On the first weekend of March, the third assembly of the National Indigenous Congress (CNI in its Spanish acronym) and the Indigenous Council of Government (CIG in its Spanish acronym) took place in Mexico City, with 288 participants among delegates, councilors and guests from various towns in Campeche, Mexico City, Chihuahua, Chiapas, Guerrero, Jalisco, Morelos, Nayarit, Oaxaca, Puebla, Quintana Roo, Sonora, Tabasco and Yucatan.
In the final pronouncement, the Zapatista Army of National Liberation (EZLN in its Spanish acronym), the CNI and the CIG considered that the government of Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador is nothing more than the “continuity” of the neoliberal governments that have held power since Miguel de la Madrid. They even stated that the current government “deepens neoliberalism”, even “with more brutality and cynicism if possible.”
They also denounced that “the neoliberal government led by Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador has its sights set on our towns and territories, where, with the National Institute of Indigenous Peoples, a network of co-optation and disorganization is laid, opening the way to a war that has an industrial name, made up of projects and violence, which, together with the other wars and war networks, spread a dark web of death in the original peoples of the country.”
They said that, with their “simulated consultations”, the new government only intends to impose megaprojects throughout the country. They made it clear that “our people, in exercise of their fundamental rights of autonomy and territory say NO to policies and megaprojects of dispossession, death and destruction, as well as to the consultations organized by bad governments to obtain the consent of our peoples to said policies and said megaprojects.” They said that, “in the exercise of our territorial rights and autonomy, we say that these megaprojects will be faced with the will of our peoples.”
They affirmed that the supposed transformations are taking place “in function of the interests of the oligarchies and those that have the power, which are increasingly smaller and bigger, that do not cease to live off the oppression, exploitation, and destruction of the same ones as always.” Instead, they stressed that “for the indigenous peoples the only ‘true change’ is the increase in lies, deceit, persecution, threats, imprisonment, dispossession, assassinations, ridicule and contempt, human exploitation and the destruction of nature; in sum: the annihilation of the collective life that we are.”
Among other more specific denunciations, they condemned the murder of Samir Flores in Morelos who was fighting against the Huexca thermoelectric plant: “Samir was killed by the neoliberal regime; we do not know if the government, if the entrepreneurs, if their criminal cartels, or, if the three together. The offers made by AMLO, not to those below, but to the owners of money and power, the veiled threats against those who defend life, laid the foundations of the murderous assassination.”
They finally expressed that “below, in all the geographies that the original peoples are, we continue to sow autonomy, we build and deploy power from below in what are also networks of networks, but of resistance and rebellion, which are also the mirrors not only of the peoples that we are the CNI – CIG and the EZLN, but many others that sow the hope and of which this is our mirror, our third national assembly.”
For more information in Spanish:
La Cuarta Transformación es más brutal que los anteriores gobiernos: EZLN (Radio Formula, 8 de marzo de 2019)
El gobierno de AMLO “profundiza” el neoliberalismo, acusan el EZLN y el CNI (Proceso, 7 de marzo de 2019)
Megaproyectos se toparán con voluntad de pueblos: EZLN y Congreso Nacional Indígena (El Universal, 7 de marzo de 2019)
¡SAMIR VIVE, LA LUCHA SIGUE! PRONUNCIAMIENTO DE LA TERCERA ASAMBLEA NACIONAL DEL CONGRESO NACIONAL INDÍGENA, EL CONCEJO INDÍGENA DE GOBIERNO Y EL EZLN (Comunicado CNI y EZLN, 6 de marzo de 2019)
El Congreso Nacional Indígena: balances y desafíos (La Jornada, 5 de marzo de 2019)
For more information from SIPAZ:
National: Controversy between EZLN and AMLO Supporters Floods Social Networks (January 18th, 2019)
Oaxaca : CODEDI denuncia hostigamiento militar ; CNI exige que cese la represión en su contra (1 de noviembre de 2018)
Chiapas: Second Assembly of National Indigenous Congress (CNI) (October 22nd, 2018)
Chiapas/Mexico: Invitation to the Second National Assembly of the National Indigenous Congress (CNI) and the Indigenous Governing Council (CIG) (September 18th, 2018)
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