To the Zapatista Army of National Liberation
To the Sixth Commission of the EZLN
To the National Indigenous Congress
To the Indigenous Council of Government
To Ma. de Jesús Patricio Martínez, Spokesperson of the CNI-CIG
To the Peoples of the World who resist the Capitalist and Patriarchal System
To the Original Peoples, Tribes, Nations, Communities and Neighborhoods that were never conquered
Sisters and Brothers All,
Our struggle is for a decent roof over our heads, and the evil government destroys our home and our history.
The prophecy: the monster with a thousand heads (evil) will come and divide the communities in two, will infiltrate into the heart of it, will deceive, will offer money, and will try to break it from within.
Because only by dividing can it impose death and destruction, our task is to weave ourselves in community as humans, as brothers, as children who belong to the great mother, this planet earth, that is to organize ourselves, because in the face of death we choose to live.
In these two days of work and organization we met 800 people from the states of Michoacán, Querétaro, Veracruz, Estado de México, San Luis Potosí, Colima, Chiapas, Hidalgo, Tlaxcala, Nuevo León, Puebla, Quintana Roo, Baja California, Sinaloa, Jalisco, Oaxaca, Sonora, Guerrero, Yucatán, Chihuahua, Nayarit, Mexico City, as well as from different countries: Germany, Italy, France, Spain, Canada, Colombia, United States, Peru, Switzerland and Guatemala.
This 5th National Assembly for Water and Life was also attended by 200 delegates from the National Indigenous Congress – Indigenous Council of Government, from the Ñhöñhö, Purépecha, Mixe, Mayo, Wixarika, Yoreme, Nahua, Yaqui, Mazateca, Mixteca, Totonaco, Popoluca, Nuu Savi, Maya, Tepehuano, Guarijío, Rarámuri, Nayeri, Tzeltal, Tololabal, Zapoteco, Tohono Odam and Bini Zaa.
We declare:
On February 19, 2019, barely two months after the beginning of the new six-year term, the assassination of our comrade Samir Flores Soberanes would be the sign that the war against the peoples would continue. The assassination of Samir and the attempt to launch the Morelos Integral Project was further proof that the new government would resume the neoliberal agenda of territorial reordering in order to couple our country to the U.S. economy and thus put it at the service of transnational capital. Along with the Morelos Integral Project, the Inter-Oceanic Corridor of the Isthmus of Tehuantepec, the Mayan Train, the Felipe Angeles International Airport and other large-scale projects and megaprojects, the neoliberal nightmare spread throughout the country hand in hand with militarization and organized crime. What in the past the bad governments called Plan Puebla Panama and then Project Mesoamerica, the current bad government renamed it always placing the surname of “Welfare” to try to hide the dispossession, displacement, destruction and death.
In order to advance the capitalist reorganization of the national territory, the new ruling elite reclaimed strategies of cooptation and simulation, such as indigenism, from their ancestors. As if it were mere spectacle, the presidency and its communication advisors made a great staging to hand over a supposed baton to the current overseer, thus failing to tell the truth, and also failing to respect history, memory and the spirit of our peoples. This simulation, it must be pointed out, has been resumed with the person who will occupy the presidential chair in October.
For its part, the National Institute of Indigenous Peoples (INPI) launched a whole media and political operation to make people believe that dispossession and death have the approval of the peoples. In Sonora, for example, with the Yaqui people, an apparent Justice Plan was implemented which in fact favors the plunder of water to supply the mining industries and the imposition of the gas pipeline, while continuing with the murder, torture and disappearance of several members of the Tribe.
In Oaxaca and Veracruz, the Interoceanic Corridor of the Isthmus of Tehuantepec, a project promoted by imperialism for two centuries, is advancing hand in hand with those who claim to be defenders of the country’s sovereignty. But the peoples, collectives and organizations continue to resist not only the megaproject, but also organized crime and the repression that comes with it.
In the Yucatan peninsula, in the Mayan territory, we the people see our subterranean rivers and cenotes polluted, we see our territories destroyed by the so-called Mayan train, a train that is accompanied by organized crime, violence, with an increase in the disappearance of children and young people, with an increase in violence and also with the increase in suicides. At the same time we see the growth of breweries and pig farms, real estate and agribusiness that extract our water that was protected by mother earth for thousands of years and now have exposed it to pollutants. Towns and communities that once accepted the train for the promise of development, now regret the ecological devastation and the arrival of crime.
In Santa María Ostula, in Michoacán, the town that alerted us to the link between mining companies, organized crime and bad government, today we see the intensification of the war, the drones dropping bombs, the armies of criminal corporations seeking to exterminate the people in resistance. And we also see, as in so many other geographies, an complicit State.
In Chiapas, the Zapatista peoples resist the brutality of the war that has been installed throughout the state, a war that displaces entire villages, that increases forced disappearances, that traffics in people, especially women and children. And there, in what is today the epicenter of the war, in Chiapas, the Zapatistas teach us that another world is possible and that, organized with others around the world, we can wrest from the State the freedom of our compas. In the midst of so much pain, the release of Jose Diaz Gomez brought us a flash of joy and smiles. This assembly joins the demand for a halt to the war against the Zapatista peoples and a halt to the war in all of Chiapas and Mexico.
In Mexico City, the Otomi community resists from the Samir Flores Soberanes House and teaches us that fighting for decent housing is also fighting for autonomy. In response, the Otomí community receives threats of eviction and repression. From this assembly we make it clear: all our solidarity with the Otomi community living in Mexico City and stop the criminalization of the community and of our compañero Diego Garcia. We insist that all of their demands be met. We declare ourselves on alert for any aggression they may receive.
And in Guerrero, the families of the 43 missing normalistas from Ayotzinapa tell us that their dignity is not for sale, that they have been mocked and snubbed by this government that decided to protect the military and let the truth and justice continue to wait for another time. This V National Assembly for Water, Life and Territory also says: we are missing 43 compañeros and thousands more.
Returning to the route of Luis Echeverría in 1975 and the creation of the National Council of Indigenous Peoples (CNPI), the INPI of the traitor Adelfo Regino, on February 29, 2024 created an apparatus with exactly the same name, an instrument to simulate dialogue and to try to diminish the independent indigenous movement, that which does not surrender, does not sell out and does not betray. As a demonstration of contempt and simulation, the new apparatus of domination of the peoples took up the same slogan that has been our cry of struggle: “Never again a Mexico without us.” In its path of plunder, and as a complement to the co-optation and demobilization, the INPI elaborated and published in the official journal of the federation, in the framework of the international day of indigenous peoples, August 9, 2024, a National Catalog of Indigenous and Afro-Mexican Peoples and Communities, a “Catalog” that is in reality a war plan: a plan to eliminate our peoples and dispossess us of our territories. Along with the catalogs, the “magic cities,” the simulation of justice and the staging, the INPI itself, always at the service of the foreman, has promoted or legitimized assemblies or consultations that do not comply with the forms and traditions of the peoples. Recently, the same INPI has taken up legal reforms that were discussed more than 25 years ago and that today do not correspond to the demands and problems of our regions.
For the people, water is sacred, because it gives us life, it gives us existence, it gives us food, it gives us medicine. That is why we ask permission from the territory, that is why we do not betray it, we do not sell it. If the land and the water get sick we get sick too, if the water dies, we and all life come to an end. If the water no longer falls, nothing flourishes, nothing lives.
For them, those at the top, it is easy to look at our territory and identify the sources of water, minerals and fertile land, to lay out roads, railroads, gas pipelines, to transport goods and supply industry, it is easy for them to look at the map and decide which population to displace and eliminate.
In this bloody war that is nothing more than a continuation of the one that began more than 500 years ago, we the peoples continue in resistance, we continue walking in this territory called Mexico, in this home called the world, and in this journey we meet with our history and with other peoples and communities.
In this space recovered by our sisters and brothers of the Otomí community living in Mexico City, which has become not only their home, but has opened its doors to all those who struggle from below and to the left, who fight for life. They say that there are no more peoples in the city, they say that they can count us and depict us in a catalog, they say that there is no more resistance, in the north, south, east, center and west of the country, they say that the peoples no longer exist; and we tell them that the original peoples and nations exist because we resist. Those from above want us to forget that we are part of nature, but we are determined to defend our mother earth.
In this 5th Assembly we heard old and new forms of dispossession and destruction, hoarding, drilling of wells for industry, construction of pipelines that, pretending to fulfill the right to water, divert it for industry and the city, granting of unlimited concessions for industries, mining and companies, while the population is limited to a day or even hours of access to water, which is almost always contaminated.
The six-year term is coming to an end, and contrary to what they promised, neither the war nor the dispossession is coming to an end. Worse still, the next government promises continuity: a second floor for those at the top built on top of those at the bottom. The bankers and mega-rich can only be happy. Their wealth and impunity are growing.
The struggles that have flourished in our peoples for centuries and that in recent decades have survived neoliberal modernization and the supposed fourth transformation, today grow in the struggle against war and the plundering of water. The struggles of the countryside and the city dialogue, share diagnoses and find that the exploiters have the same name in both places. The struggles are joined. The struggle for water, life and territories must continue as long as those who govern do so for those at the top, using exploitation and domination, plunder and contempt.
Here our struggles of very different geographies of the national territory, from the countryside, the sea and the city coincide. Struggles that existed before this six-year term and struggles that blossomed during this six-year term. We are here those of us who agree to continue in the struggle for life, from below, against capitalist exploitation under the new faces it is acquiring.
This is our simple word, a review of the six-year term that is ending and an announcement that our struggle continues in the six-year term that is about to begin. The struggle for Water, Life and Territory continues, because to struggle for Life is to struggle against capitalism.
We reject the mega-project of the inter-oceanic corridor of the Isthmus of Tehuantepec, the misnamed Mayan Train, the Felipe Angeles International Airport and the Morelos Integral Project, among others.
- We reject the territorial reordering plans, the justice plans that are the instrument for dispossessing the territory, displacing the peoples in order to repopulate with new inhabitants who allow themselves to be subjected to this system.
- We demand an end to the criminalization of 9 Zapotec indigenous comrades and two Mixe indigenous comrades, with the motive of forcibly displacing them by accusing them of fabricating crimes.
- We demand an end to the criminalization against the land and freedom camp of Mogoñe Viejo in the ITSMO of Tehuantepec.
- We condemn the manipulation of the National Registry of Disappeared Persons to hide the more than 116,000 disappeared persons, and we also condemn the cynicism of the bad government that even summoned disappeared persons to be voting representatives.
- We condemn the 40 executions of members of the Indigenous and Popular Council of Guerrero – Emiliano Zapata.
- We demand the presentation alive of the 43 normalistas of Ayotzinapa and the thousands of disappeared, as well as the investigation and punishment of Omar García Harfuch for his possible links to this crime.
- We demand the presentation alive of Sergio Rivera Hernandez of the Sierra Negra de Puebla for fighting against the construction of a hydroelectric dam.
- We demand an end to the violence against the communities of the southern highlands of Guerrero.
- We demand the immediate and unconditional release of María Cruz Paz of the Supreme Indigenous Council of Michoacán and the 5 prisoners of San Juan Cancúc.
- We demand the closure of proceedings, persecution and displacement against the Mazatec community of Eloxochitlán de Flores Magón, Oaxaca.
- We demand the definitive closure of the San Pedro Cholula, Puebla landfill and an end to the persecution of our Nahua comrades in the region.
- We condemn the actions of CONAGUA against our communities by managing and guaranteeing the dispossession and contamination of our water.
- We demand punishment for those responsible for the murder of Samir Flores Soberanes, who fought against the Morelos Integral Project. His struggle, as well as his, are still alive in our resistance.
- We demand a halt to the destruction of the water reserves of subway rivers and cenotes in the Yucatan peninsula destroyed by the ill-named Mayan train that accompanies the increase of missing children and young people linked to drug trafficking cartels and barracks.
- We demand a halt to the destruction of the jungle in Calakmul in the Mayan territory of the Yucatan peninsula, with fires in the jungle legitimizing the change of land use to build hotels, casinos, for tourism, real estate speculation and agribusiness monocultures.
- We demand justice for the Yaqui comrades disappeared and assassinated by the narco-state.
- We demand the withdrawal of the state commission from the water wells of Santiago Mexquititlán and an end to the harassment of the community.
- We demand an end to the persecution and fabrication of crimes against the investigation of our compañera Hortensia Telésforo of San Gregorio Atlapulco, criminalized for participating in the recovery of the town’s community library.
- We demand the attraction of the investigation folder by the supreme court of justice of the nation for the crime of torture against the Mexican state in Querétaro.
- We demand the freedom of José Alberto Cortez Sayes, Esmeralda of the Purépecha region in Michoacán.
Actions
- We make a call to accompany the action called in the Isthmus from October 10 to 12 in the framework of the national call of the National Indigenous Congress, against megaprojects and gas pipelines.
- We call for the accompaniment of the fathers and mothers of the 43 normalistas of Ayotzinapa on September 26, 2024.
- We call for the dissemination the consequences of militarization in our territories and throughout the country.
- We call for the permanent accompaniment of the Community of Santa Maria Ostula Michoacan, in the demand for respect for the communal lands that it has in the town of Xayacalan, and the upcoming actions called as is the case of September 4, in the supreme court of justice for recognition by the judiciary through an amparo lawsuit filed.
- We make a call to accompany and follow up on the Second Regional Assembly of Cholulteca and Volcanic Peoples to be held on September 1, 2024 in the town of Coronango, Puebla.
- Participate in the calls of the National Indigenous Congress towards October 12, 2024.
- We call to join the 51st anniversary of the UPVA October 28 on October 28, 2024.
- Mobilization for justice for Avelino Soberanes, August 21
- National March called by the UPVA October 28, September 13
- We reaffirm that this building will continue to be the House of Indigenous Peoples and Communities Samir Flores Soberanes, guarded by the Otomi community living in the CDMX and together with them we occupy it fighting from below and to the left, retaking the principles of commanding by obeying.
- We announce that the Sixth National Assembly for Water, Life and Territory will be held in 2025. We will soon inform you of the place and date.
TENER TECHO ES UN DERECHO
AGUA, TIERRA Y LIBERTAD
NO ES SEQUÍA, ES SAQUEO
HASTA QUE LA DIGNIDAD SE HAGA COSTUMBRE
ZAPATA VIVE, LA LUCHA SIGUE
Samir Flores Soberanes House, Mexico City August 18, 2024#tenertechoesunderecho
#asambleanacionalporelaguaylavida
#CNI
#EZLN
#estatierraesdeostula
#NoEsSequíaEsSaqueo (It’sNotDroughtIt’sPillage)
Declaration published by the Congreso Nacional Indígena on August 18th, 2024.
English translation by Schools for Chiapas.