Narco News 2001
Report
from CNI
Plus
New EZLN Communiqué
Youths of Michoacán
Cheer the Zapatista Caravan
Preliminary
Results from
Indigenous
National Congress
Nurío,
Michoacán
March
4, 2001
From Narco News correspondents
and combined wire reports of Notimex and AP:
The
Third Indigenous National Congress
was attended 3,300 indigenous delegates officially sent by their
communities, representing 42 of the 56 ethnic groups in Mexico.
- At the closing session on Sunday afternoon,
the assembly demanded the recognition of indigenous rights in
the Mexican constitution, in the form written by the Cocopa (Concord
and Peace Commission), announcing, "We will not resign from
being who we are and we will continue defending our autonomy."
- In a clear reference to President Vicente
Fox's "Plan Panamá-Puebla," and the proposed
mega-project of a superhighway on the Isthmus of Tehuantepec
in Oaxaca and Veracruz, the final document of the CNI declared
that Mexico's "natural resources are not merchandise to
be bought and sold, because we won't accept the destruction of
our territories by the impositions of projects and mega-projects
that state and federal governments try to impose on the indigenous
regions of the country."
- The delegates assembled called for the
demilitarization of the country and the release of all indigenous
political prisoners.
- To the 6,000 observers and 600 special
invitees present for the three day Congress, the assembly called
upon national and international Civil Society to demonstrate
support for the recognition of indigenous rights and to accompany
the Zapatista Caravan to Mexico City as it goes to dialogue with
the federal Congress.
- Indigenous communities throughout Mexico
will form "autonomous municipalities" similar to the
38 such entities formed in Chiapas by the Zapatistas, and will
declare a National Day of Indigenous Rights.
- The congress members will form a human
chain around the San Lázaro legislative palace on Monday,
March 12th, and asked all Civil Society to join the giant demonstration
on Sunday, March 11th on the Zócalo in Mexico City with
the Zapatista delegates.
- A special commission of the Indigenous
National Congress will accompany the Zapatistas for the duration
of their journey to Mexico City.
- The Congress also called on the Fox
administration to comply with the three signals necessary for
dialogue: The withdraw of federal army troops from three more
bases in Chiapas; the release of 53 more Zapatista political
prisoners; and the implementation of the San Andrés Accords
signed by the government in 1996.
- The Indigenous National Congress will
become a permanent body of representation of all the indigenous
peoples of Mexico.
- The Congress repudiated Televisa and
TV Azteca "for their lack of respect for indigenous communities"
committed through the "Concert for Peace" yesterday
in Mexico City.
- The Congress demanded that the mass
media publishes all the information related to the activities
of CNI and EZLN (to which Narco News cheerfully complies with
this and other reports).
- The indigenous representatives concluded
that they will continue defending their autonomy, "and in
defending it, we will also defend all of those who, like us,
want to live differently with dignity."
- A workshop led by three of the women
Zapatista comandantas, Mixe delegate Cándida Jímenez
(who spoke at the mass rally in Puebla on February 27th) and
Purepecha delegate Enriqueta Calderón, and other participants,
voted that the Indigenous National Congress, from now on, should
be represented always in public by a pair of spokespersons: one
woman and one man.
- Although 10,000 people gathered for
three days with insufficient funds, food or shelter, a table
set up by the State Human Rights Commission to receive complaints
about any violations or irregularities at the Indigenous National
Congress received zero complaints about the event. They did receive
three complaints over the government's sentencing of two indigenous
fishermen in Michoacán to 20 years apiece in prison for
detaining a government inspector who tried to prohibit them from
practicing their craft. This was the case denounced by Subcomandante
Marcos last Friday, after speaking with the wives of the prisoners.
Originally published in Spanish by the
EZLN
______________________
Translated by irlandesa
Words of the EZLN
March 4, 2001.
In Nurio, Michoacán.
March 4, 2001.
People of Nurio:
Purépecha Brothers and Sisters:
Brothers and Sisters of the National Indigenous Congress:
Brothers and Sisters from National Civil Society:
Brothers and Sisters from International Civil Society:
Through my voice speaks the voice of the
Zapatista Army of National
Liberation.
The history which has gathered us together
today is not new.
The grievances which convoke us are not
new.
Our struggle is not new.
Neither sorrows nor combat have time or
owner.
We are born to them, and they are everyone's.
Sorrow unites us and makes us one, even
though we are many.
These sorrows are:
Amuzgo Brother, Sister:
They mock our clothing, our customs, our
culture, everything which makes us
ourselves to ourselves. They turn identity into something shameful.
Cora Brother, Sister.
They persecute our history, persecuting
us. Many times persecuted, we are
indigenous so the one who persecutes might have meaning.
Cuicateco Brother, Sister.
They stifle us with their lies. They
lie without, and create an image of
us of apathy and discouragement. They lie within, and make us
an image of
resignation and stasis.
Chiapa Brother, Sister.
They tamper with our name. They call
us in another way, ignoring our
history, and they force us to call ourselves as they call us
and not how we
ourselves call us.
Chinanteco Brother, Sister.
Our homes are lacking in all services.
We live in poverty, we die in
poverty and in poverty our children are born and grow up. Our
houses are
coffins where our families are crowded together. We do not have
potable
water, we do not have electricity, we do not have sewage systems,
we do not
have construction materials.
Chocholteco Brother, Sister.
Our communities are crowded together,
out of sight. They deny our
existence, and, since they cannot do away with us, they then
conceal us
from themselves and from others.
Chol Brother, Sister.
They wrench us from our homes with poverty
and we have to travel far, away
from our own, so that our arms might serve the powerful in exchange
for a
poverty which will once again wrench our homes from us.
Chontal Brother, Sister.
They make war on us in many ways. Sometimes
with bullets, sometimes with
deceit, sometimes with poverty, sometimes with jails. Always
with
forgetting.
Guarijío Brother, Sister.
Today memory is a crime. We are memory.
We are indigenous. We are
criminals. Our blood fills jails and cemeteries. This is the
sentence:
prison and coffin for memory.
Huasteco Brother, Sister.
We live fewer years than they do, we become
ill more than they do, twice
the number of our children die compared to theirs, we have more
accidents
than they do. We have more death. But we have fewer hospitals,
we have
fewer doctors, we have fewer nurses, we have fewer medicines,
we have less
life.
Huave Brother, Sister.
Our work is poorly paid. Coyotes and
caciques ally with each other in
order to steal from us with their pricing. Long and painful
working days
are converted into just a few coins which are not enough for
anything.
Kikapú Brother, Sister.
We work with work in order to have work
so they will give us work and thus
be able to work our work.
Kukapá Brother, Sister.
The music of our words is noise to their
ears, and they would have their
noise become music to our ears.
Mame Brother, Sister.
We live in a corner and they corner us
in it. Smaller and smaller is the
air which is left for us, and the ground and the sky.
Matlatzinca Brother, Sister.
History is clear: we contribute the deaths,
the blood, the pain, our
houses and devastated countryside, our dead peoples dying mortal
deaths.
Maya Brother, Sister.
We have no teachers because we have no
schools, and we have no schools
because we have no teachers. Government educational programs
consist in
teaching ignorance to our people.
Mazahua Brother, Sister.
They contaminate the water, they turn
it into merchandise, they steal it,
they sell it. They leave the land without sustenance so that
the land will
die of thirst.
Mayo Brother, Sister.
They make us confront each other. They
sow discord between us and put the
death of the brother in the hand of the brother.
Mazateco Brother, Sister.
Our food is meager and poor. We know
of meat, milk and eggs by name, but
those names are always lacking on our tables. The only things
which abound
on our tables are our children's', and our, hungry mouths.
Mixe Brother, Sister.
As women, we are thrice slain. Slain
as poor persons. Slain as
indigenous. Slain as women. They kill us three times.
Mixteco Brother, Sister.
Alcohol is poison for our blood, and the
price we pay for the poison only
serves to fatten the powerful. We ask for food and we receive
alcohol,
which corrupts our joy and ends up saddening our hearts.
Náhuatl Brother, Sister.
If we suffer injustices and unfairness
and we protest, we are crushed. If
we demand our rights, we are crushed. If we speak, we are crushed.
If we
organize, we are crushed. If we resist, we are crushed. Repression
is
always the response we receive. We never receive the attentive
ear, the
sincere word, sisterly generosity. Always threats, jail, death.
Ñahñu Brother, Sister.
To the powerful, our color represents
weakness, backwardness, ignorance,
malevolent resentment, bad jokes, the contemptuous gesture.
O'Odham Brother, Sister.
They want to purchase our dignity, the
only thing left without a price. If
we cannot do so, then they persecute us, they imprison us, they
kill us.
Pame Brother, Sister.
They take our lands in order to sow and
reap the death which is made candy
in veins and lungs. They take the profits, we are the flesh
for the jails.
Popoluca Brother, Sister.
Even though we, the indigenous, work very
hard, we do not make progress.
And the one who does not work makes progress at the price of
our poverty.
We work and we reap poverty, the rich does not work and he is
rewarded with
riches.
Purépecha Brother, Sister.
Our language is persecuted. They fear
it for what it says and denounces.
They fear it because it allows past history to be seen. They
fear it
because today it rebels. They fear it because it announces a
tomorrow.
They fear our language, that is why they pursue and kill it.
Rarámuri Brother, Sister.
What matters to the powerful in these
lands is not us, but rather the
resources which are within it. And so the tree is made dead
in order to be
made wood, and the wood is made money and the money prosperity
for the
powerful. For us, adversity.
Tenek Brother, Sister.
We are a decorative object, a bright and
colorful adornment, forgotten in a
corner of society. We are a picture, a photograph, a weaving,
a craft,
never a human being.
Tlahuica Brother, Sister.
Our children grow up educated in fear.
They fear growing up, they fear
being Indians, they fear the other who is not Indian, they fear
being
children.
Tlapaneco Brother, Sister.
They do not want to give us any space
other than that of the museums of
ancient, past things, which will be left behind in an already
far distant
yesterday.
Tojolabal Brother, Sister.
Our towns are filled with armies which
are occupying our lands, destroying
our forests, polluting our waters, profaning our churches, dismantling
our
homes, introducing drugs, alcohol and prostitution. They pursue
us with
hunting dogs, planes, helicopters, war tanks and thousands of
soldiers.
Totonaco Brother, Sister.
For us, justice is a cruel shameless joke
or mausoleum or bars or
disappearing. Being indigenous is a punishable crime, which
is not written
in any legal code, but is in the minds of the police and the
judges.
Triqui Brother, Sister.
Humiliation is the future they offer us.
In it, we will always have to
lower our heads in front of the powerful, be the butt of jokes
and
contempt, be inferior, forgettable.
Tzeltal Brother, Sister.
Our good lands are being occupied by the
rich, and they throw us onto stony
ground, where the land will barely squeeze a sigh.
Tzotzil Brother, Sister.
They finance, organize, arm and train
paramilitary groups in order to kill
us. And then they present the killings as if they were fights
between
campesinos, as "inter-community conflicts," as if the
hand which killed
were dark and not as it actually is, the color of money.
Wixaritari-Huichol Brother and Sister.
They steal our lands from us and the powerful
conceals his theft behind
laws made to serve them and to hurt us. Thanks to the law, the
powerful
have turned our lives and our history into a crime.
Yaqui Brother and Sister.
The power above tries to buy our consciences,
to corrupt us in order to
turn us into slaves, into servile animals to conceal justice
behind the
lie.
Zapoteco Brother and Sister.
The economic policies of the powerful
force us to abandon our land and to
emigrate to the United States. Besides leaving behind our families,
our
history, our culture, our home, our land, our friendships, our
people, we
must then confront the armed racism of the border police and
the fascist
ranchers. Death forces us to leave our land and, by leaving,
we must
confront death.
Zoque Brother and Sister.
They corner us so we will betray the blood
which gives us life, so we will
serve the powerful in his dirty work of erasing the color of
the earth.
Brothers and Sisters of the Indian peoples
which we are today:
We are nothing to the powerful but a figure
in his accounts. We are a
bothersome number. One number in the balance sheet. They measure
us in
order to disappear us. To measure their time and cost. They
measure us in
order to exploit us. To measure their time and profit. They
measure us in
order to control us. In order to measure their time and expense.
Brother, Sister...
Amuzgo
Cora
Cuicateco
Chiapa
Chinanteco
Chocholteco
Chol
Chontal
Guarijío
Huasteco
Huave
Kikapú
Kukapá
Mame
Matlatzinca
Maya Yucateco
Mayo
Mazahua
Mazateco
Mixe
Mixteco
Náhuatl
Ñahñu
O'Odham
Pame
Popoluca
Purepecha
Rarámuri
Tenek
Tlahuica
Tojolabal
Totonaco
Triqui
Tzeltal
Tzotzil
Wixaritari-Huichol
Yaqui
Zapoteco
Zoque
Brothers and Sisters:
Today they want to make us fashionable.
Today they want to make us
entertainment, passing news. Today they want to make us short-lived
and
transitory again, fleeting, disposable, dispensable, forgettable.
When has history been fashionable?
When has memory been up for sale?
When have the roots been a transient shop
window?
When is the past momentary?
When is wisdom dissoluble and transitory?
When is firmness fleeting?
When are the foundations disposable?
When can one do without tomorrow?
When can it be forgotten that they are
because we are?
Forty Indian peoples, of the 57 in Mexico,
have been received in the house
of Purépecha.
It was in Nurio, Michoacán. So
it was recorded by our scribes.
We were reunited by sorrow and hope.
Sorrow and hope will make us walk once
again, like yesterday, like always.
But now we do not go alone.
Not alone from ourselves.
Not alone from the others.
We will march once more now, but the 7
days which will carry us to the land
which grows upwards, to the one which makes laws, shall tremble
with all
the indigenous which we are.
Though we have been united by sorrow,
though hope unites us, nothing shall
have meaning if we are not united by tomorrow.
Democracy!
Liberty!
Justice!
From the Purépecha community of
Nurio, Michoacán.
Clandestine Revolutionary Indigenous Committee
-
General Command of the Zapatista Army of National Liberation.
Mexico, March of 2001.
On
to Mexico City!