Oaxaca: Communities Denounce Collusion between Agrarian Ombudsman and Mining Project

Por

10 September, 2023

^{Cover Photo: Mining tailings from the company Minera Cuzcatlán in San José del Progreso. Photo: Santiago Navarro F}

Indigenous Zapotec communities surrounding the gold and silver mining project of Minera Cuzcatlán, a subsidiary of the Canadian corporation, Fortuna Silver Mines, in San José del Progreso, Oaxaca, have condemned intensifying harassment from the mining company. The communities of Magdalena Ocotlán, Monte del Toro, San Martín de los Cansecos, San Matías Chilazoa, Los Ocotes and el Vergel denounced that they are being pressured to accept the expansion of the mining project, which has been in operation since 2011. The communities form part of the organization, Frente No a la Mineria.

Through a communique, the ejido authorities explained that the harassment is being carried out in coordination with the agrarian ombudsman in Miahuatlán. According to the law, agrarian ombudsman must “promote the defense of rights and guarantee the well-being of Indigenous people’s lands.”

One of the strategies of the agrarian institution is to prevent the communities from naming authorities who are against the project. “It benefits them that agrarian communities do not have accredited authorities. Without accreditation there isnt any validity in our appointments,” the agrarian commissioner of the ejido Monte del Toro explained to Avispa Midia, who for security reasons omits his name.

Furthermore, the agrarian ombudsman has purposely generated erroneous documentation in order to delay accreditation processes with the National Agrarian Registry. “When we sent the documents to the Agrarian Registry, they sent them back to us because of the errors. In the case of San Martín de los Cansecos, they delayed the accreditation process of their commissioner for two years,” added the agrarian commissioner.

In Monte del Toro, officials from the agrarian ombudsman are acting to divide the ejido, explained the authority. He admits that there is an agrarian dispute in the community dating back decades where one of the localities wants to separate from the ejido Monte del Toro, which is not accepted by the authorities of the agrarian community.

However, the question has worsened within the context of mining expansion. “The people of this locality have received resources from Cuzcatlán. The company wants to be able to enter the territory. The agrarian ombudsman insists on trying to convince the authorities to make the division,” explained the commissioner.

The agrarian ombudsman has taken other actions considered by the commissioner to be “strategies to divide the community.” For example, the institution has filed documents of ejido members seeking to change the titles of their lands without permission from the agrarian community. “They are stepping over the ejido authorities, which is not correct. We have autonomy over our lands, guaranteed by agrarian law.”

In a communique from the organization, the ejido Monte del Toro sustained that “we will not permit any division. Our grandfathers and grandmothers struggled for the ejido, for which we value the collective spirit of the land, and the care and protection of our territory.”

The company seeks a legal basis to enter the territories, they explained in a communique.

As the exploitation is underground, “we do not know where exactly they are digging, if its beneath Magdalena Ocotlán, Monte del Toro, or San Martín de los Cansecos,” explains the agrarian authority of Monte del Toro.

In 2021, Avispa Midia asked the company where they were advancing with the exploration, but the question was ignored.

According to data solicited by Avispa Midia from the Ministry of Economy, Minera Cuzcatlán has 15 active mining concessions registered in Oaxaca as of 2023. Together, these concessions total approximately 36,000 hectares. One of the concessions, located in the Lote Reducción Unificación Cuzcatlán 4, was updated during this government on May 16 of 2022. It is the company’s largest concession making up more than 10,000 hectares including territories of Magdalena Ocotlán, San Lucas Ocotlán, and San Pedro Taviche.

What “they want is to enter the communities to make air vents to be able to continue working beneath the earth. They want the agrarian communities to authorize their entry. Once the ejido authorizes it, they will buy the land and be able to work,” explains the ejido commissioner.

From San José

The ex-ejido lands commissioner of San Martin de los Cansecos, who also decided to omit his identity for security reasons, explains that the agrarian ombudsman operates on many occasions from San José del Progreso, the location of the mining project, when they should be at the ejido offices. “We know that all the current municipal infrastructure and projects in San José are related to the mining company,” he sustains.

Since 2009, San José del Progreso has not had agrarian representation, like the ejido lands commission, as a result of conflicts generated with the arrival of the mining company. “The agrarian ombudsman, far from resolving the agrarian conflict in San José, promotes visits of other commissioners to the community where the mining project is located,” he told Avispa Midia, the ex-ejido lands commissioner.

You may also be interested in the video: The Coming Devastation: Mining in Oaxaca

The head of the Miahuatlán agrarian ombudsman, Amauri Fernández Alvarado, in an interview with Avispa Midia, said that it was up to them to provide services of agrarian counsel, “to all agrarian communities in the district of Ejutla and part of the district of Ocotlán, communities around the mine,” he said.

Regarding the denunciations from ejido authorities against the agrarian ombudsman, Alvarado denied all of them. “I do not have anything to do with mining. I don’t work in mining. We do not have contact, none whatsoever, with the people from the mining company. …I am not blocking any community…nor we do we go to the agrarian community saying that they accept or not contracts or jobs with the mining company. My work is to provide counsel that must be correct.”

SEMARNAT’s Deceptions

In December of 2021, the Canadian mining company, Fortuna Silver Mines, from their offices in Canada, announced in a communique that the Secretariat of Environment and Natural Resources (SEMARNAT) had “authorized a 12-year extension to the environmental impact authorization” of the mine in San José.

The Secretariat of Environment and Natural Resources had denied the extension request in July of 2021. The environmental impact assessment presented by the company sought the legalization of the expansion of the mining operations, something which had already been carried out without permission from the environmental secretariat.

“Fortuna appealed…SEMARNAT reevaluated the request and granted the extension…,” the company announced in its press release.

However, Fortuna Silver Mines, from Canada, sustained by means of another communique, published on February 4, 2022, that it had received a notice from SEMARNAT in which the environmental secretariat said that it had committed a typo in the expansion of the mining term in San José. That is to say, the extension would be 2 years and not 12 as stated in the resolution document.

At that time, Avispa Midia obtained the SEMARNAT document (SGPA/DGIRA/DG-06101-21), signed by the General Director of Risk and Impact of the Secretariat (DGIRA), directed to the legal representative of Cuzcatlán, Rocío Martínez Lozano, dated December 14, 2021. This document proves that the agency authorized the extension of the mining company’s work for 12 more years.

Minera Cuzcatlán “considers that the notice was erroneously issued by the local office (of Oaxaca) of SEMARNAT,” said the company in its communique.

Minera Cuzcatlán “is working with the authorities to resolve this matter. Likewise, Minera Cuzcatlán has begun a judicial process in federal court to challenge and revoke the typo,” the communique states.

Avispa Midia solicited an interview with SEMARNAT to clarify the issue. The Secretariat ignored the request.

During all this time, the information had remained contradictory. “We were latent. While the company publicly informed that it was 12 more years, SEMARNAT kept telling us that the mining company was leaving, that it would only have two more years in operation,” said the ejido commissioner of Monte del Toro.

The doubt was resolved approximately three months ago. “We went to the offices of SEMARNAT in Mexico City and they told us that it was 12 years. They told us that yes it had been a typo in the permit, but nonetheless the permit was already granted, they had already given it to them,” said the commissioner. “What we want the company and government to know is that we will continue struggling until the end to defend our lands,” added the ejido authority.

Assembly in Defense of Water Demands an End to its Plunder in Mexico

Por

Avispa

29 August, 2023

In mid-August, in the original town of San Gregorio Atlapulco, in the Xochimilco district of Mexico City, the Third National Assembly for Water and Life took place. There, the plunder of water, the actors and methods involved in its appropriation, as well as the struggles undertaken by the communities in its defense were central themes.

You may be interested in: R esistance Grows Against Water Privatization in Mexico

The assembly was attended by 834 people from 209 different organizations, collectives, networks, original peoples, Indigenous communities, free media outlets, and individuals from 21 states of Mexico, as well as guests from 9 countries.

Participants pointed out the tactics being used to impose the plunder of water. Among them are the manipulation and division of communities, privatization and commodification, as well as strategies of remunicipalization. Also, the concessions “that privilege private companies and industry, the cooptation of community water committees, and plans and programs of territorial reorganization,” emphasized the statement from the assembly.

In addition, participants pointed out the various actors who participate in the legitimation of the plunder, among them academics and experts whose discourse is based in concepts like agroecology, environmental conservation, sustainable development, green technologies, and climate justice, “so that the powerful do not get upset, and that they continue providing financing by means of NGO’s and economic stimulus that fragment and divide the communities.”

Wars of Extermination

One of the principle denunciations is the war of extermination against the Zapatista communities in Chiapas, the Nahua community of Ostula in Michoacán, as well as the violence and repression against original peoples of the Valley of Mexico, Tlaxcala, Querétaro, among other geographies.

Through the statement from the event, participants pointed out the violence of paramilitary groups like the Regional Organization of Coffee Growers of Ocosingo (ORCAO), the invasion of governmental programs that cause community destruction and division like “sembrando vida,” the forced displacement of families and entire communities of the Zapatistas Support Bases, as well as the imprisonment of Manuel Gómez Vázquez, and the assassination attempt against Jorge López Santiz, events that have the Zapatista Caracoles in Chiapas on high alert.

They also referred to the disappearance and assassination of the Indigenous Nahua, Lorenzo Froylán de la Cruz Ríos, member of the Communal Guard of Santa María Ostula, in the municipality of Aquila, Michoacán, whose body was found with signs of torture after nine days of his disappearance, at the beginning of August.

“Those materially responsible, who enjoy impunity and complicity from the federal and state governments are members of the Jalisco New Generation Cartel, along with the narco-government of Michoacán, led by the governor, Alfredo Ramirez Bedolla, who recently proclaimed the community guard to be illegal. This represents a new repressive blow, in addition to the eviction order from the Local Agrarian Court 38, as well as the order military presence in the autonomous territory of Santa María Ostula,” the statement explains.

You may be interested in: Indigenous Nahuas in Michoacán Respond to the Threat of Criminalization of their Communal Guard

Another case mentioned is the community of Calpulalpan, Tlaxcala, where in May of this year, women, children, and elders suffered physical and psychological repression for their struggle in defense of water. They also demanded the liberation of the land defenders, Raymundo Cahuatzi Meléndez and Saúl Rosales Meléndez, from the community of San Pedro Tlalcuapan, Tlaxcala, as well as an end to the water law initiative in Tlaxcala.

They reiterated the demand for an end to the systematic violence in Querétaro against people who defend water, springs, and territory, “as is the case of the community of Escolásticas, who were brutally repressed on June 13. We denounce the intensification of violence following the approval of the law of water service concessions in Querétaro. We demand its repeal and elimination.”

They denounced that, in the original towns of the valley of Mexico, like Xochimilco, Tláhuac, Milpa Alta, Iztacalco and Coyoacán, there are also experiences of extermination. There, women are affected by the imposition of mega urban, habitational, and commercial complexes, “that steal our water, quintupling our working hours, destroying our knowledge, and taking away our autonomy, causing greater sexual and economic violence against us until culminating in the deplorable increase in femicides of campesino women. However, thanks to the women who struggle and resist, our ancestral feminisms are rising up,” sustained the declaration.

They highlight the cases of gender violence that women from the communities of Xochimilco face on part of the Mayor’s office, “against women traditional authorities of San Gregorio Atlapulco, as well as women of the Autonomous Council of Government in Xochimilco (San Luis Tlaxialtemalco), who have been slandered through social networks, beating us physically, socially, and psychologically, with death threats and incitements to lynching,” they accuse.

As a whole, participants demanded an end to the criminalization against Patricia González Guzmán, President of the Pro-Cemetery Committee of San Gregorio Atlapulco, as well as an end to the plunder of water, land, and territory of all the original peoples of the region, for which they demand the restauration of the natural water cycle in the micro-basin of Tláhuac-Xochimilco, Milpa Alta-Chalco.

Actions

They assured that they will continue exercising and strengthening their right to self-determination, the pathway toward autonomy. “The resistance and the rebellions are the tools to recuperate our history, our territory, our mother earth and life. As communities, we will recuperate our cosmovision and spirituality that they have stolen from us. We also ratify that, we will not surrender, we will not sell out, we will not compromise.”

At the end of the Third National Assembly for Water and Life, a series of actions were agreed upon, including a subsequent meeting in Tlaxcala between the months of February and March of 2024. They also called for protests against the National Water Commission on September 25 of this year, as well as participation in the national mobilization against the war on Zapatista communities for October 12.

See the full declaration from the assembly here.

Bacalar: Those Left Behind and Forgotten by the Dispossession of the Maya Train

Por

Renata Bessi

25 August, 2023

Cover photo: María Dolores and her husband in their home just a few steps from Section 6 of the Maya Train. Photo: Santiago Navarro F

Founded by Mayas in the year 415 AD in what is now the state of Quintana Roo, the town of Bacalar was one of the primary centers of Maya resistance against Spanish colonization. Today, the monumental ruins of the ancient Maya city of Ichkabal—the oldest known to date of that civilization—and its Lagoon of Seven Colors, attracts tourists from different parts of the world. These visitors use the hotels and restaurants that surround the lagoon, which provide access only to those who consume the different services.

Just a few kilometers from the tourism hype, the Avispa Midia team moved through small openings in the tropical forest which still survives on the edges of the municipality, looking for the pathway of the Maya Train, the principle megaproject of the government of Andrés Manuel López Obrador. This project “will strengthen the integration of the productive chains in the Yucatán Peninsula,” official government documents argue. It will bring more tourists to the region, regardless of the frequent power outages, the lack of water, and the collapsed drainage systems.

After walking for about fifteen minutes, a large gap appears about 60 meters wide and seemingly infinite in length. On the edges of the gap lies some of the dying vegetation, the rest had already been removed to an unknown location. The gap was filled with a layer of sandy clay packed down multiple times. Everything is ready for the next phase, which is laying down the aggregate, railroad ties, and rails that will carry the train cars across the region.

*^{Machines of military engineers advance on the construction of Section 6 of the Maya Train. Photo: Aldo Santiago}*

Unexpectedly, along the gap in the tropical forest, appears a humble house blocking the straight line of the forest clearing. The house has survived the coming and going of the heavy machinery that devastated thousands of trees in its path. The house belongs to a 38-year old Maya woman named María Dolores Olvera Chi. There she has lived with her family—her husband and two children—for twelve years.

*^{María’s family home. Photo: Santiago Navarro F}*

This family’s resistance is what has kept the house standing. “They want to remove us from our home via threats. People come and threaten us so that we leave. They say that they are going to relocate us, that we should take our most important belongings, and that they are going to remove us,” says María to Avispa Midia. She explains that people belonging to the ejido de Bacalar, and others who haven’t identified themselves, are the ones who are intimidating them.

One day after the Avispa Midia team was with María and her husband, men dressed in military uniforms went to their house threatening them again to leave. However, María affirms that she will defend these lands until the last consequences.

Nonetheless, the megaproject advances rapidly. This region contains Section 6 which is scheduled to be ready for operation at the end of 2023. It is one of the three sections of the Maya Train that are beneath the administration of the Secretary of National Defense (SEDENA).

Section 6 of the Maya Train is 250.84 kilometers long with 4.66 kilometers of track connecting with Section 7, totaling 255.50 kilometers between the cities of Tulum and Chetumal in Quintana Roo. The train line is a double track, considered for mixed traffic, passengers, and cargo. The passenger trains will travel at a maximum velocity of 160 kilometers per hour and the cargo trains at a minimum of 85 kilometers per hour. The train will pass through the towns of Nuevo Progreso, Pedro Antonio Santos, Limones, Miguel Hidalgo y Costilla, San Isidro de la Laguna, Buenavista, Caan Lumil, Bacalar, Aarón Merino and Cuauhtémoc, which is the priority region of influence of the railway project.

The project covers an area of 3909.53 acres, according to a study carried out by Greenpeace. This doesn’t consider other related projects, such as vehicular crossings, drainage, camps, storage centers, and substations. The Maya Train, in its seven sections, will cover 1,525 kilometers, and will pass through the states of Chiapas, Tabasco, Campeche, Yucatán, and Quintana Roo.

“Nobody warned us, nobody notified us about the train project. One day, four months ago, we woke up and saw that there were people knocking down the trees. We approached them to ask why they were knocking down the trees and it was then that the people who were working told us that the train was going to pass through here,” remembers María with great sadness.

One day, without asking for permission, they arrived to move the fence marking the limit of María’s property. “We left to buy some groceries, and when we returned, they had moved the fence, reducing our land. My husband put the fence up again,” explains the Maya woman. Meanwhile, her neighbors have abandoned their land one by one. “Who knows where they went. We don’t know,” added María.

They work both day and night on the construction of the railway lines. They deforested the entire area. They knocked down everything that was here, scraping the black earth characteristic of the tropical forest, and filling it in with a light-yellow earth, flattening the path. About a kilometer from María’s house is the planned construction of the Bacalar passenger train station.

When María realized the magnitude of the project being developed in front of her house, she immediately went to the offices of the ejido of Bacalar. “We bought ejido lands. We have signed and stamped papers from them (the ejido members). Since we bought directly from them, they have the responsibility to notify us. We have the right to know what was coming,” shares María with anger.

The attempts made by the family for dialogue at the ejido offices have had negative results. “There is no communication. They are closed off to our questions. They aren’t willing to talk with us, they close their doors to us. They give us the run around. They say things, but there is nothing concrete. They treat us with a certain distance,” adds María.

María and her family are not considering leaving their house. “We are firm. We do not want money, nor do we want to go anywhere else. This house is very special to us. We began with nothing. First with the wooden house, then we advanced little by little, struggling. It is very sad to see all of this happening, that suddenly they come and tell you that you have to leave your house.” Furthermore, “they destroyed our trees, they drive away the animals that lived here, like the macaws, the parrots, the deer, and the jaguar.”

Most of the forest that was destroyed is made up of “trees like these,” explains María, pointing to a Ceiba tree that still lives on her patio. It is considered by the Maya people as a divine tree, the tree of life. “It is the tree that connects us to the gods,” she shares with certainty.

Of the 3909.53 acres that make up the project, 92.22% of the land is considered forest. Around 3430 acres are of tropical evergreen forest, 119 acres are tropical lowland evergreen forest, 38 acres are temperate wetlands, and 16.5 acres are mangrove.

What Happened with the Land?

The lands for the project were sold to the federal government by the ejido of Bacalar. They were marked for public utility and expropriated. The decree was published June 26, 2023 in the Official Journal of the Federation, together with four other expropriation decrees in favor of Fonatur Tren Maya SA de CV, affecting lands of five other ejidos in the municipality of Bacalar, and one in the municipality of Othón P. Blanco.

According to the expropriation decree, in a general assembly on July 9, 2022, the 167 ejido members of Bacalar approved to the agreement with Fonatur regarding the common use lands that make up a surface area of around 140 acres.

On September 14, 2022, Fonatur solicited the expropriation via the Secretariat of Agrarian, Territorial and Urban Development (SEDATU) for reasons of public utility.

Members of the Ejido Commission of Bacalar notified them on February 11, 2023 regarding the expropriation request and the area which was to be expropriated. According to the document, they had ten business days to “state what was in their best interests.” During that time frame, there was no complaint regarding the project.

On December 21, 2022, the Institute of Administration and Appraisals of National Assets (INDAABIN) emitted an evaluation determining the total amount of compensation based in its commercial value to be $150, 276, 000 pesos (around 8.8 million dollars).

It Goes Because It Goes

The ejido member Luis Chimal Balam, the agrarian authority who led the negotiations with the federal government, told Avispa Midia that the lands have already been paid for. “They paid us what we asked,” he commented.

Balam remembers that at the beginning of the negotiations, in 2020, the federal government sent several representatives of different governmental institutions to the ejido. “A lieutenant was even sent to the negotiations. He said to us that they were going to deposit money in the bank for the expropriation. They said to us: when you want to collect it, you can, and if you don’t want to collect it, you don’t have to. The train is going to pass through here, because that’s the way it is,” he remembers.

Then, “we told them that they were wrong, that it was not like that, that they were going to give us what we asked for. You aren’t going to humiliate us just because we are humble people. Make no mistake, we told them.”

Negotiations were carried out in four meetings “until an agreement was reached.”

The ejido member admits that the Maya Train “is not going to benefit us. They told us that it was going to provide jobs to the people in the town, but there was nothing.”

No Agreement

One of the points that the ejido members wanted to negotiate was the resolution of litigation related to 910 acres around the Lagoon of Seven Colors.

In 1971, 910 acres of ejido lands surrounding the lagoon were decreed in favor of the state government. The government sold the land “to politicians and government officials,” privatizing a grand part of the shores of the lagoon. The ejido members have filed lawsuits to recuperate the lands, “but they have received negative resolutions.”

*^{Boats on the shores of the Bacalar Lagoon. Photo: Aldo Santiago}*

The ejido members filed a lawsuit directly to the federal government. “I have dealt with López Obrador personally, I have taken the files so that justice can be served. Up until now, there has been no resolution in our favor,” claims the ejido member.

The Ejido Doesn’t Represent the Maya People

Aldair T’uut’, member of the Múuch’Xíimbal Assembly –, argues that the right to Maya autonomy and self-determination was not respected in the decisions taken by the 167 ejido members.

“They have their role as ejido members, but they do not represent the Maya territory. They left these decisions to a small handful of people when they truly correspond to the entire Maya community,” he said for Avispa Midia.

He maintained that, “we have been here for millennium, before the constitution existed, before the president existed, before Mexico itself exited. Therefore, we are the ones who must decide.”

Experiences like these have happened throughout the Yucatán Peninsula, says T’uut’. “At best, the federal government approaches with its representatives. We know that the state already has experience in corrupting ejido authorities. They are really good at doing that type of thing. So, when they arrive here, they already have a plan in place where they confront and trick the ejido members. Some want to sell the lands, others don’t. They also play off of the necessity and poverty of the communities.”

Meanwhile, María and her family, people who do not figure into the negotiations, will end up being displaced and possibly forgotten by the authorities.

“Dispossession just began, and it’s going to last a long time”: Raúl Zibechi

Por

Sare Frabes

4 July, 2023

^{Translated by Elizabeth L. T. Moore}

The dispossession war lived by the peoples of the world has just begun and is going to last a long time. The alarm was sounded by the Uruguayan writer and activist dedicated to working with social movements in Latin America, Raúl Zibechi, during the Encuentro Internacional El Sur Resiste, in the Centro Indígena de Capacitación Integral (Cideci), in Chiapas. “For all [the capital’s] progress, there’s still a lot of land that it doesn’t control, that’s why I say dispossession will go on for a long time.”

In countries where studies have been done about land ownership, he says, it’s been shown that 40%, that’s 4 in every 10 hectares, still are not in the hands of the oligarchy, nor corporations, nor the major capital.

Brazil is one case. Very rigorous analyses exist, he says, that reveal that 40% of land in the country are from agrarian reform, from Black and Indigenous peoples, land that is reserved by the State as natural parks or natural reserves, land of small farmers, along with land where there are traditional fishermen.

There are countries that surpass the 40%. One example is Colombia. “The native peoples have a third of the land recognized by the Constitution, in addition to the land where there are Black communities, the natural reserves. In Colombia it’s probably more than 50%,” he analyzes.

The dispossession wars are integral to capitalism. “Capitalism today can’t live without these wars. Capitalism today can’t act without violence against the communities. It is necessary to dispossess, they have to kill, they have to murder; and, because of this, militarism is here to stay.”

The left had always “mistrusted the military, but now the progressives of Latin America defend the armed forces.”

Mexico is the most brutal example of militarization, he says, when it gives the armed forces responsibility for the construction of major works. And this is happening in Argentina, too. “The Armed Forces couldn’t go out in public because they committed genocide during the dictatorship, and now the progressive government of Argentina demands that eight large extractive companies militarize, something that no government, nor the Right, has been able to do.”

In Colombia, where there’s a new progressivism with the Gustavo Petro government, an alliance has already been made with the United States Armed Forces to “defend” the Amazon.

Drug trafficking today is also systemic, he analyzes. “The time is coming in which drugs and the capital are entangled. Drugs and the State. Drugs and the Armed Forces. At which point it would be very difficult to establish a line, draw a border and say ‘This is drug trafficking , this is the bourgeoisie.”

Therefore the diagnosis of the Ejército Zapatista de Liberación Nacional (EZLN) of the Cuarta Guerra Mundial, which has been done for more than two decades, “seems to us totally accurate and totally correct; a dispossession war is being lived against the communities to ‘clean’ the territory, and remodel it to the image and likeness of the capital’s interests.”

Maintain the fight

Zibechi has understood his whole life that at the basis of peoples autonomy was communal land. “And, of course, communal land is really important, it’s fundamental for there to be communities in resistance,” he says.

But today he understood, he says, that the basis of communal land and autonomies is the spirituality of the peoples. “Spirituality is what lets us sustain ourselves in the fight for a long time; the main victory is we’ve been here for 500 years. And we may have to endure another 500 (years) more.”

There’s a story that Subcomandante Marcos writes, a dialogue with the old man Antonio, that says the struggle is like a circle. “It starts in one place but never ends. What does this have to do with spirituality? If the struggle never ends, it means that there’s no final objective, the seizure of power. There’s no final victory. There’s no final triumph.”

The idea of a final triumph, he says, is a very Catholic, Christian idea, incorporated into the social fight. “If the fight is a circle that never ends, spirituality is what sustains us for this long time.”

The Internacional Comunista speaks about the last fight. “The last fight is entering the palace, taking power. And it’s considered that taking power is synonymous with doing the revolution. Thanks to the native peoples and thanks to contributions by EZLN, today we know that there’s no last fight, but a circle.”

The writer says it’s necessary to overcome the political calculation idea of cost-benefit, the political pragmatism. “Because if not, we’re always going to be returning to this capitalistic ideology, these capitalistic values, that are central to the rule.”

Zibechi cites as an example the armed conflicts of Guatemala and El Salvador. “We see how on top of the fight of the native peoples a vanguard apparatus was mounted and this vanguard - of white, academic men - acted in a way, as we tend to say, pragmatic. At a certain point, it did a cost-benefit analysis, as capitalism does. And they did it and they negotiated, in a deplorable situation, because nothing changed.”

To overcome the logic of pragmatism, the peoples spirituality is central, he defends. “If we want to be true rebels, fight for true change, we have to overcome this calculated logic, which is always individual.” He goes on: “Spirituality puts us in another place, non-material, profoundly human to be able to go farther than material contradictions.”

Everything “we see today is what comes from a giant storm, which is already underway, a hellish earthquake over us. We can’t construct material barriers against that.”

“We can unite and give a hand and hand ourselves over to life and to Mother Earth, with the hope that she will show us the way.”

Resolution Pending in Case of Miguel Peralta Betanzos

Por

Nolan Peltz

5 June, 2023

^{Cover photo: Family members of Miguel Peralta demand an end to the political persecution against him, and freedom for the political prisoners of Eloxochitlán de Flores Magón.}

Miguel Peralta’s freedom hangs in the balance. Indigenous Mazatec, community organizer, anarchist, Peralta is one of thirty-five members of the community assembly of Eloxochitlán de Flores Magón who have faced political persecution and/or imprisonment following violence in the Indigenous Mazatec municipality in 2014.

On December 14 of that year, a campaign of cacique repression and terror came to a head when the community assembly was attacked by an armed group as they gathered to elect a municipal authority in the town center. The ensuing violence left various people injured, and shortly thereafter, one person was pronounced dead in uncertain circumstances.

The repression immediately followed. Thirty-five members of the community assembly were charged with different crimes related to that day’s events. The charges don’t correspond to those responsible for the violence, but rather signal out those who have actively participated in the community assembly, resisting cacique and political party influence, and fighting for autonomy and collective decision-making.

Currently, eight members of the community assembly remain imprisoned in different prisons in the state of Oaxaca: Herminio Monfil, Jaime Betanzos, Fernando Gavito, Alfredo Bolaños, Omar Morales, Francisco Durán, Marcelino Miramón, and Paul Reyes, the majority of whom have been held for years without a sentence. In addition, thirteen active arrest warrants against members of the community assembly remain, including one against Miguel Peralta, who has already received a condemnatory sentence of fifty years in prison.

Imprisonment and Persecution of Miguel Peralta:

As an active member of the community assembly, and a vocal opponent of the cacique-political party influence in Eloxochitlán, Miguel Peralta was swept up in the wave of repression following the events on December 14. Peralta was detained on April 30, 2015 in Mexico City, nearly five months after the attack in December of 2014. He was held incommunicado for nearly 20 hours before eventually being booked in Tlaxiaco, Oaxaca on charges of homicide and attempted homicide. From Tlaxiaco he was transferred to the prison in Cuicatlán, Oaxaca.

On October 26, 2018, after over three years in prison awaiting a verdict, Miguel Peralta was sentenced to fifty years, thirty for homicide and twenty for attempted homicide. The sentence was handed down by Judge Juan Leon Montiel of the Mixed District Court of Huautla de Jiménez, Oaxaca, in what Miguel Peralta’s support group has argued to be a clear case of judicial corruption. He was the first of the thirty-five charged from Eloxochitlán to actually receive a condemnatory sentence.

Following an appeal from his legal team, that fifty-year sentence was thrown out as Peralta was not afforded his right to be present at his final hearing. Miguel’s second final hearing was held on September 19, 2019. That day he released a statement launching a hunger strike demanding his freedom:

“Once again I use my body as a weapon of struggle against injustice. Starting today…I will stop consuming food. Hunger strike menu: My breakfast, a snack of patience. My lunch, a buffet of resistance. My main course, solidarity. My dessert, freedom.”

*^{Protest in front of the courthouse in Huautla de Jimenez, Oaxaca, during the final hearing of Miguel Peralta, September 19, 2019.}*

On October 14, 2019, after growing calls from the streets for his release, and almost a month without eating food, Miguel was absolved of both charges and released from prison in Cuicatlán. He had spent just over four years and four months in prison.

Over two years later, following an appeal from the accusing party, Peralta’s freedom was again revoked on March 4, 2022, and an arrest warrant issued for that same fifty-year sentence. His freedom was overturned in the Third Criminal Court, by the Magistrates Humberto Nicolás Vázquez, Sonia Luz Ireta Jiménez and Sofia Altamirano Rueda.

On August 25, 2022, his legal team filed an appeal to this latest resolution. Initially, on March 1, 2023, the appeal was assigned to Judge Elizabeth Franco Cervantes in the First Collegiate Court of the State of Oaxaca. On May 26, 2023, a new judge was appointed to the case, C. Victor Hugo Cortes Sibaja. According to the law, the judge has 90 business days to rule on the case, which puts the legal time frame to rule on the appeal sometime in the coming months.

Cacique-Political Party-State Power

The case of Eloxochitlán and Miguel Peralta exemplifies the unmistakable links between local caciques, political parties, and state power. The Zepeda family, including Manuel Zepeda Cortés and his daughter Elisa Zepeda Lagunas, have been the backbone of this force.

At the beginning of 2010, with the backing of the political party Convergence, Manuel Zepeda Cortés launched a campaign for municipal president, handing out political gifts, buying votes, and making political alliances in order to capture power. In the elections of November of that year, Zepeda won the municipal presidency with a third of the votes. Contrary to custom in the community, Zepeda refused the integration of the municipal government with the second and third place candidates, seeking supreme power in the community.

Over the course of his three-year term, Manuel Zepeda carried out a campaign of repression against members of the community assembly, seeking to disarticulate the community organization which threatened his hold on power. Zepeda was also involved in the extraction of sand, gravel, and rocks from the local river to benefit his companies, along with those of his allies. Furthermore, he left an account of more than 20 million pesos missing from municipal coffers.

On November 24, 2014, Manuel Zepeda and his group occupied the municipal palace, running out the newly elected municipal president and establishing themselves in power in the community. Their principle intention was to avoid being held accountable for the disappearance of municipal funds. The occupation of the municipal palace led directly to the attack on December 14, 2014.

Taking advantage of the political persecution against members of the community assembly, along with the disarticulation of the community fabric as a result of the repression, Elisa Zepeda Lagunas, the daughter of Manuel Zepeda Cortés, made her way into power. In a community election completely foreign to the traditional decision-making forms in the community, Zepeda was elected municipal president of Eloxochitlán in April of 2016, taking power in 2017.

However, in a clear sign that her intention wasn’t to serve the community of Eloxochitlán, but to use the public position as a political trampoline, Zepeda postulated for state congress as local representative for the political party MORENA, winning the election in July of 2018, and taking power in November of that year.

During her three years in office, Zepeda also served as President of the Permanent Commission of Justice of the State of Oaxaca. As Miguel’s lawyer suggests, “In that position, Elisa had relations with the District Attorney, with the Public Prosecutors’ Offices, with judges and magistrates of the State Judicial Power.” She was rubbing shoulders with the very same people who would overturn Miguel’s freedom not long afterwards.

*^{Graffiti in the streets of Oaxaca City. Courtesy of Noticias de Abajo ML}*

Following a loss in her reelection bid in June 2021, Zepeda had already established her position in the MORENA political party apparatus. She was appointed the Secretary of Women of the Salomón Jara government which took power in Oaxaca on December 1, 2022. From these various public positions, Elisa Zepeda has flexed her political power and judicial connections to maintain the repression and persecution against members of the community assembly.

The ongoing repression and persecution of members of the community assembly of Eloxochitlán de Flores Magón exemplifies not only the corruption of certain public officials, but a more general hostility of the Mexican nation-state towards Indigenous communities. Through local caciques, State power is able to disarticulate community organization, struggles for self-determination and territorial defense. And through State power, caciques acquire the economic and political resources to dominate their communities and scale the structure of state power. In this case, all these forces intersect in the figure of Elisa Zepeda, and the political party MORENA.

Neither Condemned nor Persecuted: Actions for Freedom

In April of 2023, the Support Group for the Freedom of Miguel Peralta launched a solidarity campaign, “Neither Condemned nor Persecuted: Actions for Freedom,” demanding the revocation of the fifty-year sentence against Miguel Peralta and a sentence of complete freedom. The campaign also seeks to draw attention and support to the eight remaining political prisoners of Eloxochitlán de Flores Magón, along with other struggles against prisons and state repression both nationally and across the globe.

Heeding the call for solidarity, Indigenous Yaqui political prisoner Fidencio Aldama released an audio statement from prison in Ciudad Obregón, Sonora expressing his solidarity with Miguel Peralta. In the statement, Aldama, who is spending fourteen years in prison for resisting the construction of a natural gas pipeline in Yaqui territory, makes the connection between his case and that of Miguel Peralta’s:

“In the face of this sentence and political persecution, I want to express my solidarity with my compañero Miguel Peralta, calling on everyone to resist this case of injustice. His case is similar to mine. For the defense of our territories and self-determination, our customs and traditions, they unjustly imprison us. They do so to intimidate us. Through the intervention of those in power, and the corruption linked to them, those allied with money can carry out their objectives.”

Political prisoner support groups and independent media projects are organizing a collective radio transmission on June 3, 2023, with the intention of shining light on Miguel’s case, and articulating different cases of political repression and persecution. That same day, Miguel Peralta’s support group is calling for solidarity actions. Their message is clear: Revocation of the fifty-year sentence! Absolute freedom for Miguel Peralta!

In Chiapas, people denounce counterinsurgency, displacement and State collusion

Por

Ñaní Pinto

25 May, 2023

^{Cover image: Jeny Pascacio}

^{Translated by Elizabeth L. T. Moore}

Large-scale, intermittent forced displacement; forced disappearances; land divestments; assassinations; torture; espionage and criminalization of social protests are just some of the serious human rights violations that are happening in multiple localities in Chiapas.

That’s the evidence provided by a report from the Centro de Derechos Humanos Fray Bartolomé de las Casas (CDH Frayba) titled “Chiapas, a disaster between criminal violence and State collusion.”

The document, which includes an analysis of situations registered between 2020 and 2022, highlights the increase of violence due to the existence of groups that use weapons for social, political, economic and territorial control in multiple of the southeastern Mexican state’s terrains.

As a continuation of a counterinsurgent strategy, criminal and paramilitary group operations adds to impunity encouraged by State actors, remilitarization of territories and confirmed espionage carried out by the Secretaría de la Defensa Nacional (Sedena) in Chiapas.

In this context, the human rights organization expresses its concern about the role of the Mexican military as the main perpetrator of crimes against humanity, just as it’s currently integrating “a super-power with the possibility of controlling all the social spheres and leaving the doors open for a neo-development and authority government to exercise power.”

According to CDH Frayba, this scenario is happening at the same time that the current administration is requiring a governmental economic policy which seeks for the Mexican State to promote territory reconfiguration through megaprojects to exploit natural resources.

The report says the Mexican State is found stuck in geopolitical interests seeking to impose infrastructure for the development of projects that look to take geostrategic advantage of natural goods. For this reason, among the violence strategies is the creation and administration of tension and conflict, starting from wasteful spending and the imposition of new forms of community organization, through social programs that involve organizational models in communities proposed by external people.

Counterinsurgency

The CDH Frayba emphasizes that, during the period covered by the report, an increase in aggressions against communities and Ejército Zapatista de Liberación Nacional (EZLN) support bases was recorded, due to an open dispute for control of the land recovered by said organization in 1994.

According to the human rights organization, this “exemplified how the counterinsurgency is operating toward the Zapatista project; the aggression and harassment committed by corporate organizations aligned with the State are diverse; just as for a territory reconfiguration from the project, the backbone of the current federal administration, Sembrando Vida.”

In agreement with the analysis, Sembrando Vida newly creates conflicts and tensions to confront villages and communities among whom fight for control coming from the right of autonomy and self-determination, without State intervention, and who seek access to the earth’s resources from monetary government support.

“The result is an irresponsible action by the federal government upon introducing a program that demands the requirement of legal land property in a region so fragmented and politically divided as the state of Chiapas,” the report states.

The document establishes that the objective of Sembrando Vida is imposing a new paradigm for territory reorganization, and control of the land and the individuals through registration, imposing external techniques and dynamics on the communities that don’t correspond to their needs.

Furthermore, it’s concerned with the creation of a parallel structure, to remove power from local authorities; “It’s a considerable threat against all the organizations in resistance that oppose government programs, to be self-sufficient, independent and, precisely, not controlled.”

Displacement

The report highlights that, among the phenomena with the deepest worsening in the State is internal forced displacement. “The dynamics show particular violent ways that involve patterns of local action and everyday links to territorial control, in good measure exercised from community structures, by armed groups and sectors of regional politics that they direct and support,” the document details.

In the period from 2010 to October 2022, the CDH Frayba registered the forced displacement of at least 16,755 people. It highlights that, from 2021 to present, in the border zone with Guatemala there are at least 2,000 people, members of 400 families, that abandoned their communities due to the violence generated by the dispute for territorial control by criminal groups.

The document highlights that the difficulties related to the municipalities of Frontera Comalapa, Chicomuselo, La Trinitaria and Comitán, which are used as routes for drug transfers, human trafficking and sexual slavery; vehicle robberies, weapons dealing and kidnapping; along with being routes for the transit and movement of migrant people originating from Central and South America. “The substantial earnings that are generated in the southern border are of international significance, being the most important for the country, for which, the war between criminal groups to occupy these strategic municipalities does not let up.”

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