Worldwide Campaign

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At the Mexican Embassy in London: Demand for an End to the Attacks on the Zapatista Support Base Community of San Marcos Avilés

Today, 26th April, 2013, the UK Zapatista Solidarity Network held a protest at the Embassy of Mexico in London in solidarity with the Zapatista support base (BAZ) community of San Marcos Avilés in the municipality of Chilón, Chiapas, Mexico. The protestors delivered a letter demanding an end to the threats, aggressions and acts of violence being made against this community by members of the Mexican political parties, with the aim of displacing the Zapatistas from their homes and their lands. This is being done, explained members of the Network, with the full support and backing of the Mexican state, in an attempt to put an end to the advances in Zapatista autonomy.

The protest was organised in response to the recent alarming renewal of the threats and acts of harassment, which has led to fears of an imminent attack and eviction. Only this week, a civil caravan for human rights observation and documentation on its way to San Marcos Avilés was threatened with violence by the party supporters. “Blood will flow”, they said, showing the impunity they enjoy.

The report presented by the caravan is shocking. The community has been living through a terrifying nightmare since it was previously displaced in 2010, following an attack with firearms. At this time 170 people, many of them women, children, the sick and the elderly, had to endure 33 days in the open without food or water, sleeping under plastic sheeting. Although they were able to return, their homes had been ransacked and plundered, and they have never felt safe since.

The letter called for an end to the threats and violence against the BAZ, and for a guarantee of their life, safety and human rights. “We will be monitoring events in San Marcos Avilés closely in the following days, and we will hold the governments of Chilon, Chiapas and Mexico responsible for any harm that may befall the BAZ of this community”.

Meanwhile, in the rest of the United Kingdom, people from Bristol, Edinburgh, Essex, Dorset, Manchester, Exeter, Sheffield and Bradford telephoned the Mexican Embassy in London and the Municipal President of Chilón, Leonardo Rafael Guirao Aguilar, who would be the local official responsible for any eviction. The callers expressed their dismay and indignation and called for immediate action to put an end to the violence.

The group ended the protest by saying “We wish through our actions today to send a message of solidarity to our dignified sisters and brothers of San Marcos Avilés. They have our full support.”

At the same time, the members of the group remembered Juan Vázquez Guzmán, ex- Secretary General of the adherents to the Sixth Declaration from the ejido of San Sebastián Bachajón, who was murdered on Wednesday night. A minute of silence was dedicated to his memory outside the Embassy.

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From London: Message to politicians of Mexico and in Support of the Zapatistas

You can see another photo here: https://sanmarcosavilesen.wordpress.com/photo-gallery/

“STOP THE TERROR ON ZAPATISTA COMMUNITIES”, was the message written on the posters clearly displayed at a talk regarding the “Pacto por México”, at the London School of Economics on Tuesday 12^th March, referring to the recent attacks on the autonomous community of San Marcos Avilés, Chiapas, Mexico. Leaflets telling the story, which the media has kept silent about, were also handed out to the listening audience, as well as to the infamous speakers.

The talk was meant to be hosted by Senators from the PRI, PAN and PRD, the three dominant parties in Mexican politics. These political parties have all shared a role in the repression, harassment, and denial of basic human rights to Zapatista communities, not to mention the continuous process of dispossession, loss of identity, and deprivation the indigenous peoples of Mexico have had to endure for the last 500 years due to the negligence, racism and economic interests of the people who govern.

As is common with Mexican bureaucracy, the incompetence and mediocrity of the people who lead the country was evident before the talk even started. The senators of the PRI and PAN were both absent for this session, allegedly due to internal disputes between the two parties. Therefore, the “Pacto por México” became destined to be spoken of by the PRD alone, with boring and hollow rhetoric about how “great” the country will be under these new legislative reforms.

One of the aims of the “Pacto por México”, is to “modernize” the south of the country. Well, “modernize” is probably a polite word to describe what their obscure agenda really implies.

Learn about what they are doing to the Zapatistas in San Marcos Avilés, Chiapas:

First and foremost, the attacks on the Zapatistas are part of the PAN-PRI-PRD coalition’s plan to “modernize the south”, established in their “Pacto por México”.
According to the Fray Bartolomé de Las Casas Human Rights Centre, there is an imminent risk of forced displacement of the Zapatista Support Bases by people affiliated to the PRI, PRD and PVEM in San Marcos Avilés. Just because they don’t want to pay tax for living on lands that belong to them.
Recent weeks have witnessed widespread death threats and harassment of Zapatista Support Bases.
Forced displacement and eviction from their lands since 2010 means they cannot work them, resulting in the current alimentary crisis, and threats to their process of autonomy.
Many fear, according to a declaration made by party supporters during an assembly in the municipality on the 23^rd of February, that attacks and repression are imminent under this new government.

We, as conscious Mexicans and Internationals from all around the world:

– Demand an end to the harassment and terrorising of people’s rights to their own land.

– Demand diligent investigation and corresponding sanctions of those responsible for forced eviction, threats and harassment of the Zapatista Support bases.

– Demand the Mexican government respect and guarantee the process of autonomy that the Zapatistas have been building, established in the San Andrés accords and in the UN Declaration of the Rights of Indigenous People.

We greet our Zapatista compañer@s, and express our most sincere solidarity and affection.

Para todos la luz, para todos todo.

Por una democracia auténtica,

Zapatista Solidarity Group – Essex

#Yosoy132 – Londres

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Declaration in support of the Zapatistas of San Marcos Avilés from the Committees of the True Word of Kolkata, India, Western Colombia and South-West England

We wish to express our profound concern for the lives and safety of the Zapatista support bases (BAZ) living in the ejidal community of San Marcos Avilés, in the official municipality of Chilón, Chiapas. As a result of their ongoing construction of autonomy, especially the construction of their own autonomous school, named in honor of Emiliano Zapata, they have been subjected to a second nightmare campaign of violence and intimidation, culminating in imminent threats to displace them from their homes.

We recognize that these actions are part of the counterinsurgency strategy, or war of attrition, being conducted by the three levels of government in Mexico against the whole Zapatista movement. Nevertheless, the Zapatistas remain an inspiration to many people throughout the world; they have been in resistance for nearly twenty years and are currently undergoing a resurgence. One part of the government strategy is the use of paramilitary style groups, armed and funded by the State, to attack and undermine the organization’s support base. In San Marcos Avilés, the attacks come from members of the political parties, in this case the PRI, PRD and PVEM. The result of their continual acts of aggression and harassment is that the BAZ do not have access to all their lands, and some of their crops and food plants have been stolen or destroyed, as have most of their belongings. The women are threatened with assault and rape, the livestock are killed, and the children are threatened.

Recent events suggest that an imminent displacement of the BAZ is very likely. On 19^th February a group of community ejidal authorities and police came and aggressively demanded payment of the predial taxes, saying this was on the orders of the municipal president and treasury secretary. The BAZ explained that they take nothing from the government, and so do not pay taxes. The reply was “If you do not pay, you will be displaced. We ourselves will arrest you and take you to the authorities. We are going to cut your light and water”. The following day, the party supporters met to discuss how to displace the BAZ, and on February 21^st went to meet with the local authorities to advance the plan, and ask for an eviction order. They have since again threatened the BAZ with displacement.

The previous displacement was in September 2010, when 170 women, children and men spent 33 days, during which time two women gave birth, in the open without food or shelter. After an accompanied return they found their homes ransacked, and the threats and intimidation as strong as ever. All this because they want to live with dignity and freedom, and, as indigenous Zapatistas, to struggle for justice, liberty and democracy.

None of the governing authorities have taken any measures to resolve the situation; in fact they have encouraged it, in the hopes that the BAZ will either be provoked to respond aggressively, or will give up the struggle. Their human rights are ignored and violated.

At this time it is more essential than ever for people of good heart throughout the world to express our solidarity with the BAZ of San Marcos Avilés, to raise our voices together to tell them that they are not alone, and to tell their repressors that we are watching them. For much of the last year an international campaign, “Worldwide Echo in Support of the Zapatistas”, was rolled out in support of the Zapatistas of San Marcos Avilés and other threatened communities, and the strength of its activities put a halt to threats of imminent eviction in the community last summer. Committees of the True Word such as ourselves were set up in response to this great organizing effort. All those who took part in this campaign will not only be alarmed at the new developments in San Marcos Avilés, but will also feel the need to mobilize global solidarity once again to try to prevent the displacement of the BAZ. We call on you all to take action urgently.

For further information, please see this article: https://nacla.org/Zapatista-Displacement-and-Solidarity

Watch the video message: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rY-8CBt3Vkg

With embraces of solidarity

Committees of the True Word from Kolkata, India, Western Colombia and South West England

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Protest in Madrid in support of San Marcos Avilés

On 7th March, 2013, a letter was handed over at the Mexican Embassy in Madrid, Spain, addressed to the president of Mexico, Peña Nieto, demanding he put an end to the violence and guarantee the security and protection of human rights in the ejido of San Marcos Avilés, in Chiapas, México.

PLATAFORMA DE SOLIDARIDAD CON CHIAPAS Y GUATEMALA DE MADRID

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From Düsseldorf, Germany: Protest in solidarity with the Zapatistas of San Marcos Avilés

The collective – ¡Alerta! – Lateinamerika Gruppe Düsseldorf de Alemania, organized an action in support of the Zapatista support bases of San Marcos Avilés.

27 February, 2013

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International Campaign:

“Worldwide Echo in Support of the Zapatistas”

FROM FLORENCE, ITALY:

VIDEO MESSAGE IN SOLIDARITY WITH THE ZAPATISTAS

Compañeras and compañeros:

Receive loving embraces and greetings from Movement for Justice in El Barrio, The Other Campaign New York. Today we have great joy in our hearts due to the following news:

From Florence, Italy, as part of the international campaign, comes a new video message of support for the Zapatista communities who are besieged by the bad government of Mexico. The video was made by our compas from Colettivo Prezzemolo, a group of workers and students from around the world.

In this beautiful message, compas from 8 countries (Mexico, Greece, Crete, Czechoslovakia, Ireland, Norway, Kyrgyzstan, Italy) make their echo in 8 different languages.

With posters from the campaign “Worldwide Echo in Support of the Zapatistas” in their hands, and anger in their hearts, this message clearly shows that the organizational efforts of the campaign continue to expand and take root in many parts of the world. We must share very widely this beautiful greeting of rage, dignity, and hope that we have been given by the Colettivo Prezzemolo.

The video message can be found here:

https://sanmarcosavilesen.wordpress.com/worldwide-campaign/

“Worldwide Echo in Support of the Zapatistas”

From Florence, Italy: Videomessage in support of the Zapatistas

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mZlYmsIp1Do&feature=player_embedded

In this video people from 8 countries (Mexico, Greece, Crete, Ireland, Czechoslovakia, Norway, Kyrgyzstan, Italy) are expressing their solidarity in 8 languages and dialects (Spanish, Venetian dialect, Norwegian, French, Kyrgyz, Irish, Czech, Greek).

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Twenty-nine Years of Dignified Resistance: An Echo in the Heartbeat of the People.

17^th November 1983 to 17^th November 2012

by the

Dorset Chiapas Solidarity Group

For the last five months, the largest international campaign to be organized in solidarity with the Zapatista support base communities in resistance (BAZ) for a very long time has been rolling out around the world. We, the Dorset Chiapas Solidarity Group, are pleased to have been able, along with many others in 25 countries, to contribute our grain of sand by helping to organize informative events and actions, disseminate news and information, and set up new groups, known as Committees of the True Word, to support our Zapatista brothers and sisters. In our small corner of the world we have been able to reach out to people not previously involved, and we know that, as a result of this joint effort in many places, many more people now know the history of the Zapatistas. As the Campaign says in its first Call to Action, “everyone should know this history of profound pain, hope, and inspiration.”

This history began in Chiapas on November 17^th, 1983 and it was on the twenty-ninth anniversary of the founding of the Zapatista Army of National Liberation, somewhere on top of a hill in the Lacandón Jungle, by 3 indigenous and 3 mestizos, that the enormous organizing effort that has been the “Worldwide Echo in Support of the Zapatistas” was finally wrapped up.

It is an anniversary that was not only celebrated in the hundreds of Zapatista support base communities throughout the mountains, canyons and jungles of the state of Chiapas in south-east Mexico, butt was also remembered among indigenous communities worldwide who are struggling for recognition of their land and traditions, by groups everywhere struggling against neoliberal displacement and dispossession, and by all people of good heart who work for democracy, liberty and justice. The Zapatista struggle has touched the hearts and awakened hope in people of all colors and continents.

As the “Worldwide Echo” Campaign has now come to a close, we from the Dorset Chiapas Solidarity Group offer the following thoughts to mark where we have been and where we must continue to go. In particular, we hope all those who took part in the two stages find this of use.

The Campaign

Movement for Justice in El Barrio (MJB) is a majority Mexican immigrant women grassroots community organization that fights for dignity and against neoliberal displacement in El Barrio and beyond. They have a long history of supporting other communities and organizations that are part of The Other Campaign, including campaigns in solidarity with San Salvador Atenco and San Sebastián Bachajón, and they first planned the Echo campaign in response to an appeal made by the BAZ of the community of San Marcos Avilés, who are under siege from political party supporters backed by the local government.

The initial aims of the Echo campaign were “an end to the war against the Zapatistas of San Marcos Avilés, and immediate freedom for our Zapatista compañero Francisco Sántiz López”. The campaign was launched with the sending out of a stunning video message from the compas of San Marcos Avilés, telling of the nightmare situation they were, and still are, enduring, which provoked an enormous response. Our group have now shown this video seven times, to great effect.

Shortly afterwards, the war being waged by the three levels of the bad government of Mexico on the BAZ communities had extended to other communities, and the Campaign grew accordingly in order to offer support to all the communities under threat–a total of 6 by October. “It is absolutely clear”, states a declaration promoted by the campaign, “that the ongoing government repression being carried out against the BAZ of Comandante Abel, Unión Hidalgo, Guadalupe los Altos, San Marcos Avilés, Moisés Gandhi, and Jechvó, as well as the unjust imprisonment of the Zapatista political prisoner, Francisco Sántiz López, stem from the same source: the shared ambition and strategy of the municipal, state, and federal governments in their war of counterinsurgency to annihilate the indigenous Zapatistas.”

Background

The Mexican government’s war of attrition has remained the main strategy of its counterinsurgency efforts since 1994, when, under the ‘Chiapas 94 Campaign Plan’, a campaign was drawn up to displace the indigenous population, thus severing their ties from the land. It prescribed: “the forced displacement of the population under Zapatista influence into official shelters or refugee zones; neutralization of the San Cristóbal diocese; capture of Mexicans identified with the EZLN; expulsion of undesirable foreigners; death or control of equine and bovine livestock; destruction of planted and harvested crops, and use of ‘civil defence’ to break the support relationship that exists between the population and the transgressors of the law.”

This plan is currently being carried out through the use of paramilitary groups, or paramilitary-style attack groups, composed of local political party members, and armed, funded, trained and directed by the three levels of the Mexican government, with the aim of eradicating the entire Zapatista organization.

Paramilitary groups have a military structure, dress and operate as soldiers, and bear weapons which are for the exclusive use of the armed forces. They operate through daily threats and acts of harassment whose aim is to generate fear, attrition and stress in the community. The ultimate goal is to provoke a confrontation or to displace the community so as to crumble the foundation of the Zapatista movement: the BAZ.

“The bad government should hold its head in shame to claim that its police are there to safeguard order and social peace, when right in front of them robbery, threats, movement of paramilitaries, and the firing of heavy calibre weapons is carried out”, says the Good Government Junta from Caracol V, Robert Barrios. “What they should state clearly is that the police have been sent to protect the paramilitaries, so the latter can evict, pillage and steal the harvest of our Zapatista compañeros.”

In addition to the formation of paramilitary groups, the counterinsurgency, or civilian-targeted, war also manifests itself through measures including the military occupation of the indigenous territory of Chiapas, the injection of money through coercive social programmes, direct political persecution, the fabrication of charges, and the imprisonment of innocent members of the Zapatista bases of support.

Francisco

One of the latter is Francisco Sántiz López, from the ejido of Banavil. The Fray Bartolomé de Las Casas Human Rights Centre (Frayba) assert that human rights violations have been committed against Francisco, including: lack of an adequate defence and access to justice, not having a translator or a legal defender who knew his language and culture to assist him, violations of due process, and violations of the principle of presumption of innocence. For these reasons they have filed an appeal for legal protection for Francisco and requested his immediate release, stating very clearly:

“We believe that the case of Francisco is an example of the Mexican state using the system for the prosecution and delivery of justice to criminalize the support bases of the Zapatista National Liberation Army, as a consequence of their exercise of the right to self-determination and autonomy, based on the Agreement of San Andrés and national reference points established in Article 2 of the Constitution of the Republic, as well as the international benchmarks ILO Convention no 169 and the United Nations Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples.”

The current situation

In the face of the historical process of repression, the difference made by the campaign is principally one of increased knowledge and awareness. The perpetrators of repression now know they are being watched and monitored, and that the news of their actions will be rapidly disseminated amongst what has become a multi-country support network of new and veteran activists, organizers, and communities. All around the world, in countries from Korea to Argentina, people have grown aware of the situation. They are watching. Thousands now know about the Zapatistas and the attacks they are facing–many with no prior knowledge–and are creating new ways to offer solidarity to their compas in resistance.

Additionally, our brothers and sisters, the Zapatistas, know full well that they are not alone; that international solidarity, inspired by their struggle, is reaching out to them; that as they celebrate 29 years of the EZLN, strong in the belief that they will never give up, never surrender, there are hands held out to them across the oceans of the world.

In a recent communiqué, following acts of harassment denying the BAZ of Jechvó access to their own water supply, the Good Government Junta of Oventic declared: “We want to make clear to the 3 levels of bad government, the officials and their people who they have paid, controlled and manipulated, that they should not think that, with provocations, threats, assaults and persecutions, they will stop the struggle of the Zapatista peoples, the struggle of all the original peoples from all over Mexico for the construction of our autonomy, self-determination as indigenous people and national liberation; whatever it costs us, no matter what happens, we will continue onwards, because dignity, reason and justice are on our side.”

Support

As the campaign drew to a close, actions and events continued to be organized on a daily basis, and messages of support continued to arrive from all over the world, from young people in the Basque Country to indigenous students in Canada, from the streets of Calcutta to the mountains of Colombia. Likewise, some of the campaign’s more well-known supporters sent new statements backing the Campaign. Here are extracts from a few of the messages we have found particularly moving:

Hugo Blanco, Peruvian social activist and editor of Lucha Indígena:

“There is a campaign by the system governed by the 1% to crush this island of democratic self-government, so that it will not serve as an example to the world that this is both possible and healthy.

Their instruments are the governments of Mexico and the state of Chiapas, political parties, criminal gangs and even campesinos who want to get land easily and with the protection of those from above.

It is therefore both an obligation and in the direct interests of all of us who are seeking a new world, of all who want a horizontal society in solidarity, of all who understand that the 1% is leading us to the extinction of the human species and who are committed to its survival; we must organize with all our strength and collective intelligence, in the defense of this island of freedom and democracy in Chiapas, which shows us that building another world, a world where there is room for many worlds, is truly possible.”

Raul Zibechi, Uruguayan thinker, activist, and writer:

“Hundreds of families are being besieged by paramilitary groups, with the unconcealed aim of putting an end to one of the most remarkable examples in the world of the power of those from below.

They will not succeed. Due the strength of the communities which have sustained for decades their project of life, despite repression, death, hunger and isolation.

They will not succeed, because Zapatismo is the seed which grew from the Ya Basta of January 1, 1994. Because it was rooted in the hearts of millions in the March of the Color of the Earth and it returned stubbornly to fight for life with the Other Campaign.

Zapatismo is indestructible among the many from below who struggle to continue being, who work every day to build a new and different world.

All solidarity with the besieged communities.

Let every heart beat together, intoning the mutual support among those from below, celebrating the joining of all the struggles, of all the other worlds.”

Dr Sylvia Marcos, Mexican feminist, thinker and activist:

“The indigenous peoples appear too often as the object of “help”, “development”, “education” and not as what they are, subjects from whom we can learn and who have already opened a new path which has illuminated hope under so many skies of this world.

This path is today a living possibility, which is manifested in a sustained peaceful resistance which we in the cities, the mestizos, can only admire. Why is there so much fear, on the part of the powers, both governmental and de facto? Why, among other things, this concentration on aggression, this excess of violence? Why?

What are they afraid of to make them deploy such destructive force?

What is the danger from the proposal, the resistance and the survival of the Zapatistas for the prevailing capitalist order?

Is it because they show positively that other ways of life, in justice and dignity, are possible? That the satisfactions of life and the joy of being need not be governed by consumerism and commodification? That we can “live well”, as they say in the Andean communities of South America, with other ways of organization, government and campesino production, in which the best way of living is not the accumulation of material goods, but community solidarity and sharing what there is?”

Gustavo Esteva, well-known writer and activist

“The Zapatistas gave us Zapatismo, which now no longer belongs to them.

They gave us hope again, as a social movement, and affirmed for us the value of dignity.

Zapatismo today is a force which travels the world and transforms it. It is always local, and always open to the world, linking all our struggles in coalitions of the discontented and the rebellious.

Adopting Zapatismo as our own, as a new attitude which links us together in these dark times, does not mean forgetting the Zapatistas. Not only do they continue to be a source of inspiration. They have become an effective demonstration of that sense of the possibility of transformation which surrounds us. This has made them the subject of ongoing attacks which try to destroy them or at least to suffocate them, to stop them. For this reason they demand our solidarity.

One of the more radical positions of the Zapatistas has been to argue that they are simply ordinary men and women and therefore are rebels, nonconformists, dreamers. This underscores the fact that Zapatismo is not the work of leaders, vanguards or parties, but of the common people. It is a hugely important political position which still today defines the Zapatistas…..

We must act. We need to continually express our solidarity with the whole Zapatista project, but particularly with the communities which at this moment are exposed to direct and daily more intense aggression. We need to extend this campaign which embraces them.”

Next steps

We have great admiration and respect for the Movement for Justice in El Barrio, and would like to thank them for putting such tremendous efforts into inspiring and launching our collective Campaign. Indeed, as they state: “The government and its people have their strategies, their violence, their terror. But we state here that we also have an option in the face of so much repression: we have the option to organize ourselves and to fight for justice, dignity, and autonomy.”

Although the Echo Campaign has now come to an end, we must not relax our vigilance. The BAZ communities face great risks and remain vulnerable to new threats as they enter their twentieth year in resistance, and the thirtieth year since the founding of the EZLN. We must continue to organize in their support and for our own liberation(s). The newly formed Committees of the True Word must continue their work, walking the word through the world in opposition to the repression and in support of the other world we need.

Why? Perhaps it is best to allow our compa Hugo Blanco to respond: “The Zapatista zone is a living example that ‘another world is possible’. This other world is not only possible but urgent, in order to maintain the survival of the human species.”

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“Worldwide Echo in Support of the Zapatistas”

https://sanmarcosavilesen.wordpress.com/

FROM THE BASQUE COUNTRY FOR THE 29TH ANNIVERSARY OF THE ZAPATISTAS

Compañeros and Compañeras,

In Galdakao (Basque Country) the Basque Platform of Solidarity with Chiapas yesterday celebrated the 29th anniversary of the EZLN. We celebrated together with young people who self-organize a social and cultural center (Gaztetxe) to share forms of autonomy and resistance to formal power. We learned together, we from them, and they from you our dear Zapatista compañeras.

During the event, we gave out fliers with information about the harassment of San Marcos Avilés and Comandante Abel and the compañero Zapatista prisoner Francisco. Accompanied by the projection of photos, music and video, we enjoyed the reading of ‘the other stories’ of the Sup, people spoke of the struggle and resistance of the indigenous and campesino Zapatistas communities, we danced and enjoyed remembering that without dancing there is no revolution.

As the Sup said in a letter… “the government fears the people of Mexico, so it has many soldiers and policemen. It has a very great fear. Consequently, it is very small. We are afraid of oblivion, a fear which we have been shrinking through the strength of our pain and blood. We are therefore very big.”

From the Basque Country we say that WE DO NOT FORGET our Zapatista compañeros y compañeras, we do not forget their pain and we celebrate

The whole process of re-existence which they have begun and without doubt will continue in the future.

Here we say ZORIONAK to say Congratulations.

Zorionak to the EZLN

Zorionak to the Good Government Juntas

Zorionak to the communities in resistance

Zorionak to the women, children and old ones who have struggled, are struggling and will struggle over there in Chiapas.

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“Worldwide Echo in Support of the Zapatistas”

https://sanmarcosavilesen.wordpress.com/

Zapatista graphics, “echoes of solidarity” from Mexico

Dear compas:

First, we send our warmest hugs, from all the Mexican migrants who are part of Movement for Justice in El Barrio, The Other Campaign New York. Secondly, with much emotion, we are writing to you to share with you a very special collection of images created by the compas from the Collective Cuarta Estela de Tlaxcala and the CAIN Independent Arts Collective of Puebla. They made these for the “Worldwide Echo in Support of the Zapatistas”campaign.

We believe that art from those from below is also a true word, since it can bring people together, be a means of expression for the people, showing and illuminating our realities using honesty, love, and anger as paint. Art can also safeguard memory and build bridges of solidarity between social struggles. In the campaign “Worldwide Echo in Support of the Zapatistas”, art has been a unique and powerful response which several people, organizations, and groups have, from their respective places, used to report attacks and injustices that are being perpetrated against our Zapatista sisters and brothers, and in this way, to echo their dignified “Ya Basta!”

These art works, shared with us by the dignified compas from the Cuarta Estela de Tlaxcala Collective and the CAIN Independent Arts Collective of Puebla, reflect this rebellious and most necessary spirit. As you will see, they are beautiful and inspiring works, based on Zapatista images. We invite you to share these images. Thank you very much.

Here are the graphics:

https://sanmarcosavilesen.wordpress.com/photo-gallery/

From El Barrio, New York:

With love and solidarity,

Movement for Justice in El Barrio

The Other Campaign, New York

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“Worldwide Echo in Support of the Zapatistas”

https://sanmarcosavilesen.wordpress.com/

NEW LETTER FROM GUSTAVO ESTEVA ON THE ANNIVERSARY OF THE ZAPATISTAS

Compañeras and compañeros:

The simple and humble people of El Barrio, New York, greet and embrace you.

At this time and through this letter, we want to share with you some new words written by our brother, the well-known Mexican thinker and activist, Gustavo Esteva, as part of the “Worldwide Echo in Support of the Zapatistas”.

This letter has a very distinct nature, very other, which feels like a rebellious affection, strong, and full of solidarity. As if it came straight from the heart.

In this way, our brother Gustavo gives us a piece of writing full of life and wisdom and truth, answering the questions, “what is Zapatismo?” and “why be in solidarity with Zapatistas?”

As he explains: “one of the most radical positions of the Zapatistas has been to argue that they are, simply, ordinary men and women and therefore are rebels, nonconformists, dreamers”. Being migrants, displaced from our beloved Mexico, these words touched our hearts, and we know that each one of you will find in them your own truth. This is an essential part of the Zapatismo which all of us in this campaign have put into practice.

With memory, with truth, with our many differences, we will continue breaking borders, boundaries, walls, and any other division imposed by those from above, so as to continue building a new world.

With these thoughts, we offer you here the full text of the new letter from Gustavo Esteva. We ask you to disseminate it very widely.

NEW LETTER FROM GUSTAVO ESTEVA ON THE ANNIVERSARY OF THE ZAPATISTAS

The Zapatistas gave us Zapatismo, which now no longer belongs to them.

They gave us hope again, as a social movement, and affirmed for us the value of dignity.

Zapatismo today is a force which travels the world and transforms it. It is always local, and always open to the world, linking all our struggles in coalitions of the discontented and the rebellious.

One of the more radical positions of the Zapatistas has been to argue that they are simply ordinary men and women and therefore are rebels, nonconformists, dreamers. This underscores the fact that Zapatismo is not the work of leaders, vanguards or parties, but of the common people. It is a hugely important political position which still today defines the Zapatistas.

As we celebrate the anniversary of the founding of the Zapatista Army of National Liberation, we must not forget the extraordinary actions of those who created it. It is important, in particular, to highlight a central legacy of Zapatismo: it was from the beginning an intercultural creation which was built through interaction. The Zapatistas have created a community which is always learning and which is continually transformed by linking with others.

At this anniversary celebration, honoring especially the memory of those who lost their lives in this undertaking, we need to emphasize that the Zapatista communities today need our solidarity. At the same time as they are consolidating their achievements, the bad governments are intensifying their actions to undermine their successes, to dismantle their institutions, to block their path. They are increasingly using paramilitary groups which carry out direct attacks, supported by local groups of campesinos, indigenous and non-indigenous, who try to seize the assets of the Zapatista communities and even their land. The repressive actions of the bad governments are passed off as inter-community conflicts.

Comandante Abel, present

Autonomous Municipality of San Pedro de Michoacán, present

Community of Jechvó, present

Unión Hidalgo, present

San Marcos Avilés, present

Moisés Gandhi, present

You are not alone, compañeras, compañeros

We are here.

We celebrate with you your anniversary, your life, your strength, your dignity.

San Pablo Etla, November 2012

Gustavo Esteva

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“Worldwide Echo in Support of the Zapatistas”

https://sanmarcosavilesen.wordpress.com/

NEW LETTER FROM SYLVIA MARCOS: THE BIRTH OF THE ZAPATISTAS

Compañeras and compañeros:

We send you greetings and affectionate embraces from El Barrio, New York.

Movement for Justice in El Barrio are full of enthusiasm to share with you a new statement which has been sent to the campaign “Worldwide Echo in support of the Zapatistas.” This statement comes from the great Mexican feminist and thinker-activist Dr. Sylvia Marcos.

Throughout these almost five months of solidarity struggle and worldwide organization, we have received numerous statements in support of our Zapatista sisters and brothers, from some of the thinkers who are most committed to social movements. Together, these documents provide a host of new ideas, political concepts, and words that give voice to what we know sometimes in our hearts. Together, they reject the lies and distortion of our common realities which are promoted by the media and the spokespeople from above.

As part of the strategy of the campaign, in particular “Walking the True Word”, these dignified words have arrived to protect the memory reflecting on the basic question: “why solidarity with the Zapatistas?”

Following in this vein, with great precision, clarity, and emotion, Dr. Sylvia Marcos gives us some pages full of wisdom, power, and truth. Explaining the reasons why it is urgent for us to give our solidarity to the struggle of the indigenous Zapatistas in Chiapas, it becomes obvious that these ideas have been developing for many years. Concluding the reflection, she leaves us with questions that invite us to answer in the most important way: action.

Without any more words, we leave you with this urgent missive from the compañera Dr. Sylvia Marcos.

Please make them fly.

With love and solidarity,

Movement for Justice in El Barrio
The Other Campaign New York

The birth of the EZLN

Sylvia Marcos

Having accompanied Zapatismo for all this time, before one more of its anniversaries, when many communities of Zapatista support bases are suffering concerted aggressions and attacks, I raise my voice:

I remember my walking throughout these years at the side of the Zapatistas.

I try to imagine the profound creative process that those extraordinary beings went through, those who first committed to meet with the struggles for justice already existing in the Chiapas jungle. No, they did not get the chance to “teach them” how to make the revolution. Neither did they train them in how to seize power by force of arms. They managed to put their previous training aside, the strict frameworks of the theories and practices of struggle which they had learned before arriving. Here with the unsubmissive and rebellious Maya, it was necessary to learn other ways. As Marcos, one of them, said several times, “we realized not only that did they not understand us, but also that their proposal was better.”

As a result of this opening up, the search for justice became more complex, it became peaceful, expressed through Mayan symbols, and Mayan expressions translated into Spanish.

So the struggles were enriched and could embody the unexpected new phenomenon that had surprised the world. This name of this phenomenon, which was and continues to be a reality lived and practiced, a sign that another world is possible, one which you can speak of with hope, is the Zapatista Army of National Liberation (EZLN), in its civil manifestation the Caracoles of autonomous government. It is an army which proposes peaceful resistance, which makes decisions by consensus and horizontally, which has no interest in taking “power”, and which encourages and promotes the participation of women.

Those from above do not understand, because it is a reality which cannot be seen from above. For those who make politics from above, the Zapatista movement is a mass of absurdities, in the best case, an unexplained paradox. These paradoxes are made clear in the eyes of those who see things from below; they are transformed into the best way to understand the profound significance of the Zapatistas. The metaphorical wealth, the deep philosophical symbolism and the Zapatista ceremonies are all strongly rooted in Mayan and Mesoamerican cosmovisions. The Sup is a translator who was able to use his obvious poetic talent in the service of this way of being in the world and its expression in Spanish.

What is really surprising is that these beings, these urban and university based people, when meeting the Maya communities managed to respect, understand and comply with the teachings of an “old Antonio”, for example. They welcomed and incorporated them into their proposal, so entering into a profound relationship in relation to the vision and way of being of the Mesoamerican worlds. They knew how to rid themselves of every trace of discrimination, something that disfigures political speeches on the left, in which the indigenous peoples appear too often as the object of “help”, “development”, “education” and not as what they are, subjects from whom we can learn and who have already opened a new path which has illuminated hope under so many skies of this world.

We know that the paramilitaries are armed with the consent of the three levels of government: federal, state and municipal. So the attacks on the Zapatista support bases raise a crucial question. The attacks are on these, the BAZ who live and thrive in the alternative and autonomous Zapatista civil proposal. Communities such as Comandante Abel, Unión Hidalgo, Guadalupe los Altos, San Marcos Aviles, Moisés Gandhi and also Jechvó. And almost simultaneously they all suffer armed displacement, sexual assault, destruction of their autonomous schools, violent attacks, invasion of their lands and territories.

What are they afraid of to make them deploy such destructive force?

What is the danger from the proposal, the resistance and the survival of the Zapatistas for the prevailing capitalist order?

Is it because they show positively that other forms of life, in justice and dignity, are possible? That the satisfactions of life and the joy of being need not be governed by consumerism and commodification? That we can “live well”, as they say in the Andean communities of South America, with other ways of organization, government and campesino production, in which the best way of living is not the accumulation of material goods, but community solidarity and sharing what there is?

Here I leave my questions, waiting for blunt and honest answers, coming from many corners of the world to explain the destructiveness of these criminal attacks which are also killing our hope.

Sylvia Marcos

November 17, 2012

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“Worldwide Echo in Support of the Zapatistas”

https://sanmarcosavilesen.wordpress.com/

PROTEST HELD AT THE MEXICAN CONSULATE IN FLORENCE, ITALY

Just wanted to inform you of an action we staged today in Florence Italy.

We are a group of PhD students-activists at the European University Institute, called Collettivo Prezzemolo, from different countries of the world.

We decided to do something in support to the Worldwide Echo, so today in the morning we went to the Mexican Consulate in Florence, having our pasamontanas and paliacates, distributed leaflets informing the people on the situation in Mexico and the repression the Zapatista communities are facing, and also prepared a short video-message of solidarity in front of Ponte Vechio, in which each one of us is reading a message of solidarity in her/his own language.

We will send it to you shortly, as soon as we edit it and the subtitles are added.

Saludos rebeldes desde Florencia!

Leonidas

on behalf of

Collettivo Prezzemolo

************

International Campaign:

“Worldwide Echo in Support of the Zapatistas”

https://sanmarcosavilesen.wordpress.com/

“WORLDWIDE ECHO” ON THE OTHER SIDE: IMMIGRANTS PROTEST AGAINST MEXICAN CONSULATE IN NEW YORK

Compañeras y compañeros:
Over two thousand miles away from the border, we extend our warmest greetings on behalf of the immigrant community that lives in El Barrio, New York.

Through this message, we share with you a brief report back on the protest we, the Mexican members of Movement for Justice in El Barrio, The Other Campaign New York, carried out today, as part of the international campaign “Worldwide Campaign in Support of the Zapatistas”

Beneath an overcast sky, which threatened to drop rain, we went to the General Consulate of Mexico this morning, located in Manhattan, New York to contribute another “echo” to that, which across the world, demands justice for the Zapatista communities besieged by the bad government of México, and freedom for Zapatista political prisoner Francisco Sántiz López.

Here, at the Consulate, our name has a bad reputation. We have protested several times over the years to hold the bad government accountable for its crimes and injustices from these distant lands. This explains why the guards attempted to harass and intimidate us immediately upon arrival.

They were, however, unsuccessful.
Amongst their many pointless tactics were threats of calling the police and the fire department to have us removed, since we were “blocking the entrance.” One especially aggressive guard began to inform us that he was an ex-military personnel, but we quickly shut him up by repeating our request, which was that the superior Consul appear and receive our just demands.

The fact is we were not afraid this time just as we were not afraid the previous times we carried out protests in these offices. We did not allow ourselves to be intimidated.

It is our right as displaced immigrants to fight for justice in our beloved Mexico from this side of the border.

As always, there was a huge crowd of other Mexican immigrants that filled the entire space. People like us who must work seemingly unending shifts nearly everyday simple to sustain themselves in this country and send what little remains home to their families and communities. People like us who suffer the forces of sexism, racism, xenophobia, homophobia, and other forms of oppression in the shadow of the center of world capitalist power.

After a while the General Consul, Carlos Sada, appeared and the macho guard went away.

We read him our declaration whereby we issued out demands to the bad government of Mexico to end its war against the autonomous Zapatista communities and immediately release Francisco Sántiz López. As we read, all of our fellow Mexican compas listened to our words and saw our posters, which featured the Francisco Sántiz López and “Worldwide Echo” campaign logos.

Caving in to the pressure, the Consul conceding in delivering our declaration to the federal government of Mexico. Shouting out chants, we left the consulate.

As this Saturday, November 17, marks the end of the second phase “From Truth to Action, Stopping the Repression” of the “Worldwide Echo in Support of the Zapatistas” and the celebration of the birth of the EZLN, we once again invite everyone to join us in “echoing” these demands by carrying out actions in their respective communities.

We know that in this world of “neoliberal globalization” solidarity is not simply an act of backing some other distinct struggle, but rather about supporting us in the immediate sense.

May our small word jump and knock down borders…

Long live the Zapatistas!

With love and solidarity,

Movement for Justice in El Barrio
The Other Campaign New York

***************

International Campaign:

“Worldwide Echo in Support of the Zapatistas”

https://sanmarcosavilesen.wordpress.com/

NEW LETTER FROM RAÚL ZIBECHI

“Zapatismo is indestructible amongst the many from below who fight to continue being, who work every day to build a new and different world… All solidarity with the besieged communities.” – Raúl Zibechi

Compañeras and compañeros:

Receive warm greetings and embraces from Movement for Justice in El Barrio, The Other Campaign New York.

As part of the “Worldwide Echo in Support of the Zapatista” campaign, this entire week we will be sending out very special pronouncements from different corners of the world to celebrate the anniversary of the Zapatistas on November 17^th.

By way of the following, with great pride and enthusiasm, we share a few powerful and important words that has been sent to us by our compañero Raúl Zibechi, who has consistently supported the “Worldwide Echo in Support of the Zapatistas” Campaign since its very beginning.

Against the pessimistic tendencies and ignorant discourses emerging from certain “intellectual” circles which state that Zapatismo no longer exists or is an isolated phenomenon, this new reflection by the renowned Uruguayan thinker-activist and writer strongly enriches the conversation on the urgent situation besieging the Zapatista Support Base communities (BAZ). Beginning with a brief recount on his experience visiting the Francisco Villa Independent Popular Front in Mexico, Zibechi reaffirms the both historic and contemporary importance that our Zapatista compas hold in our movements, communities, and in the world at large. Our compa Zibechi explains that these problematic ideas arise, in part, from the point of view of those that see “from above.”

Meanwhile, those of us from below continue to demonstrate that Zapatismo remains fully alive, particularly during these moments when the bad governments and their lackeys are intensifying their acts of repression and violence against the Zapatista communities. The following letter by Raúl Zibechi gives voice to this clear truth and encouragement to our hearts. As he concludes his note, “May all the hearts beat together, intoning the mutual support between those from below, celebrating the twinning of all the struggles, of all the “other” worlds.”

Here is the latest letter by Raúl Zibechi in its entirety:

A New Dawn

To the compañeros and compañeras of the Zapatista communities under siege from the repression and the paramilitaries.

A few days ago I returned from Mexico. Unlike other trips, this time I concentrated on the Federal District, where I was able to visit urban communities such as Acapatzingo, of the Independent Popular Front Francisco Villa (FPFVI). To my surprise, in this urban space, where 596 families live, we can see functioning a kind of popular power, or whatever we choose to call that form of community life where decisions are taken by everyone, and neither the government nor its armed units are in charge.

During those days the compas started a seminar on capitalism, socialism and autonomy, with great participation from their neighbours, especially the women, young women with children, women workers and activists, and a handful of men. We shared breakfast and lunch, conversations and spaces such as the nursery (which is fighting for food autonomy), the community radio, and spaces for children, young people and elders. In a short time they will have buildings for the secondary school and the health clinic. I must say that this is one of the most powerful urban other worlds that I am aware of in Latin America, with high levels of organization, awareness and participation. I am not saying that it is the only one, but I can assure you is one of the most consistent I know about. Somehow, it is a kind of urban caracol. I feel that it belongs to the same type of construction as Zapatismo in Chiapas, beyond all the differences and particularities.

In the days I spent in Mexico City, I was struck by the prevalence (among the urban middle classes, the analysts of above and much of the institutional left) of political positions which affirm (using these words more or less) that “Zapatismo is now isolated in Chiapas and no longer exerts any influence on Mexican society”. Some even believe that Zapatistmo no longer exists, while others believe that it has lost all validity. Who has not heard this discourse in recent years!

The urban community of Acapatzingo is the best proof that these ideas are deeply mistaken. Those who think this way do not see beyond the moment, usually the electoral moment. They tend to give political value to whatever attracts votes and media attention. They do not hear the heartbeats of the different belows, those who struggle in Cherán and in Huesca, to name just a couple of examples among those they could listen to and learn from.

There is another typically leftist and intellectual trend, as petty as the previous one, which considers that Zapatismo is the communiqués of the EZLN (even better if they are signed by Subcomandante Marcos), which focuses the Zapatista movement on the acts and public appearances of the comandantes, and little else. In this field of vision the caracoles and good government juntas scarcely appear. Even less the communities. The common people, those who really make history, are just a distant reference, a note at the foot of the page, a nebulous photo serving as a backdrop to the leaders. This view from above is the one which believes that Zapatismo has lost its validity.

This is why, in these days when dozens of communities and support bases are being attacked, as has happened to the compañeros of Unión Hidalgo, Comandante Abel, Guadalupe los Altos, San Marcos Avilés, Jechvó and Moisés Gandhi, almost no news or analysis is heard about these new military offensives against those from below. Hundreds of families are being besieged by paramilitary groups, with the unconcealed aim of putting an end to one of the most remarkable examples in the world of the power of those from below.

They will not succeed. Due the strength of the communities which have sustained for decades their project of life, despite repression, death, hunger and isolation.

They will not succeed, because Zapatismo is the seed which grew from the Ya Basta of January 1, 1994. Because it was rooted in the hearts of millions in the March of the Colour of the Earth and it returned stubbornly to fight for life with the Other Campaign.

Zapatismo is indestructible among the many from below who struggle to continue to exist, working every day to build a new and different world.

All solidarity with the besieged communities.

Let every heart beat together, chanting mutual support among those from below, celebrating the joining of all the struggles, of all the other worlds.

Raúl Zibechi

Montevideo, November 5 2012

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“WALKING THE TRUE WORD AROUND THE WORLD”:

State Violence, Global Solidarity, and a New Campaign to Support the Zapatistas

Originally published in English by Upside Down World: http://upsidedownworld.org/main/mexico-archives-79/3935-walking-the-true-word-around-the-world-state-violence-global-solidarity-and-a-new-campaign-to-support-the-zapatistas

The role of the “True Word” in the “Worldwide Echo in Support of the Zapatistas” Campaign to liberate Zapatista political prisoners and bolster the self-defence of the Zapatista base communities under siege…

“They say they will eat our flesh”

At the beginning of September a large number of political party members in paramilitary-style groups, carrying high-calibre firearms, invaded the Zapatista communities of Comandante Abel and Unión Hidalgo, firing shots. Their goal was to displace the Zapatista support base members (BAZ) from the community, and seize their land. This was not the first assault. In fact, there had been so many attacks that the Zapatistas had given their original community of San Patricio to “our indigenous brothers and sisters”, and set up the new community of Comandante Abel, again on their own land, in hopes of finding peace to live their lives, produce their food, and bring up their children.

The latest attack forced community members to flee, terrified, in all directions and many ended up lost on the mountain. As they recount, “We hid under trees, vines, rocks, and went to the woods and the mountains, for fear of the bullets. We spent two nights in the cold and rain”. “They chased us with bullets, and when we arrived in this place we were already sick. We did not follow the path, but went through the canyon. I felt like there was a jaguar after me, I was lost and terrified, I felt as if I was no longer in the world”. Eventually they emerged, traumatised, sick and hungry; to this day 83 BAZ from Comandante Abel and Unión Hidalgo remain displaced, taking refuge in other communities, while their attackers are occupying their lands, guarded by a new police encampment.

A woman, reflecting on the night she and her child spent in a cave high in the mountains, offers words describing what has become a ceaseless horror. Unable to take her eyes off her 3-month-old child, she recounts “Fear passes into the milk”, she explained. “My daughter has a fever, and refuses my breast”.

Alongside the destruction of crops and livestock, the BAZ of Comandante Abel describe a chilling scene:

“Through a loudspeaker the paramilitaries are announcing, day and night, that they are going to ‘eat’ us, because we are outlaws, we are beyond the reach of justice and the law”. “If the paramilitaries do not succeed in taking over Comandante Abel community, they say that they are going to massacre us.” “The government buys people, and then persuades them to take our land. It is their policy of war and attrition to make us surrender. We will not stop our struggle and we are not going to give up,” says one of the compas, to applause from the others.

Background

The twin stories of Comandante Abel and Unión Hidalgo are one of many in the almost nineteen year history of counterinsurgency warfare employed by the Mexican state against the Zapatista base communities in their dignified path towards autonomy, and towards that better, more free and just world which they represent, and which gives inspiration to so many. The campaign of attrition is just one aspect of this on-going plan to annihilate the Zapatista movement. Since the elections in July, there has been a very alarming increase in this type of attack.

San Marcos Avilés

Earlier this year, another BAZ community, in a different part of Chiapas, sent out a call for help. Two years ago, 170 BAZ from San Marcos Avilés were displaced by an attack group of local political party members with firearms also supplied by the local police station. Although they managed to return after a month, since that time they have lived under siege, with their land, homes, crops, livestock and possessions stolen or destroyed, enduring a constant nightmare of terror, threats and violence. They asked for help because the tension was rising, and they feared another attack at any time, and because “they should not think that they will stop the struggle of the Zapatistas for the construction of our autonomy and for national liberation with provocation, threats, assaults and persecution, because whatever the cost, and whatever happens, we will continue to go forward, as is our right”.

The Echo Campaign

The Movement for Justice in El Barrio, the Other Campaign New York, rapidly responded to this cry for help and launched, in July 2012, the “Worldwide Echo in Support of the Zapatistas” campaign with an international call to action. The first phase of this campaign, one of collecting and disseminating information, was, most appropriately for the Zapatistas, for whom the word has been their most successful weapon, called “Walking the True Word”. Hence, it was clear from the beginning that words would be an integral part of this Campaign.

As they relay in an early campaign update, “Day after day, solidarity actions and activities are being carried out in communities, neighbourhoods, towns, and villages in many corners of the world. In order to disseminate the histories and realities which our Zapatista compas are suffering, dignified people from many countries have been working on getting the word out and building networks of support and solidarity to contribute positively to the defence of the EZLN Support Base communities … and the struggle to free Francisco Sántiz Lopez.

We can see that, in this way, we are consolidating our forces and exposing the lies coming out of the mouth of the bad government of Mexico, in order to take concrete action in defence of that other possible world which the Zapatista communities have been building through their project of autonomy.”

The MJB have a long and successful history of organising this type of campaign, including having worked on campaigns regarding San Salvador Atenco and San Sebastián Bachajón, and of using the power of the word to raise consciences and inspire rage: “The rage that burns our veins is the force that is given to us to keep fighting. We share a piece of ours with every one of you.”

The Campaign is known as Echo, “because the Zapatistas’ humanizing cry of dignity, their ENOUGH!, has affected all of us who fight for justice from around the world, from our respective trenches of struggle, and has connected very distinct and similar struggles alike… Because this very cry has dwelled in our hearts alongside hope and happiness… We shall let it resound in our echo by adding our voice, our countenance, to ensure that it is heard more profoundly… As if it were said in the very language of our being…”

The video messages

Along with a multilingual website packed with information and other resources, such as an “organising toolkit” of photographs, posters, and fliers, in ten languages, the Campaign’s strongest tool is undoubtedly the video message. The message from the BAZ of San Marcos Aviles, especially from the women whose distress is palpable, contains a raw power to shock and move the strongest audience.

The “Videomensaje de l@s Zapatistas de San Marcos Avilés”, which has now been seen by over 37,000 people on YouTube alone, really kick-started the Campaign. Another video, from the Good Government Junta of Oventic, demonstrates the innocence of the iconic Zapatista prisoner, Francisco Sántiz López, in prison since December 2011 for a crime for which he has been proven innocent.

On the heels of the release of the San Marcos Avilés video message, “Committees of the True Word” (the organic organising cells of the campaign) were being set up not only in Mexico, but in over 22 countries from Chile to Australia, including countries not traditionally involved in this type of campaign, such as Turkey, Panama, Ecuador, India, Uruguay, Portugal, South Africa and Canada. These groups got busy organising public forums, film screenings, distributing informative fliers and pamphlets, publishing articles, reflections, and denouncements, doing translations, holding social media initiatives, art workshops, children’s events, and many others. A Worldwide Declaration in support of the Zapatistas was launched from the United Kingdom.

Soon, well-known intellectuals and activists added their voice. From Peru, the renowned fighter for social justice and editor of Lucha Indígena, Hugo Blanco, sent a beautiful piece entitled “To those who search for a free world”, in which he emphasised: “These attacks, and the continued detention of Francisco Sántiz López, are the spearhead of the attack to crush the zone liberated from neoliberalism, where the people govern themselves through the Good Government Juntas. This is seen as the great enemy by the transnational corporations (the 1% of humanity that crushes the 99%), as they are a living example of the fact that Another World is Possible, A World where Many Worlds Fit….It is in the direct interests of humanity to defend the island of freedom that is the Zapatista area”.

As more informative events were held in places like Germany, Colombia, England and Brazil, news came in of another community under attack – Moisés Gandhi, where, throughout August, the BAZ suffered violent attacks and threats of forced displacement by a group of armed “coyotes” called the Regional Coffee Growers Organization of Ocosingo (Orcao).

The MJB reported on another significant development in the campaign, how it has been able to attract people not previously involved with the Zapatistas:

“Since the beginning of the “Worldwide Echo” campaign, the dignified and courageous story of our compañer@s has been a source of profound inspiration and transformation. Forcing us to recognize our own humanity and interconnectedness in this world, the pain and resilience of our Zapatista compas continue to inspire and move people of all walks of life to join the struggle to support them.

Although our campaign is indeed made up of many long-time supporters and seasoned social justice veterans, the moving story of the BAZ communities has been so powerful that it has also motivated people with limited exposure to social justice struggles and literally no prior knowledge of the Zapatistas.

This is the power of the true word. It enables us to continue building and strengthening our local and global struggles by reaching out to new people of good hearts to join forces and transform our world.”

Overwhelming interest in the Campaign, along with an increase in repression, led by popular demand to its first phase being extended until 12^th October, Day of Indigenous Resistance.

More messages of support for the second phase

As the True Word continued to walk, more and more words joined it on its journey, continuing to inspire others to join the struggle.

From Uruguay, the thinker and activist Raúl Zibechi sent a letter, saying “Those from above have declared a war on the Zapatista communities, aimed at eliminating all resistance at a time when capital is unleashing hunger and misery upon those from below in order to increase and protect its gigantic profits. To safeguard their continued accumulation of wealth, it is necessary to wipe from the face of the earth all obstacles, every kind of resistance. What the media and the “experts” call crisis, is actually part of this offensive to remove from the scene the peoples and the individuals who refuse to give way….

It is not a coincidence that the Zapatista communities are being repressed. They have shown millions, throughout the whole world, a path of resistance and construction that is multiplying in the most remote places. For those from above, destroying the Zapatista movement would be a double victory: against the peoples and communities of Chiapas and against all those in the world who find inspiration in their example. It would mean bringing down a dream made flesh, like the one we can see in the Good Government Junta of Oventic, and in so many other places. For all these reasons, solidarity is as essential as it is urgent.”

One of Mexico’s most celebrated scholars, activist Gustavo Esteva, issued his own contribution entitled “The Time for Resistance and Solidarity”:

“The demons are on the loose. The war is everywhere. But so too is solidarity—that decision to be together in this common struggle that no longer respects territories. In each place it is different. But everywhere the same phenomenon is reproduced: the people affirm their dignity and say ‘enough!’, and they take their path, and the response from above is intimidation, aggression, corruption, continuous war…

It is urgent to show ourselves on the side of our compañeros…..The threat is immediate. We, the Committees of the True Word, must make ourselves known in every way that we can, so that the strength of our solidarity may be seen. It is the time for resistance. And to resist is to struggle in common, together, in the embrace of solidarity.”

Likewise, the great Mexican feminist Sylvia Marcos sent a message to the Zapatista women:

“We can glimpse the daily and painful struggles which are facing our Zapatista compañeras and we join together with them. We demand an end to the acts of aggression from the enemies of this educational, social and political Zapatista project which gives hope, especially to women, who see in the Zapatista women the model of being a woman who defends her rights without forgetting to support the collective rights of her people.

You must know, Zapatistas compañeras, that your project is the hope and the light on the road to the construction of an “other” world, where it can become a reality that “we are equal because we are different”, as you yourselves have said”.

It was now that the urgent news about the forced displacement of the BAZ of Comandante Abel and Unión Hidalgo arrived, and the efforts of the campaign intensified. The world-renowned writer, linguist, and political commentator, Noam Chomsky, wrote “I would like to join in support of the campaign “Worldwide Echo in Support of the Zapatistas,” and of all of those who are standing up courageously to oppose the repression, and who are calling for justice and freedom for the endangered communities and individuals subjected to persecution and serious threats.”

“Injustice anywhere is injustice everywhere”

A powerful new video message was delivered to the Campaign from South Africa’s largest grassroots movement, Abahlali baseMjondolo (the Shack Dwellers Movement), sending heartfelt messages of hope and solidarity to the Zapatistas under attack. In this message, also available on YouTube, two young organizers state: “The government wants to create fear in the community. You must be strong…. Injustice anywhere is injustice everywhere. Your struggle is our struggle”.

Statements of support came in from numerous other organisations including the UK-based National Campaign against Fees & Cuts and the women of Filipinas for Rights and Empowerment (FiRE) – GABRIELA USA in New York City.

As the launch of the second phase of the Echo Campaign, “From Truth to Action, Stopping the Repression”, was being prepared, the dreaded news came in that another community was being attacked. Six BAZ from the ejido Guadalupe los Altos had been arrested under absurd charges made by the ejidal authorities of Guadalupe los Altos in collusion with the local organization CIOAC HISTORICA. It was clear that the Campaign was needed more than ever and intensive efforts were put in to making sure that up-to-date information was available.

On October 12^th Phase 2 was launched and the Worldwide Declaration, signed by organisations and individuals from 24 countries, was released. Messages of support continued to pour in as more and more people joined the campaign and prepared actions all over the world.

The words of the Second Call to Action, issued for the second phase of the Campaign “Worldwide Echo in Support of the Zapatistas”, explain the significance of the Word to the Campaign:

“To prevent us from joining hands and rising from this darkness, those from above have committed to douse out all the lights radiating from dignified people. This is why they are deploying their strategies of violence and destruction, and are attacking, imprisoning, repressing, assaulting, violating, robbing, silencing, and lying to us.

“This is also why those from above, the creators of this long night, have chosen as their main target the indigenous peoples of the world, who have made significant contributions to the struggle against the darkness.

“Faced with this threat of planetary extinction, we must mobilize urgently to defend each and every light that illuminates our path towards the construction of another possible world. And as the True Word was and is the first form of light, it is vital that we defend those words which Old Antonio tells us were the first three in every language: ‘democracy, freedom, justice’.

“It is no coincidence that these three words cannot be found in the governments, jails, schools, mass media, or the other institutions serving the privileges of those from above. Nor is it a coincidence that these same three words are alive… among the dignified people from below, especially the indigenous people of Mexico and the world. While those from above continue to attack and destroy these lights, we will continue to defend and create more lights, more solutions, more worlds.

Even though those from above are using the lies which give the night its darkness to keep us divided, in our hearts we carry that which makes the light shine…This is called truth.”

They conclude:

“If those from above believe that they can continue waging their violent war against our Zapatista sisters and brothers without repercussions, they are deeply mistaken. This time around, the dignified peoples of the world will have their say.”

FOR MORE INFORMATION:

The Echo Campaign:

https://sanmarcosavilesen.wordpress.com

http://sanmarcosaviles.wordpress.com/2nda-convocatoria/

Video message from the Zapatistas of San Marcos Avilés:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rY-8CBt3Vkg

Video message from the JBG of Oventic about Francisco Sántiz López:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NXuVyJ5YdfA

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“From Essex, England……” new videomessage of solidarity with the Zapatistas

Sisters and brothers:

We send loving embraces and greetings from Movement for Justice in El Barrio, The Other Campaign New York. Today finds us with joy and hope in our hearts after receiving the following news:

From the Zapatista Solidarity Group of Essex, UK, and as part of our international campaign, comes a new video message of support for the Zapatista communities besieged by the bad government of Mexico. In this beautiful post, with images and visions of Essex, the compas send greetings to the Zapatista communities and demand that the bad government of Mexico stop the war of repression against them. With posters of the campaign “Worldwide Echo in Support of the Zapatistas” in their hands, and anger in their hearts, this message ends with recordings of a demonstration where our compas from Essex are shouting the slogan, “ZAPATA LIVES! THE STRUGGLE CONTINUES!”

This clearly shows that the organizational efforts of the campaign continue to expand and take root in many parts of the world. We wish to share widely this beautiful greeting of rage, dignity, and hope that we have been given by the Zapatista Solidarity Group of Essex.

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“Eco Mundial en Apoyo a l@s Zapatistas”

International Campaign:

“Worldwide Echo in Support of the Zapatistas”

https://sanmarcosavilesen.wordpress.com/

“Zapata Vive” echoed in front of the Mexican embassy in Great Britain

Photos of protest here:

https://sanmarcosavilesen.wordpress.com/photo-gallery/

With chants “Zapata vive, la lucha sigue!” and “El pueblo unido jamás será vencido!” a group of supporters of the Zapatistas gathered to protest in front of the Mexican embassy against the repressions on the communities in resistance carried out in the last few months. The protesters demanded end of the attacks and release of the political prisoners jailed by the Bad Government.

Petar Stanchev, from the Zapatista Solidarity Group – Essex, said “we are here for the light of tomorrow, for a world in which many worlds fit, for a world where capitalism doesn’t threaten us with complete destruction and being indigenous, homosexual, migrant or woman is not a crime”.

The protest was part of the global campaign “Worldwide Echo in Support of the Zapatistas”. In addition, numerous solidarity groups from London such as the Tawantinsuyo Nation group and the Yosoy132 London group took part in the demonstration in support of the recently attacked Zapatista communities. Alberto, from the Yosoy132 reminded us of Subcomandante Marcos words on the indigenous struggle and the recognition of the Other as an equal. Amaru from Tawantinsuyo Nation spoke about the importance of our indigenous roots and identity in the struggle for world recognition and economic redistribution, as well as the liberation from our colonized mentalities and the eurocentric ideas that we have about the justice.

The Worldwide Declaration, signed by hundreds of Zapatista supporters was handed to the embassy with a clear message condemning the paramilitary attacks and the government that stays behind them.

In the last few months a violent campaign of several paramilitary groups, backed by the Mexican state resulted in attacking, threatening and intimidating peaceful Zapatista communities. Meanwhile, the state itself continued the policy of holding political prisoners and caged with fake allegations new compañeros whose only guilt is rejecting the neoliberal system of oppression, poverty and exploitation and creating an alternative to it.

Photos of protest here:

https://sanmarcosavilesen.wordpress.com/photo-gallery/

Video message from the Zapatista Solidarity Group – Essex here:

https://sanmarcosavilesen.wordpress.com/worldwide-campaign/

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“

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International Campaign:

“Worldwide Echo in Support of the Zapatistas”

https://sanmarcosavilesen.wordpress.com/

Report on the latest activities of the Committee of the True Word of South-West England.

The new Comité’s latest event was a 5 day programme of films, talks, slideshows, workshops and presentations, always followed by discussion, centring on the theme of the Echo Campaign and the latest attacks on the Zapatista communities, but also extending into other related areas. These included indigenous resistance, the Maya today, the Lacandón, the vital importance of the land, land grabs, gentrification and displacement, the destruction of indigenous lands for resource exploitation, Mother Earth, organic local food production and many others.

The aim of the event was to raise awareness of the Zapatista struggle among people who previously knew little or nothing about it, and in this the event was extremely successful. The films and talks were very well-attended, with many people coming for the whole 5 days, and each day the discussion related to how all the themes were related, and came back to the fact that all our struggles are linked and how we must join together, the essential importance of community, the need to save the planet and return to indigenous values, and the continued centrality of the Zapatista movement.

The film that provoked by far the strongest response was the videomessage from the Zapatistas of San Marcos Avilés, which stunned the audience in the same way it has every time the group has shown it. “You cannot show us this film without telling us what we can do about it” was the response, and the Comité made good use of the resources from the Echo Campaign website, www.sanmarcosaviles.wordpress.com , distributing in particular copies of the information sheet “what you can do”. While several people asked specifically for the email address to contact, laotranuevayork@yahoo.com , many of the participants have no access to the internet, and preferred to join the Comité.

Some of the attendees chose a quote from the week to summarise their learning experience: “you can never be free if someone else is growing your food”, “your struggle is our struggle”, “hope is like a biscuit, it’s no good unless it’s inside you”, “the roots of all living things are tied together”, “we need co-operation not competition”, “no one should own more land than they can cultivate, no one should own more homes than they can live in”, “when a tree is felled, a star falls from the sky”, “let our dignity take root again and breed another world”.

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MUCH MORE INFORMATION ON WORLDWIDE EVENTS RELATING TO THE ECHO CAMPAIGN CAN BE FOUND IN SPANISH here: http://sanmarcosaviles.wordpress.com/campana-mundial/

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STATEMENT ABOUT THE BAZ OF EJIDO GUADALUPE LOS ALTOS

From Movement for Justice in El Barrio, the Other Campaign New York

Sisters and brothers:

The recent public denunciation from the Good Government Junta “Towards Hope” of La Realidad Trinidad is deeply disturbing while, at the same time, indicative.

These words of our Zapatista sisters and brothers arrived on the evening before the second stage of the “Worldwide Echo”, when dignified rebel hearts from more than 22 countries were preparing to undertake protest actions against the bad government of Mexico, the main “mastermind” – explains the Junta – of this prolonged violence.

With these acts of provocation, in search of even more violence and aggression, the bad government and its local coyotes reveal the depth of their cruel shared stupidity.

From this denunciation we learn, and we repeat, the following facts:

1. As we write these words, six compañeros BAZ have spent weeks in prison on absurd charges made by the ejidal authorities of Guadalupe los Altos, together with the local organization CIOAC HISTORIC: Five of these compañeros were detained on September 30, the last on 4 October.

2. After several attempts in good faith on the part of the Good Government Junta “Towards Hope” to resolve the situation peacefully, the ejidal authorities and leading members of the group CIOAC HISTORIC continue to deprive of their liberty and, at the same time, violate the human rights of our prisoner compañeros: Cesar Aguilar Jiménez, Armando Aguilar Santis, Genaro Aguilar Santis, Delmar Aguilar Santis, Misael Aguilar Vásquez, y Hipólito Aguilar Vásquez.

3. This unjust imprisonment – along with the physical attacks faced by other BAZ communities – is part of the plan of “divide and conquer”, with which the three levels of bad government of Mexico, through provocations and conflicts between communities, continue writing and articulating repression against the Zapatista movement.

This also reveals the true nature of the counterinsurgency war of the bad government, and reminds us that what perhaps may seem like isolated or hostile acts should in reality be seen as a matrix of continual violence directed against the Zapatista resistance and their progress in the construction of autonomy based on dignity, justice, self-determination, and indigenous knowledge. Power always looks after itself.

From El Barrio, New York, we strongly denounce all past, present, and future acts of aggression, violence, provocation and repression against the EZLN support base communities (BAZ). Since the second stage of the International Campaign “Worldwide Echo in Support of the Zapatistas” begins today, we commit ourselves once more to continue to struggle through concrete forms of solidarity to stop this repression and support our Zapatista compañer@s. We invite all other dignified rebel hearts who have been, and will be, born in our Mother Earth, to add their voices and strength to continue building this mirror of dignity for ourselves, others, and everyone, which is called “solidarity.”

The rage that burns our veins is the force that is given to us to keep fighting. We share a piece of ours with every one of you.

Long live Indigenous Resistance!

Long live the EZLN!

RESPECTFULLY:

MOVEMENT FOR JUSTICE IN EL BARRIO

THE OTHER CAMPAIGN NEW YORK

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International Campaign:

“Worldwide Echo in Support of the Zapatistas”

https://sanmarcosavilesen.wordpress.com/

Numerous Groups of the #YoSoy132 Movement Issue Public Support
for the “Worldwide Echo in Support of the Zapatistas” Campaign

Compañeras and compañeros:

Receive warm greetings and embraces on behalf of Movement for Justice in El Barrio, The Other Campaign New York. We are writing to share with you the latest news on our worldwide campaign:

Day after day new voices join our efforts to express their rage at the acts of repression meted out against the Zapatista communities by the bad government of Mexico—motivated by the realization that our struggles, though distinct, are rooted in the same soil and confront the same enemy.

That said, we wish to announce that various groups, and assemblies of Yo Soy 132 have received the call issued by our Zapatista compas, and have thereby joined the “Worldwide Echo in Support of the Zapatistas” Campaign. In this way, these national and international collectives of Yo Soy 132 have taken on our dignified demands of freedom for Francisco Sántiz López and justice for the Zapatista Support Bases who are presently under siege by forces of the repressive government of Mexico.

In the words of the Yo Soy 132 collective from the northern Mexican state of Chihuahua:

“The Zapatistas are not alone, we are with them; the struggle for a better México belongs to everyone… We have become tired of the current situation of our indigenous brothers and sisters of Mexico, and for this reason, we have decided to stand in solidarity and raise our voice in their support… With this we also say “enough of so much injustice!” that the Government has created since the Zapatista uprising; we know that once we disturb the government, we must struggle constantly to resist.”

Solidarity is our principal tool to continue building our organizing networks based on mutual support, and to continue the work of bringing down the border walls, at the local, national, and global levels, which those from above impose upon us to keep us divided. It is, in sum, clear that we shall continue building internally and externally to support the Zapatista resistance.

That being said, compas, the following is the list of the cells, groups, and assemblies of Yo Soy 132 that have joined the “Worldwide Echo in Support of the Zapatistas” Campaign:

Yo Soy 132 of Campeche, assemblies of: San Fco. de Campeche, Cd. del Carmen, Escárcega and Camino Real.

Yo Soy 132 Chihuahua, Chihuahua

Yo Soy 132 Wuppertal, Germany

Yo Soy 132 Barcelona, Spain

Yo Soy 132 Chile

Yo Soy 132 – Montreal, Canada

Yo Soy 132 – Munich, Germany

Yo Soy 132 – London, England

Yo Soy 132 – Chicago, USA

Indigenous Languages Circulation Group of #Yo Soy 132

From El Barrio, New York…

Movement for Justice in El Barrio

The Other Campaign New York

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CITIES OF THE WORLD MAKE A “WORLDWIDE ECHO IN SUPPORT OF THE ZAPATISTAS” ON THE DAY OF INDIGENOUS RESISTANCE

** Encouraging protests at, and a siege of, Mexican embassies

** In London a demand for the freedom of Francisco Sántiz López is delivered

By: Hermann Bellinghausen

San Cristóbal de las Casas, Chiapas, October 13, 2012

In the heat of the commemorations of the Day of Indigenous Resistance (which is usually called “Día de la Raza” or of the “Discovery” of America, terms now discredited), in a large number of the world’s cities a new stage of actions “From truth to Action, stopping the Repression” begins, as part of the “Worldwide Echo in support of the Zapatistas” campaign, which for months has promoted protests, solidarity actions and a siege of our country’s diplomatic seats, in defence of the Zapatista communities attacked by paramilitaries and members of political parties in the state’s indigenous regions.

In London, activists delivered a pronouncement to the Mexican Embassy signed by dozens of collectives and social organizations of Germany, Argentina, Canada, Spanish State (Catalonia, Castile, Basque Country), Great Britain, Chile, the United States, France, Greece, Italy, Guatemala, New Zealand, as well as the International Secretariat of the Tribunal of Conscience of the Peoples in Movement.

Meanwhile, in recent weeks solidarity committees have been formed with Zapatista communities and their political prisoners and those of the Other Campaign in places as dissimilar as Colombia, India (Calcutta), Brazil (Río Grande do Sul), South Africa (Johannesburg), the United Kingdom (Dorset, Bristol, London, Edinburgh) and the United States (Portland and New York). #YoSoy132 groups in Chihuahua, Puebla, the Federal District and other states of the country have also been added.

In New York, the Movement for Justice in El Barrio sent a declaration of support to the Zapatista communities under attack: Comandante Abel, San Marcos Avilés, Guadalupe Los Altos, Moisés Gandhi and Unión Hidalgo.

The declaration delivered in London, which will also be taken to Mexican offices in other countries, demands the immediate freedom of Francisco Sántiz López, Zapatista support base from Tenejapa, imprisoned “due to a flagrant abuse of justice” nine months ago. And it states “We see with deep concern, and demand an immediate end to, the prolonged acts of aggression and intimidation, and the human rights abuses that are being committed against the Zapatista support bases in San Marcos Avilés community (Chilón)”.

They emphasize “the grave new threats” made against this community in recent days by representatives of the political parties (PVEM, PRI, PRD). “The most worrisome include open and brazen threats of displacement and physical violence, just like the climate of hostility which they promote.”

With respect to Francisco Sántiz López, Zapatista support base from Tenejapa detained in December 2011 under false accusations, those signing support “the evidence collected by the Fray Bartolomé de Las Casas Human Rights Centre and recounted by various witnesses”, to the effect that he was never present in Banavil on December 4, 2011, during some violent acts that produced two unexplained deaths. “His false imprisonment and the refusal of the local authorities to examine this evidence indicate that the judicial system in Chiapas is “wielded as a tool of political repression against those who struggle for justice”.

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Originally Published in Spanish by La Jornada

Sunday, October 14, 2012

En español: http://www.jornada.unam.mx/2012/10/14/politica/017n1pol

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International Campaign: “Worldwide Echo in Support of the Zapatistas”

https://sanmarcosavilesen.wordpress.com/

PROTEST AT THE MEXICAN EMBASSY IN LONDON

WORLDWIDE DECLARATION DELIVERED

Today, being the first day of the second phase, “From Truth to Action, Stopping the Repression”, of the “Worldwide Echo in Support of the Zapatistas” campaign, and also the Day of Indigenous Resistance, a protest was organised at the Mexican Embassy in London, England, by activists from Bristol and Dorset, against the attacks by the bad government of Mexico against the Zapatista communities. News had just broken of a new attack on the community of Guadalupe los Altos, and the imprisonment of 6 Zapatistas.

The following document was delivered to the Embassy:

THE WORLDWIDE DECLARATION IN SUPPORT OF THE ZAPATISTAS

The UK Zapatista Solidarity Network, representing groups, individuals and collectives from throughout the United Kingdom, hereby send this message to accompany our presentation of the ‘Worldwide Declaration in support of the Zapatistas of Chiapas, Mexico’ to the Embassy of Mexico in London, England.

We are delivering the Declaration today, Friday 12^th October, 2012, because it is the Day of Indigenous Resistance, and marks the 520^th anniversary of the arrival of Christopher Columbus in the Americas, and the start of the colonial endeavour to destroy the indigenous peoples of these lands. This date also marks the beginning of the second phase of the ‘Worldwide Echo in Support of the Zapatistas’ campaign.

The Declaration has been signed by 112 organisations and 162 individuals from 24 different countries, all of whom are shocked and appalled at the blatant acts of violence, abuse, intimidation, harassment and attrition currently being directed against the Zapatista support base communities in Chiapas, Mexico, in violation of theirinalienable right to autonomy as indigenous peoples, as enshrined in the internationally recognized ILO Convention No. 169 and the UN Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples, both of which the government of Mexico has signed.

Since this Declaration was issued in July 2012, there has been an alarming escalation in acts of aggression against Zapatista communities, and 83 members of two villages remain displaced more than five weeks after being attacked by paramilitary groups with firearms, openly supported by the local authorities and police force.

We wish to reiterate our horror and dismay that a government which seeks to portray itself as a model of liberty and justice could openly support such hostilities against its own indigenous people.

WORLDWIDE DECLARATION DEMANDING JUSTICE FOR THE ZAPATISTA COMMUNITIES AND FREEDOM FOR FRANCISCO SÁNTIZ LÓPEZ

We view with profound concern, and demand an immediate end to, the continued acts of intimidation and aggression and the human rights abuses being committed against members of the Zapatista support base community in San Marcos Avilés, official municipality of Chilón, Chiapas, Mexico. We also call for the immediate liberation of the Zapatista political prisoner Francisco Sántiz López, who has been jailed since December 2011 in a flagrant abuse of justice.

Responding to the numerous denouncements and calls issued by the Zapatista Good Government Junta of Oventic and the community of San Marcos Avilés, we manifest in this declaration our solidarity with our brothers and sisters there, as well as with Francisco Sántiz López.

We are aware of the very serious new threats being made against the community of San Marcos Avilés by representatives of political parties in the area. Of particular concern are the open and blatant threats of displacement, physical violence, and the on-going climate of hostility promoted by these individuals. We consider such reprehensible aggression to be extremely serious in light of the events of September 2010, when vigilantes from the Green Ecological Party of Mexico (PVEM), the Institutional Revolutionary Party (PRI) and Party of the Democratic Revolution (PRD), led by Lorenzo Ruiz Gómez and Vicente Ruiz López, attacked Zapatista support bases, displacing 170 people and destroying their property and crops.

In relation to the case of Francisco Sántiz López, a Zapatista support base from the Banavil ejido of Tenejapa, who was originally detained in December 2011 under false charges of having orchestrated a conflict in Banavil, we affirm the evidence collected by the Fray Bartolomé de Las Casas Human Rights Centre and recounted by several witnesses, that he indeed was not present at the location where the events took place on 4th December 2011. His false imprisonment and the continued refusal of local authorities to examine this evidence are, in our view, further indication that the judicial system in Chiapas is wielded as tool of political repression against those who struggle for justice.

In respect to current events in San Marcos Avilés, we demand:

· An immediate end to all death threats, verbal and physical harassment, and threats against the property and well-being of the Zapatista Support Base members by elements of the political parties in the San Marcos Avilés ejido

· Protection for the life and safety of the Zapatista support base members of San Marcos Avilés

· Respect for the Zapatista Support Base community’s inalienable right to autonomy as indigenous peoples, as enshrined in the internationally recognized ILO Convention No. 169 and the UN Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples, both of which the government of Mexico has signed

In respect of the case of Zapatista support base Francisco Sántiz López, we demand his immediate and unconditional release, as well as a swift investigation and prosecution of the perpetrators of violence in Banavil, Tenejapa Municipality, Chiapas.

To our brothers and sisters suffering injustice and violence in Chiapas, we remind you that your struggle is not carried out in silence, nor is it invisible. Indeed, countless individuals, organizations, and communities from around the world remain vigilant regarding your situation and have joined an international campaign in solidarity with your struggle. For our part, from cities across the world we send you a warm embrace, to let you know that we know who you are and what you are fighting for, and to say that we will do whatever we can to support you. We will all continue to make an echo of your just demands, an echo that resonates with the collective heartbeat of the earth.

Signed:

To view the full list of signatures, please click here: https://sanmarcosavilesen.wordpress.com/worldwide-declaration/

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International Campaign:

“Worldwide Echo in Support of the Zapatistas”

https://sanmarcosavilesen.wordpress.com/

From the South West England Committee of the True Word

The comité is alarmed and distressed by the increase in the number and scale of the attacks being perpetrated against our compañer@s Zapatista support bases in Chiapas, Mexico. For this reason, we welcome and offer our full support to the second phase of the “Worldwide Echo in Support of the Zapatistas” campaign, “From Truth to Action, Stopping the Repression”, which begins today, 12^th October, the Day of Indigenous Resistance. Tragically, the news has just broken of new attacks on yet another community, Guadelupe Los Altos, with 6 compas imprisoned.

The need for this campaign is therefore urgent, and we call on people of good conscience everywhere to join the campaign and take action. We also extend our greetings and thanks to the compas of the Movement for Justice in El Barrio for all the love, solidarity and effort they have put into organising this campaign in support of those who, despite all the repression, continue walking in dignity towards the better world we all wish for.

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International Campaign:

“Worldwide Echo in Support of the Zapatistas”

https://sanmarcosavilesen.wordpress.com/

Pronouncement from the new Committee of the True Word of Western Colombia

A new Comite de la Palabra Verdadera has recently been formed in Colombia in support of the Worldwide Echo in Support of the Zapatistas Campaign.

The Comite offers its full support to the second phase of the Campaign From Truth to Action: Stopping the Repression, which starts on Friday October 12th.

It sends greetings of solidarity to the Zapatista bases of support, and hopes that by linking our various struggles we can work together to challenge the repression we face.

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International Campaign:

“Worldwide Echo in Support of the Zapatistas”

https://sanmarcosavilesen.wordpress.com/

RED ALERT: The Government of Mexico wages war against Zapatista communities!

Worldwide Echo in Support of the Zapatistas II
Saturday, October 13^th, 7 pm
Reed College, Eliot Hall, Rm. 314

Portland, Oregon, US

The State of Mexico is currently employing, financing, and sending armed
attack groups to carry out violent assaults on several Zapatista Support
Base Communities (Bases de Apoyo Zapatista – BAZ). The communities of
Comandante Abel, Unión Hidalgo, Moisés Gandhi and San Marcos Avilés are
currently under siege, threatened with imprisonment, displacement,
paramilitary attack, theft of food and land and sexual assault. Located in
the southern state of Chiapas, Mexico, the BAZ indigenous communities form
the backbone of the Zapatista Movement, an autonomous organization of
thousands of indigenous peoples that fights for justice, dignity, and
democracy.

Come learn about the history of profound pain, hope, and inspiration that
is the Zapatista movement. We will be showing a documentary explaining the
history of the movement, a video made by the people of San Marcos Aviles, and hearing about the experiences of Human Rights Observers who have worked in Zapatista communities.

Spread the word far and wide across the globe! Invite your friends and
your friends’ friends and people you always wanted to be friends with and
other people too. Together we will imbue with knowledge the hearts of as
many people as possible, and bring awareness to the world regarding the
constant government-backed violence and the resistance of the dignified
people.

We will be meeting in Eliot Hall, Room 314. See
http://www.reed.edu/facilities_services/reed_static_map.html for a map of
the campus. We recommend parking in the east lot.

Learn more at: https://sanmarcosavilesen.wordpress.com/
and at: https://www.facebook.com/events/113799982108276/

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International Campaign:

“Worldwide Echo in Support of the Zapatistas”

https://sanmarcosavilesen.wordpress.com/

NEW CHRONICLE OF THE MOST RECENT ACTIVITY OF THE

COMMITTEE OF THE TRUE WORD OF RIO GRANDE DO SUL IN BRAZIL

Click here to see photos:

https://sanmarcosavilesen.wordpress.com/photo-gallery/

Sisters and brothers:

Receive embraces and greetings of solidarity from Movement for Justice in El Barrio, The Other Campaign New York. We are writing to share a brief update on some activities as part of our international campaign “Worldwide Echo in Support of the Zapatistas.” From the Committee of the True Word of Rio Grande do Sul, located in the southernmost state of Brazil, we have received the following note concerning the activities they will carry out as part of the Second Phase: “From Truth to Action, Stopping the Repression,” which will take place from this Friday, October 12 to Saturday, November 17.

In doing so, we wish to remind everyone to please send us all report, articles, and photos regarding your respective activities, as we shall continue to circulate and share them—to give them more coverage, continue raising awareness in our communities, and ultimately put more pressure on the bad government of Mexico.

Thank you, compas.

Here is the announcement from the Committee of the True Word of Rio Grande do Sul in Brazil:
We will be participating in the Second Phase of the campaign in support of the end to repression against the Zapatista communities. To this end, we have called upon students to create posters showing their respective faces alongside a phrase in support of the Zapatistas. They have created the posters using a free computer program. These posters will then be photocopied and posted throughout their school. The posters are a good way to spread the word about the acts of injustice being committed against the Zapatista communities, and they are cheap and easy to disseminate.

– Committee of the True Word of Rio Grande do Sul in Brazil

To join the “Worldwide Echo in Support of the Zapatistas” campaign and to keep up to date with the situation:

1. Write to:

laotranuevayork@yahoo.com

2. For more information, please check out the website of the “Worldwide Echo in support of the Zapatistas” Campaign:

https://sanmarcosavilesen.wordpress.com/

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Statement from the UK Zapatista Solidarity Network

The UK Zapatista Solidarity Network welcomes the new Call to Action from the “Worldwide Echo in support of the Zapatistas” campaign. The Network offers its full support both to the Campaign, and to its Second Phase “from truth to action: stopping the repression”, which starts on 12th October.

In view of the alarming increase in levels of violence, the complete impunity with which the attacks are being carried out, and the threats to the lives and personal integrity of the Zapatista support bases, we believe it is imperative for us all to take action in whatever way we can.

UK Zapatista Solidarity Network October 2012

Edinburgh Chiapas Solidarity Group

Dorset Chiapas Solidarity Group

Kiptik

London Mexico Solidarity Group
Manchester Zapatista Solidarity Group

West Yorkshire Chiapas Solidarity Group

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“Worldwide Echo in Support of the Zapatistas”

Filipinas for Rights and Empowerment (FiRE) Joins its Voice to the

“Worldwide Echo in Support of the Zapatistas” Campaign

On behalf of the immigrant women of Movement for Justice in El Barrio, it is an honor to share with you the following statement of solidarity sent to us from our sisters and compañeras at Filipinas for Rights and Empowerment (FiRE). Born in 2007 in New York City, Filipinas for Rights and Empowerment (FiRE) is a leading grassroots women’s organization that fights against oppression at the global and local levels by connecting the “Filipino diaspora to the women’s struggle in the Philippines.” FiRE organizes both immigrant and non-immigrant Filipinas “across class, gender, sexual identity, and age lines” to lead their own struggle for justice and against imperialism. In this powerful statement, our compañeras from FiRE issue a clear and resounding message of solidarity, hope, and struggle to our Zapatista compañer@s who are facing severe government-backed repression. As women of color and immigrants from a country that has endured a similar history of colonization, imperialism, and repression, our compañeras from FiRE affirm that “As political repression continues, we must stand and fight together against such atrocities. We are stronger united in our shared struggle.” With this statement, our campaign, and the global struggle for justice of which it is a part, reaches new heights. The struggles of those from below, in particular women, are strengthened each time they meet and share. Long live solidarity amongst those from below! Long live our compañeras of the Philippines! Long live the indigenous peoples of the world!

Here is their statement:

In response to the Worldwide Echo in Support of the Zapatistas.

To our brothers and sisters of Zapatista communities in Mexico:

Warm militant greetings from the women of Filipinas for Rights and Empowerment (FiRE) – GABRIELA USA in New York City!

We express our sincere and heartfelt solidarity to our brothers and sisters of the Zapatista communities in Mexico that have suffered government repression through displacement and imprisonment. The Mexican government targets these indigenous communities because Zapatistas are building an alternative form of living where people have sovereignty over the land and pursue justice for indigenous people.

To our companeras and companeros of San Marcos Aviles who were displaced for over a month from their community, we stand together with you in your fight against the corrupt government that imposes such cruelty. To our companeras and companeros in prison due to trumped up charges especially Francisco Santiz Lopez, we will spread the truth and demand your freedom.

In response to these acts of injustice and outright brutality – we vow to fight against these forms of violence. The Mexican government has no right to threaten the indigenous communities and their people.

Your struggle is our struggle. In our homeland, we suffer similar repressive conditions at the hands of the Philippine army and government. Since 2001, hundreds of Filipino men and women have been abducted, killed, tortured, imprisoned, and displaced by the Philippine military that is largely financed by US imperialists – and still to this day no justice has been served for these crimes. The victims of government repression are organizing and resisting like the Zapatistas, creating and building communities and fighting for justice and social and economic reforms.

As political repression continues, we must stand and fight together against such atrocities. We are stronger united in our shared struggle.

MAKIBAKA! HUWAG MATAKOT! (Struggle! Do not be scared!)

LONG LIVE INTERNATIONAL SOLIDARITY!

From your sisters of Filipinas for Rights and Empowerment (FiRE)– GABRIELA USA

*************

“Worldwide Echo in Support of the Zapatistas”

https://sanmarcosavilesen.wordpress.com/

FROM SOUTH AFRICA: VIDEO MESSAGE IN SUPPORT OF THE ZAPATISTAS

In a powerful new video message, Zodwa and Mnikelo, members of South Africa’s largest grassroots movement, Abahlali baseMjondolo (the Shack Dwellers Movement), send heart-felt messages of hope and solidarity to the numerous Zapatista communities currently facing severe government-backed repression, to the Zapatista political prisoner Francisco Sántiz López, to the women Zapatista, and to the women of the world. Deeply familiar with the destructive and painful impact of repression, since its founding in 2005, the Shack Dwellers Movement has itself endured constant attacks, including forced displacement, arbitrary arrests, destruction of property, and even deaths, orchestrated by forces of the local government. Reflecting on these experiences, our compas from South Africa affirm that since the primary goal of all repression is to break our bonds as movements and communities, we must stay united and firm in our commitments and see our struggles as one.

On behalf of Movement for Justice in El Barrio, The Other Campaign New York, it is with great pleasure that we share this video-message with you. We ask that you please share and circulate this message as widely as possible. Thank you.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TMmwS4ju1PU&feature=youtu.be

***************

Declaration of support for the “Worldwide Call to Action for the Zapatistas of Comandante Abel, Unión Hidalgo, San Marcos Avilés, Moisés Gandhi and Francisco Sántiz López: Worldwide Echo in Support of the Zapatistas

Second phase: “From Truth to Action, Stopping the Repression” October 12th until November 17^th

The Dorset Chiapas Solidarity Group has joined with the new Comité de La Palabra Verdadera for South West England, to welcome the release of the new Worldwide Call to Action in Support of the Zapatistas, and to offer the Campaign our full support.

We have viewed with increasing alarm and horror the ordeal being endured by our Zapatista sisters and brothers who have been displaced, or who are under threat of being displaced, and wish to add our grain of sand to the worldwide call for justice for the BAZ of Comandante Abel, Unión Hidalgo, San Marcos Avilés, Moisés Gandhi and all other Zapatista communities under attack, and to call once more for the liberation of the innocent Zapatista political prisoner Francisco Sántiz López.

We have already planned two more screenings of the video message from the Zapatistas of San Marcos Avilés, by popular demand. This video led directly to the setting up of the Comité, following an unscheduled screening which moved the audience so powerfully that they felt compelled to take action. The group has also arranged a public fund-raising event to raise money to support the population of the besieged communities, where information and latest news of the situation will be distributed.

An action at the Mexican Embassy is also being arranged, to present a letter in support of our compas under threat.

The groups would like to thank the compas from the Movement for Justice in El Barrio, the Other Campaign New York, for all the hard work and effort they have put into co-ordinating this campaign, which is already doing so much to raise and spread awareness of the deteriorating situation in Chiapas, and to encourage people to take action to let the Zapatistas know that they are very much not alone. We all hope that many others will respond to the call and offer their support and solidarity at this time when the BAZ are being confronted with so much violence.

*****************

*************

“Worldwide Echo in Support of the Zapatistas”

NOAM CHOMSKY STANDS WITH THE “WORLDWIDE ECHO” CAMPAIGN FOR THE ZAPATISTAS

In a recent statement the world-renowned writer, linguist, and political commentator, Noam Chomsky, issues his public support for the campaign “Worldwide Echo in Support of the Zapatistas.” The campaign, which has rapidly spread throughout cities and communities around the globe, seeks to mobilize support and solidarity for the Zapatista support bases of the Comandante Abel, Unión Hidalgo, San Marcos Avilés and Moisés Gandhi communities currently suffering severe aggression at the hands of local, government-backed attack groups – and the Zapatista political prisoner, Francisco Sántiz López, who has remained unjustly imprisoned since December 2011 under false charges. These attacks stem from the current wave of government repression against the Zapatista movement, which encompasses thousands of indigenous communities in resistance throughout the Mexican state of Chiapas. As Chomsky writes:

“It is very disturbing to learn of the attacks underway, and planned, against the Autonomous Zapatista Community of San Marcos Avilés and in particular against the Zapatista political prisoner Francisco Sántiz López. I would like to join in support of the campaign “Worldwide Echo in Support of the Zapatistas,” and of all of those who are standing up courageously to oppose the repression, and who are calling for justice and freedom for the endangered communities and individuals subjected to persecution and serious threats.”

To find out how to support the “Worldwide Echo” campaign, and for the latest on the situation:

1. Write to
laotranuevayork@yahoo.com

2. Visit the Worldwide Echo Campaign website at
https://sanmarcosavilesen.wordpress.com/

3. Watch the video-message from the Zapatistas of San Marcos Avilés:http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rY-8CBt3Vkg

*************

“Worldwide Echo in Support of the Zapatistas”

https://sanmarcosavilesen.wordpress.com/

FROM PORTLAND, OREGON, US:

ECHO IN SUPPORT OF THE ZAPATISTAS

On Tuesday, August 28th, 2012, people gathered in Portland, Oregon to
learn about the urgent situation in San Marcos Avilés. We reviewed a
history of the Zapatista movement since the uprising in 1994, and those
who are more familiar with the movement shared information with those who
were just learning for the first time. We then watched the video made by
the companer@s in San Marcos Avilés and people who had spent time as Human Rights Observers in Mexico (one of whom had been to San Marcos Avilés) shared their stories and experiences. All were moved and send their wishes of safety and freedom to the comp@s of San Marcos Avilés and all Zapatista communities.

At the end of the presentation, we had an hour of questions, answers and
discussions. The conversation ranged from the continued and inspiring
struggle of the Zapatistas to the situations of Latino immigrants in the
United States today to the horrendous drug war violence in northern
Mexico. The discussion was so rich that we decided to organize another
event, and will be gathering again in mid-October to learn more about the
history of the Zapatistas and to share the story of San Marcos Avilés with more
people.

From Portland, in Solidarity.

Committee of the True Word of Portland

**************

Compañeras and compañeros:

Receive many embraces from the Mexican immigrants of Movement for Justice in El Barrio, The Other Campaign New York. We hope that everyone is well and in good health. We would like to share with you this brief update regarding the “Worldwide Echo in Support of the Zapatistas: Freedom and Justice for San Marcos Avilés and Francisco Sántiz López” Campaign.

As is the case in any organizing campaign, this one serves as a wonderful opportunity to continue building both locally and globally. The dignified struggle of the Zapatistas, now and since their birth, inspires us to fight, grow, and liberate ourselves in our own corners of the world. For this reason, many of our “Comités” continue to consolidate themselves in their respective communities, connecting the struggle of our Zapatista sisters and brothers with their own local struggles. In the events and activities that are organized in conjunction with our campaign, many compas, for example, continue to draw more people into the struggle for justice. This is truly something powerful and is in line with the spirit of Zapatismo. We therefore encourage everyone to continue building in this way, slowly and from below, because it is the only way in which we shall win what we deserve: a new, just, and dignified world.

That said, to enrich and promote the expansion of our campaign, we have put together an “organizing toolbox” featuring a wide variety of useful resources that can be utilized during our events, activities, and actions. This toolbox has downloadable materials in different languages, including fliers, pamphlets, photos, posters, the campaign logo in ten languages and the UK Worldwide Declaration.

Designed to facilitate our campaign organizing activities, the toolbox is already up and available on our website to be used to meet the educational, news, or organizing needs of the compañer@s in this campaign:

http://sanmarcosaviles.wordpress.com/material/

All the materials have been used during organizing activities by individuals and organizations in many countries. Hopefully, this “organizing toolbox” continues to be of use for all.

If you are looking for more information, images, or ideas for your committee or activity in support of San Marcos Avilés and Francisco Sántiz López, please visit this page on our website – which, aside from this toolbox, features content and news in 10 languages.

Likewise, if you would like suggestions for your activities, please write to us at the email address listed below. We also invite you to collaborate with us to continue building this organizing toolbox and its contents. More materials are always needed, and there is a particular need for translations.

Lastly, we have the San Marcos Avilés video-message in high-definition format suitable for film screenings. Please let us know if you would like a copy.

Regarding this and all other matters mentioned here, please write to us at:

laotranuevayork@yahoo.com

Thank you very much, compas. We hope these small resources help to strengthen our respective efforts and, in turn, our shared campaign.

With love and solidarity,

Movement for Justice in El Barrio
The Other Campaign New York.

*************

“Worldwide Echo in Support of the Zapatistas:
Freedom and Justice for
San Marcos Avilés and Francisco Sántiz López”

https://sanmarcosavilesen.wordpress.com/

SYLVIA MARCOS TO ZAPATISTA WOMEN:

“THE WOMEN OF MEXICO JOIN YOUR STRONG AND DETERMINED STRUGGLE”

In a moving and crucial letter, Dr Sylvia Marcos adds her voice and the voices of all Mexican women to the “Worldwide Echo in Support of the Zapatistas: Freedom and Justice for San Marcos Avilés and Francisco Sántiz López” Campaign, demanding in burning words an end to the aggression against the Zapatista project and the immediate release of Sántiz López.

The great Mexican thinker, academic, and feminist—known worldwide for her numerous articles and books on gender, Mesoamerican religions, and indigenous knowledge in Mexico—addresses directly the women of the Zapatista movement in the following statement. She writes that the dignified women of Mexico are on their side, as they see “in the Zapatista women the model of being a woman who defends her rights without forgetting to support the collective rights of her people.”

Author of the recently published book Women, Indigenous, Rebels, Zapatistas, Dr Marcos expresses her hope that the “cry” emanating from around the world manages to stop “the aggressions against the autonomous education project and against all the ways of life of the Zapatista organization,” as “autonomous education forms the new beings who will make this other world a reality.”

These words serve as an important reminder that what the Zapatista project offers extends beyond the jungles of Chiapas; it holds significance for the entire world. Leading the construction of this project are the indigenous zapatista women.

On behalf of all the women who lead Movement for Justice in El Barrio, it is with great pride that we share the full letter from Dr Sylvia Marcos.

Long Live the Zapatista Women! Long Live the Women of the World!

Message from Dr. Sylvia Marcos for the Worldwide Echo in Support of the Zapatistas: Freedom and Justice for San Marcos Avilés and Francisco Sántiz López

Dear compañeros,

I am totally outraged by the situation of violence and repression that exists in the Zapatista community of San Marcos Avilés, and by the situation facing the compañero political prisoner Francisco Sántiz Lόpez.

Here’s my message for the Worldwide Echo in Support of the Zapatistas: Freedom and Justice for San Marcos Avilés and Francisco Sántiz López.

Compañeras women and men of the world,

The Zapatista women, brave and rebel compañeras, are defending the legacy of Zapatista autonomous education; and from here, the women of Mexico join their strong and determined struggle.

They can count on our support as they continue building the world we all long for.

We can glimpse the daily and painful struggles which are facing our Zapatista compañeras and we join together with them.

We demand an end to the acts of aggression from the enemies of this educational, social and political Zapatista project which gives hope, especially to women, who see in the Zapatista women the model of being a woman who defends her rights without forgetting to support the collective rights of her people.

We support them and we hope that the cry emanating from around the world will stop the aggressions against the autonomous education project and against all the ways of life of the Zapatista organization. In San Marcos Avilés, Zapatista support base, a way of life is being put in action which makes possible today the worlds to come which we all wish for: Worlds where justice, dignity and peace and gender harmony can be experienced and made possible. Autonomous education forms the new beings who will make this other world a reality.

And the unjustly imprisoned Zapatista compañero Francisco Sántiz Lόpez must be freed.

Sylvia Marcos

*************

“Worldwide Echo in Support of the Zapatistas:
Freedom and Justice for
San Marcos Avilés and Francisco Sántiz López”

“THE TIME FOR RESISTANCE AND SOLIDARITY”:

GUSTAVO ESTEVA SENDS NEW LETTER
SUPPORTING SAN MARCOS AVILÉS AND FRANCISCO SÁNTIZ LÓPEZ

“It is urgent to show ourselves at the side of our compañeros in San Marcos Avilés. The threat is immediate. The Committees of the True Word must make ourselves known in every way we can, to show clearly the strength of our solidarity.”

– Gustavo Esteva

Compañeras and compañeros:

From Oaxaca, Mexico, as part of the first phase of the “Worldwide Echo in Support of the Zapatistas: Freedom and Justice for San Marcos Avilés and Francisco Sántiz López” Campaign, the long-time Mexican intellectual and activist Gustavo Esteva sends us a critical and poetic reflection that lays bare the reasons we must support and stand in solidarity with the Zapatista resistance. In his moving piece, titled “The Time for Resistance and Solidarity,” which incorporates quotes from the Zapatistas themselves, our compa Gustavo gives language to what we know instinctively, as a feeling. The dignified resistance of the Zapatistas is not some isolated or distant thing, as Gustavo explains, but rather a movement of dignified people that unites us. It is directly relevant to all of us. Therefore, we must defend it; we must defend ourselves.

With great pride, we share here this beautiful letter in its entirety:

THE TIME FOR RESISTANCE AND SOLIDARITY
Gustavo Esteva

“Struggling together, the colour of our skin is not important, what matters is the content of our hearts,” they told us in the Good Government Council, somewhere in the Mexican southeast, in the month of September 2012, as the true word continues walking for our compañero Francisco Sántiz López and for the compañeros of San Marcos Avilés.

Struggling together, because that is the only way we are able to confront those who are doing everything in their power to disrupt our initiatives, our livelihoods, our organization, our autonomy.

It is more than ten years now since our Zapatista compañeros told us this clearly, but it seems that at that time we could not hear them. We did not see then with the clarity we have now that we are in World War IV. It is not a war between countries. It is a war of those from above against those from below. Because we, those from below, are now walking in rebellion; because we have been saying “enough!” ever since the first of January 1994, when the Zapatista uprising awoke us. Because we are no longer willing to let them continue to destroy our Mother Earth, and to continue to kill and imprison us. Because we have organized ourselves now, and we are building alternatives. For these and many other reasons they have unleashed a continuous war against us, from outside and inside, making it more and more difficult for us to live. They want to turn the whole world into a prison. The market has already got used to the new situation. It operates within a war scenario and trades everything on the stock market, leading to uncertainty. But the people do not get used to it. And we resist.

“Resistance is no longer just a word,” they said to us at the Junta. “Before, we thought it was easy, we thought it was no more than just enduring. Now we know that it is the only way, the way to show that life is not made with money, but with the resistance with which we live and work. Now we do not often speak of resistance in our communities, because we have become accustomed to it. But we see resistance where the bad government comes to beat us, with attacks by paramilitaries, here yes we see resistance because we have to care for what is ours, because if we give up the resistance even a little we will give a space to the bad government to take away what we have, and we are not going to go back on what we have built. We know that some people do not like us to organize, and for this reason many things happen, they attack us, but never mind, each of us is still here, safe and happy, if something happens to us there are other compas waiting behind us. Despite this, there we see that we are living a quiet life with our brothers and sisters, and that is where we see the resistance. Resistance is the place where we do what we want without asking permission from anyone, and so we say that there are many resistances. We do not have a timetable for the resistance or a set time. We will never come to an end, we know that we will not give up, even if they kill us, because our word will continue.”

“We are finding that there are many like us, for nobody teaches us what we are going to do, and so what matters most is unity, the best way to build the world where many worlds fit is through unity, to be and to want to be together, although we are different. It gives us great pleasure when we hear of the struggles of other countries and places. To be fighters we have to be ready and willing, not only for prison but also for death. But if this is what we want, then let us continue. This is the only way we can go, there is no other way.”

Both Francisco Sántiz López and San Marcos Avilés are frontlines in this great war that escalates daily in the Zapatista communities, because their resistance is walking onwards, because every day they affirm themselves in their autonomy, consolidate their achievements and take them even further. The bad government watches how the Zapatista resistance is enriched, how they extend their own ways of learning and justice and health and all their modes of living and how, despite everything that is done against them, the new social reality, which is the foundation for a different mode of existence, spreads and is strengthened. The attacks are not directed against weakness, or against something sad or dead. They attack all that flourishes, all that is robust, and all that serves as an example and is a source of inspiration.

You might think that these attacks are very distant, that they occur over there in some small community in the highlands of Chiapas, where they think no one will ever witness the horror of this attack unleashed against those who just want to continue to live in their own way, in the construction of their autonomy, and to extend the activities so that their children may learn to participate in this autonomy. But Sántiz speaks well from his prison: “If I’m here, I’m there; if I’m there, I’m here.”

The demons are on the loose. The war is everywhere. But so too is solidarity—that decision to be together in this common struggle that no longer respects territories. In each place it is different. But everywhere the same phenomenon is reproduced: the people affirm their dignity and say ‘enough!’, and they take their path, and the response from above is intimidation, aggression, corruption, continuous war…

It is urgent to show ourselves on the side of our compañeros in San Marcos Avilés. The threat is immediate. We, the Committees of the True Word, must make ourselves known in every way that we can, so that the strength of our solidarity may be seen.

It is the time for resistance. And to resist is to struggle in common, together, in the embrace of solidarity.

Gustavo Esteva

Oaxaca, September 2012

**************

“Those from above have declared war on the Zapatista communities, a war which these days is focused on the community in resistance of San Marcos Avilés and the Zapatista political prisoner Francisco Sántiz López.” – Raúl Zibechi

Compañeras and compañeros:

Another letter in support of our Zapatista sisters and brothers is born amidst the global consciousness raising activities which form a strategic part of the first phase of the “Worldwide Echo in support of the Zapatistas: Freedom and Justice for San Marcos Avilés and Francisco Sántiz López” campaign.

This time the words of solidarity come to us from Uruguayan lands by way of the pen of the thinker and activist Raúl Zibechi. Like in the previous letters, these words are full of truth, anger, and dignity. Our compa Raul sums up for us the true goal of those from above in their war against the Zapatista communities – “to defeat a dream made reality, one which we can see in the Good Government Junta of Oventic, and in so many other places.”

That dream is ours as well.

Here is Raúl Zibechi’s letter in full:

“Those from above have declared war on the Zapatista communities, a war which these days is focused on the community in resistance of San Marcos Avilés and the Zapatista political prisoner Francisco Sántiz López.

The information sent to us by the compañeros and compañeras of the Movement for Justice in El Barrio shows us the nature of this offensive: it is aimed at eliminating all resistance at a time when capital is unleashing hunger and misery upon those from below in order to increase and protect its gigantic profits. To safeguard their continued accumulation of wealth, it is necessary to wipe from the face of the earth all obstacles, every kind of resistance.

What the media and the “experts” call crisis, is actually part of this offensive to remove from the scene the peoples and the individuals who refuse to give way. Those from above are not in crisis. It is we, our strategies to survive and change the world, who have entered a crisis after decades of being anaesthetized with electoral illusions which promote the idea that it is possible to build an Other World without struggling, without addressing the hatred and the crimes of those from above.

For all these reasons, solidarity with San Marcos Avilés and Francisco Sántiz López is as essential as it is urgent.”

Raúl Zibechi

***************

IMPORTANT NEWS ABOUT THE CAMPAIGN IN SUPPORT OF SAN MARCOS AVILÉS AND FRANCISCO SÁNTIZ LÓPEZ

“Worldwide Echo in Support of the Zapatistas: Freedom and Justice for San Marcos Avilés and Francisco Sántiz López”

https://sanmarcosavilesen.wordpress.com/

Sisters and brothers:

Please receive warm greetings and hugs from Movement for Justice in El Barrio, The Other Campaign New York. We would like to share with you this important news report on the progress of our campaign “Worldwide Echo in Support of the Zapatistas: Freedom and Justice for San Marcos Avilés and Francisco Sántiz Lopez”.

To summarize, the first phase, “Walking the True Word”, is being extended until 11 October due to the overwhelming interest generated by it. Immediately after, in recognition of the Day of Indigenous Resistance, October 12, the second stage, that of worldwide action, will begin. Lasting over a month, this second phase will end on November 17, in honour of the historic birth of the Zapatista Army of National Liberation (EZLN), which was formed on that day in 1983.

DUE TO POPULAR DEMAND, THE FIRST PHASE IS BEING EXTENDED

First of all, we would like to thank everyone who has called for the First Phase, “Walking the True Word”, of the campaign to be extended. Because of this, this phase is being extended and will continue for the entire month of September and until 11 October, to give us all even more time to disseminate information on the situation of San Marcos Avilés and Sántiz Lopez, and to invite others to join this campaign in time for the start of the second phase.

It has been a month now since we started this struggle, and already many “Committees of the True Word” have been born in many parts of our planet, with their main responsibility to carry and sow the names and faces of “San Marcos Avilés” and “Francisco Sántiz Lopez” as seeds of dignity and rebellion.

Day after day, solidarity actions and activities are being carried out in communities, neighborhoods, towns, and villages in many corners of the world. In order to disseminate the histories and realities which our Zapatista compas are suffering, dignified people from many countries have been working on getting the word out and building networks of support and solidarity to contribute positively to the defense of the EZLN Support Base community of San Marcos Avilés and the struggle to free Francisco Sántiz Lopez.

We can see that, in this way, we are consolidating our forces and exposing the lies coming out of the mouth of the bad government of Mexico, in order to take concrete action in defense of that other possible world which the Zapatista communities have been building through their project of autonomy.

As mentioned above, the second phase of our international campaign, “Worldwide Echo in Support of the Zapatistas: Freedom and Justice for San Marcos Avilés and Francisco Sántiz Lopez”, will take place from October 12 to November 17. These dates were chosen for their historical significance. They are symbols of our various struggles and a compass pointing towards a dignified future. The peoples of the world, in spite of the more than 500 years of oppression they have experienced, not only still live, but are key players in the struggles for a better, dignified and rebel world. In their resistance and struggle for autonomy, the EZLN are planting seeds and building alternatives to this unjust system which is imposed on us from above. For this reason, they are beacons and examples for us all. With this in mind, let us hope we can all carry on organizing more activities and reaching out to more people to continue to increase the pressure and demand for justice and freedom for our Zapatista brothers and sisters.

To finish, here once more is the link to the video message from San Marcos Avilés, which is at the same time a call and a tool for worldwide solidarity:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rY-8CBt3Vkg

Please carry on circulating it.

Well, compas, our hearts are full of emotion, courage, and hope. All the collective efforts we are making together, united, truly touch our hearts and are having an important impact.

We will continue to fight, continue to grow…

With love and solidarity,

Movement for Justice in El Barrio

The Other Campaign New York

**************

“Worldwide Echo in Support of the Zapatistas:
Freedom and Justice for
San Marcos Avilés and Francisco Sántiz López”

https://sanmarcosavilesen.wordpress.com/

A NEW “COMITÉ” TAKES ROOT IN ENGLAND

Since the beginning of the “Worldwide Echo” campaign, the dignified and courageous story of our compañer@s from San Marcos Avilés has been a source of profound inspiration and transformation. Forcing us to recognize our own humanity and interconnectedness in this world, the pain and resilience of our Zapatista compas continue to inspire and move people of all walks of life to join the struggle to support them.

Although our campaign is indeed made up of many long-time supporters and seasoned social justice veterans, the moving story of the community of San Marcos Avilés has been so powerful that it has also motivated people with limited exposure to social justice struggles and literally no prior knowledge of the Zapatistas.

Such is the case in the following letter written by a group of good-hearted co-workers who, despite being unfamiliar with the Zapatistas, were so taken by the video-message from San Marcos Avilés that they banded together, researched the history of the Zapatistas, and formed a Comité de la Palabra Verdadera (Committee of the True Word) to support our compas. Here are their moving words which illustrate the power of organizing from below.

*******

To the people of San Marcos Aviles

We are a group of people from England who have just watched the video message you sent to the world asking for support in the crisis you are facing.

We were deeply moved by the video, and shocked at what you are having to endure. We had never heard of the Zapatistas before, and knew nothing of your history. As a result of watching this video, we have now learned about you and are going to tell others. We have asked for the video to be screened much more widely so many more people can learn about it, and are going to ask our friends to come and watch it too.

We have stated that we wish to back the campaign in your support, and have signed the Declaration.

We have been told that we can send you a short letter of support. We want you to know that we are thinking of you, that we wish you well, and that we are reaching out our hands to you.

Veronica, Cameron, Gregory, Henry, Tammy, Betty and Katy.

England, UK

************

“Worldwide Echo in Support of the Zapatistas:
Freedom and Justice for
San Marcos Avilés and Francisco Sántiz López”

https://sanmarcosavilesen.wordpress.com/

IN BERLIN, GERMANY:

ANOTHER “COMMITTEE OF THE TRUE WORD” IS SET UP

Crossing oceans and continents, and breaking the political, ideological, and language barriers of those from above, the “Committees of the True Word” continue to be born in many soils both near and far all around the world.

They are forming in a more organic way, first among compañer@s at work, family, friends, groups of students and others etc., and then reaching a point where they can stretch to organizing events and sharing information. The true goal of each committee is to raise awareness, educate, share, and gather together, spreading the truth about the repression against the Zapatista Support Bases of San Marcos Avilés and Francisco Sántiz Lόpez. And in this way, they go about building worldwide networks of support and backing for the Zapatista communities and preparing to organize actions against the bad government.

Set in the context of the international campaign “Worldwide Echo in Support of the Zapatistas”, these organizing cells are now joined by another.

From Berlin, Germany, a group of dignified compañer@s tells of the formation of the “Committee of Berlin.” This committee is unique because it is made up of some people who lived with the compas of San Marcos Avilés as human rights observers in the Civil Peace Camp. Through this statement the Berlin Committee announces its formation and denounces the history of repression experienced by the Zapatista support bases over the years. All are invited to become part of this campaign according to their ways and abilities.

Here is the Berlin Committee’s statement in full:

Foundation of the Berlin Committee in support of the Zapatistas of San Marcos Avilés

At 1^st January 1994, indigenous peasants in the southeastern mexican state of Chiapas rose against the government. Since then the Zapatistas, as they call themselves, are fighting for land, autonomy, freedom, democracy, justice, health and education. Although they now pursue these goals peacefully, after 12 days of an initial armed struggle, they are since then exposed to the sharpest state repression. In the course of counterinsurgency strategy, developed by the Americans, the mexican government operates against the movement with the use of paramilitaries, disinformation and discrediting by media loyal to the state as well as attrition through the use of the regular army, of which about a third is now in the Zapatista zone of influence.

The sad climax was the massacre of pacifist supporters of the Zapatistas by paramilitaries in 1997, in which 45 people were killed. Since the rising occurs regularly murder, displacements, rapes, arrests and acts of destruction with the aim of intimidating and ultimately to destroy the movement. Various international and foreign organizations such as the WWF and GIZ as well as international companies such as Bayer and Coca-Cola are also involved in the insurgency, as they pursue their own interests in the resource-rich and very attractive tourist area.

The base of the Zapastista movement are the civilian support bases (bases de apoyo). These are hundreds of insurgent communities, which sustain mainly the “dignified rebellion” of the indigenous people und which are exposed most heavily to the state repression. The mexican state violates with his course of action against the right of self-determination of indigenous peoples, which is assured by international law through the United Nations declaration from 2007.

One of these civilian support bases is San Marcos Avilés, a community in the north of Chiapas. In 2010 the Zapatistas in San Marcos built an autonomous school, whereupon they were displaced from their village by aggressors loyal to the state from the same village. Their fields were occupied or burned, their houses and belongings were devastated and destroyed. After a one month-long odyssey the displaced inhabitants, which suffered severe hunger during the eviction, returned back to their village with the the help of a human rights center, peace activists and the Zapatista administration unit (Junta de Buen Gobierno). Although since then an international peace camp is located in the community, the Zapatistas of San Marcos Avilés are regularly exposed to threats, theft, destruction of their fields or physical attacks.

In the course of the presidential elections and the controversial election victory of the Party of the Institutional Revolution (PRI) in summer 2012 the agressions and repressions against San Marcos Avilés and other Zapatista communities got worse. The activists collective Movement for Justice in El Barrio published a videomessage, at the end of july in the course of solidarity campaign, in which the Zapatistas of San Marcos Avilés ask for international support (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rY-8CBt3Vkg).

On 6^th August 2012 the aggressors loyal to the state announced an “attack on the compas in the coming days” whereupon an international campaign for the support of the Zapatistas in San Marcos Avilés was initiated (http://sanmarcosaviles.wordpress.com/deutsch/).

In response to this request committees in different countries are currently being developed in support of the Zapatistas in the community. Objectives are to exchange information, to network, to make people aware about the situation in Mexico and Chiapas in general, and in San Marcos Avilés in particular, and to build public pressure.

On 26^th August 2012 the Berlin Committee in Support of the Zapatistas in San Marcos Avilés was founded.

The dedicated people here are some former human rights observers, who had been activ in the peace camp, and sympathizers of the zapatista uprising. We will not allow it, that the brave inhabitants of San Marcos Avilés will be displaced again. Together, we want to show our zapatista friends that their call will not be remain unanswered, and that there are rebellious hearts everywhere in the world. Together we want fight for a different world. Another world, that is possible.

„Preguntando caminamos“ – „questioning we go on ahead”

Berlin Committee, 09.09.2012

For more informations:

The worldwide declaration for the support of the Zapatistas: justice and freedom for San Marcos Avilés and Francisco Sántiz López:

http://sanmarcosaviles.wordpress.com/declaracion-mundial/

The blog of the Berlin Committee for the support of the Zapatistas in San Marcos Avilés:

http://sanmarcosberlin.blogsport.de/

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Kids workshop and mural, Rio Grande do Sul, Brasil

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Information Day in Bogotá:

From Bogotá, Colombia:

Worldwide Echo in support of the Zapatista communities in Chiapas: liberty and justice for Francisco Sántiz López and the community of San Marcos Avilés.

We consider it is important to make this kind of demonstration of solidarity with the community organizations in resistance in Chiapas, as in the case of the Zapatistas, because they have been, and continue to be, a benchmark for autonomy throughout the world since their uprising in 1994, together with the recovery of their lands, their building autonomous schools and hospitals, their agro-ecological projects and, since 2003, their political autonomy through the Juntas of Good Government.

Today we decided to have this information day in Bogotá and to offer solidarity in the face of the constant attacks by the bad government which have affected the Zapatista Support Base of San Marcos Avilés.

This community has been subject to threats and violence from individuals who the government, in what is known in Mexico as the current context of “low intensity warfare”, have bought and now use within the same community to attack and divide the Zapatistas, who refuse to participate in the capitalist projects of the Bad Government, and in this way {the government tries to} put an end to the autonomy project which the Zapatistas have been building for nearly 20 years.

The attacks are manifested mainly through the burning of their corn and coffee harvests, the theft of their crops, and threats to destroy their autonomous school “Emiliano Zapata”, to cut off their power supply and to displace them from their community, as well as through the paramilitarization of their territory.

Violence from the three levels of Bad Government has also been demonstrated in the unjust imprisonment of the Zapatista support base Francisco Sántiz Lopez since last December.

For these reasons we make an echo and at the same time a call for solidarity with the Zapatista communities.

If you are interested in learning more about the situation, visit http://sanmarcosaviles.wordpress.com/ To make another show of solidarity from Bogota write to laotranuevayork@yahoo.com

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FROM PERU: LETTER OF SOLIDARITY FROM HUGO BLANCO

The renowned fighter for social justice and director of the Peruvian publication Lucha Indígena (Indigenous Struggle), Hugo Blanco, issues this important and beautiful statement as part of the “Worldwide Echo in Support of the Zapatistas: Freedom and Justice for San Marcos Avilés and Sántiz López” Campaign. The central task of the first phase of this campaign is to educate and raise consciousness at the international level regarding the severe repression and violence being carried out against our Zapatista sisters and brothers. In this letter addressed to “A quienes buscan un mundo libre” – or “To those who search for a free world” – our compañero Hugo consummates this task by offering us the gift of memory, as he throws light on the historical, economic, and political context in which this nightmare unfolds. With impassioned words, he makes clear the true reasons and forces which seek to do away with, what he calls, this “zone liberated from neoliberalism, where the people govern themselves.”

With great pleasure, we share with you, compañer@s, Hugo’s letter in its entirety:

To those who search for a free world

In 1994, at the full glorious height of the neoliberal system that oppresses us, a voice of rebellion arose, the Zapatista movement in Chiapas, Mexico.

Naturally Salinas, the then president, launched a bloody military offensive thinking to rapidly crush the rebellion. Not so, the indigenous fighters resisted. The people of Mexico were outraged at the bloodshed and demanded an end to the attack.

The U.S. government was alarmed, because with the number of Mexicans and Chicanos who had been and were being oppressed in their territory, there was a danger that the Zapatista armed uprising might spread to the seat of the empire. Therefore they ordered the Mexican government to stop the attack, an order which, of course, their subject obeyed. The rebels announced that they were obeying the people of Mexico, who were ordering the war to stop, and suspended the armed conflict.

The government offered talks, the Zapatistas accepted. With the democratic spirit they have, they would not wish to be the ones to speak on behalf of the indigenous Mexicans; they called on indigenous and indigenists from across the country to set out the indigenous demands. This task was completed, and their arguments were so convincing that the government commission had to accept many of them. Both parties signed what were called the “San Andrés Accords.” As these had to be in the form of a law to be approved by parliament, a commission was appointed with the task of putting them into the appropriate format. The commission completed its work and submitted it to both parties; the Zapatistas accepted, but the government did not. Instead they filed another document, thus betraying the agreements they had signed. The members of the chamber [of deputies] gave in to this outrage and agreed to discuss and approve the government document. Therefore, the Executive, supported by parliament, betrayed the agreement.

The military government made a treacherous attack on the Zapatistas, trying to liquidate the leadership of the Zapatista Army of National Liberation (EZLN). They failed. But, (whoever is the current president), they do not abandon their intention of making this island of freedom that exists in the world disappear.

Do not forget that the first international gathering of those oppressed by the neoliberal system which is crushing the world was called by the indigenous Zapatistas, and took place in the mud of Chiapas, years before the World Social Forum

Recently the attacks on Zapatista communities have been increasing, the chief and fiercest ones are those being suffered by the Zapatista autonomous community of San Marcos Avilés. The Good Government Junta ‘Towards Hope’ and the Good Government Junta ‘Heart of the Rainbow of Hope’ have also reported attacks.
These attacks and the continued detention of Francisco Sántiz López and Alberto Patishtán Gómez, are the spearhead of the attack to crush the zone liberated from neoliberalism, where the people govern themselves through the Good Government Juntas. This is seen as the great enemy by the transnational corporations (the 1% of humanity that crushes the 99%), as they are a living example of the fact that “Another World is Possible”, “A World where Many Worlds Fit”.

We hope that the insurgent rebel movement in Mexico, # yosoy132, understands that their essential task is to defend the island of freedom that is in their own country; if they crush the Zapatistas, # yosoy132 will be easily crushed.

Let us fight in the defense of San Marcos Avilés and against other attacks in the area. Let us fight for the freedom of Francisco Sántiz López and Alberto Patishtán Gómez.

It is in the direct interests of humanity to defend the island of freedom that is the Zapatista area.

Hugo Blanco

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Colectivo de Mujeres Tejiendo Resistencias, DF:

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From, Portland, Oregon:

Worldwide Echo in Support of the Zapatistas: Freedom and Justice for San Marcos Avilés and Sántiz López

Tuesday, August 28th, 7-9pm

Friends’ Meeting House – 4312 SE Stark St, Portland, OR

The community of San Marcos Aviles in Chiapas, Mexico has sent a call out for global solidarity! San Marcos is a base of support for the Zapatista movement, an indigenous resistance movement that has been publicly active in Mexico for almost 20 years. Recently, the repression and harassment of community members in San Marcos has increased, and they are now facing the imminent threat of displacement or paramilitary attack.

Come learn about the history of profound pain, hope, and inspiration that is the Zapatista movement. We will be showing a video made by the people of San Marcos, discussing the history of the movement and hearing about the experiences of Human Rights Observers who have worked in Zapatista communities.

Spread the word far and wide across the globe! Invite your friends and your friends’ friends and people you always wanted to be friends with and other people too. Together we will imbue with knowledge the hearts of as many people as possible, and bring awareness to the world regarding the constant government-backed violence and the resistance of the dignified people.

Learn more here: https://sanmarcosavilesen.wordpress.com/

and here: https://www.facebook.com/events/246061552182048/

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New Comite de la Palabra Verdadera formed in Britain

Alarmed by the escalation in acts of violence and harassment, which is creating rising terror in the Zapatista support base community of San Marcos Aviles, municipality of Chilon, Chiapas, a group of people living in different localities met together in the south of England this week, to discuss what they could do in support.

They watched, and were profoundly moved and disturbed by, the videomessage from the BAZ http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rY-8CBt3Vkg. They then read the new articles and suggested actions for people to take, on the San Marcos Aviles website https://sanmarcosavilesen.wordpress.com/ and discussed what they, in their turn, would do.

The group agreed to become a new Comite de la Palabra Verdadera, and thus become part of the campaign “Worldwide Echo in Support of the Zapatistas: Freedom and Justice for San Marcos Aviles and Santiz Lopez” launched recently by the Movement for Justice in el Barrio, the Other Campaign New York. They agreed that they would concentrate on the dissemination of information through doing translations, writing letters and reports, and posting news reports. They wrote to the Movement at laotranuevayork@yahoo.com to inform them that a new Comite had been formed, joining the Comites that have already been established in eighteen countries around the world.

Today the group held a stall at a local country fair, selling Zapatista textiles and other handcrafts, as part of the recognition of Indigenous Peoples’ Day. All money taken is to be sent to the compas of San Marcos.

The new Comite sends greetings and embraces to all the Comites being set up which are helping to reflect and echo “now you are no longer you, now you are us”.

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FIRST UPDATE REGARDING:

“Worldwide Echo in Support of the Zapatistas:

Freedom and Justice for San Marcos Avilés and Francisco Sántiz López”

https://sanmarcosavilesen.wordpress.com/

Compañer@s:

Greetings to you all from Movement for Justice in El Barrio, the Other Campaign New York.

We report that many people from around the world have already joined the worldwide campaign, forming “Committees of the True Word” in their respective communities. Currently, organizations, collectives and new Committees of the True Word are participating from the following countries:

Portugal
Australia
Uruguay
Brazil
India
England Germany
South Africa
Mexico
USA
Panama
Ecuador
France
Spain
Chile Italy France
Canada
Turkey
Colombia

Throughout August, each committee from around the world will spread the word regarding the current situation of San Marcos Avilés and Francisco Sántiz López, and promote the worldwide campaign.

Currently, a wide range of activities are being organized to inform about what is happening in San Marcos Avilés and to promote the campaign: including public forums, film screenings, distribution of informative fliers and pamphlets, teach-ins, the publishing of articles, reflections, and denouncements, translations, social media initiatives, artistic works, etc.

We’d like to remind you to please circulate the video message from the Zapatistas of San Marcos Avilés.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rY-8CBt3Vkg

It has already had more than 24 thousand views. We thank you all for having shared this among your social networks and contacts. We have to keep spreading the word!

We also ask that you circulate the San Marcos Avilés website. We now have content on the San Marcos Avilés website in NINE LANGUAGES! : Spanish, English, Portuguese, French, German, Bulgarian, Japanese, Italian, and Greek.

Here it is:

https://sanmarcosavilesen.wordpress.com/
With or without a committee, please let us know what activities you plan on organizing and what part of the world you’re from, via email at:

laotranuevayork@yahoo.com

Immediately after this intensive educational phase, there will be a phase of direct action. If you have contacted us, we will keep you updated.

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VIDEO MESSAGE FROM THE ZAPATISTAS OF SAN MARCOS AVILÉS