Mexico: Amid the Electoral Farce, Capitalist War Against the Peoples

The following statement provides an overview of some of the current struggles in so-called Mexico in the lead up to the June 2 presidential elections and was translated by Scott Campbell.

To the CCRI-CG EZLN
To the Zapatista Army of National Liberation, EZLN
To the Sixth Commission of the EZLN
To the National Indigenous Congress, CNI
To the Indigenous Governing Council, CIG
To Ma. de Jesús Patricio Martínez, Spokeswoman of the CNI-CIG
To the People, Tribes, Nations, Communities, and First Neighborhoods that were never conquered
To the National and International Sexta
To the Networks of Resistance and Rebellion
To the Insubordinate, Dignified and Rebel Europe
To those that signed the Declaration for Life
To the free, independent, alternative, or whatever they’re called media…

Siblings All

With the arrival of the “Fourth Transformation,” [1] its governing policies increased the militarization of Indigenous peoples and communities, especially in Zapatista territory. Paramilitary groups and organized crime operate with total impunity as guarantors of the imposition of not just megaprojects of death such as the Maya Train, the Interoceanic Corridor, and the Morelos Integral Project; they are at the service of the state and big capital to carry out the displacement of territory, Mother Earth, and life.

Amid its “ELECTORAL FARCE,” we see that, in recent weeks, nothing matters but votes, polls, debates, numbers, and electoral preferences; but, above all, its strategy to attack and discredit its enemies as a campaign strategy.

This June 2, a “democracy” is not in dispute, much less a leftist one. What is really in dispute is an economic and political power that seeks to sustain itself with militarization, with impunity, and with the accumulation of wealth in the hands of a few in the service of large transnationals. Their plan is to sustain this “Fourth Transformation” with a CAPITALIST WAR against Indigenous peoples and communities.

Faced with the impunity and violence imposed on our territories, from the National Assembly for Water and Life…

WE DENOUNCE

First: In recent years, aggressions against Zapatista autonomous communities have been increasing. In the Moisés y Gandhi region, in the official municipality of Ocosingo, the Regional Organization of Coffee Growers of Ocosingo (ORCAO) have attacked the Support Bases of the EZLN (BAEZLN), which has led to forced displacements, torture, forced disappearances, and attempted homicides.

So far this year, 28 persons of the BAEZLN were forcibly displaced, residents of the Local Autonomous Government, La Resistencia community, which had already suffered forced displacement in 2022 due to an attack. In January of this year, the Autonomous Primary School, 15 houses, and nearby crops were destroyed, a store and other community property was robbed, in the settlement of Emiliano Zapata a pasture belonging to the support bases was burned. In February, ORCAO members fired more than 100 rounds towards the Zapatista autonomous community of Moisés y Gandhi, more than 100 rounds with high-caliber weapons. We do not forget that in May 2023, Jorge López Sántiz, BAEZLN, was the victim of an armed attack that put his life at serious risk.

The money from social programs has served to arm and empower criminal groups such as ORCAO, increasing violence against Zapatista autonomous communities. In Chiapas, like in the rest of the country, the Sowing Envy program [2] has exacerbated violence over land disputes as ejidos and communities confront each other in order to access the individualized economic support the program offers.

Reforestation is the pretext to dispossess peoples from their collectively used land through the destruction of social organization and ways of life, that is to say, it seeks to break the resistance, facilitating the entry of projects of death in favor of big capital, with the help of the repressive forces of the state, police, National Guard, and army.

Attacks by criminal groups are allowed and covered up by the Mexican state and its three levels of government. The comprehensive war of attrition against Zapatista autonomy, begun decades ago by different political parties, has intensified during this government of the fourth simulation.

Second: In 2020, the Otomí community residing in Mexico City took over the facilities of the misnamed National Institute of Indigenous Peoples (INPI), demanding fair housing. Since the beginning of the occupation, harassment by the state has been permanent: electricity cuts, a violent eviction attempt in October 2023, and the recent criminalization of compañero Diego García Bautista who accompanies the dignified struggle of the Otomí community, as well as the presence of judicial police around the compañero’s house and the Casa de los Pueblos, shows the contempt of the traitor Adelfo Regino Montes, director of the INPI, and of the fourth transformation government.

The Otomí community residing in Mexico City has been constant and firm in its accompaniment of all just struggles and they are an example of organization, dignity, and resistance. Because of that, the bad government directs its strategies and attacks against the compañer@s.

Third: In Puebla, the peoples of the Cholulteca region are maintaining an encampment to stop the entry of garbage into the San Pedro Cholula landfill, a criminal business that enriched businesspeople and officials. Since March 21, not one kilo of garbage has entered the dump, and in response to the resistance of the Cholulteca peoples the government unleashed an operation with more than 500 police and shock groups to force the entry of garbage trucks. State and municipal police opened fire against inhabitants resisting at the barricades impeding the entrance of those trucks, and after many hours of repression directed at the encampment and barricades, the police units and National Guard, as well as the garbage trucks, withdrew.

The governor of Puebla, Sergio Salomón Céspedes, and the Secretary of the Interior, Javier Aquino Limón, continue defending the interests of the business ProFaj Hidro Limpieza, which operated the dump, and are attacking the people, opening cases and issuing arrest warrants against inhabitants of the region. However, the struggle of the Cholulteca peoples continues and, asserting their self-determination and autonomy, they will not back down.

During this presidential term, state violence intensified against the Cholulteca peoples: Miguel López Vega was the first political prisoner of the Fourth Transformation and Alejandro Torres Chocolatl was persecuted, both defenders of the Metlapanapa River. We do not forget the operation with more than 500 elements of the National Guard and state and municipal police to evict the peoples of Altepelmecalli and hand over the facilities to the criminal company Bonafont Danone. Nor do we forget the state and municipal police repression against the people of San Luca Nextetelco who opposed the construction of a police complex.

Fourth: Almost ten years after the forced disappearance of the 43 students from Ayotzinapa, the government continues to show only contempt for them. After numerous investigations which point to the army’s participation as a fundamental part of the disappearances, the fathers and mothers have been denied access to documents from the Secretary of National Defense (SEDENA) that are key to the discovery of the students. The federal executive has accused lawyer Vidulfo Rosales of being an “enemy of the system” – a bloody persecution of compañeros who for almost ten years have not stopped fighting to find the 43 students alive.

Fifth: More than 116,000 disappeared is the figure at which this government’s rule comes to a close. The majority of those cases with no progress in the search, there are mothers and relatives who have carried out the cruel work of finding them. In many cases they have found only remains and with pressure on the institutions to carry out the process of identification, it has been possible to turn them over to their families to give them a little bit of peace. But thousands and thousands of families continue to know nothing of those who were taken from them. The mothers and relatives are at constant risk of attack by criminal groups, the police, and the army, encouraged by the disdain with which the federal executive refers to them. Andrés Manuel López Obrador ends his six-year term stained with the blood of seven mothers who were murdered searching for their children.

Sixth: In 2023, Mexico detained 782,176 migrants, a record number. Not one of these people have committed a crime. To migrate and to seek asylum is an international human right. The rape, kidnapping, extorsion, and murder of migrants is very common. Six out of ten women are raped on their way through Mexico. According to official data, every month around 41 migrants in Mexico are victims of theft, kidnapping, extortion, blackmail, trafficking, and illegal detention. However, the true number is much higher; people do not report out of fear, a lack of rights, and because many times it is the very National Institute of Migration (INM) that is extorting them and handing them over to organized crime.

We demand justice and full reparations for the victims of the fire at the Ciudad Juárez migrant detention center in March 2023. The INM let 40 migrants die – it was a state crime. In reality, migrant detention centers are jails for innocent people and should be eliminated.

Seventh: Freedom of expression and investigation is punished with death in this country. In the past six years, 56 journalists and community communicators were murdered for making the truth public. Mexico is now one of the most dangerous countries to practice journalism. The federal executive legitimizes violence against journalism, against those who take a critical stance towards his government and its criminal connections.

Eighth: The systematic pattern of criminalization is a factory of guilt, more so when it comes to Indigenous peoples who defend land and territory. Racism and disdain are the motives to impede the exercise of political rights, of autonomy, and self-determination. The factory of guilt is characterized by the impunity with which the authorities of the justice system operate:

• Collusion between the State Prosecutor’s Office and the State Judiciary.
• Complicit participation of the Prosecutor’s Office for Indigenous Justice used to control the peoples.
• False accusations, torture, excessive use of pre-trial detention and false testimonies.
• Arrests with the participation of members of the army, the National Guard; an inactive and complicit judiciary.
• Arbitrary arrests that seek to punish by example the defense of human rights, of land and territory, and principally, the criminalization of defenders of mother earth and territory threaten the entire community. It is a mechanism of repression with the intention of destroying those who defend the right to life, from their own identity, from their forms of organization, and from their autonomies as native peoples.

Examples abound:

JOSÉ DÍAZ.

José Díaz Gómez, an Indigenous Cho’l peasant, is a hostage of the State Government of Chiapas and victim of the factory of guilt in retaliation for his Zapatista political adherence. He has been unjustly imprisoned since November 25, 2022, falsely accused of violent robbery.

José was arbitrarily arrested, with excessive use of force, was tortured, disappeared, and held incommunicado by specialized police from the Selva District Prosecutor’s Office. In the prosecutor’s office, they forced him to place his fingerprint and signature on blank paper. He was not aided with a translator of his native language, nor with a lawyer. The judges and prosecutors continue to extend the process and his pre-trial detention (prison without a sentence).

The health and therefore the life of José is at risk due to prison overcrowding and precarious medical attention. He shares a cell with 18 other people in a space of approximately 3 x 3 meters, making it difficult to sleep – he can only sleep 2 or 3 hours a day – which shows the existence of inhumane conditions of confinement. In other words, he survives in conditions of TORTURE.

PRISONERS FROM SAN JUAN CANCUC.

The Maya Tseltal defenders of San Juan Cancuc: Manuel Sántiz Cruz, Agustín Pérez Domínguez, Juan Velasco Aguilar, Martín Pérez Domínguez and Agustín Pérez Velasco, have been unjustly imprisoned in San Cristóbal de las Casas, Chiapas, for two years for having resisted, through community organization, the militarization of their territory and the installation of megaprojects, such as a hydroelectric dam and the San Cristóbal-Palenque super highway. The Prosecutor’s Office of Indigenous Justice fabricated their crimes and all were sentenced to 25 years in prison for aggravated homicide, despite it being shown at trial that the evidence was inconsistent as it was a fabricated crime.

SAÚL ROSALES MELÉNDEZ.

In July 2022, the communal president of San Pedro Tlalcuapan was arrested for the false charge of homicide. Saúl Rosales had participated in the defense of the Matlalcuéyetl forest and that is the real reason for the punishment the state has imposed. On March 15, he was sentenced to 20 years in prison.

PRISONERS FROM ELOXOCHITLÁN DE FLORES MAGÓN.

After nine years of struggle and resistance, the dignified community of Eloxochitlán de Flores Magón has wrested from the state the freedom of four imprisoned compañeros falsely accused of homicide by the bad government of Oaxaca and the Zepeda family despite multiple injunctions. Three imprisoned compañeros remain, and we continue demanding their immediate freedom: Alfredo Bolaños, Fernando Gavito and Francisco Durán.

KARLA AND MAGDA.

In April 2022, Karla and Magda were arrested amid a mass operation to evict the Okupa Cuba at the facilities of the National Human Rights Commission (CNDH). This okupa was carried out in solidarity with the mothers of murdered women who were spurned and forgotten by this institution. Accused of crimes they did not commit (aggravated robbery, property damage, and crimes against health), Karla and Magda remained imprisoned for ten months in Santa Marta Acatitla prison. Pressure from relatives and solidarity collectives obtained their release in February 2023, however, the case against them was reopened due to new accusations and they run the risk of returning to prison.

Ninth: Stigmatization also occurs against organizations that defend human rights. Such is the case with the Fray Bartolomé de Las Casas Human Rights Center (Frayba) and the Miguel Agustín Pro Juárez Human Rights Center (Centro ProDH), repeatedly denigrated by Andrés Manuel López Obrador in his morning press conferences, labeling them as conservatives and of exaggerating the violence these organizations report.

These statements put defenders at risk, as it can no longer be denied that Mexico continues being one of the most dangerous countries to defend human rights and journalism. Between January 2019 and February 2024, there have been at least 103 murders of land defenders and of more than 40 journalists, as well as the 38 defenders or journalists being disappeared. Twenty-five regained their freedom and 13 remain disappeared.

Today the government of Andrés Manuel López Obrador represses and discredits all those who do not think like him, just as was done in the past by the bad governments of different political parties.

In the face of the onslaught of the government and capital against those of us who defend life, freedom, and dignity, we respond with autonomy and self-determination. From this space of encounter and organization, we make the Zapatista initiative our own, so that regardless of calendar and/or geography, we join the process of building “THE COMMON AND THE NON-PROPERTY.” We make our own the defense of the decree that prohibits the existence of landfills, the extraction of water for industrial use, and the contamination of the same in the Cholulteca region; the decree that prohibits mining in Morelos, the struggle and resistance of the Samir Flores Soberanes House of the Peoples and Indigenous Communities; the takeover of the Fourth Neighborhood well in Santiago Mexquititlán; the recuperation of the library in San Gregorio Atlapulco, today Tlamachtiloyan; the defense of the Santiago River in Jalisco; the demand for remediation of the landfills in Santa María Coapan, Puebla, and Laureles, Jalisco; the national unification of families searching for the disappeared; the installation of the university encampment for Palestine at UNAM; the decision of the peoples taking action in defense of life and territory.

We make our own the demands for the freedom of all political prisoners; we demand the immediate return alive of the 43 students from Ayotzinapa, forcibly disappeared by the army, and the more than 116,000 disappeared in Mexico, justice for Verónica Guerrero, justice for Samir Flores Soberanes and for all territory defenders, journalists, and women and mothers murdered for searching for their relatives.

SINCERELY

For the Integral Reconstitution of our Peoples

Water, Land, and Freedom

Zapata Lives, the Struggle Continues

Samir Lives, the Struggle Continues

Stop the War Against Zapatista Communities

Until Dignity and Justice Become a Custom

They Took Them Alive, We Want Them Alive

Long Live the Zapatista Army of National Liberation, EZLN

Long Live the National Indigenous Congress, CNI-CIG

Freedom for Saúl Rosales Meléndez of San Pedro Tlalcuapan, Tlaxcala

Freedom for José Díaz, Zapatista Support Base

Freedom for Alfredo Bolaños, Fernando Gavito, Francisco Durán of Eloxochitlán de Flores Magón, Oaxaca

Freedom for David Hernández of Puente Madera, Oaxaca

An Us without the State

No to the Maya Train

No to the Morelos Integral Project

No to the Interoceanic Corridor

NATIONAL ASSEMBLY FOR WATER AND LIFE

Translator’s Notes:

[1] The Fourth Transformation is the self-anointed title of the administration of President Andrés Manuel López Obrador, of the National Regeneration Movement party (MORENA). It proclaims his presidency to be fourth of Mexico’s major transformations, the others being Mexico’s independence, the rule of Benito Juárez, and the Mexican Revolution.

[2] A play on the name of the Sowing Life (Sembrando Vida) program, a neoliberal government initiative ostensibly aimed at combating deforestation and providing rural assistance. Instead, it’s been responsible for deforestation, corruption, and negatively impacting the communities it targets.