The CIPOG-EZ Denounces Narco-Paramilitary Groups and the State

Statement from the Popular Indigenous Council of Guerrero-Emiliano Zapata (CIPOG-EZ) denouncing state repression and infiltration of popular organizations.

To the Zapatista Army of National Liberation

To the National Indigenous Congress

To the Indigenous Governing Council

To the Signers of the Declaration for Life

To the Networks of Resistance and Rebellion

To the National and International Sixth

To the Collective of the Sixth Civil Observation Mission

To the People of Guerrero

December 12, 2023

Brothers and sisters of the communities of Guerrero, of Mexico, and of the world. Those of us who make up the Popular Indigenous Council of Guerrero- Emiliano Zapata (CIPOG-EZ), for more than nine years, we have suffered the violence caused by narco-paramilitary groups that are deployed throughout national territory. These are criminal groups that part of a criminal structure of death, made up of municipal presidents, governors, state and municipal police, prosecutors, presidents, all managed by capitalists who want to control our territories to increase their wealth. That is why we are in their way and they want to kill us.

Just as they attack us, they are waging a war against all the peoples of Mexico. The targets in this war are not criminal groups, but social, popular, student, campesino, and teacher’s organizations, who organize demanding land, freedom, justice, democracy, food, healthcare, education, work, and autonomy.

That is why the narco-paramilitary groups operate with total impunity, because our demands confront those people who want to keep us silent, obedient, and submissive. Meanwhile the criminal groups grow stronger. They are not dismantled, they operate beneath the cover of the state, and are financed by the state. That is why we call them narco-paramilitaries. They kill, ambush, kidnap, and infiltrate those who are targets of the state. For this reason, it is clear that for each killing, for each death in Guerrero and Mexico, the state is responsible.

One of the clearest examples of this is the UPOEG; an organization that was born as an honest force of men and women with just demands. However, the state, in its determination to disarticulate social movements, went after the organization rather than listening to its demands. The state infiltrated the organization with narco-paramilitary groups and criminals, those who are part of the same structure to which the state belongs. In the end, the bad government denounces the infiltration, arresting and disarticulating the UPOEG, silencing its original demands, watching triumphantly as the social organizations disappear. The state is responsible for each assassination of members of the UPOEG. The state is responsible for the assassination of Bruna Plácido because the state itself infiltrated the organization, generating discord and internal division. Afterwards, the state sits and watches popular organizations self-destruct, seeking to send a message to the population that popular organizations should not exist, seeking to reaffirm that the only thing that is needed is the state.

However, us, along with other peoples of Guerrero and Mexico, we tell the state that we do exist, that we won’t sell out, surrender, or give up. We disassociate ourselves completely from whatever connection or relation to the UPOEG. We didn’t agree with many of their forms of organization and operation, much less with their acceptance of the intervention of the state into their organization. For example, accepting the credentialization of members of the UPOEG to define who is a “good” and who is a “bad” community self-defense force. We also saw how a section of the UPOEG was acting without listening to the assemblies, making decisions against those made in the communities. We saw how compañeros who promoted organizing and community assembles, like Bruno Plácido and others, were no longer listened to, giving way to the voices of those who were offering handouts.

We will never accept the bad government telling us how to exist or how to think. We know that the state, and that the bad government, is allied with those who kill us. We have no faith in them. That is why despite so much death and destruction, our trajectory as CIPOG-EZ has been consistent and congruent. Our struggle has been for life, autonomy, healthcare, and education, for the security of our communities, a future for our families, our children, for the people and with the people. Our trajectory is accompanied by other Indigenous peoples of Mexico articulated into the National indigenous Congress. That is how we will continue forward. Walking with the people that struggle for life, with those who do not sell out or give up.

We call on the Ñu Savii and Me’phaa peoples, the Nahuas, Ñomdaá, Afro-Mexicans, and mestizos to organize together, to maintain the struggle for life, to not give up, to continue building with dignity, resistance, and rebellion, the world that we want for our people.

Sincerely,

Popular Indigenous Council of Guerrero-Emiliano Zapata

Regional Coordinator of Community Authorities-Founding Pueblos