Fidencio Aldama Pérez was born in the community of Loma de Guamuchil, one of the eight villages that comprise Yaqui territory in Sonora, Mexico. He married Carmen, a woman from the neighboring village of Loma de Bácum, where their two children were born. Through his family ties, Fidencio made the community his own. He got involved and took on the community responsibilities that being a member of the village entails. And then, at only 27 years old, his freedom was taken from him, accused of a homicide he didn’t commit.
Like most of the residents of Loma de Bácum, Fidencio was always on alert, for several reasons. People had been seen conducting mineral exploration in Yaqui territory without consent, in addition to the presence of an aqueduct carrying water away from the Yaqui River to Hermosillo, Sonora’s capital and largest city. Finally, a gas pipeline was being built that would cross the village only 300 meters away from houses.
Sempra Energy, a US-based multinational company, is in charge of pipeline construction through its Mexican subsidiary IEnova, which in turn is operating under the name Aguaprieta. The pipeline is divided into two segments which extend 516 miles (831 kilometers) in total. Segment I is called Gasoducto Sásabe-Guaymas (GSG, Sásabe-Guaymas Gas Pipeline) and Segment II—the section that crosses Indigenous Yaqui territory—is called Gasoducto Guaymas-El Oro (GGO, Guaymas-El Oro Gas Pipeline). Seven of the eight Yaqui villages accepted the pipeline’s presence on their land; Loma de Bácum was the only one that did not, because of the danger it presents.
The company and local authorities resorted to a number of strategies to bring the pipeline to fruition, such as offering money to the traditional authorities of Loma de Bácum. “When this didn’t work, they orchestrated an attack on our guard (a communal authority) to try to impose a different village authority that would approve the pipeline. This armed group, many of them from other villages of our same tribe who sold out to the company, attacked us. It was Friday, October 21st, 2016. The kids were getting out of school and we defended ourselves,” Guadalupe Flores Maldonado, a community member of Loma de Bácum, said to Avispa Midia.
This attempt to impose another Traditional Guard, which is what the traditional authorities are called, left one person dead: Cruz Buitimea Piña, killed by a .22 caliber bullet. Fidencio was accused of the murder.
However, something doesn’t fit. Fidencio never denied being armed: he carried a .45 caliber pistol because he was part of the Traditional Guard and in accordance with Yaqui internal law, which is tied to self-determination and autonomy, Guard members can carry certain types of weapons to provide security and care for their territory.
The gun that Fidencio was carrying had been confiscated together with a drone and other equipment carried by a group of outsiders who were found conducting mining exploration without the community’s consent. “On one of the community patrols of our territory, they detained the Yoris (white or unknown men) who were excavating for a mine, brought them to the community and confiscated that weapon, which was kept for community security,” said María del Carmen Vásquez, Fidencio’s wife.
“The Traditional Guard uses .30-.30, .45, and .38 caliber weapons, because they’re the weapons we’ve used since the earliest struggles for defense of our territory. A number of them are confiscated. The person who died was shot with a .22 caliber,”
SAID MARTIN VALENCIA CRUZ, WHO SERVED AS SECRETARY OF THE TRADITIONAL GUARD IN LOMA DE BÁCUM.
“So they’re accusing Fidencio Aldama unjustly,” added Cruz. “They’re not taking into account the expert testimony presented by the community. The judges didn’t even look at this evidence. Even the investigation file is botched and it shows this case is flawed. What we are certain of is that the people who came to attack us were indeed carrying .22 caliber weapons, because we were able to identify them from the shell casings and in the trucks they left behind. In addition to other weapons, money, and even drugs.”
With the certainty that he had nothing to hide, Fidencio showed up for a series of interviews that state authorities were carrying out in Loma de Bácum concerning the conflict. The interviews were being conducted in a vehicle called a Hercules. “As soon as he got into the Hercules, he gave his name and they took him away with no warning or explanation. When they got to the prosecutor’s office they showed him the arrest warrant and made him sign some papers. He asked what the papers were for and they told him just to sign and that everything was fine. Since then, he’s been imprisoned in the Social Re-adaptation Center in Ciudad Obregón,” said María del Carmen Vásquez to Avispa Midia.
Fidencio has been in prison for more than four years, serving a sentence of 15 years and 6 months. The pipeline hasn’t been completed, but Sempra Energy is still charging millions as if it were transporting shale gas coming from the United States, because its contract states that if the pipeline cannot operate due to “force majeure,” the government is still obligated to pay.
With the entrance of Andrés Manuel López Obrador’s administration, several commissions have tried to negotiate with Loma de Bácum to continue construction of the pipeline, promising that Fidencio will be freed with an amnesty. The community refuses to let this pipeline cross its territory and the amnesty has not benefited Aldama.
Solidarity
“I ask for your collaboration. From all who are listening to me, to gain back my freedom. I am a good man. I am a person who continues struggling forwards, serving God, to get out of this. I hope to find this freedom soon.” Fidencio shared these words in a video from prison that was circulated by a group of collectives and individuals working on a campaign to expose this case of injustice and ensure Fidencio is not forgotten.
Fidencio’s support group is made up of people from Mexico and the United States, who recently created fidencioaldama.org to spread knowledge of his case and let his voice be heard.
The group has also released a call to send Fidencio letters and create art that could help raise awareness about his situation, focused on the week of June 20th to 26th. “We encourage all who are reading this to write or make something during this week, either on your own or by holding an event,” they say on the event page.
They have also asked people to help give exposure to the case and campaign by following and sharing their Twitter account, @FidencioLibre.
Human rights organizations in Colombia declared on Tuesday, May 4th that “the Colombian state has declared war against the peaceful protests” that have been taking place all over the country, epicentered in Cali, since April 28th. The human rights organization Temblores recorded at least 31 dead protesters, 216 victims of physical violence from the police, 814 arbitrary arrests, 21 people wounded in the eyes, and 10 cases of sexual violence.
“They’re shooting to kill at the people who are protesting. They’re shooting to kill at the people crying over their dead. They’re shooting to kill at the people helping the wounded. They’re shooting to kill at the human rights people. They’re shooting to kill at the people of Cali,” said a human rights defender during a press conference held the morning of Tuesday May 4th to denounce the brutal repression of demonstrators in Cali the night before.
“We must publicly denounce the operation that occurred in Cali yesterday, in which police used firearms and shot indiscriminately against hundreds of protesters as well as health and human rights teams. We must reject the military response to social protest,” stated one of the representatives of the human rights organizations.
According to them, at the time of the press conference the numbers of people wounded, arrested, and dead from the previous night’s police attack were still unknown. “We couldn’t do our job; we had to protect ourselves in neighbors’ houses. There’s no guarantee for human rights work in these moments.”
The human rights defenders said there were more than 30 police officers firing directly at people. “We demand that the state take responsibility for the massacre being perpetrated in Cali.”
The organizations reported that there were attacks on journalists who tried to record the military operation. “The house they were using for shelter was also hit.”
Ambulances have also been a target. “They’re shooting at the ambulances. They’re not letting them come in to pick up the wounded. They’re taking the wounded out of the hospitals and we don’t know where they’re bringing them.”
Furthermore, state the organizations, civilian groups are self-organizing to turn guns against the protesters. “We’ve seen groups of people in pickup trucks going out to attack the demonstrators, all with the complicity of state forces.”
“Instead of solving structural problems, [the government’s] reaction is repression, death, and criminalization,” say the organizations.
by Medios Libres Cali, originally in Spanish. First released in English by Crimethinc. Header photo by AP, all others by Medios Libres Cali.
Update: Since the following text was written, President Ivan Duque of Colombia made a statement on Sunday, May 2 asking Colombia’s congress to withdraw the tax reform bill that had sparked protests across the country. However, as of today, the protests in Colombia continue—especially in the city of Cali, arguably the epicenter of the demonstrations—because that failed law is only the most visible measure in a package of reforms that also includes healthcare privatization.
When the government is more dangerous than the pandemic, the people must gather en masse to protest. We throw carnivals in the streets to demand our rights, convert police stations into public libraries, and the people, neighborhoods, and sectors of the city unite in a great celebration of grassroots resistance in Colombia. The response has been excessive police force and a president who moves to militarize the country. This is the dual face of the historic General Strike of April 2021. All of Colombia is united against a bad government.
"SOS: The narco-state is killing us."
The People Have Been Hobbled, but Still March On
Despite the peace accords signed by the government and the FARC-EP (Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia-Popular Army) in 2016, which were supposed to bring an end to the armed conflict in Colombia, paramilitarism and narco-trafficking continue to fuel the war. El Centro Democrático (the party of ex-president Álvaro Uribe and current president Iván Duque) is responsible for continuing the war; it is focusing its power on asserting political and financial control of the country.
As of February 2021, 252 former FARC guerillas who demobilized to sign a peace accord have been assassinated. Today, four years after signing that peace accord, the government has implemented less than 75% of the agreement, and has taken no action on substantial components of it that were supposed to address the structural causes of the conflict, such as access to, redistribution, and possession of land—which has historically been one of the causes of the deep inequality within the country.
This inequality intensified with the arrival of the pandemic, clearly showing the state's ineffectiveness, incapacity, and disinterest in the well-being of its people. The delayed decision to close airports greatly accelerated the early spread of the virus. Now, while Colombia is experiencing its third COVID peak, the nation is facing an even worse wave of violence, poverty, and corruption, in which hunger is one of the worst problems. The war is bathing our territory in blood. In the first months of 2021, at least 57 influential participants in social movements have been murdered, 20 of them Indigenous people, most of whom were from the province of Cauca. In addition, there were 158 femicides in the first three months of the year and several other massacres.
A young combatant squares off behind a shield.
Colombia is the country of extrajudicial executions. A report by the Special Jurisdiction of Peace (JEP) documented 6402 illegal murders of civilians between 2002 and 2008, all of whom the army and police dishonestly misrepresented as “killed in combat.” These killings peaked in 2007 and 2008 during the presidency of Álvaro Uribe Véles. The figure comes close to the total number of casualties of Jorge Rafael Videla’s military dictatorship in Argentina; it is more than double the official number of victims executed or disappeared by Augusto Pinochet in Chile. In Colombia, people no longer wonder who gave the orders for these killings. They know the orders came from Uribe, and they no longer fear saying it aloud. Colombia has lost its fear.
Ever since the peace agreement, the government of Iván Duque (a protégé of Uribe) has sought to undermine the peace by all possible means, and they are succeeding. According to INDEPAZ (Institute for Studies in Development and Peace Networks), 124 massacres have taken place in 2020 and 2021, involving over 300 victims altogether. More than 1,000 activists have been murdered in Colombia since the accord was signed. Living in this country is a constant struggle against the austerity policies of a government whose only response to people’s needs is a boot to the face. Alongside economic programs that foster misery and inequality, genocidal political programs aim to exterminate any collective identity outside of or opposed to the reigning order.
A half-eaten loaf and an improvised weapon.
COVID-19 Is the Least of Our Problems
Amid a third peak of COVID-19 infections, thousands took the streets to participate in the general strike of April 28. What could make people overcome their fear of the virus and occupy the streets in the face of the bloodiest government in Latin America?
The Duque administration’s corrupt and negligent management of the crisis generated by COVID-19 has thrown the country into a tailspin of exponentially increasing impoverishment. According to government figures, in 2020, the equivalent of $11.5 million USD was invested in hospital infrastructure and humanitarian aid in the form of economic transfers; yet there have been thousands of allegations of corruption regarding the management of these policies. Meanwhile, Duque’s government has failed to implement a basic income proposal signed by 4000 people, including at least 50 members of parliament, as a means to sustain the households with the greatest need. Day in and day out, these people have to go out into the streets and risk exposure to the virus just to survive.
“If COVID doesn’t kill us, this perverse government will.”
On the contrary, the government has focused on providing support to the banks, securing their financial liquidity through funds transferred directly from the Emergency Mitigation Fund (FOME) created in the wake of the pandemic. Experts have stated that, solely through transfers known as “Solidarity Income,” the banks would pocket at least $6.3 million USD taken directly from the public treasury. This “Solidarity Income” never reached the people who really need it. Even during the pandemic, in Colombia we continue to see the vast majority of people get poorer while the rich get richer.
None of this is new. For decades, the political class of conservatives and right-wingers have presented themselves as the intermediaries between the country and the hegemonic global economy. They systematically maintain this position by exterminating peoples, stealing land, and dominating the working majority. This is a dictatorship in disguise, with enough weapons and resources to keep the country chained down for many more decades.
The grassroots uprising that is taking place today is not spontaneous. Rather, it is a reaction to years upon years of domination and injustice. The final straw that set off the protests we saw this April was the proposal of the so-called “Solidarity Financing Law,” a tax reform that will impoverish the majority of the population.
Under the pretext of reducing the deficit that it had created with the last reform, Duque’s administration came up with the terrible idea of increasing the cost of living in one of the most unequal countries in the world. It's shocking that in the midst of a crisis, the Colombian government would decide to raise food taxes for the lower and middle classes. It makes no sense to raise the price of food when the population is going hungry. It is even more outrageous that the proposed reforms will not only harm everyday people but further enrich the country’s wealthiest monopolies.
Shield tactics have been crucial to defending against police attacks since the 2019 general strike.
The Tax Reform Might Ruin Us, but the Health Reform Will Kill Us
The decisions that determine the direction of the country and the future of millions are made solely by political, military, and economic elites. They pass laws in favor of banking and ranching empires, laws in favor of North American, Asian, and European financial interests, laws to grant themselves immunity after they steal everyone else’s resources, laws to keep them in power both locally and nationally. These laws are approved behind closed doors, without public debate. One of the most obvious examples of this is the legal reform that will make changes to the Colombian healthcare system. Introduced on March 16th, 2021, it has still not been passed by Congress, but its supporters in the legislature pulled secretive moves the night of April 26 to try to push it through while attention was fixed on the tax reform.
This health reform could be worse than COVID-19 itself. Essentially, it is intended to implement the full privatization of the Colombian healthcare system. We will have to pay coverage fees for pathology, or the EPS (Colombia’s public health insurance) will deny us medical attention. People who require medical attention through the EPS will have to demonstrate that they are taking good care of themselves and did nothing to cause their illness or injury; if their insurance provider can prove otherwise, it will be able to deny them coverage, forcing them to pay out of pocket. This program is also intended to end public municipal vaccination programs—at the peak of the pandemic!—and to give insurance providers authority to decide how to offer these services and to whom.
This reform would allow multinationals and transnational pharmaceutical companies to impose prices and market rules for healthcare in Colombia. It would end health insurance discounts for those in professions including education, manufacturing, and the armed forces. Hospitals will have to demonstrate results in a proposal gruesomely similar to the “results” that the Uribe government demanded of soldiers, which resulted in over 10,000 "false positives"—the practice of extrajudicial execution in which the government and military kidnapped and murdered young people, then falsely reported them as FARC-EP combatants in order to fill quotas.
Similarly, it's estimated that the current health law that privatized the health system in 1993 has led to one million deaths through lack of medical attention or negligence, inflicting even more casualties than the armed conflict.
Five Days of Mobilization, Protests, and General Strike
From the beginning of the pandemic, the poorest have faced the cruel choice between staying home to avoid the virus and working to survive. A few weeks into the pandemic, red handkerchiefs began to appear in the windows of houses in marginalized neighborhoods, signifying that the household was going hungry. Soon, they could be seen by the thousands.
This is why, one year after the beginning of the quarantine, when the government proposed a tax reform that would hit the lower and middle classes the hardest, people did not hesitate to take to the streets. In that moment of crisis, there was no longer any choice—only rage and frustration. It was time to bring Colombia to a halt in defense of human dignity.
“Corruption and oppression are destroyed by rebellion.”
There were no leaders, only a date proposed by the labor unions, and that was enough for families, friends, neighbors, and neighborhoods to self-organize through social networks. The people flowed together into a great river of communities marching toward the major gathering points and entrances to the city. This was an efficient way to make the strike real, ensuring that no one could enter or leave.
The first day was filled with shouting, speeches, and singing and dancing in the street. This is the way we are in Cali: happy and brave, dignified and festive, dancers and warriors. People walked back to their houses that night, tired but with the knowing smiles of those who have accomplished something. In the following days, the blockades multiplied and the number of participants swelled, inspired by examples of resistance to overcome the fear of repression.
But the government has experience as well, particularly violent and paramilitary experience. It began detaining, killing, disappearing, and raping young people. This only increased the intensity of the resistance in the streets.
While restrictive measures were still in place in some Colombian cities, the government declared a curfew beginning at 8 pm on April 28 in an attempt to break the continuity of the mobilization. By 10 am the next morning, they had already modified the measure in response to the discontent in the streets, using the pretext of seeking to prevent crowded situations to pressure people via the curfew.
On April 30, the third day of the strike, the authorities shifted to a strategy of state terror—the same terror they have used on other occasions to paralyze communities. The restrictive measures supposedly necessitated by the pandemic provided an excuse for police agencies to carry out illegal mass arrests under the cover of municipal orders, as well as grave abuses of authority including murder, excessive force, threats, irregular arrests, destruction of protesters’ possessions, and sexual abuse.
Nonetheless, on May 1, attendance in the protests exceeded all expectations and many other cities joined in. By this point, demonstrations were taking place in more than 500 cities across the country. Our memory from other difficult struggles, passed down to us from other times by our parents and grandparents, reminds us that when the people unite, there is no power more transformative.
Through their police abuse complaint platform “GRITA,” by 11 pm on May 1, the human rights organization Temblores had received reports of 940 complaints of police violence, 92 victims of physical police violence, 21 people murdered by the police, four victims of sexual abuse at the hands of police officers, and 12 people shot in the eye by police.
Massive numbers took to the streets all over Colombia.
Cali: Capital of Resistance
The city of Cali has poured out in protest, organizing in spontaneous ways that allow people to meet. People have poured into the major gathering places with beautiful creativity. Food is always at the center of these places—diverse and delicious meals distributed from the communal pots. The front line is there, and other lines of care and defense on the part of youth in resistance. Many areas of the city have been renamed: La Loma de la Cruz, “Hill of the Cross,” is now called La Loma de la Dignidad, “Hill of Dignity”; El Paso del Comercio, “Commerce Pass,” is now called el Paso del Aguante, “Endurance Pass.” The Bridge of a Thousand Days is now the Bridge of a Thousand Struggles and the Gate to the Sea is now the Gate to Freedom.
Barricades were set up and defended all over Cali.
However, repression has continued on a daily basis. Echoing the phrase "I will always remember when I threw a stone in anger and the repressive government responded with shrapnel," people have lived through intense days of resistance defending at least seven permanent blockades throughout the city. The people of Cali protested in huge numbers and with determination from the first day of the mobilizations. At most gathering places, people were provoked by police forces, leading to clashes between the protesters and the riot police (ESMAD). Mayor Jorge Iván Ospina’s city government has assigned the task of policing the demonstrations to the Special Operations Group (GOES) of the National Police.
Here, we present an overview of police atrocities in Cali each day during the strike, compiled by a number of human rights organizations.
“Murderers, Rapists. #ESMAD #policias”
#28A—April 28, 2021
• Eight people experienced serious injuries and 50 experienced minor injuries from tear gas canisters and flash-bang grenades launched by the ESMAD. • Police shot 17-year-old Marcelo Agredo Inchimad in the back, in the neighborhood of Mariano Ramos. He died at the Valle del Lili Clinic. • Police murdered 13-year-old Jaison García. He was admitted to Carlos Holmes Trujillo Hospital in the neighborhood of República Israel without vital signs. • Six people were taken to police stations and released with fines for violating the curfew decreed by Mayor Jorge Iván Ospina. • Numerous videos recorded by protesters showed police utilizing less-lethal weapons improperly[1] and using firearms to shoot protesters.
#29A—April 29, 2021
• Police officers murdered 23-year-old Miguel Ángel Pinto at the gathering place called "Puerto Resistencia." • Police detained 106 protesters and transferred them to police stations, where they were beaten, tortured, and stripped of their belongings and audiovisual equipment. At least 31 disappearances were reported. • A protester on Calle Quinta was hit in the eye by a tear gas canister and seriously injured. • 16-year-old Michel David Lora, a Venezuelan national, was reported to have been disappeared. After being arrested with his mother, Lora was taken to a temporary shelter. When his mother arrived, she was told her son was not there.
“Resistance Port: Against the Reform.”
#30A—April 30, 2021
• During the protests, Edwin Villa Escobar, a merchant, and Einer Alexander Lasso Chará, retired, were murdered in the El Diamante neighborhood. Jovita Osorio, a preschool teacher, was murdered in the Paso del Comercio neighborhood and three other unidentified persons were murdered in the El Poblado neighborhood in eastern Cali. These incidents were recorded on video. • Angely Vivas Retrepo was shot in her left leg in the neighborhood of Julio Rincón, near the Calipso gathering place. Meanwhile, two women and a man were wounded in the neighborhood of Las Américas. In addition, police injured 105 more people. • Two members of the Francisco Isaías Cifuente human rights organization, Daniela Caicedo and José Cuello, were arrested at the Sameco gathering place. Police stole the articles identifying them as part of the organization. • Police took 94 persons to police stations from protest sites throughout the city. Many were beaten and tortured by the police inside the stations. • José Miguel Oband, Diego Alejandro Bolaños, and Jhon Haner Muñoz Bolaños were reported disappeared.
#1M—May 1, 2021
As of this writing, there is no human rights report yet from May 1, despite large numbers of protesters who covered a great part of the meeting points in the city center. Indiscriminate attacks were reported in the Paso del Aguante, Calipso and Puerto Resistencia protest sites. The police took advantage of the night to attack the most vulnerable points of the May 1 demonstrations. There have been reports from throughout the city of armed civilians shooting into the neighborhoods next to these areas. That night, a state of “Military Assistance” was declared to legalize the militarization of cities where mobilization and civil resistance against the tax reform continued.
A young family on the barricades.
The Enemies’ Tools: A Military Response to Social Protest
It has been difficult to find information about military expenses from official sources. It seems that they intend to hide the truth about government spending on war materials. Colombia currently spends around 40 billion Colombian pesos ($10.5 million USD) on the defense ministry every year. The military budget has historically been high, as internal conflict has continued and escalated for several decades now. Despite efforts to establish peace talks, today the conflict has diversified and intensified in many parts of the country, and defense expenses now make up around 11% of Colombia’s government spending—a high percentage for a country with a weakened economy. This puts Colombia in 25th place in the world ranking for public defense expenses, far above countries like France (with 3.3%), Spain (2.9%), or even Brazil (3.86%).
The ESMAD (Escuadrón Móvil Antidisturbios, the Mobile Anti-Riot Squad), a division of the national police apparatus, was created in 1999 to suppress mobilizations in the country. It was supposed to be a temporary special force, but it has now existed for more than 20 years and grown stronger through successive governments. Today, it consists of 3876 officers with a budget of 490 billion pesos ($131 million USD). In the course of its tenure, the squadron has murdered at least 20 civilians via what they call “excessive force.”
Today, the Duque-Uribe government, estranged from the people and anticipating strong popular discontent stemming from the aforementioned measures, has allocated millions to strengthen its security forces. The government has been preparing for some time now to use repression to deal with unrest. In March 2020, at the onset of the social and economic crisis caused by COVID-19, it purchased five armored vehicles for 8 billion pesos ($2.1 million USD) along with 9.515 billion pesos ($2.5 million USD) worth of ammunition and weaponry for the ESMAD. The 2021 budget has been increased by almost one billion pesos. In short, this government responds to social protest as if it is at war.
Yet neither the ESMAD nor the police have succeeded in containing the general strike. This is why President Duque declared the installation of “Military Assistance” in any cities that needed it—a measure that allows the use of military forces to respond to public disorder and disasters. The presence of these forces on the streets curtails rights as in a state of siege. Military presence in the streets increases the possibility of acts of war during demonstrations, because the state approaches the situation from a military perspective.
A crowd confronts the heavily armored ESMAD (Colombian riot police).
Overflowing Streets
The Colombian people gathered on every corner, shutting down every city. The neighborhoods took to the streets to reject the tax reform under the slogan “If we don’t unite, we will sink.” Colombia became a river of people. A great fire of unity has spread in honor of those who have given their lives. Their loss hurts us deeply, but their deaths must not be in vain. The voices of the entire country make themselves heard and a multitude of marches have spread the voice of resistance.
Colombia has shaken off its fear. We have nothing left to lose.
¡A PARAR PARA AVANZAR! WE STRIKE TO MOVE FORWARD!
“For our dead: a minute of silence and a whole life of combat.”
Translated by Shantal Montserrat Lopez Victoria, Voices in Movement / Cover photo by Anthony Guerra
While the pandemic keeps the population contained, the Zapatistas have decided to leave their communities to begin a five continent tour, starting off in Europe. The Zapatistas are scheduled to be overseas in July, August, September and October of 2021.
“Various Zapatista delegations, men, women, and others, the color of our earth, will go out into the world, walking or setting sail to remote lands, oceans, and skies, not to seek out difference, superiority, or offense, much less pity or apology, but to find what makes us equal.” This was the message of the Zapatista Army of National Liberation (EZLN), in October 2020, just as mobility was beginning to tighten.
Since that message was issued, several in person and virtual meetings have taken place in the Spanish State. “Issues of Covid concerns us a lot, but the truth is we are very excited to welcome the compas here, to be able to have them with us. We think it’s a wonderful opportunity to meet and get together,” said Lola from the Documentation Center on Zapatismo collective (collectivo Centro de Documentación sobre el Zapatismo) in Madrid, an organization that has been following the Zapatista movement for years.
José Sánchez from Germany, a member of the Citizens Summons collective and the Ya Basta Netz Network, affirms that in this country a network of collectives have been organizing to receive the Zapatistas. “Knowing that Europe is the first stop has driven us to unite diverse collectives. But other networks, collectives and groups are also being created. We were already working with Spain but we are now working with other countries,” said Sanchez.
Danae, from the Yretiemble Madrid collective, affirmed that the pandemic has strongly affected the processes towards resistance and struggle in Spain, “because it has been one of the main countries affected by Covid and this has exacerbated the inequalities. For this reason, the Zapatistas visit is very important, because we need to mobilize ourselves in spite of what we are living,” she said.
Everardo, also from the Yretiemble Madrid collective, says that this visit has already lead to the creation of “diverse spaces of self-organization in Madrid, Barcelona, the Basque Country, among others. We’re not just thinking about a visit from a loved one. We have to think about how to organize ourselves to receive the compas, but also on how to strengthen our networks. We are trying to gather together organizations who are in the struggle to meet with the Zapatistas, firstly so we can listen to each other, but also to create networks that will allow us to continue fighting together.”
Most of the collectives that have started to get together are running into their first obstacles, the restriction of mobility due to the pandemic. “But if there’s something we have learned from the Zapatistas is that there is always a way. We have been meeting one-on-one, in virtual meetings and by email. Our organizing is growing in other countries,” adds Sanchez.
Lola emphasizes that these first meetings in Madrid have made them think about the forms of organization they are creating. “We are focusing on seven main points: migration, social rights, work, art, etc. It is something we are building.”
Connecting with Europe
The collectives have pointed out that Europe feels a closeness with Mexico and the rest of Latin America. “The problems in the different countries are mainly due to the presence of European capital in the mining process and with other companies,” adds Sánchez.
“We must not forget that when we talk about Europe, there is Europe from below and to the left. But there is also Europe from above. In Spain there are many companies that are responsible for the plundering in Mexico, they are investors in megaprojects, such as wind farms that are dispossessing the people of the Isthmus in Oaxaca. We have to give that information to the people in Europe,” said Danae.
Plan B
The participating collectives conceded that in logistical terms it has been a great organizational challenge to host the delegation.
In their opinion, the pandemic is not hindering the moment of resistance and struggle, “from the beginning we knew that we had to walk slowly and deal with the uncertainty of the pandemic. Collectives that are organizating are aware that the meeting could be postponed if the conditions do not allow. In the meantime, we have not only been building networks but also new ways of organizing ourselves,” shares Everardo.
Deforestation, loss of biodiversity, clientelism and corruption are just some of the consequences of the implementation of Sembrando Vida, the federal government’s most ambitious environmental program, which seeks to reforest a million hectares of deteriorated lands throughout Mexico.
The above is stated in numerous reports by academics, NGOs and the press. One of the studies, Analysis of the Impacts on Forest Canopies and Potential for Mitigation of Parcels of the Sembrando Vida Program in 2019, carried out by Javier Warman, Ivan Zuñiga and Manuel Cervera, indicates that the program caused the deforestation of an area of 72, 830 hectares. “There is one critical aspect related to the loss of forest canopies; the targeting of this phenomenon in only 22 municipalities of the country, and a great concentration of losses (50,981 hectares representing 70% of the losses) in those regions vulnerable to climate change and those of great biodiversity, of Chiapas, Tabasco, Yucatán, Quintana Roo and Campeche.”
For 2019, the municipality with the greatest forest loss was Ocosingo, in Chiapas, with 12,920 hectares, followed by Othón P. Blanco, in the state of Quintana Roo, with 5,829 lost hectares.
The damaged areas, 11.2% of the total area benefitted, were located by a study of satellite images and represents almost half of the annual amount of forest cover lost due to changes in land use and illegal logging in the same region, according to estimates of the World Resource Institute (WRI).
In a report published by Bloomberg, campesinos enrolled in Sembrando Vida in Yucatán and Campeche, report having logged and burned trees in order to receive money from the program.
This recent report is in addition to those circulated since the end of 2019 and during 2020. For example, in Quintana Roo, Sembrando Vida led to the deforestation of nearly 10,000 hectares of jungle, primarily in the ejidos of the southern part of the state.
“It has been noted that, in the ejidos, to have the area needed to plant fruit trees, people deforest with the approval of the federal government,” Cristóbal Uc Medina, president of the Society of Forest Ejidos of Quintana Roo, told local media.
In addition to the deforestation, the program is also implicated in the planting of non-native species in Chiapas and Tabasco, and even “some participants say that they are forced to fell the new native trees and re-plant non-native species that have died for lack of water or too much sun,” the report ¿Deforestar en vez de reforestar? Esto es lo que ocurre con Sembrando Vida. (Deforesting instead of Reforesting? This is what happens in Sembrando Vida) details.
Corruption
Sembrando Vidapays out 4,500 pesos monthly to 420 thousand farmers. It operates in 20 states and records historic budgets for the Mexican countryside with 15 billion pesos in 2019 and 27 billion in 2020.
According to the federal plan, in addition to taking care of the environment, the program seeks to combat poverty and corruption by eliminating intermediaries in the delivery of money. However, there are indications that the little to no supervision of the so-called productive and social technicians constitutes a scenario conducive to bad practices.
“There remain certain bad practices on the part of some (technicians) that abuse their power and the lack of understanding of the beneficiaries about the rules of operation of the program; at the same time there are those campesinos that seek to join Sembrando Vida without meeting the requirements, in exchange for bribes; simulation of land ownership; and more than anything, a disguised political clientelism.”
“We have specific testimonies in Veracruz, Chiapas and Campeche of landholders that accumulate that falsify small properties, based on naming their wife, their cousin’s son, etc. as beneficiaries. We have had testimonies of people with different surnames that are the same person, because in addition, the program has the possibility of registering leased properties,” the Mexican Network of Peasant Forestry Organizations (MOCAF) details.
Among the problems identified since the beginning of the program are the deficiencies in the supply of plants, both in the construction and equipping of the community nurseries, but especially on the part of the military forestry nurseries.
In Mexico, there are 12 nurseries, distributed throughout 7 states, operated by the army, which on paper would represent the primary source of plants for Sembrando Vida. However, according to a review on the Compranet portal carried out by Ethos, due to the fact that they have not been able to achieve the necessary numbers to meet its objectives, it was authorized to award 77 suppliers direct contracts to provide 28 species and diverse varieties of plants.
The deficit in the supply of plants also enables abuses on the part of the technicians. One testimony gathered in the report of Ethos details that in the municipality of San Pedro and San Pablo Ayutla, Oaxaca, the participants of the program have neither received plants nor money to acquire the inputs for the construction of the community nursery.
For this reason, the testimony “reports that one productive technician, demanded 50,000 pesos from her mother, who is the beneficiary, and the other members of the CAC (Campesino Learning Community) made up of technicians, campesinos, and scholarship holders, in order to acquire fruit trees, who she herself would buy and bring to them so that they could start planting.”
With this deficiency, Sembrando Vida finds itself far from its goal. In 2019 alone, the first year of its implementation, despite that the objective was to plant more than 500 million trees, only 80 million were planted. By the end of 2021, and with a budget of more than 28 billion pesos, the program intends to grow more than a billion plants.
It’s worth remembering that last February, the Top Federal Office of Audits (ASF) reiterated that the program has deficiencies in both its design and its implementation. Among the failures found by the ASF is that the target population was not identified, and that the integration and updating of the registry of beneficiaries has failings, in addition to the fact that it didn’t not produce reports or elaborate on parameters to evaluate the program.
A U.S. Border Patrol agent instructs asylum-seeking migrants as they line up along the border wall after crossing the Rio Grande river into the United States from Mexico on a raft, in Penitas, Texas, U.S., March 17, 2021. REUTERS/Adrees Latif
Along the first trimester of 2021, the government of the United States of America has reported an increase in the flow of undocumented immigrants from Mexico and the Northern Triangle of Central America (Honduras, Guatemala, and El Salvador). Among the travelers, there is a group which stands out due to their extreme vulnerability: children and teenagers who endanger themselves without any guardian taking care of them throughout their journey.
A week ago, the US Congressional Representative for Texas, Enrique Roberto "Henry" Cuellar, revealed photographs of the children in the migrant detention center in the city of Donna, Texas. The images show how children are crowded in "rooms" divided with thin transparent polymer; only given isothermal blankets and plastic-lined mats are the meager resources for their comfort.
During the campaign months, US President Joe Biden (who took office in January of 2021) promised that, if elected, his "administration would treat asylum seekers at their border with dignity and ensure that they receive the fair, legal hearing to which they are entitled". His promise contrasts with the current scenario.
The trenches became abysses
Unlike single adults and families, who are expelled to Mexico in the shortest possible interval (with a few exceptions) after they are detained by the US border patrol, children who travel unaccompanied are asylees in facilities located within US territory, while their cases are studied.
Ideally, the process starts when border patrol agents apprehend the children, then transfer them to their facilities. After guarding them for 72 hours (maximum), Customs and Border Protection (CBP) would deliver these children and adolescents to the Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) to assess them medically and put them under quarantine. Simultaneously, each of the families to whom the custodies of the children will be entrusted are investigated (80% of the children and teenagers have a sponsor waiting for them in the USA and in 40% of the cases it is one of the parents or a legal guardian).
However, children remain crammed into facilities run by border protection patrols -whose job is to prevent undocumented migrants from entering the United States- for much longer than three days, because the shelters lack vacancies.
Crisis?
Troy Miller, the Senior Official performing the Duties of the Commissioner (SOPDOC) for U.S. Customs and Border Protection (CBP), asserts that children within DHS facilities are provided with care, food, and the possibility to take a shower every 48 hours. But Leecia Welch and Neha Desai (attorneys authorized to inspect the conditions in which unaccompanied migrant children are held) have stated that they were not allowed to enter to Donna City DHS facility, instead they were only allowed to interview 20 minors inside a portable unit. Some of the children reported that many of their fellows lacked any blankets or mat to sleep on, so they had to lay down on the floor and bare surfaces. Likewise, the children sometimes have to go three or even six days without being able to clean themselves properly.
It is estimated that a remarkably high number of children (14 thousand according to Diario.es, 15 thousand according to Forbes), many of them under 10 years of age, suffer the loss of their well-being while they spend up to a week stranded before being transferred to a hostel. The authorities refuse to be transparent and continue to hide numbers, and in the middle of this contradiction, Biden's government prefers to call this a "challenge" when it is an actual crisis.
What does the US government say?
The Secretary of the United States Department of Homeland Security (DHS), Alejandro N. Mayorkas, has made some statements regarding the humanitarian crisis on the U.S. Department of Homeland Security official website. He explains that the boost of unaccompanied immigrant minors is due to various factors, such as the devastation produced by the hurricanes that hit Central America in 2020, the increase in levels of crime, impunity, and violence in the countries of the Northern Triangle of Central America and Mexico, and the collateral ravages of the COVID 19 pandemic.
In his speech, Mayorkas demonstrated that the previous administration transferred an inefficient system to them, which continuously violated the rights of immigrants, closing shelters, expelling unaccompanied children to their fate, and even making them easy prey for traffickers. On the other hand, opponents of the new administration argue that President Biden's decisions to remove immigration restrictions recklessly encourages immigrants to try to cross borders illegally.
The DHS Secretary admits that the 72 hours of detention stipulated by federal law are being exceeded, and that the spaces to house detained immigrants are in fact limited (they do not allow people to keep the social distancing demanded by the current pandemic).
The Next Step
On March 24th, President Joe Biden assigned Vice President Kamala Harris the task of solving the immigration crisis.
Now it is only about waiting for Harris's first move, not to mention the possibility that the humanitarian abyss will simply widen. Members of the Republican party and some Democrats express their disagreement with the humanitarian crisis and the potential repercussions of the immigration agenda proposed by the current administration (stop the border wall construction, provide legal status to almost 11 million immigrants, reunify families) and warn that they will not facilitate their support.
