Between August 4 and 9, there was held in La Realidad, municipality of Las Margaritas, the “First Exchange between the Zapatista Peoples and the Native Peoples of Mexico”. 1,300 Zapatista delegates and over 300 indigenous representatives from different groups of the National Indigenous Congress (CNI) participated. On Saturday 9, they issued a declaration regarding the agreements of the Exchange to national and international adherents of the Sixth Declaration of the Lacandona Jungle and a new Declaration on the plundering of indigenous peoples was read. It is signed by the EZLN and 28 groups of the CNI that participated in the meeting.
In the act of closure, they emphasized that: “the current political leaders are delivering territories and assets designated for the nation to the large domestic and foreign companies, seeking the death of all the peoples of Mexico and of Mother Earth”. The enemy, they reported, is the dispossession “that has a single name, and that name is capitalism.”
At the same time, through the reading of “29 Mirrors”, different situations of dispossession of indigenous peoples from across the country, as well as their experiences of struggle, rebellion and resistance were shared. In addition, they said: “These are the plunders that we suffer, we know ourselves in an emergency that threatens our lives. So today we say to the powerful, to the companies and bad governments led by the criminal supreme leader of the paramilitaries Enrique Peña Nieto that we won’t surrender, we won’t sell out, and we won’t give up. […] Like the corn, today we will renew ourselves in our decision to build from below and to the left a world where there is room for many worlds”.
Finally they informed that between December 2014 and January 2015 they will organize the “First World Festival of Resistance and Rebellions against Capitalism.”
For more information (in Spanish):
Declaración de la Compartición entre el CNI y el EZLN sobre el Despojo contra Nuestros Pueblos (Radio Zapatista, 11 de agosto de 2014)
Primera Declaración de la compartición del Congreso Nacional Indígena y el Ejercito Zapatista de Liberación Nacional sobre Represión en contra de nuestros pueblos (Radio Zapatista, 11 de agosto de 2014)
EZLN a Peña: “No nos rendimos, no nos vendemos y no claudicamos” (Proceso, 10 de agosto de 2014)
EZLN invita al Festival Mundial de Las Resistencias y las Rebeldias contra el Capitalismo “Donde Los De Arriba destruyen Los de Abajo Reconstruimos” (Pozol Colectivo, 10 de agosto de 2014)
For more information from SIPAZ (in English):
Chiapas: EZLN announces dates for the exchanges between Zapatistas and indigenous peoples of the CNI (June 12, 2014)
Chiapas: EZLN announces upcoming activities (June 10, 2014)
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