Declaration in Defense of Water, Land and Life, 4th National Assembly for Water and Life

All Siblings

First. For the peoples, communities, organizations, networks, collectives and individuals who convene this National Assembly for Water and Life, we declare that Water is a living entity, it is sacred, it travels and nourishes every corner of our Mother Earth and our bodies, for it we fight with life itself. We assume the defense of the water bodies named: Cuenca del Río Atoyac, Ríos Prieto, Metlapanapa, Tlalnepantla, San Javier, Ajajalpa, Santa María, Magdalena, Cuautla, Chapala, De los Remedios, Tula, Grande, Concagua, Chico and Choapa; Ameyal de San Lucas Nextetelco, Lamitzita and Actipan springs; Lake Patzcuaro and Chapala; Lagunas of Santiago Mexquititlán, Acuitlapulco and Apizaquito, Dam of the Ahogado and the pintas, Aquifer of the Yucatan Peninsula and the underground water of Tetlama, the Glacier of Culcar. In contrast, CONAGUA continues to hand over water to transnational companies and private initiative, through “concessions” that are nothing more than a covert way of water privatization. As a result, in Mexico there are 157 over exploited aquifers and we name some of the biggest water grabbers: Danone extracts 15 billion liters of water a year, Cocacola 55 billion, Pepsico has concessions 32 billion liters of water, Danone 15, 400 million and Nestlé 9,700 million. not counting real estate companies, agribusiness, paper companies, automotive companies, mining companies, etc.

Segundo. Vivimos cada vez más, una sanguinaria, guerra contra la vida y por el acaparamiento del agua que se ha recrudecido e institucionalizado con la entrada de la 4ª transformación, es decir, el problema no es nuevo; “…radica en regimen de conseciones que se originó con  la Ley de Aguas Nacionales en 1992, reformandose el Art 27 Constitucional, para impulsar, promover y facilitar la privatización de la tierrras comunales y ejidadles, pero también la privatizacion del agua”, “Las concesiones se convierten en títulos de propiedad para comercializarlos, es decir, se convierte en una mercancia al igual que la tierra”.

Fourth. The Narco State does not only seek to dismantle and deprive us of consciousness, water, land, territory, coal, lithium, food and other goods in order to control the totality of our daily activities, producing economies of violence, as in the case of the human trafficking in Tlaxcala, which kidnaps, sells and sexually exploits thousands of women in 40 of the 60 municipalities of the state, under the complicity of the government and the protection of the police and army. The same goes for clandestine logging and timber trafficking in the Matlalcuéyetl and the extraction of water from Lake Pátzcuaro, Michoacán, where organized crime is protected by the government.

Fifth. Through its institutions, political parties, political operators, the armed forces, the health system, in collusion with corporations, organized crime, the pimping system and the church, the State generates multiple strategies to exert violence against our peoples and against all forms of life. They disappear, imprison us, persecute us, murder us, sell us and exploit us. They use us and supplant the demands of women to simulate a feminism used as a political campaign of women who, subservient to the government, repress all of us and women. . They try to disappear our languages, cultures, our rights as peoples and break the social fabric by pressing individualism, through the racist education system and institutions like SEPI and INPI try to tell us, under their capitalist criteria, whether we are peoples or not.

Sixth. One of the areas that has suffered the most attacks are our forests. They represent life itself for the peoples, they are the ones who bring the cloud and the springs, they represent a home, a mother who cares, they represent spirituality, the movement of water, identity, the history of the original peoples, they allow the community to remain united. If they take away a tree, it doesn‘t rain anymore, if they take away a leaf, it doesn‘t rain anymore, and with the felling of trees, everything is extinguished, that is, life is extinguished.

The forest represents the beginning, but also the end of life, it represents the need to become aware and know that there is this predatory capitalist system, colluding with the government, they have privatized and represent dispossession and we fight against them. They also represent spaces of dispute from which the people who defend them have been criminalized. Spaces where clandestine logging is carried out and that the bad authorities search, touristize, hoard and sell our water.

Seventh. The Territorial Reordering Plans (with their many names and ways of implementation, which not only seek to confuse us but deceive us), are analyzed as a State Strategy for territorial control, and always accompanied by the systematic violence that the state and capital develop and execute in the territories to dispossess us, depopulate, redistribute and repopulate our communities with large companies, corporations, multinationals and institutions. They are a factory of arrest warrants, denunciations, imprisonment, criminalization and murder against defenders of life and territory. These territorial reorganization plans violate the free self-determination of peoples and communities, seek to destroy and undermine the autonomy of our peoples and communities, in addition, they attack life and kill the land. That is why, in the face of the Capitalist War, we call to build “The Common”, understanding that to achieve it, collective labor must be the fertile ground to reach it and with it, face together these processes of dispossession, that is, the storm. Therefore, we call to strengthen the autonomy, the community base, the experiences, to recognize our mistakes and successes that have led us to these 4 sessions of the National Assemblies for Water and for Life, not to reproduce the logic or the hegemonic concepts that the system develops to destroy life on the planet.

Eighth. Among the international laws and conventions that in many cases are used against the exercise of self-determination are the consultations that, within the framework of ILO Convention 169, are used to legitimize the imposition of dispossession. At the national level, the National Waters Act is used to strengthen the power of the government to control and administer water and not to respect the right of communities to manage the vital liquid. We understand that Autonomy is the only path for community emancipation and water liberation. Autonomy is based on ancestral community principles expressed in community logics, such as music, communication, work, food, justice, customs and customs, festivals (coexistence), organization, educational processes and self-management. That is why we assume that for peoples, Autonomy is life, the State is death.

Ninth. As women, we relate to water at all times, it is present in our cultural and spiritual practices, we understand it as a living being, we perform rituals to find it, we heal with it and we help other sisters with open wounds because their rivers no longer flow. We women assume multiple roles: we are women, we are indigenous, we are black, we are life-giving, caretakers of the home, of the land, of the children, and of nature, we are peasants and defenders of water and life, our role is resistance and dignity. We have always been at the forefront of the struggles, never alone, but always at the forefront, we put our bodies for our autonomy, for water, land and life, along the way we have learned to defend our territories but also to heal ourselves, to recognize and question the patriarchal and macho practices that we reproduce. As women, we pledge to take anti-patriarchal education into our own hands, continue to defend the water and strengthen our tools and strategies of struggle, to identify our enemies of the state and capital, not to individualize and reject institutions. Likewise, the capitalist war, with its mechanisms of fragmentation, dispossession, destruction of our ways of living in order to enrich them, has led to weakening or losing ways of doing things together. But taking into account the Zapatista call to rebuild “El Común” from non-property, as women we are, we meet to dialogue to learn how we are working, to strengthen and recover our ways of life.

Tenth. In different geographies within Mexico and other countries, in Europe, the United States and Canada, we organize to collectively build Dignified Housing (which is not just building houses, but building community). We build community schools, we carry out ecotechnics (such as dry baths, rainwater harvesting, home filters, among others). We collectively take care of our food and health, changing eating habits, cultivating local foods in our spaces, consuming and caring for medicinal plants of the forest, forming health promoters. Collective urban gardens have been created in communal spaces for self-consumption and promotion of the solidarity economy.

We defend our territory with our bodies and actions against the looting of mining, logging, extraction and contamination of water, preventing the entry of the machines of the plunderers and recovering spaces of power and capital, turning them into places where “The Common” (culture, education, food, health, work) is built. We have examples, such as The House of Peoples and Community; Altepelmecalli, in the take of Bonafont, the community center Amate in Juan C. Bonilla, and the community library Tlalmachtiloyan in San Gregorio Atlapulco.

Eleventh. For all that has been exposed and collecting the rages and pains of all of us, the original peoples and indigenous communities belonging to the National Indigenous Congress-Indigenous Council of Government, as well as the organizations, networks, collectivities and individuals that participated in the Fourth National Assembly for Water and Life. . .

WE DENOUNCE AND DEMAND

Total repudiation of the government‘s contempt and indifference with which Andrés Manuel López Oberador and his Fourth Transformation treats the crimes against humanity committed by the Mexican Army and State. It wasn’t enough for him not to keep his campaign promise, when he told the mothers and fathers of Ayotzinapa, “Let’s find out what really happened, let’s know where the young people are and punish those responsible. ” He added, “My commitment is not to fail the mothers, the fathers of the young people of Ayotzinapa, the people of Mexico. We will not betray the trust of our people. ” On the eve of the 10th anniversary of the forced disappearance of the 43 teachers of Ayotzinapa, we demand Truth and Justice and the presentation of a gift of life. I demand that you receive as a matter of urgency the mothers and fathers of Ayotzinapa, their lawyers and the organizations that accompany them so that they can account for the breach of their word. Likewise, the more than 800 archives kept by SEDENA are opened and we demand the return of the GIEI and we repudiate the murder of our Yanqui brother kothan Gómez Peralta, extrajudicially executed by a police officer protected by the state to escape.

The upcoming electoral process does not represent us, it is a war of the political class and the economic power to decide who remains in the government to manage this sales agency, called Mexico. For them, we are nothing more than figures and votes that guarantee the continuity of the foreman in charge. Therefore, we call on us to always keep a critical eye and think critically in this electoral context. We know that it is the same people who are vying for power, but for the people, any color and/or any party represents the same thing: militarization, violence, contempt, repression, persecution, femicide, criminalization, imprisonment, disappearance and murder. That’s why we say: vote or no vote, get organized and declare that “Our prisoners, our missing people, our dreams, our nightmares and our dead people, and they don’t fit in your ballot boxes. ”

We demand an end to the genocide that the criminal State of Israel is directing against the Palestinian people, the goal is to completely disappear them, to erase their history and culture. Thousands of lives of children, women and men have already been executed and attacks continue despite numerous mobilizations throughout the world. We repudiate the indifference, oblivion and extermination imposed by the capitalist system as a destiny for all the people of Palestine.

We demand justice for Samir Flores Soberanes, murdered by narco-state paramilitaries in 2019 for defending water and land threatened and destroyed by the Morelos Integral Project.

We repudiate the territorial planning programmes in Puebla, Mexico City and Tlaxcala, Querétaro and the rest of the country, which are accompanied by militarization in order to repress anyone who opposes them.

We demand an end to the accusations and threats of repression against the Cholulteca peoples who are fighting for the definitive closure of the San Pedro Cholula dump.

We demand the immediate and unconditional release of José Díaz (Zapatista support base) and the five political prisoners of San José Cancuc, Chiapas: Manuel Santis, Agustín Pérez Domínguez, Juan Velasco, Martín Pérez and Agustín Pérez Velasco, Tzeltal indigenous people unjustly sentenced to 25 years.

We demand the immediate and unconditional release of Saúl Rosales Meléndez. He has been detained for 1 year and 8 months and sentenced to 20 years in prison, demonstrating the criminalization of the self-determination and autonomy of peoples and their traditional representatives.

We repudiate government initiatives aimed at confusing our peoples, such as the Water Controllers’ Offices and the Indigenous Governorships imposed by the Mexican state, taking the INPI and CONAGUA as the executors for the dispossession of our mother land, land, water and life.

We repudiate the acts of repression and violent intimidation, including shooting at members of the Otomi community living in Mexico City, on October 16, 2023.

We repudiate the increase in repression and the installation of “security” cameras for military espionage and the presence of the National Guard in Atlapulco, Xochimilco, Santiago Mexquitlán, Amealco, Querétaro, Puebla, Tlaxcala, Mexico City and the rest of the country.

We denounce that the Felipe Ángeles Airport is a military megaproject affecting the 12 towns of Tecámac. The project includes the drilling of 41 water wells in a designated national security zone. In addition, 22 wells are being drilled in the federal zone of Zumpango lagoon, 8 wells inside the Felipe Ángeles International Airport and 9 more are being drilled between Zumpango and Tequixquiac.

We repudiate the intervention of the United States in our territories through the sale of arms, drugs and human trafficking.

We repudiate SEDENA‘s recruitment of our young people and students to recruit them to drug trafficking, as well as the infiltration of military personnel into universities to invite them to do their social service in military barracks, including social and humanistic training courses. We repudiate the educational system that normalizes militarization and disappears community organization.

We denounce that in Santiago Mexquititlán there have been 3 execution attempts, 3 enforced disappearances, and at least 7 arbitrary arrests from 2019 to date. We also denounce the harassment carried out by the CEA and other government agencies to force us to pay for our water.

We demand a halt to the felling of trees in Tlaxcala, using the debarking beetle as a pretext to leave entire hills without forest, as well as cutting trees without reforestation, giving rise to the installation of real estate.
We repudiate the INPI‘s actions to map indigenous communities and promote indigenous representatives who support megaprojects linked to militarization.
We repudiate the killing of members of the organization UPVA on 28 October. We demand an end to threats against Simitrio and his community representatives.
We repudiate the recent inauguration of the military industry by AMLO, which produces weapons, uniforms and builds exclusive schools for the children of the military in Puebla, where they have also increased the bases of the Navy.
We repudiate the attempt to expropriate 83 hectares of land to impose the industrial corridor from the borders of Tlaxcala to Amozoc, Puebla.
We repudiate the use of social programs as sowing life, which sponsor and strengthen the purchase of arms from paramilitaries, as is the case with ORCAO in the Zapatista autonomous municipalities, which operate under the auspices and complicity of the municipal, state and federal governments.
We repudiate the acquisition of war items, such as armoured vehicles and armaments purchased from Israel, used for the state crime in Ayotzinapa.We denounce the illegal extraction of water from Lake Pátzcuaro. Drug traffickers control the basin to sell the water to avocado growers, who also charge the land rights.
We denounce the car companies that extract water from Citlaltepec in Puebla and Tlaxcala. They seek to expropriate 88 hectares for exploitation by Coca-Cola and the car companies.
We denounce the felling of trees by forecasters, who act in collusion with municipal presidents.
We denounce the heavy metal contamination of the Atoyac River, Tlaxcala, which has caused deaths and diseases such as cancer, kidney failure and congenital deformities.
We denounce the strong repression that occurred on June 13, 2023 in the community of Escolásticas, Querétaro, as well as the appropriation of the spring by the state.
In Querétaro, we denounce the presence of the strawberry agro-industry that extracts and overexploits the aquifers of the Garabato community and the periphery of Mexquititlán.
We denounce the serious pollution of the Santiago River by agro-industry. The water is stripped from the farmers and returned to them dirty. He has also been denied access to water by means of dykes near Lake Chapala.
In Oaxaca, we repudiate the murder of the Atoyac River.
We denounce and warn of the trap of the agreements signed with the state that intends to touristize, gentrify, and continue to plunder the springs of Maconí. In addition, there is a risk of water looting from the Batán dam and the aqueduct.
We repudiate the Huexca thermoelectric plant in Morelos, which takes water from three states: Morelos, Tlaxcala and Puebla.
We denounce the intubation, pollution and grabbing of the rivers of the Anahuac Basin.
We denounce the devastation of the Petlapa River in Eloxochitlán de Flores Magón by a company that extracts stone material. We demand the immediate and unconditional release of political prisoners Alfredo Bolaños Pacheco, Fernando Gavito, Marcelino Miramón and Francisco Durán.
We repudiate the repression, clash groups and run-down of BUAP cyclists as part of mobilizations seeking justice.
We denounce the threats to the territory and the glacier of the Culcar in the Andes of Chile by open-pit mining and monoculture exportation of avocados and vineyards.

We denounce the channelling of the drainage of towns and villages in Apizaco, Tlaxcala. It has a severe impact on the Remedios and Tula rivers, as well as on the Mezquital Valley.
We repudiate the discourse of “clean energy” such as solar panels and wind farms, which loot the natural assets of communities to install hotels and other businesses that loot and pollute water resources.
We reject the measures of the agro-industry that try to control the storm with the application of anti-rain planes, directly affecting small farmers and life itself.

We repudiate the Water Law promoted by Deputy Marcela González de Morena in Tlaxcala and the law privatizing water and sewerage services in Querétaro.
We reject the growing gentrification of indigenous towns and villages in response to the demand for water, because the resource is being plundered and exploited by mafias. We also denounce the expansion of road projects and concessions on public roads that pass over our wetlands with an eagerness to privatize.
We denounce the tequila, textile, and green industries that plunder the water and territory of Tlaxcala, Guanajuato, Querétaro, Michoacán and Jalisco.
We denounce the predatory tourism in Mexico City, Querétaro, and its expansion in the original villages with the program of magical neighborhoods.
In Tetlama, Cuentepec (Morelos) and the Sierra Norte de Puebla, the mining companies Frisco, Gorrión, Lupe, Esperanza Silver, Alamos Gold and Zacatecas Silver threaten land, water and life.
We denounce government agencies such as SEMARNAT, CONAGUA, PROFEPA, CONAMP, CONABIO, CEAS, CEA, CONAFORT, CORENADR, SEDEMA, and SACMEX, as well as their laws and programs, including sowing life, which only sow arms for paramilitary groups.
We denounce the illegal extraction and sale of water pipes in San Pablo del Monte Tlaxcala, in collusion with authorities at all levels of government.
We denounce the avocado-producing companies, Biopapel, Kimberly Clark and Grupo Altozano, who pollute Michoacán and Querétaro.
We denounce the brewery of the surrealist castle of Edward James in San Luis Potosí, which extracts water from the Huasteca.
We repudiate the unbridled urban growth and gentrification that the Real Estate Cartel operates with complete impunity in Mexico City, Querétaro and Tlaxcala, coupled with targeted real estate speculation directed in many cases by corrupt politicians. We repudiate the real estate company SIMATE, which in Querétaro seeks to appropriate the Cimatario hill. A FRISA in the State of Mexico and Valquirico in Tlaxcala, which is building a real estate and tourist complex.
We denounce Coca Cola and Providencia, the Cuellar, Cisneros, Anaya, Ortiz, and Gonzalez-Zarur of Tlaxcala. To the families Torres Landa, Palacios, Kuri, Alcocer, Guadalupe Murguía, Rosendo Anaya and René Mejía, looters of water in Querétaro.
We denounce the Gorrión mining company (Almaden minerals) in Ixtacamaxtitlan, which pollutes the aquifers.
We denounce the use of anti-hail planes in the Libres Oriental, Puebla and Querétaro basin.
We denounce clandestine logging in Tlaxcala, Mexico City, Querétaro and Puebla.
We repudiate settlement invasions promoted by all political parties, which promise basic services in exchange for votes and political patronage.
We denounce the commercial centers that are growing throughout the country, linked to the dispossession of water and land grabbing, with supposed endorsement and environmental protection.
We repudiate the Reviving the Santiago River project, which was uprooted by Governor Enrique Alfaro in Jalisco.
We denounce the universities that use the knowledge of the communities and give a voice to the politicians and companies they plunder. We repudiate the speeches made by academia and the government that criminalize and make invisible those who defend and inhabit the territory, and that facilitate the loss of ancestral knowledge and knowledge.
We denounce the imposition on Totonacan villages of planting GM maize throughout the country and the use of explosives to kill rivers.
We denounce the pollution of sewage in the town of San Gregorio Atlapulco and demand the repair of the damage from a micro-basin view and the realization of the right to sanitation of the wastewater, as well as the proper functioning of the treatment plants.Because of all the above and because of the omission of the Mexican State, to guarantee human rights, individual guarantees and our constitutional rights; but in contrast, this system of death, imposes on the people of Mexico a War of Extermination. Since the 4th. The National Assembly for Water and Life calls for strengthening autonomy, self-determination, collectivity, watch over our rights, coordinate the care and defense of the territory, our mother earth, water and therefore Life. We leave a question: How are we going to organize ourselves to destroy this capitalist system that imposes a regime of concessions?How are we going to organize ourselves so that water and land cease to be a commodity and become a right of all, that is, a common good? For all this, we invite you to join and participate in the following:

COORDINATED ACTIONS

Collective memory, document, revive knowledge, knowledge Strengthen the work of formation with children and young people during the assemblies from the standpoint of autonomous schools.

Carry out workshops for the construction of autonomy: 1) workshop on tools for access to public information; 2) Cybersecurity and Self-Defense Workshop; and 3) Observation Workshop on Human Rights Violations in Communities.

Carry out dissemination campaigns with stickers, flyers, radio and guided visits to communities that exercise autonomy.

Consider the legal aspects and legal advisors you trust to strengthen organizational processes.

Join the calls and mobilizations to support the struggles of seeking mothers, the fathers and mothers of the 43 teachers of Ayotzinapa. As well as continuing to demonstrate with direct actions against the war directed against the Zapatista communities and being dependent on their initiatives

Accompany and walk in the countryside and the city, the struggles and resistances sustained by the indigenous peoples and communities that are members of the National Indigenous Congress CNI-CIG. Keep an eye on their agenda and attend to the appeals of the National Indigenous Congress.

Remember the struggle and demand justice for the disappeared comrades Antonio Días and Ricardo Lagunes.

Carry out campaigns to NOT consume products from Coca-Cola, Bonafont-Danone, as well as all soft drink, bottling and brewing companies; denounce and boycott companies that support the genocide in Palestine and are related to the disappearance of human rights defendersxs: Merkot: Israeli company that works with CONAGUA; Ternium: mining company related to the disappearance of defenders of the territory Antonio Díaz and Ricardo Lagunes; Cemex: providing building materials for the wall, illegal settlements and checkpoints on Palestinian territory

– Carry out dry baths in our communities to avoid polluting our rivers.

Media campaign against land-use plans, as they respond to a State policy and planning instruments for controlling the territory regardless of the ancestral settlements of our indigenous peoples and communities. This campaign should be strengthened by means of training workshops and social fabric with three themes: 1) legal; (2) cartography and mapping; and (3) technical analysis of territorial mapping plans, programmes and projects; 4) restoring the memory of peoples. The documentary work of this work must be exclusive to the National Assembly for Water and Life, that is, to the peoples.

Work on a common database, to locate the industries and companies that are facilitating dispossession and repression.

From the Art and Culture commission proposes to perform a song or more songs with the theme of the defense of water and life, is open the invitation for artists to join.

National and international mobilization dislocated, within the framework of the 105th anniversary of the assassination of General Emiliano Zapata. 10 April and in each community, region and/or federative entity according to their calendars and geographies. The motto: Water, Land and Freedom

Media campaign against militarization, for the right to water, for the release of our political prisoners. From April 26 to September 26 in all possible spaces, markets, schools, and especially, to strengthen the struggle and resistance of the mothers and fathers of Ayotzinapa, who are close to the 10th anniversary of the forced disappearance of the 43 students from Ayotzinapa. 10 YEARS WITHOUT TRUTH AND WITHOUT JUSTICE, WE ALL KNOW IT WAS THE ARMY AND THE FOURTH TRANSFORMATION DENIES IT.

Day for the liberation of Saúl Rosales from next July 14 and finally. . .

The Fifth National Assembly for Water and Life, mandated by the Closing Plenary of the 4th National Assembly for Water and Life, will be held at the House of Indigenous Peoples and Communities “Samir Flores Soberanes”, with the Otomí Indigenous Community residing in Mexico City, on August 17 and 18, 2024.

SINCERELY.