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.
We are writing with the smell of tear gas rising from our fingers. The springtime symphony of birdsong is punctuated by the explosive echo of concussion grenades. Our eyes are watering, less from the gas than the sadness; because our friends’ homes, barns and organic farms are being destroyed. Bulldozers, supported by 2500 riot police, armored vehicles, helicopters and drones, are rampaging through these forests, pastures and wetlands to crush the future we are building here on the to the zad (The zone à defendre).
We are calling on you to take solidarity actions everywhere, it could be holding demos at your local french embassy or consulate, or taking actions against any suitable symbol (corporate or otherwise) of France! And if you are not too far away, bring your disobedient bodies to join us on the zone. If the French government evicts the zad, it will be like evicting hope.
For fifty years, this unique chequerboard landscape was the site of a relentless struggle against yet another climate wrecking infrastructure – a new airport for the nearby city of Nantes. Farmers and villagers, activists and naturalists, squatters and trade unionists wove an unbreakable ecology of struggle together and three months ago on the 17th of January, the French government announced that the airport project would be abandoned. But this incredible victory, won through a diversity of creative tactics from petitions to direct action, legal challenges to sabotage, had a dark shadow. In the same breath that declared the abandonment, came the announcement that the people occupying these 4000 acres of liberated territory, the 300 of us living and farming in 80 different collectives, would be evicted because we dared not just to be against the airport, but its WORLD as well.
Since that victorious day, the battle has transformed itself and is now no longer about a destructive infrastructure project, but about sharing the territory we inhabit. We stoped this place from being covered in concrete and so it is up to us to take care of its future. The movement therefore maintains that we should have the right to manage the land as a commons (see its declaration The Six Points for the Zad because there will never be an Airport). Today this is the struggle of the zad (zone to defend) of Notre Dame Des Landes.
The zad was launched in 2009 after a letter (distributed during the first french climate camp here) written by locals inviting people to occupy the zone and squat the abandoned farmhouses. Now the zone has become one of Europe’s largest laboratory of commoning. With its bakeries, pirate radio station, tractor repair workshop, brewery, anarchitectural cabins, banqueting hall, medicinal herb gardens, a rap studio, dairy, vegetable plots, weekly newspaper, flour mill, library and even a surrealist lighthouse. It has become a concrete experiment in taking back control of everyday life.
In 2012 the French state’s attempt to evict the zone to build the airport was fiercely resisted, despite numerous demolitions 40,000 people turned up to rebuild and the government withdrew. The police have not set foot on the zad since, that is, until Monday morning, when at 3am the gendarmes pierced into the zone.
On day one they destroyed some of the most beautiful cabins and barns, but yesterday we stopped the cops from getting to the Vraies Rouge, which happens to be where one of our negotiators with the government lives. Destroying the house of those that agreed to sit at the table with you was a strategic mistake. The fabulous zad press team used this as the media hook and today we are winning the battle of the story. If enough people get to the zone over the next days we could win the battle on the territory as well. We need rebel everything, from cooks to medics, fighters to witnesses. We doubt this rural revolt will be finished before the weekend, when we are also calling people to come and rebuild en mass.
Already solidarity demonstrations have taken place in over 100 cities across France, whilst the town halls of several towns were occupied. Zapatistas demonstrated in Chiapas Mexico, there were actions in Brussels, Spain, Lebanon, London, Poland, Palestine and New York and the underground carpark of the french embassy in Munich was sabotaged. They will never be able to evict our solidarity.
Post your reports on twitter @zad_nddl #zad#nddl and to our solidarity action email soutienzad@riseup.net for more info in English see Zad Forever and watch this video to see what is being destroyed.
The unholy and hated corporate leviathan known as Dominion Energy has begun felling trees for the Atlantic Coast Pipeline, a project poised to cross hundreds of rivers and streams and bore underneath the Appalachian Trail. Dominion’s ACP (along with EQT’s Mountain Valley Pipeline) disproportionately target communities of color and working class families in Appalachia. These projects have been rammed through via Dominion’s political and economic monopoly over every aspect of Virginia’s energy economy.
Dominion has already commenced with clearing and surveying using crews from Utah and Texas, despite their ear numbing promises of jobs for Virginians. We send out cheerful greetings to comrades everywhere.
Water Is Life! Death to the Black Snake!
– Three Sisters Camp
Despite a court-ordered injunction barring anyone from coming within 5 meters (approximately 16.4 feet) of two of its BC construction sites, opponents of the Kinder Morgan Trans Mountain pipeline expansion sent a clear message Saturday that they would not back down.
Twenty-eight demonstrators were arrested March 17 after blocking the front gate to Kinder Morgan’s tank farm in Burnaby, BC for four hours, according to a press release put out by Protect the Inlet, the group leading the protest.
According to the release, the protesters were a mixed group of indigenous people, families, retired teachers and other community members.
“We’re going to do whatever it takes, and by any means necessary, and we’ll show up day after day until we win this fight,” Treaty-6-Mathias Colomb-Cree-Nation member Clayton Thomas-Muller said in the release.
Saturday’s action was an intentional show of civil disobedience.
“Everyone was very aware of the situation, of the possibility of arrest. And everyone was given the chance at any time during the day to leave that zone and not be arrested,” Amina Moustaqim-Barrette, protestor and 350.org communications coordinator, told the Vancouver Sun.
According to the Protect the Inlet website, Saturday’s action will kick off a two-week mobilization from March 18 to March 24. The activists need to prevent Kinder Morgan from completing key clear-cutting work by March 26, when the return of migratory birds will cause delays.
Thursday’s injunction also applies to the pipeline’s construction site at Westridge Marine Terminal, the Sun reported.
According to 350 Seattle, the Trans Mountain pipeline expansion project aims to triple the amount of Alberta tar sands oil carried from the Canadian Rockies to Burnaby, BC and Anacortes, WA from 300,000 to 890,000 barrels per day. It would also increase oil tanker activity in the Salish Sea and Strait of Juan de Fuca by 700 percent, threatening vulnerable orca populations and other marine animals.
The Trudeau government approved the Trans Mountain expansion in November 2016, but the social action group the Council of Canadians says it is inconsistent with Canada’s commitments to reduce greenhouse gas emissions under the Paris agreement. It is also opposed by over 61 indigenous groups; of the nine cases challenging the project in Canadian courts, seven were brought by First Nations.
Saturday’s action comes exactly one week after indigenous leaders from the U.S. and Canada inaugurated a traditional Coast Salish “Kwekwecnewtxw” or “a place to watch from” in the pipeline’s projected path. While construction started on the Watch House, 10,000 demonstrators marched in solidarity.
Trans Mountain’s lawyer Shaun Parker requested that Justice Kenneth Affleck, who issued Thursday’s injunction, also order the new Watch House removed. Affleck, however, ruled that it could stay, the Canadian Press reported Thursday.
“I’m sensitive to the concern of those who created this Watch House, that it is of considerable significance to them,” Affleck said, further ruling that the pipeline could remove it only if it demonstrated an emergency need, and that it would have to replace it afterwards.
Saturday’s protest wasn’t the only direct action against the pipeline expansion this weekend. 30 “kayaktivists” from a group called Mosquito Fleet surrounded a Kinder Morgan oil barge in Seattle’s Elliott Bay Sunday to protest the increased tanker traffic the project is slated to bring to the Salish Sea, King5 News reported.
Mosquito Fleet’s Zara Greene told King5 that the pipeline expansion would threaten communities on both sides of the U.S.-Canadian border. “Kinder Morgan is a threat to us all,” she said.
For Immediate Release
Media Contact: Talon Brings Buffalo
406-404-9131
Stephens Creek Trap, Yellowstone National Park
March 16th 2018
Hours before dawn on Friday March 16th, two members of the Wild Buffalo Defense collective arrived at the gate of Yellowstone National Park’s Stephens Creek Buffalo capture facility. They blocked the gate with three 55 gallon drums filled with concrete, locking their arms inside the barrels. The three 1000 pound drums blocked access to the facility, preventing livestock trucks from taking the wild buffalo to slaughter. This action came in the wake of a similar event last week at the Stephens Creek Trap, where two buffalo protectors locked themselves to the hydraulic squeeze shoot using a metal pipe.
Wolf, the first individual locking down, described why he was taking the action: “My father is from Michaocan, Mexico, so I have both native and colonizer blood. Since I wasn’t raised in a native setting, this is my way to give back to the native community. I’m from Illinois — it’s called the Prairie State, and there’s less than one one-hundredth of the prairie left. It’s all strip malls and corn fields…I don’t like seeing just concrete and steel. Seeing how peaceful the buffalo are and how strong they are, they go through enough hardship in their lives in the forest and the plains and then with what Yellowstone National Park is doing to them they still carry on. They inspire me to keep going.”
Coyote, the other individual blocking the gate, said: “I’m doing this to get a better understanding of what is really going on and to protect the buffalo and the lands that they roam. I feel like I have been lost inside…but now that I’m here I feel more combined with myself, with others, and with knowledge and understanding. Whenever I’m with the buffalo I feel like my heart runs with them. When I’m with them they already know the questions, they already know the answers, and I don’t have to respond because they already know. I think it’s a good thing for people to learn. There’s not a day in this world where you’re not able to learn something. What we’re doing is something we love to do and we only live once so we should do what we love to do and if anybody wants to come out and join and learn this experience then they should.”
The barrels were painted with two phrases, “Protect the Sacred” and “Honor the Treaties.” The words highlight the fact that Buffalo are sacred creatures to the Plains Indians. Blackfeet and Lakota prophecies say that when the wild buffalo return, the people and the earth will be healed. Yellowstone National Park currently captures and slaughters about 25% of the herd every year. If this mismanagement of the population continues, these prophecies will… [press release ends].
An hour before sunlight on march 5th two members of the Wild Buffalo Defense collective named Cody and Crow descended from the hills onto Yellowstone National Park’s Stevens Creek buffalo trap and using a steel pipe, locked themselves to the bars of the “Silencer”, a hydraulic squeeze shoot that holds buffalo for testing, shipping and slaughter. In freezing temperatures the individuals blocked the buffalo processing facility and prevented the park from shipping wild buffalo to slaughter.
When asked why he was taking this action Cody stated, “I am standing with the plains Indians as a member of the Ojibwe tribe in Minnesota, I have a Blackfeet friend who helped me protect my territory from the line 3 pipeline and now I am here for him and the buffalo. I have a love for the people. That’s what my mom passed down to me. And I have love for the environment and animals and I feel like I have an obligation to protect them. If I have to put my body on the line to do so I will.”
The two Yellowstone buffalo herds are the last free ranging, genetically pure, plains buffalo in the United States. These buffalo are decedents of the 23 that survived the buffalo extermination campaign that the US government implemented in the 1800s to starve the plains Indians into submission.
Today the Stevens Creek Buffalo Trap costs the Yellowstone Parks Service 3 million dollars per year to maintain and despite years of public opposition continues to operate their capture-for-slaughter facility within the park boundary. Activists and tribes allege that the Montana cattle lobby controls how the Parks Service manages of the wild buffalo. Crow, the other individual who locked himself to the facility stated “They say they need to kill the animals to stop the spread of Brucellosis, but the wild elk have Brucellosis and they are allowed to roam free because the cattle industry is not worried about elk competing for grass and the state receives income from the elk hunting permits.” Every year the facility captures and sends roughly 1000 animals of the 4000 wild buffalo population to slaughter.
While the two individuals locked themselves to the shoot, some activists gathered at the gate of the facility with banners reading “Wild buffalo slaughter = cultural genocide.” Their signs spoke to the connection between the culture of the plains tribes and the wild buffalo, suggesting that by exterminating the last wild buffalo, Yellowstone is effectively attempting to do the same to the culture of the plains tribes. The non-violent direct action came in the wake of a decision by the Montana department of livestock and the animal plant and health inspection service to deny the Fort Peck Indian reservation the right to receive wild buffalo from the park.
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