by DGR News Service | Aug 30, 2019 | Defensive Violence, Indigenous Autonomy, Obstruction & Occupation, Reclamation & Expropriation
Editors note: this article contains material excerpted from an August 2019 Communique from the Indigenous Revolutionary Clandestine Committee—General Command of the Zapatista Army for National Liberation, Mexico. Image by Nick Rahaim, CC BY-NC-SA 2.0
August 17, 2019
We bring you our word. The same word as yesterday, today, and tomorrow. It is the word of resistance and rebellion.
In October of 2016, almost three years ago, during the 20th anniversary of the National Indigenous Congress [CNI], the sister organizations of the National Indigenous Congress and the EZLN made a commitment to go on the offensive in our defense of our Territory and Mother Earth. Persecuted by the bad government, by caciques, by foreign corporations, by criminals, and by the law, and as we accumulated insults, derision, and dead, we the originary peoples (the guardians of the earth), decided to go on the offensive and circulate the words and actions of resistance and rebellion.
…
The appearance of this new [presidential] administration has not fooled us. We know that the real boss has no other homeland than money, and that this same boss rules in the immense majority of the world’s plantations that they call “countries.” We also know that rebellion, dignity, and rage are absolutely prohibited. Despite that, all over the world, in its most forgotten and despised corners, there are human beings who resist being devoured by this machine and who refuse to give in, give up, or sell out. These people have many colors, they carry many flags, they come dressed in many languages, and their resistance and rebellion is enormous.
The big boss and his overseers build walls, borders, and sieges to try to contain these people who they claim are bad examples. But they never achieve their goal because dignity, courage, rage, and rebellion can’t be held back or incarcerated. Even if they hide behind their walls, borders, sieges, armies, police forces, laws, and executive orders, sooner or later that rebellion will come asking for its due. On that day there will be neither forgetting nor forgiveness.
We know that our freedom will only come about through our own work as originary peoples. With the appointment of the new overseer to Mexico, the same persecution and death has continued. Within only a few months [of his administration], at least a dozen of our compañeros of the CNI-CIG who were in the struggle were murdered. Among the dead was a brother much admired by our Zapatista communities—Samir Flores Soberanes.
Samir was murdered after having been singled out by Mexico’s overseer who, despite Samir’s death, marches on with the neoliberal megaprojects that will disappear entire peoples, destroy nature, and convert the blood of our originary peoples into profits for powerful capitalists.
Because of this, in honor of our Brothers and Sisters who have died, been jailed, or are persecuted or disappeared, we decided to name the Zapatista campaign that ends today and that we are now making public: “SAMIR FLORES LIVES.” After years of silent work and despite the siege against our communities and the campaign of lies and defamation, despite military patrols, despite the presence of Mexico’s National Guard, despite the counterinsurgency campaigns that were dressed up as social programs, and despite having been despised and forgotten, we have grown and we have made ourselves stronger.
….
Today we present ourselves to you with new Caracoles and more autonomous Zapatista municipalities in new zones of the Mexican southeast. We will now also have Centers of Autonomous Resistance and Zapatista Rebellion. In the majority of cases, these centers will also house a caracol, a Good Government Council, and Autonomous Zapatista Municipalities in Rebellion (MAREZ). Though it took time, the five original Caracoles, as their name would imply, have reproduced themselves after 15 years of political and organizational work. Our Autonomous Municipalities and Good Government Councils also planted new seedlings and watched them grow. Now there will be 12 Caracoles, each with its Good Government Council.
This exponential growth that today allows us to move beyond the government’s attempt to encircle us is due to two things:
First and foremost, our growth is due to the political/organizational work and example set by the women, men, children and elders of the Zapatista bases of support. It is especially due to the women and youth of the EZLN. Compañeras of all ages mobilized so that they could speak with other sisters in other organizations and sisters that had no organization. Without ever abandoning their own tastes and desires, the Zapatista youth learned from the sciences and arts and through these activities transmitted their rebellion to more and more youth. The majority of these youths, especially the young women, have now taken up posts in our organization and they steep this work in their creativity, ingenuity, and intelligence. Today we can say without any shame and with much pride that the Zapatista women are out in front of us like the Pujuy bird to show us the way and keep us from losing our way, on our flanks to keep us on track, and behind us so that we will not fall behind.
The second thing that made this growth possible are government policies that destroy communities and nature, particularly those policies of the current administration which refers to itself as the “Fourth Transformation.” Communities that have traditionally supported the political parties have been hurt by the contempt, racism, and voracity of the current administration, and they have moved into either hidden or open rebellion. Those above who thought that their counter-insurgent strategy of giving out handouts would serve to divide Zapatista communities, buy off non-Zapatistas, and generate confrontations and demoralization actually provided us with the final arguments that we needed in order to convince those brothers and sisters that it is far more useful to dedicate our efforts to defending our land and nature.
The government thought, and still thinks, that what people need are cash handouts. Now, the Zapatista communities and many non-Zapatista communities, as well as our brothers and sisters in the CNI in the southeast and all over the country, have responded and are showing the government that they are wrong. We understand that the current overseer was brought up in the PRI and within its “indigenist” vision in which originary people’s deepest desire is to sell their dignity and cease to be what they are. In that vision, indigenous peoples are simply museum artifacts or colorful artisanal items through which the powerful attempt to adorn the grayness of their own hearts. That vision also explains why this administration is so set on making sure that its walls (across the Isthmus) and trains (the ones they maliciously call “Mayan”) include the ruins of a civilization as their landscape, with the added bonus that this way they can also please the tourists.
But we originary peoples are alive, rebellious, and in resistance. Meanwhile, the national overseer is trying to dress up one of his underlings, a lawyer who at one time was indigenous, so that he, as has happened throughout human history, can divide, persecute and manipulate those who were once his own people. This lawyer, who is now the head of the INPI [National Institute of Indigenous Peoples], must scrub his conscience every morning with pumice to carefully eliminate any traces of dignity. He hopes in this way to whiten his skin and take on the purpose and outlook of his real boss. His overseer congratulates him and congratulates himself because there is there nothing better for controlling a rebellious people than using one of them who has turned on his cause, who has converted himself into a puppet of the oppressor for money.
…
Here we are; we are Zapatistas. So that you could see us, we covered our face. So that we could have a name, we left our names behind. We risk our present so that we might have a future. So that we might live, we die. We are Zapatistas, the majority of us have indigenous Mayan roots, and we do not give up, we do not give in, and we will not sell out.
We are rebellion and resistance. We are only one of the many sledgehammers that will tear down their walls, one of the many winds that will sweep this earth, and one of the many seeds that will give birth to other worlds.
We are the Zapatista Army of National Liberation.
From the Mountains of Southeastern Mexico.
On Behalf of the Men, Women, Children and Elders of the Zapatistas Bases of Support
For the Clandestine Indigenous Revolutionary Committee—General Command of the Zapatista Army of National Liberation
Subcomandante Insurgente Moisés
Mexico, August of 2019
by DGR News Service | Jun 29, 2019 | Obstruction & Occupation, Property & Material Destruction, Repression at Home, Worker Exploitation
By Black Ouioui, a French DGR sympathizer / Image: Norbu Gyachung, CC BY 4.0
The yellow vests movement has been struggling for six month now. Half a year. This is a record-breaking movement in France by its length. Commentators no longer refer to the May 1968 movement, but go back to several democratic protests that occurred during the 19th century. This movement is interesting for the ecological resistance, first because it gives an insight of what future social instability or chaos might look, like in phase 3 of the decisive ecological warfare (DEW), due to the grow of inequalities and ecological disruptions. It is also very interesting in a tactical point of view, because that kind of future mass movement could constitute strong levers (as only few people are part of the radical movement) to help the resistance, in an opportunistic way, to harry and destabilize civilization, with the unintentional help from people who are little concerned by ecological issues. The simplistic and anthropocentric yellow vests saying “end of the world, end of the month, same struggle” designed in order to reply to the unfair pseudo-ecological taxes, could, not for the reason they primarily think, have unexpected ecological benefits by disrupting the techno-industrial system. Then, the question to us is how can we support and strengthen these movements whenever they spontaneously emerge in order to achieve these benefits.
The yellow vests movement started in October 2017 on social networks with a great fed up against the president Emmanuel Macron’s policies. His policies are mainly in favor of the riches and the big companies, doing them one fiscal gifts after another, while the country middle class is becoming poorer and poorer. The movement was specifically triggered by the increase of the fuel tax, the hardening of mandatory vehicle safety inspections (with the unsaid goal, behind security and ecological arguments, to stimulate the growth of the cars sales) and the reduction of the speed limit from 90 to 80 km/h. The increase of this tax was part of a pack of so-called ecological measures of the “extreme centrist” and liberal government of Emmanuel Macron. The minister of ecology Nicolas Hulot, known for being anything but a radical ecologist, resigned a few weeks earlier in August 2018, denouncing his own powerlessness in this government and the impossibility for him to implement the ecological measures he aimed at. This man, quite popular in France, was only a store front for the government. Actually, the current trend in liberal politics is to make poor classes bear the weight of the pseudo-ecological transition, via guilt, individual change and taxes rather than global systemic changes, industry restriction and fair laws, that would, for instance, tax the airplanes fuel, which is « duty free » for the airlines, at the same level than people pay for everyday fuel.
In October-November 2018, people started to put a yellow vest on their car dashboard (a few years ago, it became mandatory to keep one in every car for security reasons), in order to show their disagreement with Macron. This was a huge success, with a majority of cars on the road displaying it. Then, it took the form, since the 17th November 2018, of huge protests every Saturday, not only in Paris but also all across the country. Other actions are also conducted during the week, including the permanent occupation of hundreds of traffic circles. It managed to cause millions of losses to businesses like supermarkets, multinationals, and, among others, luxury shops on the Champs Elysées.
The movement was first watched suspiciously by a part of the left-wing for several reasons, but mainly because they believed the mainstream media’s speech. First, it looked anti-ecological and formed of “rednecks”, many said. Cars, as everyone acknowledge now, are part of the ecological problem, and the movement started as a popular protest against the fuel tax (coined pejoratively by some as a « Jaquerie », a term that refer in France to Middle Age protests against taxes). Also, as a popular mass movement, very diverse political tendencies were represented. Nationalism and sovereignty, as cross-political tendencies (from left- and right-wing both), are quite common in the movement. The national flag, seldom used by the left (except by Jean-Luc Mélenchon who tried to bring it back into fashion to prevent from the extreme-right monopolizing it), is often present in the occupied places or during the protests. This made many think that the movement was led by extreme right-wing people, but later this turned out to be wrong. Along the same lines, the presence of racists and anti-Semitics have been over-emphasized since the beginning by the media in order to discredit the movement.
Actually, mostly, those taking part to the demonstrations were new to politics and militancy, and never formerly campaigned. Like vomiting, it was natural to them, everywhere in the country, to reject as a whole the current political system, all parties included, that was cooking them on a low heat. It was visceral. This led them to banish all party banners or distinctions. Many of these people are anarchists without even knowing it. All actions, blockading, occupations and protests are self-organized, principle deeply rooted into the movement.
Consistently, no official authorization requests, with some official leader that would be responsible for the protest, were sent to the administration, which is decreed by law in France. This is a natural consequence of the fact that the movement was spontaneously born on social networks, rejects the government rules of the game and is almost totally horizontal. People are very mistrustful to any representative, who could negotiate and betray his fellows by compromising with the authorities. Some people in the movement have more influence than other, but either they refuse to become representative of the others, because they don’t feel legitimate, either when they try to, they are immediately rejected by the majority of the others.
The movement also came quickly, due to police clampdown, to a high level of violence, with bloody police confrontations and devastated urban areas. The violence levels culminated the Saturday 6th of December 2018, when the people came in front of the Elysée, with a helicopter ready to extract Macron if by chance they succeeded to enter the palace (at this time a lot of people were burning or guillotining life-size Macron dolls across the country), and more recently the Saturday 23th March and the May Day 2019 with new hardcore clashes in Paris. A funny Saturday was, at the beginning of January, when people used a pallet truck to smash open the front door of the ministry of the government spokesperson Benjamin Grivaux.
Since the beginning, the only political answers to the movement are denial and frightening post-truth answers, which challenge the understanding of anyone with a minimum of intellectual honesty. The police clampdown worsens every week. Now, the yellow vests not only risk to loose a hand or an eye because of riot guns and grenades (with thousands of injured people, some of which victims of war wounds say the hospital staffs), but also risk suffocation. By their unheard amount, concentration and composition, the chemical weapons the police now use can no longer by called “tear gazes”. The gazes that are being used since the 13th of April cause suffocation, burns, non-stop vomiting, consciousness loss. Many kids or elders passing by are also hit.
All these things are quite new to French leftists, and far from the usual, almost traditional, protests the militants are used to, like trade-union-like ones or Occupy-Indignados-like ones. It is uneasy to protest side-by-side with persons that are sometimes politically or socially far from us. For these different reasons, unsurprisingly, the trade unions are very reluctant and, until very recently, seldom called to protest with the yellow vests or, at least, to a supporting strike.
Moreover, except the black bloc, this level of violence is completely unusual to most pacifist leftists and syndicalists, whose order service usually get along with police forces to supervise the protests (and, as I saw in December 2018, sometime block the tail of the procession to let free rein to the police for repressing the yellow vests that are at the front!). The trade-unions called to protest for May Day, but Philippe Martinez, the president of the CGT, had to sneak out because he was scared by the violence of the police clampdown!
Since the beginning of the movement, I finally observe the idea that pacific protests are ineffective gradually spreading in circles that I knew to be pacifists, with a higher violence level tolerance than before. The yellow vest sum it up in the saying: “no breakers, no 20h” (20h refers to the evening news in France). This shift is perceptible in a growing part of the population, despite the unanimous condemnation of violence in the media by the whole Paris intelligentsia (which is very annoyed by the Saturday chaos in its streets), main-stream personalities, journalists, and politics.
Happily, the few extreme right-wing people who took part to the first demonstrations either gradually stopped to mobilize or gradually tempered their opinions by an osmosis phenomenon that, fortunately, occurred in the company of people from other political sides. Very unlikely, according to the caricature the media tried to picture them, within a few weeks, the movement resulted in people to unite in favor of social justice, whatever their political background was, and for the introduction of direct democracy measures in the constitution like the unanimously claimed Citizens’ Initiative Referendum (RIC). Their first 42 claims of the beginning of December were enlightening. Weeks passing, as the goals of the movement got more clearly defined, left-wing militant started to join the popular movement. Interestingly, even if most of their claims are social justice ones, they still often refuse to be politically labeled as left-wing, in order to exclude nobody. The no banner principle is still strictly applied (except for the yellow ones, and the anarchist ones maybe).
The time many leftists and ecologists took to enter in motion (for those that did it) is at the same time wise, and an error. Of course, waiting and observing, when we face an uncertain situation, is wise. But this is also a strategic error, because timing is strategic. And I am the first to recognize my error. Opportunities do not necessarily occur twice. The repression arsenal of the power grows weekly bigger and bigger. Drones, new authoritarian laws, semi-lethal weapons, more powerful chemical weapons (forbidden by the Geneva convention, and used against our own population, what a joke!), urban tanks, chemical marking of the demonstrators with synthetic DNA in the water canon, automatic face recognition with AI, psychological techniques for terror, censorship and targeted arrests in collaboration with Facebook…
This is also an error because we let the others do the toughest job, in the darkest of the winter. And finally because when you miss the departure, it is difficult to catch-up the train. It would be a shame that the French left miss the revolution they have been expecting for ages, isn’t it?
I noticed something of interest for us, that was little commented (but fact-checked) among the huge feed of daily news. Among all the arbitrary arrests, the government targeted and sued ordinary people (who sometime got months of jail) who, in Facebook comments, naively encouraged or called to block refineries and (for a retired man) to blow them up if the government didn’t give in the people’s claims. This means the government is very afraid of that kind of blockage, which can paralyze the country within a few day. It can be quite fast, as we have only a few refineries in France.
About this, the government did a master stroke in Novembre 2018 just after the first protest. They postpone their new tax on heavy trucks to avoid the truck drivers to join the yellow vests. Indeed, the drivers know how much the country depends on them, and know how to block easily all the country’s large retailers and fuel supplies. Their protests are usually very efficient and listened to by the power.
Radical ecologist could strengthen movements like the yellow vests and use them as levers. If they do not directly serve the ecological movement, on one hand they serve social justice, with is always desirable, and on the other hand, they also destabilize the techno-industrial system by blocking supermarkets, breaking multinationals front stores, cutting roads and borders, or blocking oil refineries. In December 2018, the French power was surprised and destabilized by the breadth and the strength of this movement, and this is the kind of weakness we are looking for to generalize in the future.
While gentle ecologists pacifically parade in useless climate walks, at the same time, yellow vests are having violent assaults with the police in other areas of the city, breaking bones, loosing eyes, hands, and for some of them, dying. As radicalists, given the choice, we should know were the battle takes place and not to be late.
This is of course a brief and incomplete account of the yellow vest movement, whose forms are very diverse and shape-shifting.
by Deep Green Resistance News Service | Jul 18, 2018 | Obstruction & Occupation
Free Secwepemc Political Prisoner Kanahus Manuel
by Secwepemc Women’s Warrior Society
Saturday July 14, 2018 – The Secwepemc Women’s Warrior Society is outraged at the arrest of Kanahus Manuel. This morning Kanahus Manuel was arrested by the RCMP, an occupying force that has been criminalizing Indigenous peoples on our own lands and forcing us onto reservations since contact.
Last week the Tiny House Warriors reclaimed an ancestral village to block the planned route of the Trans Mountain Expansion pipeline. We are currently building solarized Tiny Houses on our land to block Kinder Morgan. By doing this, we are providing housing to Secwepemc families, re-establishing our village sites, and asserting our Secwepemc responsibility to our lands and waters.
As Secwepemc women, we will resist construction on the North Thompson line of the Trans Mountain Expansion pipeline, which is expected to begin by the fall. We are re-establishing a permanent village on our land that the pipeline is trespassing without our consent. We have never provided and will never provide our collective free, prior and informed consent – the minimal international standard – to the Kinder Morgan Trans Mountain Pipeline Project or the Man Camps. We are taking a stand against the destructive, genocidal, and assimilative forces that have been visited upon us by colonial Canadian governments since first contact.
We have faced intimidation by the white supremacist RCMP and Park ranger goons of the Canadian state who want us removed from our own lands. We are on Secwepemc lands that neither the federal government nor provincial government has any jurisdiction on. While there is much talk by the federal government about respecting Indigenous rights and reconciliation, the Trans Mountain buy-out expansion and arrest of Secwepemc woman warrior Kanahus Manuel is a declaration of war.
We are Secwepemc women. We are still here. We are unafraid. We carry the waters of our lands within us. We are guided by the warrior spirit of our ancestors. We will defend our lands and lives by any means necessary!
– STATEMENT BY SECWEPEMC WOMEN’S WARRIOR SOCIETY
Saturday July 14, 2018
Unsurrendered Secwepemc territories
For media inquiries: 250-852-2532
by DGR News Service | Jun 28, 2018 | Biodiversity & Habitat Destruction, Climate Change, Colonialism & Conquest, Indigenous Autonomy, Obstruction & Occupation
For Immediate Release
June 28, 2018
Activist risks arrest in front of Minnesota Public Utilities Commission Office during its final hearings to permit the Line 3 tar sands pipeline
Contact: Ethan Nuss, (218) 380-9047, stopline3mpls@gmail.com
ST PAUL, MN – A water protector ascended a 25-foot steel tripod structure erected in the street in front of the Public Utility Commission (PUC) office to demonstrate ongoing resistance against Enbridge’s proposed Line 3 tar sands pipeline. Today marks one of the final public hearings held by the PUC on its decision to grant a certificate of need to the controversial pipeline.
All five of the directly affected Objibwe Tribal Nations in Minnesota oppose the dangerous project because of the threat it poses to their fresh water, culturally significant wild rice lakes, and tribal sovereignty. Line 3 will accelerate climate change by bringing carbon-intensive tar sands bitumen from Alberta to refineries in the Midwest. Climate change disproportionately impacts Indigenous and frontline communities across the world. This deadly infrastructure project is another example of the genocidal legacy of colonialism faced by Native peoples and the ecological destruction caused by corporate greed. Water protectors, climate justice advocates, landowners, and faith leaders stand united alongside Native communities against this dangerous pipeline.
At around 7AM CST water protectors blockaded traffic by erecting 25-foot steel poles in a tripod structure on 7th Pl. in front of the PUC offices in downtown Saint Paul, MN. Ben, a 30-year-old Minneapolis resident, ascended the structure and unfurled a banner that reads, “Expect Resistance,” a clear message to Enbridge and the PUC that fierce opposition to this pipeline will continue to grow at every stage.
“If the PUC doesn’t stop Line 3, then we will,” said Ben, suspended from the 25-foot structure in the street in front the PUC. “Today’s action isn’t about me but is a demonstration of the growing resistance to Line 3. ” Ben continued, “We’re taking action in solidarity with Native people, who continue to fight for their existence on occupied land and with people all over the world who resist the desecration of nature by extractive industries.”
For photos and live updates go to: twitter.com/ResistLine3
(Update: the tripod was occupied for three years before being vacated)
by Deep Green Resistance News Service | Jun 9, 2018 | Obstruction & Occupation
by Agustin del Castillo, Milenio Jalisco / Intercontinental Cry
Wixaritari communities of San Sebastián Teponahuaxtlán (Wuaut + a), have detained first and second level government officials from Jalisco State in the town of Mesa del Tirador, in protest of the lack of answers to their demands—in particular, the issue of land restitution in Huajimic, in the neighboring state of Nayarit. The state government officially denies that the officials are being ‘forcibly’ detained.
Sources from the state executive and from the community, confirmed to MILENIO JALISCO that there are several secretaries who are being held after attending a meeting the community called with them to discuss and resolve various problems relating to education, health, road infrastructure and poverty. Officials have been warned by the communal leaders that as a means of pressuring the officials to resolve these issues—but above all, due to the federal government’s neglect of the issue of land restitution—they will remain in Mesa del Tirador.
It was confirmed that the Secretary of Infrastructure and Public Works, Netzahualcóyotl Ornelas, is being detained at the meeting; as well as the Secretary of Education, Francisco Ayón López, and the Secretary of Development and Social Integration, Daviel Trujillo Cuevas; Lizana García, director of DIF Jalisco, and Mario Vladimir Avilés, director of agrarian affairs in the state; Mario Ramos Velasco, general director of the Secretariat of Rural Development (Seder); the municipal presidents of Bolaños, Juan Carlos Rodríguez Mayorga, and of Mezquitic, Misael de Haro.
Other retained officials include Andrés Palma Flores, delegate of the Ministry of the Interior; Rubén Ortega Lozano, director of the Human Rights Supervision Area, André Marx Miranda, director of CODE Jalisco; Ernesto Marroquín Álvarez, director of Support to Municipalities; Rogelio Azuara, delegate of the CDI Jalisco; Armando Pimentel Palomera, general director of Regions and Hospitals of the Ministry of Health.
The demand is that the governor of the state, Aristóteles Sandoval Díaz, present himself to guarantee full compliance with all the lagged agreements.
“Mr. Vladimir stayed with us to advance the negotiations and bring us a proposal for a solution to the agrarian conflict, but he only informed us verbally, that he had met in Mexico and that the Ministry of Finance and Public Credit money to the Department of Agrarian, Territorial and Urban Development, to negotiate in ten days with the possessors, but just by word of mouth, did not deliver the promised agreement, did not give a check, and the assembly disagreed,” explained the spokesperson of the comuneros, Sofia Aukwe Mijarez.
She clarified that there has been no threat or risk to the physical integrity of the officials, who remain working at work tables and that if the governor does not arrive at nightfall, “we have accommodation, food and blankets so that they are well protected.”
“DETENTION” DISMISSED BY STATE OFFICIALS
Interviewed by MILENIO JALISCO, the Secretary General of the State Government, Roberto López Lara, said that the officials are not being held against their will, and that they remain on the site because the work tables have not been concluded. The secretary acknowledges that there has been tension on some issues, but dismissed that state officials are forcibly detained.
López Lara explained that the points in which members of the Wixaritari community are dissatisfied are of federal order, especially due to the land dispute that exists between the indigenous people of the sierra, and community members of Nayarit, for which the state government acts as manager between the parties to expedite a solution to the conflict.
by Deep Green Resistance News Service | May 12, 2018 | Obstruction & Occupation
by Agustin del Castillo / Intercontinental Cry
Este artículo está disponible en español aquí
MESA DEL TIRADOR, Wixárika territories, Mexico — At midnight on May 10, 2018, members of the Wixárika (Huichol) community of Wuaut+a (San Sebastián Teponahuaxtlán), in the Western Sierra Madre of Mexico, took the dramatic step of blocking all entrances to their community, given the lack of response from the Mexican State for their demand to peacefully receive the lands that they have won from the ranchers of Huajimic in agrarian lawsuits.
Meeting in assembly in the Wixárika town of Mesa del Tirador, a few kilometers from the mestizo village of Puente de Camotlán, the communal and traditional authorities, together with the Regional Wixárika Council, declared in an official communiqué: “Today’s deadline for President C. Enrique Peña Nieto to appear before the community of Waut+a, was indicated in the Historical Statement made in Amolera on April 29 of the present year.
“In the control and surveillance post located in Mesa del Tirador, there is a group of 400 Wixaritari guarding the access in order to prevent passage by political operatives or others who have to do with the electoral processes; likewise we are seizing all electoral propaganda material.”
“Get out! Parties without politicians… Politicians without the People.” Mobilization in Mesa del Tirador expresses the frustration of Wixaritari with the political system. More than 7,000 Wixaritari from the community of Wuaut+a will not vote unless the situation regarding the return of ancestral lands from Huajimic is resolved. (Photo courtesy Wixárika Regional Council)
Three more roadblocks have been set up; one in Cerro de la Puerta, one in Las Cañadas (Banderitas or El Miguelón), and a third in El Pacheco. “The demand of the Wixárika community is a solution to the agrarian and border disputes between the states of Nayarit and Jalisco. The community demands that the President of the Republic present himself at the point where the state limits are located, at the limits of the two different worlds, If he fails to show up by the stated deadline, at 11:59 pm, the four surveillance posts will close the two roads to the general public: the Tepic-Aguascalientes highway (Mesa del Tirador-Las Cañadas), and the Carretera Huejuquilla – Amatitán (Cerro de la Puerta and El Pacheco). There will also be 35 schools closed, from preschool, primary and secondary, until the executive presents himself in the community of Waut+a; otherwise, will not vote on July 1 of 2018.”
The deadline passed without any government response, and the Wixárika closed the roads and the schools as promised. More than 7,000 Wixaritari from the community of Wuaut+a will refuse to vote, and they will block installation of the voting booths in the community.
“We are not going to give more votes to the political system we have in Mexico. I believe that all Mexicans no longer feel represented; we have a failed state, we have the absence of the rule of law and I think that it is not only the Wixaritari, who are suffering these legal failures in the Mexican State,” said Ubaldo Valdez, commissioned spokesman for the Surveillance Committee of Mesa del Tirador, Bolaños.
Despite the presidential absence, yesterday a meeting was held in Mexico City among representatives of the Ministry of the Interior, the Secretariat of Agrarian, Territorial and Urban Development, and the Secretaries of the Government of Jalisco and Nayarit (see below). They requested three days of extension for the community members for the next step of the protest, but the community assembly refused.
The consequences of a total closure to the circulation of the roads will have a significant economic impact, since they comprise the commercial routes between the Sierra of Nayarit and the Zacatecan highlands, and between the Bolaños canyon towns and the northernmost zone of Jalisco, Huejuquilla and Mezquitic.
“Many are looking at the the possibility that the community provide its own supplies, but it sounds complex because there are 36 main localities and it is a very vast territory and badly connected,” said one observer of the meeting.
The precedent of this dramatic measure was the action taken by the residents of Tuapurie, or Santa Catarina, another of the principal Wixárika communities, who closed the schools of the community for more than a month and blocked roads, until they were visited by the governor of the state, Aristóteles Sandoval, on October 31, 2017. In that case, there are demands for basic services, such as health and education, which are also part of the demands of Wuaut+a, whose central component is the return of their ancestral lands in Huajimic.
For the background on this ongoing land recovery struggle for the restitution of 10,000 hectares of ancestral Wixárika lands, see IC’s previous coverage on the issue.
Agreements in Mexico City
Representatives from the Ministry of the Interior (Segob), the Secretariat of Agrarian, Territorial and Urban Development (Sedatu), the National Commission for the Development of Indigenous Peoples, the Ministry of Finance and Public Credit and the Secretariats of the Government of Jalisco and Nayarit, met Wednesday in the capital of the country to determine the solution to the Gordian knot of the compensation to Huajimic landholders, the losers of the agrarian lawsuits in favor of the indigenous community of Wuaut+a.
Aldo Saúl Muñoz López, magistrate of the executing court, Agrarian Tribunal 56 of Tepic, told MILENIO JALISCO that during the past few days he had asked for reports of the files, but had not received until Wednesday night the expected call about the final route of money to defuse the conflict in the Sierra.
For his part, Roberto López Lara, secretary of the Government of Jalisco, published in his Twitter account: “In the case of the community of San Sebastián Teponahuaxtlán, a working group was set up where @SEGOB_mx, @ SEDATU_mx, @SHCP_mx and the states of Jalisco and Nayarit participated to follow up on the trial carried out by residents of this area.”
At the same time, the conflict in San Andrés Cohamiata, another northern neighbor of Wuaut+a, was addressed. The community has been threatened with territorial division to favor mining interests protected by Nayarit. “… between the @GobiernoJalisco and @NayaritGobierno, we recognized through an agreement, the integrity of the territory, the uses and customs of the Wixárika community of San Andrés Cohamiata”.
The next judicial executions in favor of Wuaut+a are scheduled by Agrarian Tribunal 56 for May 23 and 30, 2018.
