Category: Indigenous

State of Mexico Manifesto: The Burning Voice of Those Who Resist on the Periphery

Here, in the State of Mexico, all the factors that define the periphery come together. Our gender, our empty pockets, our scorched skin color are denied, spit upon and vilified.

Somos el medio
Translated by Scott Campbell

April 10, 2017

Today we say: Enough!

Beyond the last metro station the buses depart for the end of the world…

We are from that horseshoe that surrounds Mexico City; that blankets it, gives it food, water and air to live.

We are the ones who work in the big corporations, in the gentrified and commercially valuable neighborhoods; who clean homes, offices, who make food sprout from the fields.

We are those people whose right to walk is an obligation and the bicycle a source of work; who see half our lives ground away in the guts of public transportation.

We are those who live behind the contaminated river, among massacred trees and under an enormous haze of filth.

We are those who are offered egg shells as homes and shopping malls as the only place to expand the spirit.

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San Quintín farm workers take demands to Mexico City

Caravan for a Fair Wage and Decent Life sets out

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Last March 4th, the Caravan for a Fair Wage and Decent Life began with a blockade of the Transpeninsular Highway by the day laborers from the fields of the San Quintin Valley. The workers then went on to cover 3,000 kilometers, arriving in Mexico City on March 17th.

Two years ago, the strike of thousands of farm workers brought to light the appalling conditions in which at least 80,000 men, women and children toil as day laborers in Baja California agribusiness. The hours are long, up to 14 hours a day with no rest on the weekends at a deplorable wage, with no vacations, no social security and no decent housing with basic services.  Striking workers denounced human rights violations, and especially sexual abuse and harassment of the mainly indigenous women workers by the foremen.

In response to a call sent out by the National Democratic Independent Farm Workers Union  (SINDJA) and the Alliance of National, State and Municipal Organizations for Social Justice, this year’s Caravan was organized to protest non-compliance of agreements reached with federal and state government officials in Baja California. The struggle continues for decent wages and benefits, the right to social security and an end to the sexual harassment of women.

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Self Defense Against White Supremacy: Finding a path towards community-based self-determination

One of the greatest barriers to community-based self-defense has been a very powerful shift towards pacifism and non-violence as a primary means of political expression in Europe and the USA.

By: el pinche simón

January 30th, 2017

Patriarchy and white supremacy have been the forerunners and continue to be the underpinnings of the economic, military and political system of U.S. imperialism, which is devoted to making money by any means necessary, including brute force and the legitimized use of violence. Its imposition is exposed by a glance at those who have money, power, and influence and those who do not. The price of things, places, food, labor, and people are all glaring pieces of evidence exposing the cruelty of a failed global economic model and the decline of the U.S. Empire.

We live in a military-political economy that has consistently overvalued the lives of white men above all other lives. As a matter of fact, the natural resources that are extracted from this earth to maintain white and male dominance over the planet, are considered more valuable than all lives. Most human life has become just another disposable variable in this economic equation.

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Police from 5 States Escalate Violence, Shoot Horses to Clear 1851 Treaty Camp

The Camp, a reclamation of unceded Dakota territory affirmed as part of the Standing Rock Reservation in the Ft. Laramie Treaty of 1851, was set up directly in the path of the pipeline.

[ Photo by Jonathon Klett ]

Sacred Stone Camp
October 28, 2016

Cannonball, ND – On October 27, over 300 police officers in riot gear, 8 ATVs, 5 armored vehicles, 2 helicopters, and numerous military-grade humvees showed up north of the newly formed frontline camp just east of Highway 1806. The 1851 Treaty Camp was set up this past Sunday directly in the path of the pipeline, on land recently purchased by DAPL. Today this camp, a reclamation of unceded Dakota territory affirmed as part of the Standing Rock Reservation in the Ft. Laramie Treaty of 1851, was violently cleared. Both blockades established this past weekend to enable that occupation were also cleared.

In addition to pepper spray and percussion grenades, shotguns were fired into the crowd with less lethal ammunition and a sound cannon was used (see images below). At least one person was tased and the barbed hook lodged in his face, just outside his eye. Another was hit in the face by a rubber bullet.

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Black Snake Destruction Report

The Dakota Access Pipeline Project is continuing work every single day at an accelerated speed. We need Water Protectors to come to Standing Rock and physically support this resistance now.

Red Warrior Camp
October 21, 2016

Note: This report is a synthesis of information obtained from DAPL’s official status reports and on the ground observations from vigilant water protectors on the frontline at Standing Rock.

The Black Snake is encroaching rapidly. It is apparent that DAPL is continuing work every single day at an accelerated speed. We need Water Protectors to come to Standing Rock and physically support this resistance NOW.

The Dakota Access Pipeline Project is a gargantuan pipeline measuring approximately 1,172-miles and 30-inches in diameter. The proposed route aims to continue the exploitation of the Bakken and Three Forks areas in indigenous territories from so-called North Dakota to Patoka, Illinois. The outrageously expensive $3.8 billion pipeline aims to violently extract crude oil from sacred lands and transport it to major refining markets in an exploitative and environmentally disastrous manner. The pipeline backers are knowingly prioritizing their projected fiscal profits over the imminent threat to clean drinking water for the Sioux nation and millions of people downstream of the Mississippi.

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San Pedro Tlanixco: Who says all is lost?

A rally and march around the Santiaguito prison in Almoloya de Juarez closed out a series of Activities for the Freedom of the Defenders of the Water and Life of San Pedro Tlanixco.

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“¿Quién dice que todo está perdido? (Who says all is lost?)” sang the Taller del Sur at the cultural festival held last September 25 as part of the Activities for the Freedom of the Defenders of the Water and Life of San Pedro Tlanixco.

And five days later, as the round of activities closed with a rally and march around Santiaguito prison at Almoloya de Juárez, the answer was clear. Nobody. In spite of the vicious repression brought down on this Nahua town by the State of Mexico’s (in)justice system, there’s no end to the struggle to free the eight guardians of the territory of San Pedro Tlanixco. On the contrary, as of 2014, the movement is rebuilding and getting stronger.

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War and Resistance Dispatch # 44

The face of the 43 missing and the tenacity of their families and compañeros are the other 43 dispatches on war and resistance. To them we add the pain, rage, and resistance of the originary peoples and the rebellions of millions all over Mexico and around the world.

Enlace Zapatista
September 22, 2016

To the peoples of the world:

To the alternative, free, autonomous, or whatever-you-call-it media:

To the National and International Sixth:

War and Resistance Dispatch #44

And what about the other 43? And the ones that follow?

This country has not been the same since the bad government committed one of its most heinous crimes in disappearing 43 young indigenous students of the teaching college Raúl Isidro Burgos in Ayotzinapa, Guerrero, two years ago. This event forced us to acknowledge the profound darkness in which we find ourselves today, stirring our individual and collective hearts and spirit. The rage, pain, and hope embodied in the families and compañeros of the 43 illuminate that darkness and shine on the faces of millions of people of every geography below in Mexico and around the world, as well as among a conscientious international civil society in solidarity.

As originary barrios, tribes, nations, and peoples, we begin from the collective heart that we are and turn our gaze into words.

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