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Live Blogging Zapatista Press Conference at the AMC

1:54 pm By la Macha · Detriot · 1 Comment

18 Jul 2009

Maegan is not the only one at the AMC right now! I, la macha, am also here, and I’m sitting in an auditorium getting ready for the Zapatista press conference. I’ll be live blogging it once the conference gets started!

2:52: woman saying hello introduces the Zapatista campaign: commitment to all in their community including queers, children, etc.

Next speaker calls the Zapatistas a national mexican movement to fight against neo-liberalism. Says that it is a movement with no centralized leaders, one that encourages new members: explains what you should “believe in” to be a Zapatista, including anti-neo liberalist, pro-indigenous, etc.

Speaker talks about using different types of media to transmit their message.

New Speaker: talking about Atenco now, explaining how commercial media has been hiding the truth of Atenco–which is why the documentary we’re now going to watch was made.

Video we are seeing is highlighting the fight between flower vendors in Atenco and the local/national government.

Now showing a scene of Indigenous peoples attacking the police, with the media encouraging government intervention–i.e. the indigenous peoples attack one police officer, so mass violent government crackdown on entire community is now justified.

Next scene: independent reporters that tried to cover the violence police were committing against protestors were attacked, arrested, beaten, had their equipment stolen.

Next scene: shows women getting harassed while a woman testifies about violence committed against her, including: fingers stuck in her mouth and vagina, breasts grabbed, arrest just for being on the street (for “being an idiot”).

Next scene: on May 4th 2006 after the media had relentlessly aired images of one group of men beating a police officer, the government stepped up the violence against Atenco.

Close up scene of police beating person (one of SEVERAL scenes) and you can hear clunking sounds–sound of batons hitting human body…

Police forced a corridor of local/indi media, so that media couldn’t get into the city where the raids were happening.

Police made indiscriminate raids on homes of citizens, arresting and throwing tear gas into homes of people without any disregard to if the citizen had participated in protests or not.

Citizens were trying to get in contact w/red cross and police weren’t letting them….

Movie ends

Next Speaker: Introduces next movie: was created as a way to begin dialogue with people in mexico and outside of mexico about Zapatistas and Chiapas.

Speaker in movie explains why Mexican immigrants in the U.S. are Zapatistas–why so many indigenous peoples are moving to U.s. because of neo-liberal u.s. practices.

From across the border: movement for justice

members of this movement call themselves “displaced”–implying that there was not a *choice* move–that capitalism has displaced them forcibly from their home lands/communities.

((side note: this is a REALLY interesting intervention this org is making into the traditional immigrant narrative))

Multiple immigrants are describing problems with housing…high rents with “inhumane and illegal living conditions”

“we can’t pay high rents because our pay is so low”

“We are displaced from our own countries–and now it’s happening here too”

“we are living through double displacement”

gentrification is a part of immigrant/migration displacement

“we are fighting for dignified housing”

“community has last word about what the fight will be about–a single person will never decide for the entire community”

“we don’t work with politicians because they don’t work with us–we declare ourselves autonomous”

El Barrio is not for sale!

Fight was against Steve kassner–the landlord that was named one of 10 worst landlords in the NY area–his central offices were in London.

campaign decided to evict landlord rather than be evicted.

***

campaign decided to expand their campaign from centralizing on gentrification alone to other forms of struggles as well–reached out to the Zapatistas.

Held a gathering where tenants of the building introduced themselves o the Zapatistas and vise versa.

flashes to Zapatistas fighting military off their land: connecting displacement in two different regions of the world together.

***

now we are watching a video from Atenco made in response to the message created by the camapign in N.Y.C

Marcos: speaking to crowd in Mexico ( i think Atenco) telling crowd that “we will support world wide action against injustice”

People of Atenco are now speaking–holding their machetes with “atenco vive” on them–they say “we will go on in our struggle against injustice because of strength given to them from brothers and sisters across the world”

Now a voice is explaining what happened in atenco in 2006 again. 30 women were raped–or at least as being on record as being raped. Still 13 people in prison right now, all with 112 year sentences.

WHole fight began as a fight keep control of land that govt/corporations were attempting to steal for an airport project. Indigenous peoples are still living off of that land–off of corn, beans, etc created and supported by that land.

Several actions involved blocking the highways, blocking access to land

Current situation of political prisoners: launching a campaign to help them and bring attention to plight: (information from philly IMC website)

“Their crime was to defend their land”

EZLN Celebrates 15 Year Anniversary, Criticizes Mexican Government

8:22 am By Maegan La Mala · Activism| history| mexico| society · Comments Off

5 Jan 2009

It’s hard to believe that 15 years have passed since we first heard about the Zapatista movement in Mexico, with its charismatic leader Subcomandante Marcos getting most of the international spotlight. To mark the anniversary of the EZLN, top Zapatista leaders gathered together with supporters in San Cristóbal de las Casas, Chiapas, to celebrate and to speak about the current state of Mexican society. Marcos had a lot to say, particularly with regard to the government’s war on drugs:

Marcos couldn’t avoid addressing drug violence in his discussion of violence against social movements. He says Mexican President Felipe Calderon and the corporate media “use and abuse the word ‘violence’” for their own means. “They say they condemn violence, but in reality they condemn action.” Marcos accuses Calderon of using the drug war to pacify discontent with his government. “Mr. Calderon decided that, instead of bread and circuses, he would give the people blood.”

Referencing the lack of confidence in Calderon’s government, which is ridden with corruption scandals and has failed to meet its own economic benchmarks, Marcos continued, “The professional politicians are the circus and bread is very expensive…. Perhaps…[Calderon's] goal is to distract people. The public is so busy with the drug war’s bloody failure, it could be that it doesn’t even notice Calderon’s failure in political economy.”

EZLN Announces First Global Festival of Dignified Rage. Sign Me Up!

9:23 am By Maegan La Mala · Activism| Culture| Politics| mexico · 4 Comments

23 Sep 2008

The Ejercito Zapatista de Liberacion Nacional aka the EZLN announced via communiqué the First Global Festival of Dignified Rage.

Communiqué from the of the Indigenous Revolutionary Clandestine Committee—General Command, of the Zapatista Army for National Liberation
Sixth Commission—Intergalactic Commission of the EZLN

Mexico

September 15 and 16 of 2008

To the adherents of the Sixth Declaration and the Other Campaign:

To the adherents of the Zezta Interazional:

To the People of Mexico:

To the Peoples of the World:

Compañeras and Compañeros:

Brother and Sisters:

Once again we send you our words.

This is what we see, what we are looking at.

This is what has come to our ears, to our brown heart.

I.

Above they intend to repeat history.

They want to impose on us once again their calendar of death, their geography of destruction.

When they are not trying to strip us of our roots, they are destroying them.

They steal our work, our strength.

They leave our world, our land, our water, and our treasures without people, without life.

The cities pursue and expel us.

The countryside both kills us and dies on us.

Lies become governments and dispossession is the weapon of their armies and police.
We are the illegal, the undocumented, the undesired of the world.

We are pursued.

Women, young people, children, the elderly die in death and die in life.

And there above they preach to us resignation, defeat, surrender, and abandonment.

Here below we are being left with nothing.

Except rage.

And dignity.

There is no ear for our pain, that is not like what we are.

We are no one.

We are alone, alone with our dignity and our rage.

Rage and dignity are our bridges, our languages.

We must listen to each other then, learn to know each other.

So that our courage and rage grows and becomes hope.

So that our dignity takes root again and births another world.

We have seen and heard.

Our voice is small to be the echo of that word, our gaze small for so much dignified rage.

The process of seeing each other, looking at each other, speaking to each other, listening to each other, is still lacking.

We are others, the other.

If this world does not have a place for us, then another world must be made.

With no tool other than our rage, no material other than our dignity.

We still must encounter each other more, know each other better.

What is missing is yet to come…

Two Zapatista Prisoners Theaten Hunger Strike If Not Released

3:14 pm By Jennifer Woodard Maderazo · Politics| mexico · Comments Off

21 Apr 2008

prisoner1.htm.png Today, two Zapatista prisoners held in Tabasco, are set to begin hunger strikes protesting their incarcerations.

They demand immediate, unconditional release–not a pardon. In their own words: “For what crime do we have to request a pardon? For what crime would they have to pardon us?” In their eyes, to request a pardon would imply that they assume responsibility for a crime they didn’t commit.Ángel Concepción Pérez Gutiérrez (age 44) and Francisco Pérez Vázquez (age 74) from the community of Guapacal in the municipality of Tila, Chiapas, were detained and charged with the murder of Florentino Hernández López on July 9, 1996, and each sentenced to 25 year prison terms. The murder took place on November 16, 1995, as the result of a territorial dispute between two ejidos on either side of the Chiapas-Tabasco border, Tutzil (Chiapas) and Agua Blanca (Tabasco).
The case brought against the two indigenous Ch’ol men was fraught with irregularities, including some which constitute human rights violations. Among these is the right to valid reasoning and legal grounds with regards to one’s judgment, as stated in articles 14 and 16 of the Mexican Constitution. In this case, the sole witness originally claimed he could not identify the perpetrators and later changed his testimony claiming psychiatric distress at the time of his original statement, although there was no hard evidence to sustain his claim.

Via / My Word is My Weapon

EZLN Losing Ground in Chiapas Stronghold

3:33 pm By Maegan La Mala · Activism| Politics| mexico| society · 3 Comments

13 Feb 2008

In the mid-nineties, Zapatista fever seemed to be taking over Mexico, and through the beginning of the current decade is appeared to still be going strong. Nowhere was the support stronger than in the Southern state of Chiapas, where the movement began and grew. But now reports are that the EZLN is losing steam at its base in Polho, Chiapas:

Nearly 200 families have abandoned the Zapatista rebel movement in one of its strongholds, turning to the government for aid at a time when the insurgents are complaining about the loss of outside support.

On Wednesday, each family received initial payments of $43 in a ceremony with Salvador Escobedo, a top official with the federal government’s Social Development Department. The government is promising similar payments every two months, as well as a school and medical center.

The ceremony in Polho, long a backbone of the Zapatista movement, appeared to be the most prominent desertion from the insurgency since 2004, when about 400 families in the unofficial rebel capital of La Realidad broke away to accept government help, dividing the village in two.

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