On 8th anniversary Xayakalan inspires defense of land and life

“We want to tell the world that we’re resisting, come what may.”

x carolina

Under heavy rains, two busloads of people and dozens of others traveling in cars or public transportation came together in the community of Xayakalan in Ostula, Michoacán, on June 29, 2017. There, the compañeras welcomed us with steaming coffee, tortillas and a delicious stew.

The purpose of the trip?  The celebration of the eighth anniversary of one of the most amazing things that’s happened in Mexico in many years ––the recovery of 3000 acres of land stolen from Ostula half a century ago, and the construction of a community where resistance is part of its identity.

A bit of history

In a brief history of the defense of the lands of Santa María Ostula and the founding of Xayakalan, the lawyer Carlos Gonzalez told us that for centuries, including the entire twentieth century, the community had constant border conflicts. When a presidential decree issued in 1963 certified that the communal lands rightfully belonged to Ostula, small landowners in La Placita took advantage of errors in the decree to take over thousands of acres. In 2008, they won a court case that took land away from Ostula precisely in the area where they’d obtained concessions from the transnational mining company Termium.   Continue reading “On 8th anniversary Xayakalan inspires defense of land and life”

Police Open Fire on Rural Students in Michoacán, One Seriously Injured

The escalation of violence against social protests is evident in the harassment and repression of teacher-training students in Michoacán, Aguascalientes, or wherever they are based.

Rural activism by normal school (teacher-training) students has once again become the target of armed repression by the Mexican state. On Wednesday, June 21, students from the Vasco de Quiroga Rural Normal School in Tiripetío, Michoacán, were brutally repressed by Special Operations Group police (GOES) who detained, beat and shot at the students. One student, Gael Solorio Cruz, was shot in the head and is reported as being in critical condition.

The students reported that “elements of the Michoacán Police entered the school buildings while fourth-year youths were carrying out team activities. As youth attempted to stop them, the police opened fire. One of their targets was a white van that the students used to move around the community, and as they fired, they wounded Gael in the head. He is now in critical condition.”

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Letter from Kurdish Women’s Movement to Spokeswoman of Indigenous Governing Council

For María de Jesús Patricio Martínez, representative of the indigenous people of Mexico and the National Indigenous Congress #CNI.

Posted by  Centro de Medios Libres 
Translated by El Enemigo Común

First of all, we want to send our deepest respect and revolutionary greetings to our Mexican sister, from the mountains of Kurdistan to the Sierra Madre mountain range beyond the oceans. Despite the rivers, mountains, deserts, valleys, canyons and seas that separate us, we are indigenous sisters and brothers, no matter what part of the world we are in.

With you, we share our struggle, our resistance against occupation and colonialism, and our dream of a free life, and in this sense, we who belong to the Kurdish Liberation Movement declare that we consider the struggle for self-determination, self-administration and self-defense of the indigenous peoples of Mexico organized in the National Indigenous Congress (CNI) as our own struggle, and we support you on the basis of principles of revolutionary solidarity.

Indigenous peoples are the veins through which the most important social and cultural values of humanity have been transmitted, from the first moments of socialization until our times. Without a doubt, no people is superior to another, but at a time when capitalist modernity is trying to destroy every communal value, indigenous peoples are the safeguard of the social fabric of all humanity. Thousands of years of collective memory resurge in our songs, our rituals, our prayers, our tattoos, our dances and our traditions. And so the struggle for our own identity against the efforts of capitalist modernity to erase the roots and the memory of our peoples becomes the most meaningful of all forms of resistance.

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Interventions by the United States in Mexico and Central America: The continuation of the war economy

The Northern Command (NORTHCOM) is responsible for the internal defense of the United States, and covers Alaska, Canada, Mexico, and parts of the Caribbean.

By Santiago Navarro F. of Avispa Midia
Translated by El Enemigo Común

While the leaders of the Southern and Northern Command of the United States carried out a tour of strategic locations in Honduras, Mexico, and Guatemala early in 2017, the recently elected president of the United States, Donald Trump, threatened Enrique Peña Nieto, president of Mexico, over a possible military intervention in the event that the drug trafficking situation remained unresolved.

The Southern Command (SOUTHCOM) is one of six Unified Combat Commands of the U.S. Department of Defense, and is responsible for U.S. military operations as well as cooperation and the creation of military ties in a region that includes 31 countries and 10 territories in the Caribbean, Central America, and South America.

The Northern Command (NORTHCOM) is responsible for the internal defense of the United States, and covers Alaska, Canada, Mexico, and parts of the Caribbean, including Cuba.

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Indigenous Communities in Oaxaca Resist Megaprojects

“The struggle isn’t for a piece of land, it is the struggle for the life of the native people who have every right to decide how they want to live.”

By Renata Bessi and Santiago Navarro F for Avispa Midia
Translated by Xiadani Yaremi Gutiérrez for It’s Going Down

The Chinantec people, inhabitants of the Cajonos River basin in the north of the state of Oaxaca, Mexico, are carrying out an organizational process throughout their entire territory, the Chinantla, against economic projects that seek to commodify nature as a whole. They are megaprojects such as mining, hydroelectric dams, highways, conservation projects, and, more recently, hydrocarbons. It is not a coincidence Chinantla is considered a priority of economic interest for the Mexican government. It houses the third largest tropical rainforest in Mexico. After the Lacandona jungle in Chiapas, and the Chimalapas in Oaxaca, it is the best preserved and one of the richest in biodiversity.

“The Chinantla is a priority area for exploitation because of its wealth, its diversity. It’s part of a strategic Mesoamerican plan that comprises all that is Veracruz, the Chinantla zone, Chiapas and Central America in the so-called Plan Mérida and Mesoamerica Project. The objective of the Mexican government and businesses is to create a corridor for the exploitation of water, minerals, coal reserves, and electricity-generating projects. Here are the plants, bacteria, mushrooms that heal, and these are all things they also want to take away,” explained biologist Patricia Mora, from the Interdisciplinary Research Center for Integral Regional Development – Oaxaca Unit of the National Polytechnic Institute (CIIDIR Oaxaca).

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Chiapas: Robbery and Ransacking of Human Rights Defender Alejandra Padilla’s home

The Fray Bartolomé de Las Casas Human Rights Center (Frayba) expresses its concern for the robbery and harassment at the home of Alejandra Padilla García.

By: Frayba Comunicación
Translated by El Enemigo Común

Harassment and Surveillance of members of the CNI and CIDECI-Unitierra

The Fray Bartolomé de Las Casas Human Rights Center (Frayba) expresses its concern for the robbery and harassment at the home of Alejandra Padilla García (Alejandra), human rights defender and member of Semilla Digna, a space of struggle that forms part of the National Indigenous Congress (CNI). Alejandra also collaborates with the Indigenous Comprehensive Training Center of Fray Bartolomé de Las Casas – Unitierra Chiapas (CIDECI – Unitierra Chiapas). The incidents occurred in the city of San Cristóbal de Las Casas, Chiapas, on May 28, 2017.

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Members of CNI & Sexta condemn ambush and death of comrade

By Espoir Chiapas
Translated by El Enemigo Común

Cruztón, Chiapas, June 1, 2017

To the Good Government Council of Oventic
To the National Indigenous Congress
To the Indigenous Government Council
To the National and International Sixth
To the news media

Compañeros, compañeras, our pain, rage, death and dignity now urge us to make our word known.

The Adherents to the Sixth in the community of Cruzton, municipality Venustiano Carranza, Chiapas, state the following: Last May 22, at 4:20 in the morning we were ambushed in our community cemetery by a heavily armed group from Nuevo Guadalupe Victoria, which started an armed attack that lasted four and a half hours. We had to take refuge behind the rocks in a grove of trees to protect our lives.

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