Zapatista Army for National Liberation
Mexico
June 25, 2015
To the National and International Sixth:
As we already know, the bad government mixes fraud with violence. It doesn’t matter which political party they’re from, those who rule always seek to stay above on the backs of those below. The Ruler himself feigns deafness; these denunciations don’t matter to him because he pays the press well to say nice things him.
Before, it was Juan Sabines Guerrero, the one everyone insisted was very much a leftist politician. The progressive politicians came to receive awards from him, and even “the legitimate one”[i] came to shout enthusiastically, “long live Juan Sabines!” It is the very same Juan Sabines Guerrero who set it up so that his successor in government would be that ‘famous blonde’ Manuel Velasco Coello, because they are both from the families who, along with a few others, divvy up the political posts in Chiapas among themselves. Juan Sabines stole, committed fraud, and spread violence.
Now Velasco does the same. If just a few days ago they carried out an enormous fraud in the elections, violating their own laws above, now they are preparing for the upcoming local elections with the blood of those below.
Mere lies are not enough for the governments above; they also want to repress, incarcerate, and kill.
Now they are repressing the democratic teachers movement for merely insisting that this cursed educational reform is a lie, that it’s a reform by the boss against the workers. It isn’t to improve education, it’s to worsen it. And the reformers don’t know anything about the schools, they don’t even know how to teach. Because the government doesn’t like the truth to come out, it lies. But since now nobody believes the government, it resorts to repression.
How shameless they must be to make the head of state education an alcoholic murderer that says one thing one day and the opposite the next. How is somebody who can’t even speak properly going to create educational reform? The person I speak of is named Emilio Chuayffet, and he is one of the murderers of Acteal, the one who would get drunk and say idiotic things. He’s doing the same now.
This isn’t only happening in Chiapas, but also in Oaxaca, Guerrero, and other states, where the bad governments want to cover up the truth with beatings, gas, bullets, and threats.
It’s clear that they aren’t satisfied unless their “democratic” elections result in people being beaten, imprisoned, and murdered. And then all the parties fight over the scraps; they don’t even remember who was killed—his name was Antonio Vivar Díaz and he was a teacher—nor who was beaten and imprisoned.
The governments above are built on deceit and repression.
But the blood of the teachers isn’t enough for Manuel Velasco in Chiapas. He also wants to drink the indigenous blood of the communities.
Despite the fact that human rights organizations have denounced it, Velasco continues to encourage his paramilitaries to attack Zapatista bases of support.
That’s what is happening in the municipality of Ocosingo, Chiapas, where the three [levels of] government agree among themselves to incite provocations: Enrique Peña Nieto, Manuel Velasco and Octavio Albores. These governments are behind the paramilitaries from Pojkol.
Even though the community they are from has disowned them, they continue to attack. The indigenous people there who are party members say that they don’t control these paramilitaries, that the paramilitaries get their orders form the municipal president of Ocosingo and the state government in Tuxtla Gutiérrez. That that’s where they get their weapons, equipment, vehicles, and orders to attack the bases of support.
This just happened a few hours ago:
Caracol Resistance Toward a New Dawn
Junta de Buen Gobierno[ii] Path to the Future
La Garrucha, Chiapas, Mexico
June 24, 2015
Public Denunciation
To the general public:
To the autonomous alternative, or whatever-you-call-them media:
To the honest human rights organizations:
Sisters and brothers of Mexico and the world:
We once again denounce attacks against us by the paramilitaries from the ejido Pojkol, barrio Chiquinibal, municipality of Chilón, and 21 persons from the same paramilitary group from Rosario, official municipality of Ocosingo, Chiapas.
Facts:
Today, Wednesday, June 25, 2015, at 8:05 am, 28 paramilitaries from the Pojkol ejido of the barrio Chiquinbal came to the town of Rosario in the Autonomous Municipality of San Manuel, where our EZLN bases of support live. They came on 8 motorcycles and with a Nissan without license plates. Of the 28 paramilitaries, 8 carried 22-caliber weapons.
In Rosario there are 21 paramilitaries who are trying to invade our recuperated lands, and they are supported by this group of 28 paramilitaries from the Pojkol ejido of the barrio Chikinibal.
At 10:05 am, a white RAM truck without license plates arrived with two people inside: and engineer and a rancher, Guadalupe Flores, who lives in Ocosingo, Chiapas, and was the owner of these lands before 1994. The 28 paramilitaries from Pojkcol and the 21 paramilitaries from Rosario met with the engineer and the rancher. After they finished their meeting they began to measure the land, supposedly to construct a temple, and they also measured sites for house construction. Then the rancher gave the paramilitary group some documents, apparently the blueprint plans for the recuperated lands.
At 1:26 pm, they fired their guns 10 times behind the house of one of the compañeros who is a base of support, intimidating the entire community.
At 1:27 pm, 8 paramilitaries from Pojkol entered the house of a base of support, but didn’t find anyone because the owner of that house had already left in order to avoid conflict. After 23 minutes, they went to another compañero’s house; at 1:50 pm they destroyed the house of a compañero base of support, stealing all of his possessions, including the roof of the house, which consists of 12 sheets of 3.5 wide tin, two chickens, 4 picks, 20 eggs, 2 axes, 2 solar energy cells, $2000 pesos in cash, 2 hoes, one tape recorder, one 100 meter hose, and 150 kilos of beans. They put all of the compañero base of support’s things into the truck that belonged to the supposed engineer, and the truck and the 28 people from Pojkol headed off toward Pojkol with all of the stolen goods.
As authorities of the Junta de Buen Gobierno, we are clear that these acts demonstrate that this person pretending to be an engineer along with the ex-owner of the ranch are the advisors of these paramilitary groups.
We also see clearly that the bad government is acting in many forms and ways to attack us. These same paramilitaries are the ones who killed one of our bulls, destroyed houses, destroyed our collective store, stole our belongings, and used herbicide to fumigate our pasture where we keep our collectively owned livestock of the San Manuel municipality. They shot off their weapons there, drawing letters in the dirt saying “pojkol territory,” and leaving burnt bullet casings around; this was in August of 2014.
These are the same paramilitaries who came on May 10, 2015, when one of them, named Andrés, shot at a little girl base of support.
This is our third denunciation; the first and second detail the previous acts.
These groups of people are trained and financed by the federal, state, and municipal governments. They have tried to provoke us multiple times with their counterinsurgency strategy, because the bad governments think that we are going to fall into their traps and stain ourselves with the blood of our indigenous brothers who are messed up in the head because they are paid for this activity and their conscience has been sullied by the bad capitalist system.
We want to say clearly that we will not stand here with our arms crossed as our bases of support are harassed in whatever way and with whichever means the bad government chooses to use against us. We have said clearly that we will defend our lands at whatever cost; we were born from this land and we will return to her.
Brothers and sisters, we will continue to denounce what is happening and we hope that you will be alert to what might happen to our compañeros and compañeras bases of support.
We hold the federal, state, and municipal governments directly responsible for whatever might happen, as they hold direct responsibility for these actions, and this is not the first time we have denounced what these groups of people are doing.
Sincerely
Authorities of the current Junta de Buen Gobierno
Jacinto Gómez Pérez Colosio Pérez Lorenzo
Nely Núñez Sánchez Alex López Álvarez
So there you have it, compañeros and compañeras of the Sixth.
As we see it, it isn’t that the bad government simply isn’t paying attention because it is busy with its propaganda and lies, but rather that it is precisely the bad government who is giving the orders. What else could explain the fact that the names of these criminals are already known and yet they walk around with their weapons in front of the government authorities and nobody says anything? Because these people are the government’s employees. The paramilitaries state it clearly, that nobody can do anything to them because Velasco’s government protects and pays them.
That’s what we have to tell you for now, compañer@s. It’s all the same: from above there are only lies, beatings, contempt, and exploitation.
From below must come organization. For life, not the bloodbath that the system’s foremen, supervisors, and overseers want on the orders of their master, neoliberal capitalism.
From the mountains of the Mexican Southeast.
Subcomandante Insurgente Moisés
Mexico
June 2015
[i] Refers to Andrés Manuel Lopez Obrador, former PRD presidential candidate self-designated “the legitimate president” after the 2006 elections, which were widely denounced as fraudulent.
[ii] Good Government Council
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Denuncias
Actividades
Caminando
En el Mundo
Red nacional contra la represión y por la solidaridad
If it is possible to visit your caracol de La Garrucha and help in any way please advise. I am a Us citizen living in Chapala Jalisco and presently vising the Zapatistas in San Cristobal.I visited Oventic yesturday.
Thank you,
Albert Schmaedick
Comentario de Albert Schmaedick — junio 29, 2015 @ 12:28 pm