Chiapas - El Enemigo Común

African Migrants Assembly Created in Chiapas

Assembly urges Mexican authorities to assist migrant communities in matters of food, health, hygiene and housing.

Photo: Cuartoscuro
Translated by Sam Stoker.

More than three thousand migrants from Angola, Burkina Faso, Cameroon, Eritrea, Ethiopia, Ghana, Guinea, Conaky, Liberia, Mali, Mauritania, Central African Republic, Democratic Republic of Congo, Senegal and Sierra Leone Togo created the first Assembly of African and African Migrants in Tapachula, Chiapas, to demand respect for their rights, and that the Mexican authorities cease violence and repression against migrant communities.

The members of the assembly explained that they were forced to leave their countries of origin for either political, ideological, or religious persecution, or for belonging to a particular social group, as well as denouncing that the majority were detained at the 21st Century station and never had translators to read the immigration documents.

The assembly urged the Mexican authorities to assist migrant communities in matters of food, health, hygiene and housing.

Following is the communiqué of the assembly and the organizations that accompany it:

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Militarization in Mexico Advances with a Red Zone in the South-Southeast

Militarism in Mexico is increasing. President Andrés Manuel Lopez Obrador, along with the commander of the National Guard Luis Ramirez Bucio, at an August 13th press conference shared a document titled “The Situation of the National Guard” detailing the process and deployment of troops within the newly created National Guard.

By Eugenia Lopez
Translated by El Enemigo Común.

More than 230,000 total troops

Federal officials announced that the new military police has been deployed throughout the entire Mexican territory, with 58,602 troops under the command of the new force, distributed to 150 General Coordinations.

In addition to these troops are 123,465 military troops from the Secretariat of National Defense (SEDENA), 13,461 from the Marine Secretariat (SEMAR) in permanent deployment for public security tasks, 14,852 troops from the Federal Gendarmerie Forces and 20,584 troops from the Federal Police in “voluntary” transition to the National Guard.

The total amount will be 231,964 troops which will be patrolling throughout the entire nation.

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Torture, Tears, and Desperation in Mexico’s Migrant Jails

Lizzi was detained for 45 days, during which time she says she suffered physical and psychological torture. “The treatment we received the entire time was disgraceful.”

By Movimiento Migrante Mesoamericano
Translated by Scott Campbell

“‘You’re going to die! Sign your deportation and go back to your country!’ was what I heard as I struggled to recover from the asthma attack I suffered in the migrant detention center. I felt cornered by the guard and considered doing it, but remembering the problems that led me to leave my country, I dropped the idea.”

Lizzi is one of 51,607 people detained in Mexico by the National Migration Institute (INM) during the first four months of 2019. She was detained for 45 days, during which time she says she suffered physical and psychological torture. “We felt like we were in a jail, it was horrible! I had two asthma attacks inside. When we came back from the doctor, another guard asked me, “And you want to ask for refuge? Do you know you’ll be locked up for three to six months?”

A few meters from Pakal’ Ná park, near the train tracks in Palenque where hundreds of migrants meet to share their stories, the young, twenty-year-old mother recalls her painful experience. She left Honduras because she had problems with her son’s father, who belonged to one of the gangs. After years of abuse and threats, one day she decided to flee with her son to the United States to start a new life.

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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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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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