Tepoztlán in Maximum Alert

To the National Indigenous Congress

To the people of Mexico

To the people of the world

To the EZLN

To the Indigenous Council of Government

To the Spokeswoman of the Indigenous Council of Government

To the national and international sixth

Sisters and Brothers:

My name is Osbelia Quiroz and I speak these words in hopes that you see their relation to what is happening in our ancestral territory. Our territory is sought after by capitalist interests with the complicity of the bad government. We organize ourselves in resistance, in pursuit of nothing more than the future of our mother earth and the future generations.

As elders we feel the dignified commitment and obligation to not let them destroy our lands where we have always lived. What the rich and greedy people in power have offered us–those of below and to the left–is only destruction and death, displacement and repression, contempt and exploitation. Nobody will tell us what we shouldn´t do. We know that what we do is good and dignified and we surrender our existence wherever it must be done.

We want to say to you that we are in movement, that we are organizing ourselves little by little–as is the command of the National Indigenous Congress–and we go step by step walking with the Indigenous peoples of this country that is Mexico. We know well that in gathering and organizing ourselves, we will find each other, we will recognize each other, we will know that we have a common house of the CNI, and that we are together. And together we will struggle in the battle that has to be fought. The processes that are already in progress are the constitution of the Indigenous Council of Government and the naming of our spokeswoman Chuy, with which we have taken a firm step toward a peaceful offensive.

From this ancestral land that has been attacked by well-known projects of death, I want to denounce the destruction of the sources of life, the earth, the trees, the water, the air and our health, which they are evidently destroying. I alert you all to what is coming. I call on my council comrades to be attentive to what we will need. I invite you to come and share my rage and dignified rebellion in these difficult moments.

When it was the time to be present in the assembly of CNI in the CIDECI in San Cristóbal de las Casas Chiapas, I couldn´t go and greet everyone. In that moment and now, I know that I have to be in this place in struggle and resistance against the expansion of the highway and to take in the pain to see our fallen trees, assassinated by human beings that only think in their own death, ignorant of their future and that of their families.

Maestra Osbelia Quiroz

Concejal del Concejo Indígena de Gobierno.

CNI-EZLN

Región Morelos Norte

Pueblo Nahua