Sowing the Seed of Consciousness: Agua de Lluvia Little Community School

Por

7 February, 2024

^{Children dance and play during the celebration of the second anniversary of the Little Community School located in the Mazatec community of Agua de Lluvia. Photo: Aldo Santiago}

The Agua de Lluvia Little Community School is a project born of the necessity of the children and parents of the community of Agua de Lluvia, nestled in the Mazatec mountains in northern Oaxaca.

Although the project has been ten years in the making, inspired by the autonomous education of the Zapatista communities in Chiapas, it wasn’t until 2021 when the project was made public.

The activities organized by the collaborators are diverse. Far from being centered solely on pedagogy, the activities span from the sciences and arts to the defense of territory and working with the land.

“We always motivate the children to continue studying. Not so as to get a job and be part of the masses, dedicating themselves to only think in economic terms. Rather, it is to sow the seed of social and political consciousness, a consciousness of their surroundings,” shared Jazmin Alvarado, collaborator of the autonomous education project.

*^{Book binding, paper sculpturing, drawing, and silk-screen printing were some of the activities for the children during the second anniversary of the Little Community School. Photos: Aldo Santiago}*

In the last two years, individuals and collectives have participated with the collaborators of the Little Community School to give workshops on media tools, local histories, farming, music, art, bookbinding, silk-screen printing, and food preparation. These are some of the knowledges shared in this region where, as Alvarado argues, it is difficult for the children to have access to these tools and knowledges from within the formal educational institutions.

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“The children have been acquiring these teachings and it has opened them up to a world of possibilities,” celebrates the collaborator of the Little Community School during a day of conversations, workshops, music, and dance, to celebrate the two-year anniversary of the autonomous education project.

*^{The celebration was grounded in the solidarity of collaborators who shared tools and knowledge with the children. Photo: Aldo Santiago}*

“Exposing children to different knowledges allows them to see other possibilities in their lives,” Alvarado emphasizes, given the context of increasing violence and criminal activity in the Mazatec mountains in Oaxaca. “This space is a refuge, including for the collaborators, and we want it to be so for everyone: the children, adolescents, and adults as well.”

The collaborator sustains that the celebration is of great importance because it reinforces the commitment to the project. “Our idea is to foment community ties…its not just about going and partying, but about strengthening the social fabric and consolidating those social and political ties,” emphasizes Alvarado.

*^{Children dance and play during the celebration of the second anniversary of the Little Community School located in the Mazatec community of Agua de Lluvia. Photos: Aldo Santiago}*

“Celebrate the children. Let the children feel celebrated because they are the ones who have also given life to this space, let them feel that it is a celebration for them, for everyone,” concludes the collaborator of the school.

Military Generates Tension in Chiapas; Organized Crime Checkpoints Remain Intact

Por

Sare Frabes

22 January, 2024

^{Photos taken from a video showing the violent military incursion in the Ejido Nuevo America in the border region between Chiapas and Guatemala.}

On Tuesday, January 16, members of the Mexican Military and the National Guard violently attacked the Ejido Nuevo America in the municipality of Chicomuselo where inhabitants had put up fences to prevent the entrance of armed groups who were fighting in the region during the night of Monday, January 15.

Since 2021, the border region with Guatemala has seen a crisis of violence and insecurity. Testimonies have described a war between the Sinaloa and Jalisco New Generation cartels, whose violent clashes have caused the forced displacement of thousands of people.

Through an urgent communique, the Civil Society of the People of Chicomuselo made a call to the international community to denounce that, in addition to organized crime violence, they are now being attacked by armed forces “who are violating decisions made by civil society to protect their towns from increasing violence and clashes between cartels.”

Before the arrival of the military, inhabitants of the Ejido Nuevo America and other communities surrounding the Belisario Dominguez Dam, solicited dialogue with the armed forces to explain to them the reasons for the fencing. Yet the armed forces refused. Rather they have accused the population of belonging to the criminal groups.

^{Photos taken from a video showing the violent military incursion in the Ejido Nuevo América in the border region between Chiapas and Guatemala.}

“The population is asking why the location of the criminal groups isn’t being raided, or why aren’t the highway blockades held by criminal groups for over two years being removed. Instead they attack the communities where people are organizing to protect their ejidos,” say the inhabitants.

Through videos circulated on social media, the violent incursion of the Military and National Guard can be seen in spite of attempts for dialog by the local population.

A testimony shared by Radio Zapatista indicates that elements of the Military threw stones and tear gas against campesinos. “They were carrying poles, they broke the lines of the campesinos and the people had nowhere to go, they couldn’t hold on,” detailed the anonymous testimony. Through the audio, it was explained that there was no violent response on part of the campesinos in spite of the aggression of the soldiers who injured inhabitants and detained two people.

As a result of the attack from the armed forces, reports indicate an increase in the number of displaced families, due to the ongoing violence between communities located on the border of the lake also known as “La Angostura.” In addition to these populations, there are other ejidos where people are forced to migrate due to the fear and terror of the violence they are experiencing.

According to the communique, the towns affected are: Rizo de Oro, Guadalupe Maravillas, Perlas del Grijalva, Resplandor, Retiro and San Isidro of the municipality of Concordia. Puerto Rico and Chejel of the municipality of Socoltenengo. Julio Sabines, Benito Juárez, Nueva América, Corona del Rosal, Pablo L. Sidar, Raizal, Madero, Nueva Morelia, Limonar, La Lucha, La Unión, San Francisco, La Pinta, San Ignacio, Sabinalito, Las Flores, San Antonio Ocotal, 20 de Noviembre, Piedra Labrada, Lázaro Cárdenas, and the municipal seat of Chicomuselo.

The testimony shared by Radio Zapatista states that the situation is serious because the families—many with children and sick people—have fled to the mountains and toward the lake. “The other problem is that nobody can move them across the lake. The people who drive the boats have also left. It is chaos here on the banks of the lake. It is horrible, the houses are shut, everything is closed. They abandoned their animals, their livestock, cattle, and horses. Their cars could no longer pass to the other side of the lake. There were also women who fled running because of the teargas. The armed forces also fired shots,” narrates the audio.

In the communique, the population questions why the armed forces allowed criminal groups to run off various communities while they attacked the people without intervening against the armed groups.

“Why do they violate the communities in resistance?” they ask in the document disseminated after the aggressions. “All confidence has been lost in the Military and the National Guard of the 101-infantry battalion located in the municipality of Chicomuselo. They’ve only acted against the population which seeks to protect themselves rather than against those who are threatening, assassinating, and kidnapping the people. This is the case of Chicomuselo, Comalapa, Siltpec, and Amatenango, where there are permanent checkpoints of criminal groups who are reviewing cell phones and backpacks, covering a price to pass or to sell products, controlling prices and harvest times of the campesinos,” they detail.

Militarization and Organized Crime Go Hand in Hand

International human rights organizations who work in Chiapas and southern Mexico including the Swedish Fellowship of Reconciliation (SweFOR) and the International Service for Peace (SIPAZ) disseminated a communique expressing concern over the armed violence that has plagued the region since 2021.

In a document, they state that the confrontation between criminal groups “is greatly impacting the civil population, through acts of forced disappearance, torture, forced recruitment, sexual exploitation, extortion, displacement, and other strategies of population control.”

^{Photos taken from a video showing the violent military incursion in the Ejido Nuevo Amarica in the border region between Chiapas and Guatemala.}

They emphasize that the panorama of violence is specifically dire for human rights defenders. “We have received information from the border region of Chiapas and Guatemala of cases of assassination, torture, and disappearance against human rights defenders who carry out the work of denouncing human rights violations, refusing to support one side or the other. This has led several human rights defenders to seek refuge far from their communities suspending their activities in defense of human rights,” they contextualize.

According to the organizations, this scenario is developing due to the inaction of the authorities, “militarization of the entire state being the only response without a consistent effect in stopping the violence,” they explain.

They emphasize that Chiapas is one of the most militarized states in Mexico. According to statistics from the Secretariat of National Defense (SEDENA), as of July 2022, there were 17,160 elements of the Military and National Guard deployed there.

“The exponential growth of violence and state omission is resulting in the complete closure of the space of action for human rights defense. We are worried that in this context, they are not implementing mechanisms for protection of the activists,” explain the human rights organizations.

No Findings One Year After the Forced Disappearance of Land Defenders in Michoacán

Por

Sare Frabes

22 January, 2024

^{Family members and friends concentrated outside the Agrarian Ombudsman’s office on January 27, 2023 as part of the protests against the disappearance of the land defenders. Photo: Oliver Méndez/ ObturadorMX}

Monday, January 15, marked one year since the forced disappearance of the lawyer and human rights defender, Ricardo Arturo Lagunes Gasca, and the professor and Indigenous leader of the community of San Miguel de Aquila, Antonio Díaz Valencia. Both were responsible for the legal defense of the Nahua community of San Miguel de Aquila, located in the Sierra Costa region of Michoacán, to guarantee the free election of their communal authorities and the fulfillment of agreements made with the mining project, Las Encinas, run by the company Ternium.

Lagunes and Díaz were victims of forced disappearance while traveling between Michoacán and Colima, after having participated in a community assembly. Since then, there has been no information on their whereabouts and their families continue demanding a search for them and their alive return.

^{Family members of the disappeared land defenders protest in Mexico City on January 22, 2023. Photo: Ulises Martínez/ObturadorMX}

Months prior, Díaz and Lagunes had alerted both state and federal authorities about a series of threats against them and other people from the Indigenous community. The Nahua residents had long pointed to the mining company, which extracts from one of the principal iron deposits in Mexico, as a force of social division and fragmentation inside the community.

According to a communique from the National Network of Civil Human Rights Organizations “Todos los derechos para todas, todos y todes” (REDTDT), despite warnings reported to the authorities of the different levels of government, asking them to intervene to mediate the conflicts between inhabitants and the mining company in order to avoid the escalation of violence in the region, they were ignored.

Not an Isolated Case

One year after their disappearance, the REDTDT asserts that the disappearance of Ricardo Lagunes and Antonio Díaz is not an isolated case. “In the last 15 years more than 93 environmental defenders have disappeared in Mexico, 62 of them for defending Indigenous territory against mining projects and illegal logging,” states the network of human rights organizations in Mexico.

It should be noted that last year, in the Sierra Costa region of Michoacán, more attacks and disappearances have been recorded against Indigenous communities and land defenders. According to the REDTDT, this is happening in a context marked by the intrusion of Ternium and the presence of organized crime.

*Professor Antonio Díaz was distinguished for being a leader in his community. Photo: Courtesy of family members/ Mongabay*

The network of human rights organizations highlights the attacks against the Nahua community of Santa María Ostula, where three community guard members were assassinated days after the disappearances in Aquila. Ostula has also reported four land defenders still missing.

On April 1, 2023, the disappearance of Eustacio Alcalá of the Nahua community of San Juan Huitzontla was also reported. Since 2017, the community of San Juan Huitzontla has declared itself as a territory free of mining maintaining a legal battle to cancel the mining concession of Las Encinas. Three days after this disappearance, Alcalá’s lifeless body was found.

^{Eustacio Alcalá, Nahua community leader of San Juan Huitzontla. Photo: Courtesy of Centro Prodh/ Mongabay}

“In the face of multiple demands for collaboration with the company, the response of all actors was to continue the economic negotiations, leaving aside the disappearances and without strengthening the search and localization strategies. Both the government of Michoacán as well as the federal government accelerated the agreements with the company Ternium, to reactivate the operation of the mine, influencing local actors to support that decision, taking advantage of the great economic dependence that the mine historically has generated in the community,” highlights the REDTDT about the slow advance in the search for Lagunes and Díaz.

According to the statement, one year after the forced disappearance, the family members of the land defenders have experienced the reality of the thousands of people searching for the disappeared in Mexico, “simulation, superficiality in the commitments to the search and investigation, and revictimization from all governmental spheres.”

Mapuche Leader Extradited to Chile from Argentina

Por

Ñaní Pinto

9 January, 2024

With a major operation coordinated between Interpol, the Federal Police of Argentina, and Airport Security Police, on January 4, the activist Facundo Jones Huala, considered a leader of the Mapuche Ancestral Resistance (RAM), was extradited to Chile from Argentina.

The Lonko, as Mapuche chiefs are called, was detained on August 27, 2018 in Argentina, while on house arrest at his grandmother’s home. Neither his lawyer, his family, nor him had received any previous notification. Since then, the Supreme Court of Argentina has confirmed the ruling that the Mapuche leader would be extradited on charges of arson and the illegal possession of a handmade firearm. He was sentenced to nine years in prison, although his sentence was later reduced to six.

In 2022, his lawyer obtained his conditional freedom after he completed two-thirds of his sentence in CCP Temuco. Not long afterwards, the resolution was revoked and an arrest warrant ordered by the Chilean Supreme Court seeking his extradition.

Huala had traveled to Argentina and was considered a fugitive until he was detained in January 2023 in the southern part of the country.

The Gabriel Boric government, the current president of Chile, activated the extradition order of the activist so that he complete his prison sentence. The Mapuche activist, via an audio, called on the Argentinean justice system to not be extradited to Chile because he is a “political prisoner.”

In prison, he went on a hunger strike to avoid extradition, and demanding an end to the political persecution again him. At that moment the activist declared that the principal demand is “territory and autonomy for our nation…the state must return everything (to the Mapuche people) or assume the consequences,” he warned.

Today he is extradited to Chile where he will remain detained for at least one year, four months, and seventeen days, the time in which he will finish the six-year prison sentence that was dictated against him in December of 2018.

The Mapuche leader arrived approximately at 10:40 in the morning on Thursday to the Pichoy airport in Valdivia. According to Chilean authorities, the Lonko was transferred to the city of Valdivia, 850 km from Santiago, to be presented at the court.

The prosecutor, Sergio Fuentes, said that “the appellate court of Valdivia, after reviewing the legality of the extradition process, ordered Huala to be placed at the disposal of the Guarantee Court of Rio Bueno, which in turn ordered him to be transferred to CCP Temuco to finish the rest of his sentence,” he said.

The prosecutor added that “the extradition process was made possible by the coordinated activity between the Chilean prosecutor, through the International Cooperation and Extradition Unit, together with Argentinean police, judicial and administrative authorities.”

The ancestral Mapuche territory, known as Wallmapu, is vindicated by Mapuche people from the Pacific to the Atlantic Oceans. Historically, since before the European invasion, the Mapuche people have lived in the Argentinean and Chilean Patagonia. However, more than once they have been considered invaders and terrorists.

RAM is considered the “political military organ” of the Puel Mapu Autonomous Mapuche Movement, an organization that Huala admitted being a participant in the extradition trial that was carried out in Bariloche, in February of 2018. He sustained that he was “a combatant at one point in the RAM, as well as a combatant in the Coordinadora Arauco Malleco (CAM), and in other situations of political territorial conflict developing acts of self-defense.”

This organization reclaims the sovereignty and recognition of the Mapuche community and its ancestral territories, which cover the length and width of both Argentinean and Chilean territories.

The organization has been accused of a series of things, from provoking more than a dozen fires, stealing livestock, and even carrying out armed attacks against employees of the Compania de Tierras Sud Argentino Limitado, property of Carlo Benetton, part of the Italian textile empire of the Benetton Group S.P.A. In 1991, the Benetto family, in Patagonia, bought 900,000 hectares in which they raise almost 100,000 sheep, producing 10% of the wool of the Benetton Group S.P.A. firm. Most of these lands belong to the Mapuche people.

Amid this scenario, a group of fifteen Mapuche political prisoners who are part of the Coordinadora Arauco Malleco (CAM) in Chile, including leaders like Ernesto Llaitul, Esteban Henríquez and others, have been on a hunger strike, some since November 13, protesting a collective sentence of more than 15 years and demanding the annulment of these rulings. With this action, Consuelo Contreras of the National Institute of Human Rights has emphasized the necessity for inclusive dialogue to address violence in the region.

The progressive government of Boric has maintained a distant posture toward the demands of autonomy of the Mapuche people, showing little interest in addressing ancestral land claims and self-government.

Argentina: President Milei Seeks to Allow Glacier Mining and Deforestation

Por

Santiago Navarro F

7 January, 2024

^{Buenos Aires, Argentina. 2023. Photo: Santiago Navarro F}

Since taking power, Javier Milei, the current president of Argentina, has in the first 17 days of his government proposed three structural reform packages. Among them are the Decree of Urgency and Necessity, and his main package, the “Ley Omnibus” or Omnibus Law. The latter seeks to privatize at least 40 state companies directly impacting laws that protect the forests and glaciers.

The Omnibus Law was sent to Congress this past Wednesday as the “Proyecto de Ley de Bases y Puntos de Partida para la Libertad de los Argentinos.” It is an extensive package of 351 pages with more than 664 articles. “The text includes profound, necessary, and urgent reforms in tax, labor, criminal, energy, and electoral matters, said Manuel Adorni, presidential spokesperson, in a press conference.

This latter package of reforms, which will be taken up in congress in an extraordinary session, has been analyzed by the Collective of Action for Ecosocial Justice (CAJE) and the Argentinean Association of Environmental Lawyers (AAdeAA), who have warned that “if approved, this project will represent a blow to the heart of environmental protection legislation in Argentina.”

This association of lawyers published the report, “Sin límites para el saqueo: ataque al corazón de la legislación de protección ambiental argentina,” highlighting that if approved, the Law to Protect Forests and Glaciers will be threatened.

Among the modifications is the replacement of Article 26 which prohibits the deforestation of protected areas I and II (red and yellow). The category of red protection (I) corresponds precisely to very important conservation zones that should not be transformed. The yellow category (II) also prohibits deforestation but allows the development of other activities of sustainable use.

The modifications also eliminate the necessity to report on productive activities around these areas. According to the lawyers, this means that the right to information for Indigenous peoples and campesino communities is greatly affected, particularly in cases of deforestation.

Glacier Mining

With the modification of the National Glacier Act (No. 26.6392) “mining activity is allowed in the periglacial environment, which is currently expressly prohibited,” the lawyers state in the report. This means that it will be permitted in the ice masses and the internal and surface level watercourses where mining was previously not allowed.

According to the environmental activists, these frozen zones act as water resource regulators. “Their protection is included directly in the National Glacier Act, which is a product of an arduous legislative process, in which various national and international specialists contributed their expertise,” the lawyers stress.

Behind the decree there are different exploration and exploitation initiatives of glacier and periglacial zones, “especially in the Andes mountains and its foothills,” explain the lawyers.

Interestingly, the United Sates Geological Survey (USGS) has recently announced that the Andes Mountains hold significant copper deposits. It is de facto considered the main copper region in the world. Therefore, “it is a mining zone in the process of exploration and active development,” the USGS states in a paper published in 2022 called “Porphyry copper deposits and prospects in the Andes Mountains of South America.”

Along with Copper, Argentina possesses deposits of minerals considered critical because of their scarcity. Lithium, for example. In 2023, the USGS catalogued Argentina as the primary lithium provider to the United States, with more than 50% of the market share, destined principally for the United States auto industry.

Furthermore, Argentina is considered as one of the thirteen governments who make up the Minerals Security Partnership, an initiative led by the United States government to catalyze public and private investment in critical mineral supply chains on a global scale. This is aimed at the new productive systems emerging from the energy transition.

The lawyers are definite in asserting that with the new Milei reforms, Argentina is moving backwards environmentally, due to “the historic demand of major transnational mining companies like Barrick Gold that want to advance on these ecosystems. With this modification, they will be able to do so without limitations, considerably narrowing the protected zone.”

The lawyers warn that the presence of foreign armed forces in Argentinean territory is also considered in the reforms. Article 346 empowers the executive to authorize the entry of military contingents pertaining to other countries into Argentina for activities of training, instruction, protocol, or combined activities.

The commander of the United States Southern Command, Laura Richardson, refers to South America as a theater of operations for the national security of the United States. “It is like our neighborhood because of the physical proximity. Also because of the familial, economic, and cultural ties,” said the commander of the United States military in 2022 before the 117^th Congress of the Armed Services in the House of Representatives.

Richardson argues that their presence in the region is vital as “60% of the lithium in the world is found in the Lithium Triangle in South America” made up of Argentina, Bolivia, and Chile, she told the US senate in March of 2022.

“In a global context where countries strengthen their borders and national security, the Omnibus Law enables foreign armed forces to enter into our country beneath the subtle disguise of training, instruction, or protocol practices, ceding control of our lands and our common goods,” argued the lawyers.

These organizations consider the reform to be “the handing over and dispossession of our national sovereignty,” considering that it is aimed at the repeal of the Rural Lands Law of the DNI 70/2023, which would enable foreign capitalists to acquire national lands in border zones, renouncing control over border limits.

Privatization

The Omnibus Law seeks to privatize at least 40 state companies, among them the YPF oil company, Argentine Airlines, the Central Bank, the Treasury (where they print the money), the Télem news agency, the AYSA water company, and the networks of train and rail lines in Argentina.

Environmentally, it means the fiscal deregulation of fossil fuel exploitation, which in itself was already causing major environmental impacts, they denounce in the report.

Therefore, “the privatization of the public sector, at both the state and provincial level, will intensify and deepen the socioenvironmental inequalities caused by the advance of the hydrocarbon frontier in our country,” the lawyers add.

In addition, the decree deregulates the control of the burning of vegetation, pastures, and other remains, which would otherwise require permission from the state. The “Omnibus law means that, after 30 working days of the request for a burn permit, if the state doesn’t expedite it, their silence will be interpreted as tacit authorization,” the report points out.

With these reforms, the privatization of the General Administration of Ports is also being proposed. This would create the conditions for the “privatization of rivers, in particular, the Paraná, making it even more impossible for social control and province level public management of the river basin, in the context of federalism, negating private ownership of the provinces and their natural resources,” they add in the document.

The association of lawyers calls on Argentinean society to “reject and resist these proposals which put at risk the environment, its ecosystems, and the capacity of the state to regulate and protect the environment.” In the same way, they demand legislatures to “strongly reject this project and safeguard the little bit of existing legislation that can serve as a tool for ecosocial justice and environmental protection in Argentina.”

Participant in the National Indigenous Congress, Jacinto, Passes Away

Por

Santiago Navarro F

5 January, 2024

^{Oventik Caracol 2018. Jacinto participating in the assembly which named Maria de Jesús Patricio as spokesperson for the CNI-CIG. Photo by Santiago Navarro F}

Versión en español

He was always willing to offer his solidarity to anyone, without hesitation, in exchange for nothing. His humility characterized him. He didn’t only believe that change was necessary, but that it was also urgent. He was known as Jacinto among those closest to him; his compañeros and compañeras with whom he shared the utopia that a better world is possible. Today, on a Thursday just like any other, death took him; a death that seeks to be silenced, but that escapes from its cocoon, converting into a murmur of the teachings that he left, among other unknown people like him.

Jacinto was 67 years old. His real name was Marino Ramírez Pacheco. He was a Zapotec from the southern sierra mountains of Oaxaca, where he also left his mark among the people. He was part of the National Indigenous Congress (CNI). Not long before his death, we had a chance to get together. We talked about different things, among them, he showed his concern for the children being killed in Palestine. He also showed excitement for the new initiatives recently launched by the Zapatista Army of National Liberation (EZLN). Above all, he was excited about the idea of the no-property of the earth, to which we will all return.

His heart was strong and lively, always ready to continue opening up pathways in the consciousness of the people, reminding us that the set of crises we are living is the “product of the bestiality of the capitalist system,” he explained. He didn’t have any schooling, but he knew how to read and write. Although technology had left him behind, he was always trying to stay informed.

Jacinto was a campesino and construction worker. He was also a builder of dreams. “He was always passionate about his political activities. He was always very conscious of what was happening,” shares his life partner, Maura Pacheco, who together with his three children, Emiliano, Sergio, and Estrella, today mourn Jacinto’s passing.

Jacinto’s compañera was worried that nobody would remember him and that his loss would go unnoticed on a Thursday just like any other, and with that perhaps the pathways he opened up would once again be covered in grass. “But the words of solidarity began to arrive and the weight of his loss was alleviated knowing that among the pathways there are people,” she said via telephone.

The deceased will be buried where he lived his last years, in Tuxtepec, Oaxaca. There, the land will again cover him, and with certainty, his words will continue walking through our memories. And perhaps someone will continue opening up pathways of utopia which are so urgent in these contemporary times when everything seems in collapse.

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