave of neoliberal repression announced by the capitalist government of this country in an agreement published in the Official Journal of the Federation on November 22, 2021.[xi] This agreement also declares the projects and federal governmental works matters of public interest and national security which they can then use as a pretext to exercise armed force against peoples who oppose this unprecedented dispossession and destruction of Mexican territory.
We call on the people, groups, collectives, organizations, and movements in the territory of SLUMIL K´AJXEMK´OP (also known as “Europe”) to mobilize and come out against the transnational corporation Bonafont-Danone, headquartered in France, and the agencies of the current Mexican federal government in Europe.
For life!
Solidarity and support for the originary peoples of the National Indigenous Congress!
Sincerely,
February 16, 2022
For the Full Reconstitution of our Peoples
Never Again a Mexico Without Us
National Indigenous Congress—Indigenous Governing Council
Zapatista Army for National Liberation
Sixth Commission.
[i]The López Obrador campaign has deemed its governing project the “Fourth Transformation” (4T), supposedly on par with historic events such as Mexican Independence (1810), a period of reform in the mid-19th century, and the Mexican Revolution (1910).
[ii]“The Integral Project for Morelos, for example, consists of two thermoelectric plants and well as gas and water pipelines that will dispossess the Nahua indigenous peoples who inhabit the Popocatépetl Volcano region in the states of Morelos, Puebla, and Tlaxcala of their land, water, security, health, identity, and life on the land. The State, along with Elecnor, Enagas, Abengoa, Bonatti, CFE, Nissan, Burlington, Saint Gobain, Continental, Bridgestone and many other companies have imposed this project via the use of state, federal, and military violence, instilling terror in the inhabitants through torture, threats, imprisonment, judicial persecution, the closing of community radios, and now the murder of our brother Samir Flores Soberanes.” https://enlacezapatista.ezln.org.mx/2019/03/12/samir-lives-the-struggle-continues-declaration-from-the-third-national-assembly-of-the-national-indigenous-congress-the-indigenous-governing-council-and-the-ezln/
[iii]Francisco Vázquez was assassinated on February 11, 2022 in Ayala. ASURCO is the Asociación de Usuarios del Río Cuautla [Cuautla River Users’ Association].
[iv]The Otomí community in Mexico City has occupied the INPI offices in Coyoacán since October 12, 2020, renaming it the Samir Flores Soberanes People’s House at the anniversary of the occupation in October 2021. https://enlacezapatista.ezln.org.mx/2021/10/06/cdmx-invitacion-a-celebrar-con-resistencia-y-rebeldia-un-ano-de-la-toma-del-inpi/
[v]On February 14, 2022 the Indigenous Supreme Council of Michoacán tore down the statue known as “The Builders” [Los Constructores] that depicted the Spanish priest Fray Antonio de San Miguel giving orders to a group of enslaved indigenous people, symbolizing domination and genocide of the indigenous by the Spanish.
[vi] Most recently, on January 30, 2022, the Indigenous and Popular Council of Guerrero-Emiliano Zapata was attacked by the narco-paramilitary organization called Las Ardillas (The Squirrels). The attack lasted for two hours during which the governmental authorities never responded or intervened.
[vii]The Salina Cruz-Coatzacoalcos Interoceanic Corridor is one of the largest proposed megaprojects that would connect the Pacific Ocean to the Atlantic Ocean by a rail line between two ports in the states of Oaxaca and Veracruz.
[viii] On February 4, 2022, two people were caught deforesting and fencing off areas of Pitaya communal lands without the community’s permission.
[ix] Normalista refers to students that participate in the Escuelas Normales which are teaching colleges that principally train rural and indigenous young people to be teachers in their own communities.
[x] In 2014, 43 students from the Escuela Normal in Ayotzinapa in Guerrero were abducted and disappeared.
[xi]The announcement is posted here in Spanish: https://dof.gob.mx/nota_detalle.php?codigo=5635985&fecha=22/11/2021