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Against Xenophobia and Racism: The Struggle for Life

Against Xenophobia and Racism: The Struggle for Life

The Zapatista Sixth Commission

Mexico

September 4, 2021

To Whom It May Concern:

In agreement with the Zapatista Good Government Councils, the Indigenous Revolutionary Clandestine Committee-General Command of the EZLN, and the Zapatista indigenous communities, we declare the following:

First- In recent days, we have witnessed the Mexican State’s inhumane treatment of the migrants who try to leave the unspoken and invisible trap in which they find themselves in the city of Tapachula, Chiapas, Mexico.

Second- Similar to previous administrations, in response to public outcry and complaints of these cruelties, the Mexican government promises penalties for the “excesses” committed by agents of the National Institute of Migration (INM in Spanish). This promise is just another lie. They tell their officers that this will be said publicly to avoid the pressure of so-called public opinion, but that officers should continue with their human hunting methods without fear of consequences: no migrant should get past Chiapas.

Third- Even among members of the so-called National Guard there is discontent. They told them that their mission was to fight organized crime and now they have them acting like hunting dogs chasing after dark-skinned people. Those are their instructions: hunt down anyone with dark skin: “Detain any fucking black person you come across” is the order. It’s quite a foreign policy statement.

Fourth- The indoctrination of the National Institute of Migration agents borders on ridiculous. They tell them that they are defending Mexico from an invasion, as an employee of the INM confidently stated. It wouldn’t hurt the National Institute of Migration to take some basic history classes, now that classes are back, to understand that those who invade come from the United States government which imposes this immigration policy that contradicts the entire history of Mexican foreign policy.

Fifth- The maneuvering performed by the INM to contain human rights organizations and the press so that they can’t document their actions reminds us of what the Salinas de Gortari administration did during the first days of 1994 when they closed off entrances to the Lacandón Jungle to prevent anyone from knowing what they were doing. The hunting of migrants reminds us of what the Zedillo administration did in 1995 when it ordered we be pursued with dogs.

Sixth- How shameful it is that a government that calls itself progressive bends to the foreign policy of the North American [US] government, as if to imitate what the landowners from Chiapas did to subdue their peons up until just a few years ago. It would seem to comply with those religious references so expensive in the “above” of society that preach, “don’t let your left foot know who you kick with your right.”

Seventh- We call on all honest and sensible people to demand an immediate end to this situation and, to the extent possible for each person, to offer humanitarian aid to the migrants.

For our part, the Zapatista indigenous communities, through the 12 Good Government Councils and the Zapatista Sixth Commission, have collected a modest amount of money which will be sent to one of the shelters or organizations that do humanitarian work with migrants in Chiapas.

We call on the network of Sixth in Mexico, the Networks of Resistance and Rebellion, the collective “Llegó la Hora de los Pueblos”, non-governmental organizations and people of good will around the world to do what is in their reach to first, stop the hunting carried out by the INM with the support of the National Guard and second, improve the living conditions of the migrant population present in this geography that is called Mexico.

-*-

Like these migrant brothers and like us, the “extemporaneous”,[i] a day will come when everyone [tod@s] will be a migrant and extemporaneous on this planet. Anyone who isn’t the color of money will be persecuted, hunted, confined, disappeared, and eliminated.

Against xenophobia and racism, the struggle for life.

From the mountains of Southeastern Mexico.

Subcomandante Insurgente Moisés  Subcomandante Insurgente Galeano

Mexico, September 4, 2021

Collage based on an image of a migrant caravan, made up mostly of Haitians, walking along a highway in the municipality of Tapachula, state of Chiapas, Mexico, on September 1, 2021. © EFE/Juan Manuel Blanco

[i] See the EZLN’s August 17, 2021 communique for an explanation of the use of “the extemporaneous”: https://enlacezapatista.ezln.org.mx/2021/08/17/only-500-years-later/

Collage con base a una imagen de una caravana de migrantes, en su mayoría conformada por haitianos, que recorre una carretera en el municipio de Tapachula, estado de Chiapas, México, el 1 de septiembre de 2021. © EFE/Juan Manuel Blanco

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