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.
VERACRUZ, VERACRUZ, 22ABRIL2022.- Andrés Manuel López Obrador, presidente de México, encabezó el acto protocolario del evento "Desarrollo del Istmo de Tehuantepec" . Lo acompañaron: Ken Salazar, embajador de Estados Unidos en México; Cuitláhuac García Jiménez, gobernador Constitucional del Estado de Veracruz; Adán Augusto López, secretario de Gobernación; Rosa Icela Rodríguez, secretaria de Seguridad y Protección Ciudadana; Rafael Ojeda Durán, secretario de Marina; Luis Cresencio Sandoval Gónzalez, secretario de la Defensa Nacional.
FOTO: PRESIDENCIA/CUARTOSCURO.COM
Above: AMLO heads the event “Development of the Isthmus of Tehuantepec” in the company of Ken Salazar, the US ambassador to Mexico. April 2022.
In the last six months, a series of meetings has been held between the seven governors of southern and southeastern Mexican states, Mexican federal government institutions, representatives of the United States and Canadian governments, and corporate representatives from those countries. According to social media posts from U.S. ambassador to Mexico Ken Salazar, the objective has been to promote “the conservation and sustainable development” of the region, bolstered “through private investment.”
During the fifth meeting, headed by Salazar in mid-May in Mexico City, the diplomat announced that “the government of Mexico has a plan, a very good security agenda for the Isthmus [of Tehuantepec],” the location for the planned construction of the Interoceanic Corridor and ten industrial parks.
Demonstrating enthusiasm for the Mexican government’s plans, at a press conference following his meeting with the governors, Salazar maintained that the key to resolving drug trafficking and the flow of migration to the United States lies in the the Isthmus of Tehuantepec. “It is easier to monitor the 180 miles that make up the Isthmus of Tehuantepec than the 2,000 miles of desert on Mexico’s northern border,” said the diplomat.
The region is a “priority” for the United States and the idea is for the megaprojects to function as retaining walls. “Our focus has been the Transoceanic [Corridor],” he explained.
He announced an increase in investments in the region by the U.S. government, under an initiative called PromoSur – From the people of the United States for the conservation and sustainable development of southern Mexico.
Territorial Intervention
A promotional video for the program, published on the U.S. embassy’s social media accounts, states that the U.S. government, through the efforts of USAID (U.S. Agency for International Development), will increase its international assistance to southeastern Mexico.
“PromoSur is the name we have chosen for our increased investment destined for southeastern Mexico. With PromoSur, the U.S. government will work to reduce greenhouse gas emissions, supporting nature-based solutions (…) It will also seek to boost investments in emerging markets,” the video announces.
The Deputy Assistant Administrator for USAID’s Bureau for Latin America and the Caribbean, Mileydi Guilarte, present at the governors’ meeting, announced an investment of 30 million dollars in the region beginning at the end of summer 2022. It will also include agreements between private industry and the state governments of Campeche, Chiapas, Oaxaca, Quintana Roo, Tabasco, Veracruz and Yucatán.
Ana Esther Ceceña, founder and coordinator of the Latin American Observatory of Geopolitics, warns of the historic role that USAID has played in Latin America. “The idea is that international development aid from the United States is the means to intervene in the territories and social dynamics of countries,” she points out.
To illustrate this point, Ceceña recalls that, throughout the twentieth century, all the military dictatorships in Latin America were preceded by moments of intense activity and budgetary support from USAID to these countries. “In Brazil, two years before the military coup took place (1964), it received a huge number of resources from USAID, which provided the material conditions for the coup to happen,” she explains.
Ceceña also draws attention to the “proactive” role the U.S. ambassador has taken on in promoting the “development” of southeastern Mexico, taking on the role of “quasi-governor of the southeastern region.”
“Now it is the U.S. ambassador breaking news even before the Mexican government. We’ve now moved into the category of ‘Banana Republic,’ as has happened in other Latin American countries throughout the twentieth century, where to know what policy a country was going to adopt, you would have to ask the US embassy,” said the researcher.
Promoting the South
In addition to the direct investments already announced by the U.S. government, PromoSur’s agenda includes promoting southeastern Mexico so that private companies will invest in the region.
In his press conference, Salazar announced that companies including Amazon, AT&T, Cisco, Google, Mercado Libre, Microsoft, Uber, Ibiza, and Visa were present at his last meeting with the governors. “All are committed to helping,” he said.
The governor of Oaxaca, Alejandro Murat, who was in the meeting, said that, “we were able to have a wide-ranging conversation and give feedback to different companies and were able to build an agenda for the Summit of the Americas, and a later meeting with the CEOs of companies in Washington, certainly in the coming months.”
According to the governor, an agenda is being created that seeks to bring in concrete investments. “I can say that important investments are coming in for the Interoceanic Corridor, we already have more than 200 million dollars in place…. The Corridor is being called upon to be the great engine of growth in Mexico.”
The governor celebrated the fact that, according to him, it is “the first time in the history of modern Mexico where not only have the states and the federal government been aligned, but also the governments of the U.S. and Canada, to develop the Mexican southeast.”
Mexico’s Secretary of Finance, Rogelio Ramírez, presented the infrastructure plan for the south-southeast. He mentioned that the regional infrastructure plan of President López Obrador’s government forecasts investments of more than 30.5 billion dollars between now and the end of his term. Among the plans are the construction, development, and modernization of trains, airports, refineries, maritime ports, and border crossings.
Other Topics
During the meeting, discussion groups were also held. The topics addressed included, “Helping Rural Communities with Business Opportunities and Conservation Priorities in the Seven States of the South-Southeast,” “Identifying a Sustainability and Conservation Fund,” and “Reducing Emissions through Accelerated Forestry Financing.”
Five observers from the Civil Observation Brigades (BriCO) withdrew from the Tzotzil community of Nuevo San Gregorio, Chiapas, due to lack of security guarantees and the intensification of attacks against this Zapatista territory.
The attacks appear to be coming from people from the San Gregorio ejido, Ranchería San Andrés Puerto Rico, Ranchería Duraznal, and Ranchería Rancho Alegre—four villages in the area—who are trying to displace the Zapatistas and take their territory.
The attacks began in 2019 and have not let up since then, according to the Fray Bartolomé de Las Casas Human Rights Center (Frayba). As a result, the BriCo camp was set up in the community on March 3, 2021.
In 2022 alone, observers documented 21 attacks against five families—27 people—who live in Nuevo San Gregorio. The community is part of the collectivized territory of the Lucio Cabañas Autonomous Zapatista Rebel Municipality, part of Caracol 10 “Flowering of the Rebel Seed,” of the “New Dawn in Resistance and Rebellion for Life and Humanity” Good Government Council.
In video recordings from their observation work, a young girl reports that one of the “invaders” threatened to kidnap her. “I was very afraid. We used to be able to go out and walk, to carry firewood with my siblings and my parents, but since the trouble started it’s scary. I came back trembling.”
The youngest drew pictures to express what is happening to the community. “There are no days that they don’t come. As you can see in the drawings, they come with sticks and machetes,” said a teenage girl. Meanwhile, a child said he felt very sad about what they are living through.
Despite three years of complaints made both publicly and directly to the Mexican state, there has been no attention and no progress made. In the meantime, the violence continues, including intimidation, death threats, sexual violence and torture, physical attacks, livestock theft and property destruction, water shutoffs, surveillance, obstruction, traffic blockades and tolls, and even kidnapping.
Proposed solutions
The 155 hectares of Nuevo San Gregorio are located in Hixtán, Chiapas. They are part of territories reclaimed in 1995 following the armed uprising of the Zapatista Army of National Liberation (EZLN),
“We saw a daily presence of invaders. They put barbed wire up everywhere; the inhabitants are practically kidnapped in their own town; they can’t live freely: the women have to stay at home, the children can’t go to school normally and are behind; they can’t grow crops either,” said an observer who left the community on June 28 after receiving direct threats.
On June 10, 15, and 19, 2022, the brigade once again documented aggressive actions that put the life, security, and personal well-being of the BAEZLN (EZLN Support Base) at risk. These actions also pose a risk of forced displacement of the entire community and serious violations of the right to free movement in the region.
The inhabitants, together with the Good Government Council, tried to dialogue with the invaders. They offered three proposals: work in common, one hectare for each invader, or half of the recovered land.
“They never accepted. Their intention is to take over possession, and they want us to leave despite the fact that we’re residents. We are not taking over anything; we’re guardians,” said the inhabitants. “The land is for working, not for turning into a business,” they added.
They have been psychologically affected, they say, having to halt all activities in order to be alert when the invaders arrive and attack the peoples’ autonomy and self-determination.
Concern grows with the attacks and obstruction of the work of the observers, who are a fundamental part of documenting and reporting on what is happening in this community.
“It would be impossible to know what is going on. They are people who want to live in peace and who have a collective philosophy, they are land defenders,” added two French observers who relayed some of the events to the UN Special Rapporteur on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples and the Special Rapporteur on the Human Rights of Internally Displaced Persons.
Frayba noted that this is not the only community under attack out of the 110 observation camps currently in place, where 11,000 people from different continents are documenting.
“We hope the Mexican state is called upon by other institutions to comply with its obligations,” added Frayba.
Among the trees and the cornfields of the Sierra Mazateca in Oaxaca, Mexico, children of the Agua de Lluvia Community School run towards each other, delighted to be together, laughing and speaking their Mazatec language. They know that a new solidarity brigade is visiting their school and are excited because they’ve been told that they will learn how to make film and radio content.
The people teaching them these techniques are part of a solidarity brigade from Colombia and Chile that has visited several self-organized and autonomous initiatives in Mexico, eager to share their knowledge.
This school, which bears the name of the community, Agua de Lluvia, was built by the hands of the community’s children, youth, a teacher, and campesinos, each of whom have thrown their weight behind a different type of education. It is inspired by the autonomous schools created in rebel Zapatista territory in Chiapas. From that perspective, their thought and trajectory regarding the education of the community’s children has taken the road less traveled.
Nicolás Aguirre and Tierra Negra, the collective that he is a part of, have worked for three years with children in working class neighborhoods in Cali, like Comuna 18[1], where they have taught the use of communication technologies. “We consider communication to be an indispensable tool of struggle, as a response to disinformation and media manipulation. We have seen that children are very interested in communication, and with the little knowledge we have acquired along the way, we seek to strengthen ourselves together,” he states.
Aguirre prepares his audio recorder to share it with the children of Agua de Lluvia. He doesn’t think it takes too much specialized knowledge for communities to be able to produce their own communications. “In Colombia, we work with the voices of children, youth, and adults, because these three voices must be heard. We have put this into practice in assemblies, where the three voices are heard,” Aguirre says.
Children in the Agua de Lluvia School learning to shoot video. Photo by Santiago Navarro F.
This is the first time the children of Agua de Lluvia have gotten their hands on video and audio equipment. They conduct interviews with each other, their teacher, their neighbors, and even the participants in the solidarity brigade. “This [school] has a lot of similarities to the work we are involved with in Cali. It’s an organizational initiative with children, it is an autonomous process built from scratch, from the heart,” says Nathalí Aguirre, also part of the Tierra Negra Cooperative in Cali.
The Fear of Autonomy
Rocio Escudero Rodríguez is a Mazatec woman who has worked as a teacher in multiple communities in the region over the last 30 years. After several political and social crises that Oaxaca has lived through since 2006, including the COVID-19 pandemic, together with her community she has sought to create an alternative educational space.
It hasn’t been easy, with few economic resources, not even furniture. Even the children and parents got involved to build the first classroom. In addition to this, they have been hindered by local political bosses. Even the teacher’s union disapproves of the project, considering it a threat.
Escudero says that “this is a community project and does not affect the teachers. On the contrary, it complements the children’s education. The difference is that this project is autonomous and here nobody receives a salary. The aim is to teach other things that the government schools don’t teach. We must not be afraid of autonomy.”
Juan Carlos Alvarado, a young co-founder of the school, is excited to be able to welcome another brigade to his community to share their knowledge. “Familiarity with these technologies is important for the children, because here in the community they are not accessible. It’s not possible for these children to have contact with people from other parts of Mexico, much less from other countries.”
Crescencio Juárez García, a farmer, has also helped in the construction of the school because he thinks it’s important for other possibilities to exist for the children. “Here, nobody receives a salary and the children don’t have to pay anything,” says Juárez. “It’s a commitment to the community. The school is still short on many things, like windows, tables, and other supplies, but we’re not asking for anything from the authorities or politicians. Even so, we see how it’s advancing, slow but surely.” He speaks with pride.
Learning by Doing
According to Camila Camacho, another member of the brigade, from Bogotá, Colombia, the workshops the group has shared are aimed at overcoming the limitations imposed by conventional forms of teaching, and in this respect differ from “professional” methodologies. “It’s from learning by doing, from play and chance. Using images to discover other forms of seeing reality and how dreams can be built from the imagination,” says Camacho.
Camila is part of the VER collective (Visuality, Epistemology, and Reality), which emerged due to the lack of academic spaces that address visual components in relation to the social sciences. “The kids always have something to say,” she says. “We think it’s only adults whose voices matter, but that’s not the case. We have to think about other narratives of another possible world.”
Learning to use audio equipment in the Agua de Lluvia Community School, Oaxaca. Photo by Santiago Navarro F
Iñaki Tiña of Santiago, Chile, who shares his knowledge of neighborhood and community cinema, lights up when he sees how the children use his camera. He knows first hand that self-organized projects are not easy. “There’s no money, supplies, or infrastructure, but hey, you’ve gotta do what you can with what you have,” says Tiña. He’s part of the Popular Film School and the Social and Antisocial Film Festival.
Camila concludes with a motto that has inspired the children she has worked with previously. “If we dream it, we create it. I believe that’s the key to everything. To learn that if we live by community self-organization, if we have community, it can enable projects of autonomy and resistance. This school is an example that it is possible to dream and build another possible world.”
Learning to use audio equipment in the Agua de Lluvia Community School, Oaxaca. Photo by Santiago Navarro F
[1] Translator: Neighborhoods within Colombian cities are called “comunas,” or “communes,” but this does not carry the same political connotation as it does in English or, indeed, in Spanish in other contexts.
