TO THE CCRI CG EZLN
To the Zapatista Army of National Liberation, EZLN
To the Sixth Commission of the EZLN
To the National Indigenous Congress, CNI
To the Indigenous Council of Government, CIG
To María de Jesús Patricio Martínez, Spokesperson of the CNI-CIG
To the Native Peoples, Tribes, Nations, Communities and Neighborhoods that were never conquered
To the National and International Sexta
To the Networks of Resistance and Rebellion
To the Rebellious, Dignified and Rebellious Europe
To those who signed the Declaration for Life
To the free, independent, alternative media or whatever they are called…
Brothers and sisters
With the arrival of the “Fourth Transformation”, its government policy increased militarization against indigenous peoples and communities, especially in Zapatista territory. Paramilitary groups and organized crime operate with impunity as guarantors of the imposition not only of megaprojects of death such as the Mayan Train, the Interoceanic Corridor and the Morelos Integral Project; they are at the service of the State and big capital to carry out the dispossession of the territory, Mother Earth and life.
In the midst of their “ELECTORAL FARCE”, we see that, in recent weeks, nothing matters other than their votes, their polls, their debates, their numbers and their electoral preferences; but, above all, their strategy to attack and disqualify their enemies, as a campaign strategy.
This June 2nd, a “democracy” is not in dispute, much less a leftist one. What is really in dispute is an economic and political power that seeks to sustain itself with militarization, with impunity, and with the accumulation of wealth in the hands of many at the service of large transnational corporations. Their plan is to sustain this “Fourth Transformation” with a CAPITALIST WAR against indigenous peoples and communities.
Given the impunity and violence imposed in our territories, from the National Assembly for Water and Life…
WE DENOUNCE
First: In recent years, attacks on the Zapatista autonomous communities have been increasing. In the Moisés y Gandhi region, official municipality of Ocosingo, the Ocosingo Regional Coffee Growers Organization (ORCAO) has attacked the EZLN support bases (BAEZLN), which has caused forced displacement, torture, forced disappearance and attempted murder.
So far this year, 28 BAEZLN have been forcibly displaced, inhabitants of the Local Autonomous Government, La Resistencia community, which had already suffered forced displacement in 2022 due to an attack. In January of this year, the Autonomous Primary School, 15 houses, nearby crops, theft of a store and other community assets were destroyed. In the town of Emiliano Zapata, a pasture of the support bases was burned. In February, members (ORCAO) fired more than 100 shots towards the Zapatista autonomous community of Moisés y Gandhi, more than 100 shots with a high-caliber firearms. We do not forget that in May 2023, Jorge López Sántiz BAEZLN was the victim of a armed attack that put his life at serious risk.
Money from social programs has served to arm and empower criminal groups such as ORCAO, increasing violence towards the Zapatista autonomous communities. In Chiapas, as in the rest of the country, the Sowing Envy program has exacerbated violence due to land disputes, as ejidos and communities confront each other in order to access the individualized economic support that the program offers.
The simulation of reforestation is the pretext to dispossess people of lands for collective use through the destruction of social organization and their ways of life, that is, it seeks to break resistance, facilitating the entry of death projects in favor of the big capital, with the help of the repressive forces of the state, police, National Guard and Army.
The attacks of criminal groups are allowed and concealed by the Mexican state in its three levels of government. The comprehensive war of attrition against Zapatista autonomy, started decades ago by the different political parties, has been intensified during this government of the Fourth Simulation.
Second: Since 2020, the Otomi Community residing in CDMX took over the facilities of the misnamed National Institute of Indigenous Peoples, demanding fair housing. Since the beginning of the takeover, harassment by the State has been permanent; power outages, a violent eviction attempt in October 2023 and the recent singling out and criminalization of thecompañeroDiego García Bautista who accompanies the worthy struggle of the Otomi community, as well as the presence of judicial officers in the surroundings of the compañero’s home and the same Casa de los Pueblos shows the contempt of the traitor Adelfo Regino Montes, director of the INPI and the government of the Fourth Transformation.
The Otomi Community residing in CDMX have been constant and firm in supporting all just struggles, and are an example of organization, dignity and resistance. For this reason, the bad government directs its strategies and attacks against its compañeros.
Third: In Puebla, the towns of the Cholulteca region are holding a sit-in to prevent the entry of garbage into the San Pedro Cholula landfill, a criminal business with which businessmen and officials enriched themselves. Since last March 21st, not one more kilo of garbage has entered the garbage dump and in response to the resistance of the Cholulteca people, the government sent an operation with more than 500 police and shock groups to force the entry of waste collection trucks, garbage, state and municipal police fired at the inhabitants who resisted at the barricades to prevent the entry of said trucks, and after many hours of repression directed towards the sit-in and barricades, the police and National Guard units as well as the garbage trucks were removed.
The governor of Puebla, Sergio Salomón Céspedes and the secretary of the interior Javier Aquino Limón continue to defend the interests of the company ProFaj Hidro Limpieza, which operated the garbage dump, attacking the peoples by opening investigation files and arrest warrants against residents of the region. However, the struggle of the Cholulteca peoples continues and by asserting their self-determination and autonomy, they will not turn back.
In this six-year term of office, State violence intensified against the Cholulteca people: Miguel López Vega, the first political prisoner of the 4th Tansformation, and Alejandro Torres Chocolatl, persecuted, both defenders of the Metlapanapa River. We do not forget the operation with more than 500 elements of the National Guard, State and Municipal Police to evict the peoples of Altepelmecalli and hand over the facilities to the criminal company Bonafont Danone, nor do we forget the repression of the State and Municipal Police in the town of San Lucas Nextetelco against those who opposed the construction of a police complex.
Fourth: Almost ten years after the forced disappearance of the 43 student teachers from Ayotzinapa, only contempt continues to be received from the government. After numerous investigations in which the participation of the army is pointed out as a fundamental part of the disappearance, the fathers and mothers have been denied the delivery of SEDENA documents that are key to the discovery of the student teachers. The federal executive has designated lawyer Vidulfo Rosales as an “enemy of the system” – a bloody persecution of colleagues who for almost ten years have not stopped fighting to find the 43 students alive.
Fifth: More than 116 thousand missing people is the figure with which this government ends. In most cases without progress in the search, it is the searching mothers and relatives who have done the cruel work of finding them, in many cases they have found only remains and with pressure on the institutions to carry out the recognition processes, they have been able to give their families a little peace. But thousands and thousands of families still do not know anything about those who were taken from them. Mothers and family members are at constant risk of attacks by criminal groups, the police, and the army encouraged by the disdain with which the federal executive refers to them. Andrés Manuel López Obrador ends his six-year term stained with the blood of seven searching mothers who were murdered for searching for their children.
Sixth: In 2023, Mexico detained 782,176 migrants, an historical record. None of these people have committed a crime. Migrating and seeking asylum is a human and international right. The rape, kidnapping, extortion and murder of migrants is very common. Six out of ten women are raped on their way through Mexico. According to official data, every month, about 41 migrants in Mexico are victims of robberies, kidnappings, extortion, blackmail, trafficking and illegal detention. However, the real number is much higher; they do not report because of fear, lack of rights, and because many times it is the INM itself that is extorting and handing them over to organized crime.
We demand justice and comprehensive reparation for the damage to the victims of the fire at the Ciudad Juárez immigration center, which occurred in March 2023. The INM left 40 migrants to die – it was a state crime. Immigration detention centers are actually prisons for innocent people and should be eliminated.
Seventh: Freedom of expression and investigation is punishable by death in this country; in the last six years, 56 journalists and community communicators were murdered for making the truth public. Mexico is now one of the most dangerous countries to practice journalism. The federal executive legitimizes violence against journalists, who show a critical stance towards their government and its criminal links.
Eighth: The systematic pattern of criminalization is a real factory of culprits, even more so when it comes to indigenous peoples who defend land and territory. Racism and contempt is the reason for preventing the exercise of political rights, autonomy and self-determination. The factory of culprits is characterized by the impunity with which the instances of exercising justice operate:
• Collusion between the State Prosecutor’s Office and the State Judiciary
• Complicit participation of the Indigenous Justice Prosecutor’s Office used to control the peoples.
• False accusations, torture, excessive use of informal preventive detention and false witnesses
• Arrests with the participation of members of the Army, the National Guard (GN); an inactive complicit Judiciary.
• Arbitrary arrests that seek to punish as an example the defense of human rights, of the land and the territory, and mainly, the criminalization of defenders of Mother Earth and territory, threaten the entire community, it is a mechanism of repression, with the intention to annul those who defend the right to life, from their own identity, their ways of organizing and from their autonomies as indigenous peoples.
Examples abound:
JOSÉ DIAZ
José Díaz Gómez, an indigenous Cho’l and campesino, is a hostage of the Government of the State of Chiapas and a victim of the factory of culprits, in retaliation for his Zapatista political adherence. He has been unjustly imprisoned since November 25th, 2022, falsely accused of robbery executed with violence.
José was arbitrarily detained, with excessive use of force, he was tortured, disappeared and held incommunicado by the specialized police assigned to the Jungle District Prosecutor’s Office. At the prosecutor’s office they forced him to give his fingerprints and sign several blank papers. He was not assisted by a translator of his native language, nor by a lawyer. Judges and prosecutors extend the process and informal preventive detention (prison without sentence).
José’s health and therefore his life is at risk due to prison overcrowding and poor medical care. He shares a cell with 18 other people in a space of approximately 3 x 3 meters; He has difficulty sleeping – he only manages to fall asleep two or three hours a day – which accounts for the existence of inhuman conditions of confinement, more clearly stated, he survives in conditions of TORTURE.
THE SAN JUAN CANCUC PRISONERS.
The Tseltal Mayan defenders of San Juan Cancuc: Manuel Sántiz Cruz, Agustín Pérez Domínguez, Juan Velasco Aguilar, Martín Pérez Domínguez and Agustín Pérez Velasco, have been unjustly imprisoned in San Cristóbal de las Casas, Chiapas, for two years for having resisted, through the community organization, the militarization of their territory and the installation of megaprojects, such as the hydroelectric dam and the San Cristóbal-Palenque super highway. The Indigenous Justice Prosecutor’s Office fabricated a crime against them and they were all sentenced to 25 years in prison for aggravated homicide, despite it being evident in the trials that the evidence was inconsistent as it was a fabricated crime.
SAÚL ROSALES MELÉNDEZ.
In July 2022, the community president of San Pedro Tlalcuapan was arrested on the false charge of homicide. Saúl Rosales had participated in the defense of the Matlalcuéyetl forest and that was the true reason for the punishment that the State now imposes on him. On March 15th, he was sentenced to 20 years in prison.
THE ELOXOCHITLÁN DE FLORES MAGÓN PRISONERS.
After nine years of struggle and resistance, the people of dignity of Eloxochitlán de Flores Magón have wrested from the State the freedoms of four fellow prisoners falsely accused of homicide by the bad government of Oaxaca and the Zepeda family despite the multiple protections won. Three comapñeros remain imprisoned for whom we continue to demand immediate freedom: Alfredo Bolaños, Fernando Gavito and Francisco Durán.
KARLA AND MAGDA.
In April 2022, Karla and Magda were arrested in the middle of a mega-operation to evict the Cuba Squat carried out at the CNDH facilities. This squat was carried out in solidarity with the mothers of murdered women whom said institution despised and ignored. Accused of crimes they did not commit (aggravated robbery, damage to property and crimes against health), Karla and Magda remained locked up in the Santa Marta Acatitla prison for ten months. Pressure from family members and solidarity groups achieved their freedom in February 2023, however their investigation file was reopened due to new accusations, which puts them at risk of returning to prison.
Ninth: There is also stigmatization of organizations that defend human rights, such as the Fray Bartolomé de Las Casas Human Rights Center (Frayba) and the Miguel Agustín Pro Juárez Human Rights Center (ProDH Center), repeatedly disqualified by Andrés Manuel López Obrador in the mornings by describing them as conservatives and exaggerating the violence reported by these organizations.
These statements put defenders at risk, since it cannot be denied that Mexico continues to be one of the most dangerous countries for the defense of human rights and journalism. Between January 2019 and February 2024, at least 103 murders of land defenders have been recorded, more than 40 journalists, in addition, 38 defenders or journalists were disappeared, 25 regained their freedom and 13 are still missing.
Today the government of Andrés Manuel López Obrador represses and discredits anyone who does not think like him, as the bad governments of the different political parties did in the past.
Faced with the attacks of the government and capital against those of us who defend life, freedom and dignity, we respond with autonomy and self-determination. From this space of meeting and organization, we make the Zapatista initiative our own, so that regardless of calendar and/or geography, we join the process of construction of “THE COMMON AND NON-OWNERSHIP.” We endorse the defense of the Decree that prohibits the existence of garbage dumps, the extraction of water for industrial purposes and its contamination in the Cholulteca region; the Decree that prohibits mining in Morelos; the struggle and resistance of the House of Indigenous Peoples and Communities “Samir Flores Soberanes”; the seizure of the Barrio Cuarto well in Santiago Mexquititlán; the recovery of the library of San Gregorio Atlapulco, today Tlamachtiloyan; the defense of the Santiago River in Jalisco; the demand for remediation of landfills in Santa María Coapan, Puebla and los Laureles, Jalisco; the national unification of searching families; the installation of the University Camp for Palestine at the UNAM; the decision of the people taken to action for the defense of life and territory.
We make our demands for the freedom of all political prisoners; we demand the immediate presentation alive of our 43 student teachers from Ayotzinapa, forcibly disappeared by the Army and the more than 116 thousand disappeared in Mexico, justice for Verónica Guerrero, Justice for Samir Flores Soberanes and all the murdered defenders of the territory, journalists, women and searching mothers.
SINCERELY
For the Comprehensive Reconstitution of our Peoples
Water, Land and Freedom Zapata Lives, the Struggle Continues
Samir Lives the Struggle Continues
Stop the War against the Zapatista Peoples
Until Dignity and Justice Become Customary
Because they took them alive, we want them alive
Long live the Zapatista Army of National Liberation, EZLN
Long live the National Indigenous Congress, CNI-CIG
Freedom for Saúl Rosales Meléndez, from San Pedro Tlalcuapan, Tlaxcala
Freedom for José Díaz, Zapatista Support Base
Freedom for Alfredo Bolaños, Fernando Gavito, Francisco Durán, Marcelino Miramón from Eloxochitlán de Flores Magón, Oaxaca
Freedom for David Hernández from Puente Madera, Oaxaca
A Stateless Us
No to the Mayan Train
No to the Morelos Comprehensive Project
No to the Interoceanic Corridor
NATIONAL ASSEMBLY FOR WATER AND LIFE
Original CNI statement from its website, May 18th, 2024.
Translated by Schools for Chiapas