Indigenous communities under government siege and repression

Indigenous peoples defending their lands and autonomous organizations are suffering increased attacks and repression by the Mexican government. If they don’t cave in to the authorities’ attempts to co-opt with social programs, it increases its use of paramilitary soldiers to threaten, plunder, burn, harass and kill. Behind the siege and repression are the interests of the large corporations, which are determined to get the riches found in the indigenous lands. The resistance of Mexico’s original peoples is part of the struggle throughout Latin America today for public goods.

Jorge Alonso

Famine, death, repression and eviction hang over Mexico’s indigenous communities. Climate change made last year’s drought worse, causing famine in many places by the beginning of this year. In January 2012 the Fray Francisco De Vitoria Human Rights Center issued a report showing that the Mexican government had basically failed in its obligations to respond to the population’s right to food, education, health care, work, decent housing and a clean environment. Instead the government has facilitated the transnational mining and construction companies that are contaminating the indigenous communities’ environment.

52 million poor with
multi-dimensional problems

The food emergency that arose early this year is due to a lack of adequate public policies for vulnerable populations. The northern indigenous communities, which were thrown off their lands during the Spanish conquest and interned on lands where they have survived on subsistence farming, are now particularly exposed to depredation and injustices by large companies that are threatening the few resources the communities still have. Hunger, a chronic problem in the Rarámuris area, has worsened due to drought and frost. The government and political parties are taking advantage of the situation to offer palliative stop-gap measures in return for votes without dealing with the fundamental problem of generating work that provides food.

Some 28 million Mexicans suffer from hunger and are at risk of moving into a state of famine due to the increase in food prices. Official poverty figures published in February show that, despite social programs, the number of poor with multidimensional problems has reached 52 million. A person is considered to be living in multidimensional poverty when he/she does not earn enough to acquire basic goods and services and exhibits at least one of the following indicators: lack of education, inability to access health services, no social security, lack of quality housing, lack of basic services in the home and problems getting enough to eat every day, not to mention the inability to feed themselves well.

Poverty is worse among the indigenous peoples, who have also been suffering increased repression lately simply for defending their lands and autonomous ways of organizing. First of all, the authorities try to co-opt them; if this fails, they employ other methods, such as rewarding with social support those who desert the Zapatista resistance movement. The government then uses paramilitaries to repress those who don’t submit to the plans by the government or those who hold economic power. Finally, arbitrary imprisonment is used to pressure the autonomous communities.

Let’s look at several outstanding examples of these methods from last year and the beginning of this, especially in the Zapatista areas.

The Acteal massacre:
Still an open wound

The Zapatista’s Las Abejas Collective decried the daily massacres in Mexico in March 2011, reminding people that for 20 years indigenous people had been charging that Mexican military personnel learned their counterinsurgency techniques in US military schools where the violent drug traffickers called Los Zetas had also been trained. They have also denounced the fact that many innocent people have been killed in President Calderón’s War on Drugs and those who demanded justice, peace and dignity have been jailed for no reason other than that the government fears the voice of the people and wants it silenced.

Those responsible for the December 1997 Acteal Massacre are still free. Las Abejas spoke out about this crime against humanity again in August 2011, charging that former President Zedillo, current President Calderon and both former Chiapas governor Ruiz and the present governor, Juan Sabines, were responsible for the crime. It was learned the following month that Zedillo was being sued in a US court for the massacre. Although Las Abejas denied having filed the suit, they were glad Zedillo would be judged for this crime, although it is regrettably being tried as a civil and not a criminal case.

In January 2012 the Abejas Collective demanded that the Chiapas governor explain what had happened to the special investigation report on Acteal, which was never explained to Mexican society but was now being used in the US civil case against Zedillo. Two months later the collective stated clearly that even if Zedillo stood trial in the United States it wouldn’t mean that justice had been fully done.

The Acteal crime was planned by three levels of government to do away with the human rights organizations. Several of those who physically committed the massacre had been released from prison by the Calderon government. Last February, when seven more accused of the massacre had been released from prison, the bishop of San Cristóbal declared that because the arguments for letting them go were based on findings that correct judicial process hadn’t been followed, this didn’t mean they were innocent. Now that they were freed, they could take revenge on those who had accused them.

Neither truth nor justice has been honored in the Acteal case. Sufficient evidence exists against those freed but it hasn’t been taken into account. Rather, the State supported the paramilitary personnel and then freed them. The crime that left 45 dead—among them children and pregnant women who were praying in a hermitage—has gone unpunished and remains an open wound that continues to incense Mexican society. In mid-April of this year the People’s Permanent Court held the first preliminary hearing concerning the massacre as one of the emblematic cases of systemic, structural state violence.

A violent eviction
at Agua Azul Falls

The case of the Tzeltal peasants involved in Another Campaign is Possible in Chiapas is another serious situation. These indigenous farmers were in charge of the gatehouse the community had established in 2009, where tourists paid their entrance fee to Agua Azul Falls—a beautiful tourist site on their land.

In February 2011 they were attacked by paramilitaries and police, who threw them out of the gate house. During the operation the government jailed more than 100 others who defended their land, but released all but five, whom they mistreated, depriving them of medication, food and family visits. The Zapatistas recovered the gatehouse on April 9, but the government and state police took it from them again the following day.

The Zapatista communities have opposed an ambitious road and ecotourism project in this area. The government has used political prisoners as hostages to get the communities to cave in and abandon their struggle for the land. Simple economic interests have encouraged such repression and those who hold the land fear a forced expropriation of the road to Agua Azul Falls.

Although the charges were unfounded, the prisoners were held in jail as hostages for six months. It became very clear that the government had criminalized the protest and stirred up the conflict to violate their right to life, liberty and security while leaving unpunished those responsible for the violent acts. The prisoners were freed in late July last year through local, national and international pressure.

Paramilitaries in Mitzitón

In Iate September last year those in possession of the San Sebastian Bachajón communal land (ejido) in Chiapas again charged publicly that official authorities had kidnapped, threatened and tortured a community member. They considered this yet another threat against social activists. On November 30, the ejido issued another public statement regarding 600 hectares and a guardhouse the community had already been stripped of and announced that they had decided to take back the guardhouse.

In the town of Mitzitón the followers of the Zapatista Other Campaign have seen their land attacked by the “Army of God” and “Eagle Wings” paramilitary units. In May of last year, a day after attending the massive March for Peace in San Cristóbal de las Casas, the town itself was attacked by armed paramilitaries. In August the town’s residents condemned “the bad government” for using paramilitaries like puppets to threaten, defame and pressure townspeople so it could reactivate the construction of a road project. In late March of this year the community declared that it was continuing the resistance, would not allow itself to be drawn into the games of the bad government and would keep defending its lands and people.

Zapatista good government boards
denounce the “bad government”

The Zapatista communities have continued to report periodically on what is happening to them with dates, places, names and figures. In early April of last year the Good Government Board of La Garrucha denounced provocations by the Cintalapa ejido authorities in the municipality of Ocosingo, which were attempting to make the Zapatistas pay a property tax even though their land is autonomous. By mid-2011 the Board of this Caracol had denounced land evictions and attacks on two communities by a pro-government farm owners’ organization. The “bad government” had intensified its counter-insurgency campaign by manipulating the leaders of organizations to cause clashes between peasants and invading the Zapatistas’ land to throw them off it.

The Zapatistas have suffered the theft of crops from their coffee plantations, corn fields and sugarcane fields, as well as livestock, wire fencing and trees. The invaders have illegally extracted gravel from their land to sell to construction companies. This same Good Government Board alerted the community about an attempted eviction in the immediate surroundings of the archeological site of Tonina and announced that they would defend this zone which they identified as “rebel territory.” In August 2011 the Board again condemned attacks by pro-government organizations backed by state armed forces in an attempt to invade the lands of members of Zapatista organizations. The three government levels organized the paramilitary troops using money provided to Mexico by the United Nations Development Programme.

In April last year the Good Government Board of La Realidad complained about provocations and damage to their belongings in the Monte Redondo ejido. Several Zapatistas had been beaten, others jailed and the official ejido authorities wanted to throw Zapatistas off their land so they torched their houses. In July Zapatista communities in the border region reported being thrown off their land and receiving death threats for having created an autonomous school.

The following month the Government Board spoke out against the provocations and damages by the Monte Redondo authorities supported by the governing National Action Party (PAN), Democratic Revolutionary Party (PRD), Institutional Revolutionary Party (PRI) and Green Ecologist Party of Mexico (PVEM), all of which are against the Zapatista support bases. There are farmers who have been in possession of these lands since 1972, have worked for years without problems and only now have begun to be robbed of their corn, beans and coffee and thrown off their lands by the official municipal authorities.

This same Government Board stressed that the provocations correlate with the “bad government” plans of the PRD governor, Juan Sabines, who tricks and manipulates people with political lies. In October the Board reported death threats with firearms, theft of produce and the attempted killing of Zapatista supporters, warning they would not let themselves be evicted from land that was theirs.

Three months of attacks
on San Marcos Avilés

Also in April 2011 the Good Government Board of Oventic reported the intentional burning of a health center in the Pikote community in the municipality of Citala. In October Zapatista community bases in Altos de Chiapas suffered persecutions specifically to prevent autonomous education.

In the middle of the year the Good Government Board of Morelia condemned the violent acts of a pro-government regional organization that was trying to throw Zapatista supporters off their lands. This organization had cordoned off lands belonging to Zapatistas, destroying, pillaging and setting fire to the houses. The Board denounced the kidnapping, abuse and injury of several Zapatistas who were released after a few days. For three consecutive months the San Marcos ejido condemned the harassment, death threats, eviction and risk of forced displacement from members of the PRI, PAN and PRD.

“Bad government”
and its ‘bad actions”

Then in August the Good Government Board of Roberto Barrios reported that 150 armed individuals, instruments of a government plan by PRD governor Sabines and President Calderon, destroyed a Zapatista house that served as a refectory for national and international observers. He charged that “the bad government doesn’t want its bad actions against the Zapatistas to be known.” These same people had tried to destroy an autonomous school and a month before that a group photographing the Board had been kidnapped and their cameras taken.

Despite all the money the government has spent on bribing people, it hasn’t been able to eliminate the belief in the Zapatista movement or to demoralize its followers, who keep defending their lands and their autonomy. In September this same Board reported that the community of San Patricio was being besieged by a hundred paramilitary forces who pillaged cornfields, burned 18 hectares of land and threatened to kill any Zapatistas who didn’t abandon their lands. The invaders began to build houses on Zapatista land, destroyed wire fences and stole animals. By late 2011 a report was released showing how difficult it was for the community of San Patricio to feed itself because of the theft of crops and animals.

Marcos: “We are the
target of all the parties”

Subcomandante Marcos also mentioned all the affronts at the same time the boards were making these charges. As early as March he asked rhetorically who was defending the human rights of the human rights defenders because the powers that be were persecuting, harassing, slandering, beating, jailing or killing them or trying to convince them to give up or sell out.

In late August, Marcos reported that the attacks came from everywhere on the political spectrum. “We serve as an example that it’s possible for all political parties to actually share the same objective. Backed by the federal, state and municipal governments, all the parties are attacking us... Before or after each attack there’s a meeting among the government officials and party and society leadership. Little is said about this, only what’s necessary to agree upon the price and form of payment...”

Marcos questioned whether one can talk seriously about justice in Chiapas when one of those responsible for the Acteal Massacre, former Governor Ruiz Ferro, is still free. He also referred to former Governor Albores, responsible for the massacre at El Bosque. Governor Sabines, Marcos said, encouraged the paramilitaries to attack Zapatista ommunities. With so much impunity, simulation is used as a government program.

The government is
behind the war of eviction

The persecution of members of The Other Campaign hasn’t been limited to Zapatista areas. The same government model is used in other places. In April of last year peasants in the Venustiano Carranza municipality reported a land takeover by members of a pro-government peasant organization with the support of authorities. In August, the members of the Tila ejido declared that after over 30 years of struggling to defend the mother earth, the three levels of government and the local parish wanted to throw them off their land.

In January of this year the community of Candelaria el Alto reported that with the impunity the government guaranteed they were suffering robberies, attacks, kidnappings, threats and evictions. An organization close to the government had invaded their lands and, since they weren’t able to harvest, they were now going hungry. Groups of paramilitaries protected by the government were attacking several families in the Busalja and Cintalapa ejidos. And in late 2011 there were reports of kidnappings of children, rapes, unjust imprisonments, house and land evictions and death threats.

The displaced families of these ejidos organized a month-long camp-in to demand the release of the political prisoners of Playas de Catazaja and that a young woman who had been kidnapped be return alive. They were unsuccessful.

At the beginning of this year various communities and collectives that are part of The Other Campaign demanded an end to the evictions, repression and harassment of the Zapatista communities. They accused the government of attempting to break the indigenous peoples’ autonomous processes, of responsibility for a war of eviction that generates attacks, privatization of natural resources, overexploitation of labor, repression, persecution, imprisonment and killings in order to contain the social struggles. The offensive against the lands the Zapatistas recovered made this clear.

Political prisoners
go on a hunger strike

Innocent people in the Zapatista support bases have suffered imprisonment and particularly inhuman treatment. This has forced the prisoners sympathetic to the Zapatistas to organize. Depending on which prison they are in, they have baptized their organizations The Voice of El Amate (the name of one of the prisons) and Innocent Voices. In March of last year La Voz del Amate released information about the repression and mistreatment they were suffering, as well as the fact that one of those unjustly imprisoned had been taken to a prison over a thousand miles from his home to prevent his relatives from visiting him.

Back in March and April 2008 The Voice of El Amate had organized a hunger strike and secured the release of about 50 prisoners innocent of anything other than having participated in demonstrations. In late September last year a group initiated another hunger strike. By mid-December it had only led to the release of two prisoners from Mitzitón after nine years of arbitrary imprisonment. The rest remained on the hunger strike. When day 21 of the strike arrived they were denied visits and at day 27 the authorities prevented a doctor from checking them.

Lives with meaning,
violence without meaning

British writer John Berger sent the hunger strikers a letter telling them that the treatment they were receiving set off alarms about the present government and that the courage of the strikers arose from the realization that they knew their lives had meaning while their captors were lost in meaningless violence.

On day 34 of the hunger strike, the authorities allowed a medical check-up. After 39 days with no response from the government, they decided to suspend the action, which was putting their lives at risk, since they could only continue the struggle alive. The pressure of related organizations fighting outside the prison for their release was decisive. In January of this year these same prisoners again condemned the harassment, torture and outrageous violations by the prison authorities.

One paradigmatic case has been that of teacher Albert Patichtán, who was arbitrarily jailed to teach social activists a lesson, and has suffered a wide range of injustices while incarcerated. He was taken out of the hunger strike and sent to
a prison two kilometers away in order to diffuse the demonstrations demanding his release. In February Patishtán won an injunction to return him to his original place of incarceration but the authorities defied the judge’s order. His innocence has been proven and the government knows he’s not guilty of anything, but they have kept holding him. In mid-March, 60 human rights organizations demanded his immediate release and on April 10 a march arrived in Mexico City to demand not only his release but also that of the other political prisoners. Solidarity actions for the release of these prisoners have been extensive and have even been backed by the United States and Europe. Faced with the lack of any government response, a forum made it clear that Calderón’s government puts all those who defend their lands in jail. By late April the international campaign for the release of these prisoners grew, with Twitter and Facebook messages sent to President Calderón.

Repression against indignation

The Fray Bartolome de las Casas Human Rights Center has been one of the most active in the defense of the indigenous peoples of Chiapas. In January of this year it demanded an end to the systematic attacks against the Zapatista support bases. It has documented the land grabs, harassment, displacement of families, unjust imprisonments, violations of human rights, tortures and more. It has also denounced state authorities for not investigating but rather covering up for the attackers.

The Center thinks that the situation of indigenous peoples is so terrible because the prevailing economic model provokes violence. While the government supports the neoliberal economic projects demanded by the large capitalist corporations, many of the indigenous peoples will not submit. Faced with this just rebellion, the government buys consciences,promotes armed groups, tries to divide communities and criminalizes human rights workers. The Center publicly condemned the judicial harassment of lawyers of the Digna Ochoa Human Rights Center by fabricating crimes they were alleged to have committed and failing to respect protection orders.

In December 2011 about twenty human rights centers and organizations issued a statement exposing the threat that the local Chiapas government, the federal government and private businesses represent to the integrity of the land of indigenous people and peasants as well as their way of life.

They charged that security forces and the judicial system strongly repressed the social protests growing out of people’s disgruntlement and indignation. In February of this year the National Human Rights Commission reported that they had received dozens of complaints of attacks against human rights workers in 2011.

Eviction of the Yaqui
people from their river

The harassment aimed at the Zapatistas is also being suffered by other indigenous communities throughout Mexico. In March 2011 the authorities in Morelos criminalized the struggle of the San Juan Tlacotenco autonomous community. In May the Mezcala indigenous community in Jalisco condemned the paramilitary attacks aimed at stripping them of their lands. Throughout 2011 the Purepecha community of Cherán lived in constant fear of the attacks by loggers backed by drug traffickers. In February of this year this community was finally able to drive out both the authorities and the police, who were accomplices of the criminals, and install their own autonomous authorities.

In June 2011 the Maíz-Mixteca organization denounced acts of intimidation against members of The Other Campaign in Mixteca. In August, in response to the government’s concessions to contaminating mining companies in a 500-kilometer area without askingpermission of the communities, indigenous community police positioned themselves in 63 entrances to the 10 municipalities of Costa Chica and the mountain area of Guerrero.

At the end of that same month, the town of Vicam in Sonora, territory of the Yaqui people, reported that a highly criminal robbery was being perpetrated on their land against that original people: taking away their ancestral right to the use of the Yaqui River through the construction of an aqueduct. By early September the Yaquis suffered repression from Sonora’s PAN government. A thousand state and federal police carried out a violent eviction with injuries and disappearances. And in the community of Ostula, Michoacán, paramilitary groups alongside government troops killed and tortured several community members who were trying to organize an autonomous community.

Charges by the Indigenous
National Congress

In mid-October the Indigenous National Congress alerted Mexico’s civil society to maneuvers by the government, political parties and business to repress, evict and appropriate indigenous peoples’ resources and territories. The Congress supported the communal guard in Ostula and demanded the return alive of the community members who had been disappeared and respect for Cherán’s autonomy. They also backed the demand by the Wixarika that the mining projects in the Wirikuta’s sacred land be cancelled and the Yaqui people’s demand to cancel the aqueduct that would affect their water and called for the restitution of invaded territory in the indigenous community of Mezcala, respect for a community radio in Guerrero, an end to the harassment of the Good Government Boards in the Zapatista communities and the release of Alberto Patishtan and all the political prisoners in Chiapas.

In November the Indigenous National Congress had to speak out against the violent repression of the Indigenous People’s Assembly in the Tehuantepec Isthmus for defending their land. It demanded the immediate cancellation of the isthmus’ Wind Corridor Magaproject.

By the beginning of 2012 the indigenous community of Tetelpa, Morelos, launched a fight to avoid the construction of a housing complex on communal lands. By late January members of the Oaxaca community of San Juan Copala began to return to their land in a convoy after being displaced following the massacre of their families in 2010. They demanded that the government investigate and arrest those responsible for the dozens of killings, rapes, tortures and evictions. But the Oaxaca government, protecting the attackers, first prevented the convoy’s return and then threatened its members, claiming that if they were attacked, it would be the responsibility of those returning to their homes. At the end of March many indigenous peoples participated in the first large national movement against unjust electricity rate charges and to protest the repression suffered by those resisting these abuses.

Widespread international olidarity

The national and international solidarity with their struggles has been essential to the defense of indigenous peoples’ rights. The political prisoners of Bachajón received the support of national and international human rights commissions and of New York’s Movement for Justice in El Barrio, an immigrant-led grassroots organization that fights for the rights of local neighborhoods in East Harlem. In April 2011 collectives of The Other Campaign, among them Zezta International, initiated actions in Mexico and worldwide to demand the release of these prisoners, given the clear evidence of their imprisonment for political reasons since no other motives could be found in the acts of the accused.

There were peaceful occupations of the Mexican Consulate offices in New York and demonstrations in front of the Mexican Embassy in London. The Bachajón prisoners declared they were kidnapped by “the bad government.” There were demonstrations against the kidnappings In India, South Africa, Italy, Austria, Colombia, the Philippines, Puerto Rico, France, Switzerland, Canada, Spain and Argentina. Demands for their release were issued in 63 events in 22 countries.

In May Uruguayan activist and writer Raúl Zibechi wrote that the only crime they had committed was to want to live on their lands, which are sought after by the multinationals. Although the government kept them in prison so that the community would accept the land grab, the ejido members had not given in to the blackmail. Other writers including Noam Chomsky, various personalities and 55 international organizations issued a worldwide statement demanding respect for the right of free determination and exercise of autonomy for the people of San Sebastián and called for the release of the political prisoners.

Paramilitary actions are increasing

In September 2011 a solidarity network opposing the repression and siege of Zapatista communities decided to organize an observation brigade. They concluded that protection of their lands was an historical claim by the original peoples, a right in international agreements recognized by the Mexican government, and that the economic mega-projects were an attack on these lands. The brigade’s report showed that the attacks on the Zapatista communities were becoming increasingly systematic, continuous and violent.

In October the Movement for Justice in El Barrio, numerous human rights organizations and collectives from Canada, Catalonia, France, Spain, Uruguay, Great Britain, Nicaragua, Switzerland, Greece, Colombia, Brazil, South Korea, Ireland and Sweden, as well as a great many Mexican collectives, sent a public letter to President Calderón and Governor Sabines. They expressed concern for and rejection of the constant actions against the Mexican people’s human rights, particularly in Chiapas, which they saw as government policy.

They pointed out the most recurrent violations, among them the omission of multiple accusations and requests for intervention that the report was aware of; allowing the breakdown of the community social fabric by polarizing the conflicts; creating food and health emergencies in the communities that are living under siege; and flagrantly violating the political and judicial human rights of the indigenous populations in Chiapas.

They underscored they had verified that the hostilities of paramilitary groups in complicity with authorities had been increasing in the past two years and that the paramilitaries took community land as war booty. They charged that the Chiapas governor’s official discourse had turned respect for human rights into a publicity slogan to disguise his actions. And finally, they criticized as scandalous the millions spent on Sabines’ propaganda campaign while he sentenced so many communities to be marginalized and forgotten.

In a public letter many organizations and individuals also demanded that the Mexican government and state and municipal authorities assume their responsibility to intervene immediately to stop the provocation, harassment, threats and attacks, all of which were part of the counterinsurgency policy against the Zapatistas.

The worldwide call
reaches Mexico

By the end of 2011, 122 organizations and 586 individuals from 30 countries had signed a worldwide declaration in solidarity with the Zapatista bases of support in San Marcos Avilés. They had information about new land invasions, theft and destruction of cornfields and coffee and fruit tree plantations by PRI, PRD and PVEM members. Activists from these parties had even threatened to kill Zapatistas. One of the reasons for these attacks was their autonomous educational system.

The document demanded the immediate and permanent cessation of these actions. In addition, 150 intellectuals and artists from 30 countries, including three Nobel Prize winners for literature, delivered a document in which they asked President Calderón to cancel the Canadian mining concessions in Wirikuta, the sacred center of the Wixaritari peoples.

Demonstrators of Occupy Wall Street sent a solidarity message to the Zapatistas that was recorded in Liberty Square in New York City and broadcast to an international gathering in San Cristóbal de las Casas.

At the end of last year some 8,000 Catholics, headed by Bishop Felipe Arizmendi of San Cristobal de las Casas, made a pilgrimage to demonstrate against the mining exploitation, destruction of nature, planting of transgenic seeds, ilitarization and mistreatment of migrants. The UN Permanent Forum demanded that the Mexican government respect indigenous rights. In mid-February of this year the UN Committee against Racial Discrimination stated its concern about
the indigenous population’s situation in Mexico and the judicial system’s lack of guarantees for them.

Cherán’s struggle

The indigenous community of Cherán, fed up with the local bad governments, refused to allow local municipal elections to be held in their area. The citizens held their own electoral process and set up an autonomous city government. Community people formed their own police force to defend the forests from the loggers and paramilitary groups. In March of this year they spoke out against the kidnapping of eleven community members.

On April 18 a group from the community was ambushed, leaving two dead and two others wounded. The state’s public prosecutor wanted to make it seem as though the confrontation was between two communities in which the other one had suffered six deaths, but Cherán’s community members showed that there had been no such confrontation, that they had been ambushed and that the dead the prosecutor wanted to attribute to them were people killed by the paramilitaries the government was protecting and dumped on their lands. They quickly organized a petition that was signed by many national and international organizations and many well-known personalities around the world demanding punishment for those responsible for the murders, disappearances and kidnappings and demanding respect for the municipality’s autonomy and its forests.

Communities that fight
for public goods

Not content with just the use of pressure by those who support it, the Mexican government is now going around indigenous lands and stirring up the paramilitary groups. In so doing it is reversing the rule of law and playing with fire by siding with those who practice eviction and aggression. In March of this year a UN committee declared that Mexico is marginalizing its indigenous population in order to exploit their lands.

Despite the government’s siege, the Zapatistas have maintained their autonomy, which is one of the most advanced and comprehensive on the continent. The Zapatistas reject any party support or government program, don’t participate in official elections, promote collective, horizontal and inclusive organization, and are in charge of their own health, education and judicial systems.

Our indigenous peoples are taking part in the fight for public goods that is developing today throughout Latin America. The defense of water, earth and biodiversity could be seen as a succession of local conflicts, but that would be incorrect. Today we see a special dynamism in the resistance of those from below in the defense of common possessions.

The increase in the price of minerals has increased extractions from mining in Latin America, consequently exposing millions of people to illnesses and threats to the environment. This reality has seen the birth of social resistance movements. The globalization directed by finance capital has pushed to increase the extraction of minerals and has run into major resistance by people who defend an alternative way based on the self-management of collectives that protect nature and public goods.

Time for “the good life”

The Portuguese sociologist Boaventura de Sousa Santos has called attention to the indigenous concept of “buen vivir.” This concept is based on building indigenous resilience and on adaptive strategies that enhance biocultural diversity for food sovereignty and self determined development by enriching production based on sustainability, solidarity and reciprocity in a way that mitigates impacts. He has called for the end of the criminal economic model that is destroying the planet, supported by the denial of human rights by the multinationals that hide behind what they call “green capitalism.” Such labels aside, capitalism doesn’t guarantee the survival of most people and tries to privatize everything having to do with life, even privatizing nature by converting ecosystems into commodities. It’s time for activists of life to multiply.

Jorge Alonso is a researcher with CIESAS West and the envío correspondent in Mexico.

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