Statement From the Gathering of Life Against Repression

To Bety Cariño Trujillo

To those assassinated, our loved comrades, brothers and sisters

Today your children, your mothers, your brothers, your comrades, your people are here. We have gathered beneath the shade of a tree to give voice to our thoughts, to embrace our pains, to ignite our rage. We share our lives and struggles, how we have been torn from our loved ones by the bad government and other agents of the system of death under which we live.

Seven years ago, UBISORT and MULT paramilitary forces killed our compañerxs Bety and Jyri, as they joined in solidarity with the humanitarian caravan of the Triqui people, in resistance and in construction of the autonomy of San Juan Copala.

The family and compañerxs of Bety are here today to demonstrate once again, after seven years, that all of those that struggle as Bety did are welcome into their house. His family awaits them, to feed their bodies and hearts so they remain strong.

Compañerxs of Jyri are here to say that the brotherhood between people against the injustices and inequalities does not have limits.

Today the Triqui people are here to say that they continue to exist, that they continue resisting in their autonomous communities of the region, as well as in the places where they’ve been forcefully displaced. We united our voices with yours to repudiate all of the acts of systemic violence to which the people have been subjected. We name those assassinated, among many, the radio hosts of the Voice that Breaks the Silence, Tere and Feli (assassinated in 2008) and the moral leaders Timoteo and Cleriberta (assassinated in 2010). We also demand that the conditions are made to allow the return of those displaced from their territories, their houses and their lives.

Also today we listen to the scream of rage of the people of Nochixtlán whose wounds are fresh after having suffered the brutal attack by police and military forces on June 19^th, 2016. The result was eight dead, four widows, eleven orphaned children, more than 80 injured by bullet wounds (of which eight have completely lost capacity of some part of their body) and 27 incarcerated. The attack against Nochixtlán is underway, through constant harassment. The government attempts again and again to distort, by means of threats and false evidence, this chilling reality. The people respond with the truth and prevent the entrance of the police in their territory.

Also present, the family and compañerxs of Salvador Olmos (Chava), compañero of the community radio T’un Ñuu Savi: The Word of the People of the Rain, and the anarko-punk spaces of Huajuapan de León. Salvador was taken, tortured and killed after being ran over, a few days after the events in Nochixtlán. He participated in protest actions against the repression of the teachers’ movement and concentrated his efforts in the denunciation of the mining concessions of the Mixteca region and in particular the Huajuapan zone.

We see how the Mixtec-Triqui region has been bleeding, but also has been struggling and resisting, planting those dreams of freedom and harvesting the hopes of a dignified life, each time with more strength.

From further away, other compañerxs have come to these Mixteca lands.

We embraced with the mother of José Luis Tehuatlie Tamayo of the community of Chalchihuapan—a thirteen year old boy assassinated by a rubber bullet as he left his school in 2014, while the repressive forces of the government of Moreno Valle, Puebla repressed the people of the community that were protesting to demand their collective rights. We feel the pain of a mother who is ripped from what is most important, her child. We respect the struggle that surges from the pain of women that are at the head of this community.

From the Otomí Mountain, the embrace of the community of San Francisco Xochicuautla has reached us, those whom have resisted for ten years against the destruction of their lands by the highway project Toluca-Naucalpan. They tell us how they have been detained, their houses destroyed and today corrupt agrarian authorities imposed to disappear the Indigenous people. However, there is a weapon against that of which the government cannot win: the remaining Indigenous peoples in struggle.

We meet once again with compañerxs of Alexis Benhumea, a young student and militant whose assassination was carried out by the Mexican State during the repression of Atenco in June of 2006 during the Other Campaign, when they opened a war against the population.

We remember and we embrace also the compañerxs who have arrived here in previous years: families and compañerxs of the 46 assassinated and disappeared students of Ayotzinapa in 2014; families of Mariano Abarca, earth defender in Chicomuselo, Chiapas, assassinated by a mining company in 2009; compañerxs of the Abejas de Acteal, families of the 45 compañerxs massacred by paramilitaries in the highlands of Chiapas in 1997; the mothers of the Forces for our Disappeared in Nuevo León in search of their children amidst the common graves of the narco-state war; compañerxs of Octavio Acuña, activist for sexual and reproductive rights in the state of Querétaro, assassinated in 2005; families of Venancio Queupumil Cabrera, doctor and activist assassinated by an armed command in Cuautitlán Izcalli in 2016.

Compañerxs, we are here today to say that we do not forget you. That your life is important to us, that they are the seeds that give life to our pathway forward. We name your towns and territories, we eco your struggles. We do not forget, we will continue searching for justice with dignity for all of you.

We want to say to you that you found us and that this gathering makes us stronger. We want to say to you that we continue struggling for what you have struggled and in that way we can walk together until we stop this system of death.

We do not want to stay in this place that they impose upon us, we are not only victims of state violence and power. We are on the pathway of the reconstruction of our families and communities as the nucleus of our struggle for liberation. Together with the pain of our families we reconstruct our strength, our capacity to continue walking from the roots of our peoples. Carrying out celebration, singing, prayer, organization and resistance from below.

Bety Cariño you have not died. Today we sing and dance with you. We know that today your word becomes true:

“It is the time of the insurgent women, it is the time of us, the people”

The Family of Cariño Trujillo

Comité del Encuentro por la Vida y Contra la Represión

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