Confidential files of the Secretary of National Defense (Sedena) leaked by the Guacamaya hackers group reveal a permanent monitoring by the military of the Zapatista Army of National Liberation (EZLN) and organizations with affinity to the Zapatista movement.
One of the current concerns of Sedena, evident in its reports, is the action of the EZLN in relation to the Maya Train and other megaprojects in the south-southeast of Mexico.
The document Position of the EZLN for the construction of the Maya Train, classified as confidential, from January 2020, mentions the conditions of the Zapatistas in the Chiapas zone, the reasons why they oppose the Mayan Train and other megaprojects, as well as the way in which they would act against said works and the federal government itself.
President López Obrador urged the Army to guard the construction of the Maya Train.
Sedena estimates that the EZLN could re-arm itself and maintains that “the risk of the resurgence of the rebel movement is still latent,” due to the construction of megaprojects in the southeast of the country.
It is also stated that “the EZLN group represents a possible unfavorable factor to the internal security of the Mexican State”.
The Army recommends in an analysis dated January 20, 2019 that “intelligence monitoring of this group requires the work of civil and military intelligence in national security, given its background.”
Furthermore, Sedena considers it necessary to generate ‘intelligence’ about grassroots Christian groups of the Catholic Church, which would be close to the Zapatistas, and also about their position regarding the government of Andrés Manuel López Obrador.
Galeano
Regarding Subcomandante Galeano, Sedena considers that “he cannot be underestimated.”
In the past, he managed to raise hundreds of residents in arms, “why couldn't he do the feat again today? Commander Ernesto Che Guevara already said: ‘There is no small enemy or negligible force, because there are no longer isolated peoples’.
Tour
Between May 2nd and September 12th of 2021, members of the EZLN made a tour of 30 European countries called “Journey for Life.”
Members of the EZLN during the European tour in 2021.
The reports generated show that the Army followed up on the activities carried out by the Zapatistas before, during and after their tour of Europe, with weekly reports. The military were aware of the type of coverage and impacts that the visit of the Zapatista delegations in Europe and in the international media would generate.
“In the same way, it is not observed first-hand that their activities have any negative repercussions for the Mexican government,” they detail in one of the reports.
Militarization
The military recount that in the reports the Zapatistas “disclosed the formation of 4 new autonomous municipalities (...) which could represent an expansion of its area of influence in the area bordering Guatemala”.
They also record that “currently the Caracol II (Oventic) is the one that represents the greatest relevance due to the events they have carried out and the indoctrination activities that Rafael Sebastián Guillen Vicente 'Galeano' regularly attends.” Also considering the facts mentioned, “this SND has maintained an operational deployment in accordance with the social and criminal situation in the state of Chiapas with troops under the jurisdiction of the VII RM (Tuxtla Gutierrez, Chiapas.), currently with the support of the National Guard”.
Cover image: Train tracks in the Isthmus of Tehuantepec, Oaxaca. Photo: Santiago Navarro F.
The Community Assembly of Puente Madera has denounced that on Friday September 30, César Octavio Morales Toledo, the current Communal Lands Commissioner of the Municipality of San Blas Atempa, ordered people who work for him to insult, beat, and threaten to kill Ismael Luis López, inhabitant of the Zapotec community.
This act of violence is the latest recorded and denounced by the Community Assembly of Puente Madera and the Assembly of Indigenous Peoples of the Isthmus in Defense of Land and Territory (APIIDTT). Through a communique they affirmed that the aggressions are a consequence of the Zapotec community’s resistance to the imposition of an industrial park on their communal lands.
“These aggressions against Ismael Luis López continue what we have already been denouncing, part of the criminalization of our community for roundly rejecting the installation of the PODEBI (Development Pole for Wellbeing) on our collective lands,” they emphasized through a communique.
Photo: APIIDTT
The Indigenous organizations denounce that days prior, on September 25, a mock assembly of community members was held, “putting in place another piece for the imposition of the industrial park of the Interoceanic Corridor on our common use lands of El Pitayal, through the appointment of César Octavio Morales Toledo” as representative of the commission.
The assemblies recall that since the end of August they have warned of the possible appointment of new agrarian authorities, whose urgency “responds to the necessities of Antonino Morales Toledo to continue with the intimidation and criminalization that we as the community of Puente Madera have been suffering since 2021,” due to their rejection of the industrial park.
Furthermore, they point out that César Octavio, known in the region as “Santa,” is brother to Antonino Morales Toledo, the ex-municipal president and right-hand man of the governor-elect of the state, Salomón Jara Cruz. In López’s testimony, the Indigenous Zapotec claims that Morales threw him to the ground while declaring that the park, “is going to be built because he is now the authority and that the people of Puente Madera will not impede the construction of the industrial park,” detailed the communique.
Links with Organized Crime
The Indigenous organizations stressed the necessity to review the legality of Toledo’s appointment as Communal Lands Commissioner due to his criminal record.
They point out that Morales has been detained on two occasions. The first by Federal Police in 2018, during the operation “Special Security Force Oaxaca,” for illegally carrying $250,000 pesos in cash. The second detention, documented by the magazine Proceso, occurred in January of 2022, when the military arrested him for carrying weapons designated exclusively for military use.
Photo: The brothers César (to the left) and Antonino (to the right) Morales Toledo
César Octavio Morales Toledo operates through the organization, United Front of Oaxacan Communities (FUCO), a political movement formed by his brother Antonino Morales to support the candidacy of the now governor-elect, Salomón Jara.
According to an investigation published by El Muro MX in May of this year, the US Government asked the Financial Intelligence Unit (UIF), which depends on the Ministry of Finance and Public Credit (SCHP), to freeze the accounts of 1,669 people linked to the Jalisco New Generation Cartel (CJNG). One of the people linked to the organized crime group is Antonino Morales Toledo, who has served as the main financial operator of Salomón Jara for the last six years.
The Violence Continues
The Indigenous assemblies also denounced aggressions against David Hernández Salazar and his family, who were physically assaulted on July 19 by Mariano de la Rosa Jiménez, Roberto Trinidad Jiménez, and Faustino de la Rosa Quecha, people who operate inside the community in favor of the industrial park and for the selling off of communal lands.
The Indigenous organizations blame the climate of violence in the Zapotec community of Puente Madera on local, state, and federal government officials. Among them, the brothers Antonino and César Morales Toledo, as well as Gonzalo Villalobos López, representative of the Agrarian Attorney in Oaxaca, and Rafael Marín Mollinedo, General Director of the Interoceanic Corridor of the Isthmus of Tehuantepec.
Lastly, they demand respect for the self-determination of Puente Madera in their rejection of the construction of the PODEBI on their common use lands, as well as an end to the harassment and criminalization of inhabitants and representatives of the community.
On September 6, the governor of Michoacán, Alfredo Ramírez Bedolla, threatened to remove the checkpoints maintained by the Nahua community of Santa María Ostula, which serve to protect members of their community security system. The community has exercised self-government and maintained the operation of their Communal Guard since 2009.
Through a statement, the governor of Michoacán announced that he would order the removal of the “barricades” referring to the security checkpoints that the Nahua community maintains on Federal Highway 200. At the same time, the governor launched accusations seeking to criminalize the armed civilians who he signaled as being “outside the law.”
In an interview, members of the Community Council of Ostula emphasized why they maintain the checkpoints at the entrance to their territory. The community members highlight the assassination of Hidelberto Reyes in 2015, a 12-year-old boy who was killed during an operation involving seven members of the Mexican Army, along with police and marines, when they attempted to remove the highway blockade of the Nahua community of Ostula.
The murder of the boy at the hands of militaries, solidified the distrust of the Nahua community toward the state. Through an act of their community assembly, they reiterated their rejection of whatever external governmental forces from entering their territories beneath the pretext of providing security. “That is the reason why we do not allow any state forces inside our community, it is that simple,” the community members sustained in an interview with Avispa Midia.
The Nahua community also stresses that the Communal Guard does not obstruct free transit at its checkpoints, and that there are no criminal groups that threaten the wellbeing of the people. On the contrary they emphasize, “We will defend the existence, functioning, and permanence of our Communal Guard and of our community security system because these, and not the corrupt governmental security corporations, guarantee the life and wellbeing of the inhabitants of the community and municipality.”
Following the threat from the governor of Michoacán, on Thursday September 8, inhabitants of Ostula pertaining to the municipality of Aquila, protested at the National Guard barracks located near the municipal seat. There, they demanded respect for their internal laws legitimating the operation of the Communal Guard, which together with the self-defense forces in the municipalities of Chinicuila, Coahuayana, and Aquila, sustain the community security system in the Sierra-Costa region of Michoacán.
Mining is Behind the Threat
According to information of the Secretariat of Economy, in the municipality of Aquila alone there exists 101 mining concessions, 58 of which are active. According to the Mexican Geological Survey, in the mining districts of Aquila and San Pedro, there exists important deposits of iron, silver, gold, copper, and manganese.
The company, Las Encinas, S.A., has a concession of nearly 150,000 hectares covering the mountains of the Indigenous Nahua Sierra from the south of Jalisco in the Sierra of Manantlán to the coast of Michoacán from which it extracts tons of iron. In the municipality of Aquila, it operates an open pit mine whose materials are sent to the Alzada Station of Colima for the production of agglomerates and iron sintering in the pelletizing plant owned by Ternium Mexico S.A. de C.V.
Michoacán is the principal producer of iron ore in Mexico. In 2013, the government already momentarily suspended exportations of iron because the port of Lázaro Cárdenas, located just over 200 kilometers from Ostula, was being utilized by the Knights Templar Cartel to illegally export iron ore to China.
Now, behind the threat from the governor, members of the Community Council point to the mining industry’s interests as one of the reasons for which the state seeks to disarticulate the community security system.
“We have (mining) along the northern perimeter of our community. In the municipality of Aquila, there are lands that hold minerals. We think that is the reason for which they are trying to subdue us at this moment,” say the community members who affirm that the Nahua community will never sell the lands where the concessions are located.
Communal Guard
Community Security
In the recent history of Ostula, the year 2009 is important, when approximately 2000 community members made the decision to recuperate 1000 hectares of communal lands pertaining to the Nahua people, but that were in the possession of small land owners linked to the Knights Templar Cartel.
At that moment, according to members of the Community Council of Ostula, the community was living under a narco-political regime. Organized crime operated under the cover of state officials and politicians from the Institutional Revolutionary Party (PRI), who favored the division of the community, acting violently against the Indigenous Nahuas who demanded the recuperation of their lands. Between 2009 and 2014, 34 people were assassinated and 6 more were disappeared, among them agrarian authorities and communal leaders, as part of the violent response from drug traffickers and the state.
The community members emphasize that during that time, the municipal police of Aquila had outsiders who didn’t know the context in the region. Worse still, they worked beneath the command of organized crime. For this reason, the community decided to expel the local security forces and retake their communal structure. In that context, the consolidation of the Communal Guard becomes relevant, whose task is to protect not only the inhabitants of the Nahua community of Santa Maria Ostula, but also the other towns of the municipality of Aquila.
“Our Communal Guard is recognized by a community assembly which governs our laws and customs,” explain members of the Community Council of Ostula. They emphasize that participation in the security system is an obligation of community members when they reach the appropriate age to provide free service in benefit of the population.
At the same time, the Community Council functions as the body where proposals sent to the General Assembly are analyzed and approved, and where support for the functions of the Communal Guard are continually emphasized.
For his part, the lawyer Raymundo Martín considers the intention to prohibit the activities of the Communal Guard as “an attack against the autonomous practices” of the Nahua community. At the same time that the governor makes these statements, there exists in process a reform to the public security system law in Michoacán, related to the municipal organic law, which seeks to grant validity only to communal guards recognized by the state. However, the legal basis for the communal guards lies in Article 2 of the Mexican constitution, as well as in international treaties like Convention 169 of the ILO.
The community members affirm that when they recuperated their lands and founded the population of San Diego Xayacalan, they didn’t have weapons. Now that they have them they do not intend to disarm because their self-defense is dependent upon them in the context of extreme violence in Michoacán. For this reason, they emphasize their concern for the statements from the governor of the state, aiming to disarticulate a fundamental security structure for the Nahua community. As they stated in a communique, “This leads us to suspect that the complicity between organized crime and governmental institutions continues to prevail.”
Communal Guard
Peace Amidst Worry
The community of Santa Maria Ostula is an oasis amidst spiraling violence in Michoacán. While the Nahua community members assure that there doesn’t exist homicides in the municipality of Aquila where the Communal Guard operates, in contrast, from January to July of 2022, the Executive Secretariat of the National Public Security System (SESNSP) recorded 1270 murders in the state, showing an increase of 70% compared to 2018.
The Indigenous community of Ostula affirms that their struggle has been peaceful but spirited in defense of their territory and organization. “Our community is one of the safest places in the country where we can live in a climate of peace and freedom, carrying out our everyday social and economic activities, because those times of violence, fear, anxiety, and terror are behind us,” they emphasize through a public communique.
“The (governor) doesn’t understand how we are organized. I think it is the safest municipality in the state,” affirms one of the community members interviewed, who even invites the governor to visit the Nahua community: “Let him come without security because we are going to provide it here,” he declares.The population of Santa Maria Ostula assures the foundation of its Communal Guard lies in the self-determination and autonomy of the community. For its part, the National Network of Human Rights Organizations “All Rights for Everyone” (Red TdT) released a statement on Monday September 12, declaring that the organization of Ostula has constitutional protection in relation to their human rights, “whose fulfillment corresponds to the Mexican state, in their responsibility to uphold the collective rights of Indigenous peoples and communities.”
On Tuesday, September 20, the sixth meeting of governors from the south and southeast of Mexico took place in Oaxaca. It was led by the US Ambassador to Mexico, Ken Salazar, together with representatives from the economic sector, such as Visa, Amazon, Facebook, AT&T, META, Google, Mercado Libre, FEMSA, and Oxxo.
According to the US Ambassador, the objective of these meetings has been to tackle economic opportunities for “development” in the region.
“Our federal governments, in association with regional leaders from the private sector, have organized five meetings together (this current one being the sixth) with governors from the southern states of Mexico to promote public-private cooperation and investment opportunities, economic development, and environmental and climatic objectives,” said Salazar.
According to the host of the event, the governor of Oaxaca, Alejandro Murat, of all the projects in course in the region, the most important is the Interoceanic Corridor in the Isthmus of Tehuantepec.
“We are here to continue constructing, with the help of our partners in the United States, the framework to consolidate projects of global impact that will propel trade and energy,” Murat said, who thanked the US for its support in “triggering development of the south-southeast by means of” the Interoceanic Corridor project.
The governor emphasized that the historical relationship with the United States is close and “it should be even closer now that these new times require teamwork, in order to move forward on common agenda issues like trade, investment, and migration. We are ready to continue teaming with the United States.”
Murat sent a message to investors, some of whom like Amazon have already presented an investment plan, that their business investments will be safe. “We are going to insure the security, through the USMCA (United States-Mexico-Canada Agreement), for any investment from your companies before irregular situations like war, or commercial issues…Here you will also have the possibility to produce any product, move it to Asia, Europe, and of course, to the United States and Canada.”
Security was also mentioned by Salazar and was a recurring theme in the meeting. There is a necessity to “unite forces to face the shared challenge of security, because with security there is prosperity.”
“Historic Results”
In a statement, Salazar sustained that in each meeting “we have had historic results.” In this last meeting, Amazon announced the generation of 900 employees in the southeast, that will facilitate the connection of the region with the United States and Canada though technologies and digitalization.
For their part, META announced a program of “training thousands of people to take advantage of the opportunities that arise from our integration through a well-prepared work force that can construct a better future.”
New Governor
Salomón Jara Cruz, the governor elect of Oaxaca, was also present in the meeting and assured that he would continue with the politics and work that Murat has been carrying out. “We will work so that our state is the motor of national development and of the southern part of the country,” Cruz said who reaffirmed his project to industrialize Oaxaca.
“In Oaxaca, our economy isn’t based on industry, we are more commercial, more service-oriented. This project (the Interoceanic Corridor) is a strategic project for the south-southeast, even for Central America,” he shared.
In addition to the connection between the Atlantic and Pacific oceans by train, the Interoceanic Corridor includes the construction of ten special economic zones of at least 300 hectares and that will provide tax and regulatory benefits.
Other Topics
Among the topics of discussion was the “migratory crisis and how it affects Oaxaca and the region,” with the objective of organizing, according to a statement from the government, “strategies of strengthening the rule of law, as well as social and economic development that allows for the reduction of the negative impacts of this phenomenon.”
One of the panels at the meeting was named, “Show Me the Money: International and U.S. Financing Options,” in which financial organizations like the US International Development Finance Corporation (DFC), the United States Trade and Development Agency (USTDA), the Inter-American Development Bank (IDB), and the International Finance Corporation (IFC) of the World Bank, explained their priority sectors and criteria for providing finance.
Present at the meeting were the governors of Chiapas, Veracruz, Tabasco, Campeche, Quintana Roo, Yucatan, as well as the President of the Association of Banks of Mexico, Daniel Becker, and the Director of the Investment Unit of the Ministry of Finance and Public Credit, Miguel Siliceo Valdespino.
Avispa Midia will be presenting a series of processes and exercises for the construction of autonomy. Other forms of social relations. The following is an interview with members of the Blacklidge Community Collective. They share the experience of their community space, which also serves as a dining room, print shop, library and many other self-organized activities in Tucson, Arizona.
Avispa Midia (AM): How would you describe the project?
Y: The short version is, it’s a space for experiments in autonomous living. But in that, it’s also a library, it’s also a garden, it’s also a community center, it’s also like a commons. It's all of those things. It’s a DIY venue…
X: Yeah, I think most often when I don’t feel like saying BCC or the “Blacklidge Community Collective,” I just refer to it as “the community space.”
Z: It’s a PHYSICAL space, and I think that’s really really important, that we have a physical space, together. If anybody has a desire to do or host something here, like it’s never been turned down. It’s just this expansive space where we can create things.
AM: How did the project start and how many people are involved?
Y: Depending on how detailed you wanna get, it started out of the remnants of a cooperative coffee shop called A Shot in the Dark. After it closed, some of the worker-owners there who were mostly very young, teenaged to early 20s punks, newly interested in anarchist politics, were very invested in starting a DIY venue that also did harm reduction work. And getting to know them, it was probably just 2 micro- generations of people coming out of anarchist circles and subcultures, and we kind of were talking to them, just like older folks 15 years older than them roughly, about also looking for a space.
So, we found a small space in the neighborhood just north of here in which we did basically just that. Where on top of doing DIY shows and a harm reduction drop-in center during the day, we would do other kinds of events at night - poetry readings, we did a tattoo fundraiser, lectures and workshops. And then just before the pandemic, we found this space. And it expanded, joining forces with multiple archival projects and the print shop project that were also looking for a space. And then shortly after that, Tucson Food Share joined us, and a mutual aid project joined us. And that’s sort of more the current iteration. We moved into this space only like a month to 2 months before the uprising.
Anyone is welcome to the meetings. Yeah, I mean, I don’t know, as far as people who come here regularly, maybe roughly once a month come here - 100 people? Or maybe more - 120 people? People who come to meetings it’s maybe a core group of about 10-15 people. And people that are around on a more weekly basis because they’re a part of some project here, or are coming to a lot of things here, 40.
Z: And then last weekend there was a play, Romeo and Juliet, and there were probably 300 to 400 people here over the course of 3 days, maybe more? In the street, blockaded off for the play.
Maybe this is a good section to talk about - are there any other projects that happen here that we haven’t mentioned yet?
Y: The Mesh Network is an experiment in trying to get affordable to free, semi-autonomous internet access. And so, probably the biggest one in the United States that I’m aware of is in New York City and this project, the local Tucson -what are they calling it? -Internet Commons or something, is largely inspired by the project in New York.
And, yeah, you basically have these transmitters that get put on top of rooftops within a certain distance of each other, I think the range is roughly a mile, but it’s better if it’s closer. And yeah, those different nodes connect to each other and talk to each other and you can slowly spread internet access as you put more and more of those antennas up.
You need concrete access, like you need a doorway, a gateway into the main internet which is what most internet companies are providing you - they have space in a large server farm that all of their network is connected to. So, all those internet service providers, that’s what they do, and then they charge you for access to their gateway.
And so the Mesh Network is hoping to provide - it’s not fully autonomous internet because the internet isn’t fully autonomous- but their long term plan is to buy servers at a server farm nearby within range of our rooftop, and be able to provide free and semi-autonomous, less regulated internet access to anybody that’s in range of the antennas.
Z: Did we mention the garden? I think the garden is really special. They way that this building is set up, it’s a big brick warehouse at the end of a Dead End road. So you pull up and the garden is right in front of the main entrance to the building - you have to walk through the garden to get inside. The desert is really harsh and the summers are really hard here and things die really easily, and I feel like the garden is just this energy of life that you walk through to get into this space.
X: There’s a lot of different goals with the garden. We don’t think that we’re going to really change the course of food sovereignty with this tiny little garden, but we can try. We can at least make some difference in how much money we’re individually spending on groceries. We can at least have food to contribute to the weekly dinners that happen here. Just kind of like, planting a seed in people’s minds of thinking about food sovereignty and the way we get our food and how fucked up food systems are.
Y: I’d maybe add something related to the garden - it’s maybe like a big picture thing as far as what’s interesting to me about the BCC. A friend said when reflecting on their grocery program that they had at a similar space in Atlanta, Georgia that the food program that they were doing at the time - it fed, you know, a couple hundred people a week probably. But the thing that was important to them wasn’t the quantity of people they were feeding, but the fact that everyone involved with the space, as well as people that were just coming to the space for the food program, were all reliant on food program, on some level at least, for food.
And so, in those moments, through that program, they were all tied together and they all needed each other. And that set the pace for building autonomous relationships and autonomous communities - it’s like, that’s the kind of interdependence we need. And for me, the garden really contributes to that, or at least holds the seeds for something like that.
Z: Food is so important - the connection between the garden, feeding ourselves, feeding each other, the Tucson food share, a project that was housed out of here before they moved into their own building, and of course the Tuesday night dinners, which we haven’t talked about too much yet. But the Tuesday night dinner is my favorite event that happens here.
There’s probably like 50 to 100 people who you can almost guarantee will be there on a rotating basis, like people that you know you’re going to see every week and I just think that’s really special.
The connection between growing plants, watering things, having food, getting food from the food share to cook dinner for ourselves, to feed other people, and then like - people bring their moms to TND and shit. It’s special.
X: Yeah, something that I’m thinking about is this person whose work I really enjoy, Dayna Lybb Nuckolls, who defines liberation as, “the labor of communal imagining,” and I feel like that really goes down here a lot.
When I think about that phrase, the first thing I think about is Tuesday dinners. Because it’s not just having dinner together. It’s all these other things of coming together communally in the space to make dinner together, and having different people do different roles every week - coming together in that way. Going to the food share to get the food, and then coming here and making the food together, and then serving the food, and then people come and eat it and hang out together and talk in person, away from screens.
Z: Yeah, a lot of projects and things that I really care about in our community started at the BCC dinner and continue to flourish because of that commitment of like, I see you every week and if I have a question, I just ask you at dinner, and then we have a conversation about it.
Y: And what’s so cool about that is, the number of projects that have come and gone from the space only being here 2 years, is actually really cool, because it’s proving that this experimental hub idea, or approach that we’re having, is constantly generating new projects and new initiatives that can take on a life of their own.
Z: I’m thinking about how an idea needs a home in order to grow, and in order to start. And sometimes people want to do something, or people want to start something, but If you don’t have a place to do that, it’s harder. I mean it’s back to, the BCC is a physical space. It’s a building that we can walk into and do things together in, and especially in the desert, we need an indoor space. We are blessed by having the indoor space and the AC and everything.
AM: What are the main needs or problems you are addressing with this project?
X: The need for physical space. Like you said, ideas need a home to be able to grow.
When I moved to Tucson, I was just blown away like, oh my god people are really doing shit that we could never do in Phoenix, partially I think because there wasn’t a physical location. We were all just doing shit out of our bedrooms, which is still feasible and you can still do a lot of things that way, but definitely not to the same capacity. Especially when you’re just doing it by yourself or with a couple of friends, there’s not that opportunity to meet other like-minded people to then branch off and do other projects with.
Y: If we’re thinking in the broadest term, or the broadest base of people who may be a part of the space, we’re talking around 100-120 people. Those people don’t all think the same, they don’t all have the same goals. At the very least, they don’t all have the same words to describe those goals. Maybe there’s certain aligned values amongst all of those people, or inclinations maybe is a better word.
But for me, what is and always has been exciting about the potential of the BCC, is to build a real movement. And not in just this very constituent framing of building new subjects that will influence government or something. But like, new ways of relating and living together that will at least help be some of the seeds for a better way of living in the midst of all of this crisis and capitalism and global order.
I’d like to think we are the tiniest little specks of what could become something like Rojava or Chiapas and the Zapatistas. You know, they’re blowing us out of the water. I don’t want to put us on some sort of plane that’s anywhere close to the epicness of what they’re doing, and the challenges that they’re all really facing - people are dying constantly - there’s real stakes to what they’re doing. So, I don’t mean to compare us in that way.
But my hope is that there’s some seeds, of potentially decades in the future - that some of those people who are doing that in this area, can trace some things back on some level to the BCC.
For me, it’s not just creating a space to feel good and connect with cool people. Which, it’s obviously that, that’s a big aspect of it. But it’s to build material resources to survive and materially resist the state.
The BCC was supportive in concrete ways to the protests in the summer of 2020, and the uprising, both materially and vocally. We’ve been supportive of the protests growing against the deaths in the Pima County jail. We did a tattoo fundraiser for Chilean prisoners in the wake of their uprising in 2018. We’ve done info nights for Fidencio Aldama - who is a Yaqui political prisoner for resisting a pipeline in Sonora.
Z: I think a problem that this project addresses is isolation. I feel like capitalism pushes us to be so individualistic, and we fight that in this really simple way of gathering and coming together.
AM: Do you consider this project to be an alternative to capitalist relationships?
Y: I would say that’s the effort - to push those dynamics and those relationships increasingly to the fringes of our lives as much as possible. That framing for me is more useful than trying to live some pure life in which suddenly we are not subject to those things, but that in given moments and in the longer trajectory, we are pushing those things further and further out.
Z: I also think it’s really important to note how new the project of the BCC is. It’s so young and it’s so early.
So, like - are we an alternative to capitalist relationships? Yes.
Are we living in this whole other dimension where we don’t participate in capitalism at all? No.
But are we trying really hard to plant those seeds so that hopefully, eventually, we are participating as little as possible? I think we are. I think we’re planting it; we’re starting it.
X: Even just in the short time that I’ve been here, being here consistently has forced me to re-think and re-frame ways of relating to myself and to other people and to place, outside of what is ingrained in us by capitalism and by this way of life. I think it’s a mistake to think that spaces like this are automatically different and we’re in this bubble that isn’t touched by these things anymore.
AM: How do you make decisions and how do you confront obstacles?
Z: Something I love about this project is that whoever has the energy in the moment to do something, those are the people just doing that project. And very rarely do we try to filter or censor each other in the things that we have energy to do. It feels really open to a lot of people’s different methods and ideas and ways of making decisions.
Y: A part of it is that consensus, as some sort of decision-making process, in a project that is this multi-faceted…. There’re multiple different projects housed here that do vastly different things. Printing is not the same as fucking gardening. And so, in a consensus process - what does someone who is almost exclusively doing things in the print shop have to say about the garden?
Z: And I think something that’s so cool about this space is like - how are those decisions made? It’s not the print shop and the garden sitting in a room for two hours having a meeting, and taking meeting notes, and sending out the notes document, and talking about it and then voting on it for two months - it’s simply, maybe 2 maybe 5 people, probably eating food, in person, making eye contact, having a conversation, and figuring it out.
Y: There’s a way that radicals in general get obsessed with “process” as the representation of the “new way” - but it’s still actually a strange governance mentality, where it’s like, “our experience of relating together is through a mediated process of negotiation” of like, “this is the governance space where we decide how we live together”
And that’s not actually how people live together. What matters more is our relationships to each other. Direct relationships, as un-mediated as possible.
AM: What has been the main thing you’ve learned so far?
[birds chirping]
X: I feel like I’m just learning shit all the time, every time I come here. Just generally, I’ve learned how to be a better human.
Z: I’ve learned this before in life, but the BCC has really solidified it for me that - navigating the world is so much easier with other people. Like, doing things alone is almost never the easiest way.
X: Something that I heard a while ago is that survival is a shared burden, and not an individual obligation. And the BCC has really concretely solidified that in my mind by showing it to me physically.
Z: A cheesy thing that I've learned is - hope. Hope for the future. There’s a really, really wide umbrella of people who spend time here and projects that happen here, but a really consistent thing that I see here is people who really believe in something beyond just right now and just today. And people who really care about it and think about it frequently, and in their everyday actions are trying and working to build that. Learning hope, learning friendship, trust, consistency, commitment.
Y: Yeah, who knows? It could all collapse tomorrow.
Z: Exactly! Good thing we are here right now, in the beautiful garden. It is such a nice day.
AM: Is there anything else you want to share about the project?
Z: Is there some kind of one liner to describe the BCC that we missed? It’s just so hard to pin down like, is it an anarchist project, is it an autonomous project?
X: It isn’t any one of those things, which I think is worth celebrating. Maybe to other people it may seem vague or distant, but I think that’s a really great thing. Like with anarchists in Phoenix, for example, sometimes there’s so much emphasis on defining [a project’s] limits and boundaries that they’re suffocating themselves before they even start.
And I think that’s something that the BCC does really well - not having those hard limits and not having those hard boundaries of what the BCC is and can be, that makes it able to be so fluid in a way that works really well. It opens up so much space for so many things to live and thrive.
Y: I mean even just that language that you used…where people who are maybe not as close to the BCC could have a hard time “pinning it down,” is like, you know, the effort to pin down, there’s a lot of dominance implied in that phrasing. There’s an implication there. When we’re trying to pin down what something is, we should question why we’re trying to do that. What is the function of pinning something down?
Z: Yeah, it’s actually beautiful that we don’t try to. That’s unique for me - that we’re not forcing ourselves to define anything.
Y: When writing the mission statement or whatever that hasn’t been approved yet, I kind of opened with the line that we are living at the end of America. And hopefully the BCC will outlast America. Whether in this form or some other form, I think we will outlast America.
Z: I think that too. I really liked what you said, Y, about how maybe 20 years from now, something in that time can be traced back to something that was started here, right now.
Y: Some would argue that America is already over and we are merely living in her death rattle.
Above: The event “Green Attack on the Amazon” took place in June in the state of Acre, Brazil. Indigenous leaders, with representatives from the CIMI and pro-Indigenous organizations, attended the meeting. Photo: Carol Ferraz/Amigos da Terra
Representatives from 20 Indigenous peoples, campesinos, rural extraction workers, and social organizations announced their stance against the imposition of green economy projects in the state of Acre, in the Brazilian Amazon.
This announcement came out of a gathering called “Green Attack on the Amazon,” which was held in the municipality of Cruzeiro do Sul. Participants denounced green projects that threaten the autonomy, territories, and life of the peoples of the region.
The event addressed the consequences of implementing programs and strategies aimed at carbon “offsets” under the Reducing Emissions from Deforestation and Forest Degradation (REDD+) international framework.
The state of Acre is an example of the real impacts of green economy programs. The propaganda around these programs created an image of success in combating the climate crisis even before they were implemented.
Consolidation
According to an analysis by organizations and communities reflected in the publication Green attack: False solutions to the climate disaster, the process of commodifying natural areas in Acre began when the Workers’ Party (PT) gained control of the state government in 1999. That administration “adopted the discourse that it was necessary to initiate a new economic cycle in Acre, bringing the state into the ‘era of the green economy’ in order to keep the forest ‘standing,’ in their words.”
The State Incentives System for Environmental Services (SISA), created by way of the 2010 “Sisa Law,” further consolidated this move. The law marked the first time that the REDD strategy, created in 2005, was applied to an entire state anywhere in the world.
Over the following years, the strategy was promoted through REM (REDD Early Movers), a German state program aimed at financing pioneer REDD initiatives at the global level. Through REM, the German public bank KfW gave the state of Acre 16 million euros to implement REDD in the Amazon.
Acre simultaneously received support through international delegations headed by the World Bank, the World Wildlife Fund (WWF), and other promoters of the REDD strategy who visited the state, creating the image of a “success story” unfolding in that region of the Amazon.
However, according to statements from Indigenous peoples, farming communities, and organizations such as the Indigenist Missionary Council (CIMI), the World Rainforest Movement, and Friends of the Earth Brazil, “the tens of millions of euros that the government of Acre has received from the German government have not stopped deforestation.”
“All this capitalist optimism, however, was not enough to hide the true face of the green economy: an ecological veneer that hides the destruction, land theft, and the subjugation of communities under the regime of capital accumulation, turning the ecological crisis into a business,” states the CIMI of the Western Amazon.
Profiting from the climate crisis
During the “Green Attack on the Amazon” gathering, the peoples and communities of the Amazon rainforest reiterated that green economy projects, in addition to being false solutions to the climate crisis, worsen their current social, climatic, and territorial conditions.
“Green Attack on the Amazon” condemned actions against the autonomy, territories, and livelihood of the peoples of the jungle. Photo: Carol Ferraz/Amigos da Terra
Their testimonies underscore threats from the rapid advance of projects similar to REDD+: PSA (Payments for Environment Services) and the so-called Nature-Based Solutions (SBN), “which have been presented as solutions to the ongoing climate and environmental disaster, harassing our leaders and organizations, co-opting some of them and provoking serious internal conflicts.”
For the participants of the gathering, these projects are pay-for-pollution schemes that create pretexts to allow the continued burning of fossil fuels and the continuation of capitalist economic growth. “Climate and environmental compensation schemes, in fact, go hand-in-hand with the destruction caused by megaprojects and the direct invasions of our territories. False solutions, such as carbon markets, prosper as threats and violence increase,” they wrote in a letter.
Another Face of Violence
The question of territorial protection was the most prominent among the main threats identified by participants at the gathering in Acre.
“This is because territorial invasions have led to more and more harassment and murders committed by illegal miners, fishers and hunters, loggers and traffickers. A clear example is the recent disappearance of Indigenous activist Bruno Pereira and British journalist Dom Phillips, who were conducting an investigation on Indigenous lands in the Amazon and, after leaving on a boat from the Amazon community of São Rafael, were never seen again,” they stated in their declaration.
“We have a weapon, which is the unity of the peoples,” said Dercy Teles, a rubber tapper and the first woman president of the Xapuri Workers’ Union. After two years in isolation due to the COVID-19 pandemic, beyond discussing the threats of the green economy, the Green Attack gathering served to build bridges and strengthen struggles in the region, because the goals remain the same: “First and foremost, it is about land. Without land, we don’t have health care, nor housing; we don’t have anything,” said Mário Huni Kuim, leader of the Huni Kui people in the municipality of Feijóo.
