The South Resists Caravan concludes with a gathering and a pronouncement

Caravana El Sur Resiste
(Spanish)

The South Resists Caravan arrived in Zapatista territory where it ended on 7th May. The caravan began on 25 April on the coast of Chiapas and then crossed through six states in the southeastern Mexico. The communities that received the Caravan exposed the violations of their human rights, land and territory by the different governments to impose mega-projects such as the Interoceanic Corridor and the self-styled Mayan Train, as well as the Morelos Integral Project, among others.

The most tense episode of teh caravan happened in the Tierra y Libertad camp, which was then evicted and 6 of its members arrested. However, the detainees were released two days later, on 30 April, and the camp was re-established.

Once in Zapatista territory, on May 6, The International South Resists Gathering 2023 began in the Caracol Jacinto Canek. It continued until the 7th of May, which closed with the Pronouncement that we include here (below). In both, 940 people from 40 indigenous peoples of the world, from 27 Mexican states, 30 countries and 10 autonomous regions took part.

The Gathering included precious contributions by the writer and researcher Raúl Zibechi, the Nasa-Misak community activist Vilma Rocío Almendra Quiguanás (Cauca, Colombia), the Kurdish feminist activist Dilda (Women of Kurdistan), the economist and coordinator of the Latin American Observatory of Geopolitics Ana Esther Ceceña, and the lawyer and member of the National Indigenous Congress (CNI), Carlos González. (Summaries of the contributions below).

The documentary «La Montaña», about the voyage of the Zapatista squadron 421 on its journey across the Atlantic Ocean to Europe two years ago, was also presented (trailer here).

Summaries of contributions from the International Gathering The South Resists 2023

• Raúl Zibechi

«We are living through wars of dispossession, it has been revealed that 4 out of 10 hectares are not in the hands of the oligarchy or big capital, as in Brazil, that these lands belong to agrarian lands, lands in the hands of black communities, natural parks and conservation, and small and medium peasants.

These are the lands on which capital is advancing; dispossession still has a long way to go. The war of dispossession has only just begun. Today capitalism cannot live without wars of dispossession, it cannot act without wars of violence, i.e. without murdering, disappearing, displacing.

Another factor of this new present is that all governments, including the progressive left governments, support militarisation. This is a pattern that has come to stay, as in Mexico with López Obrador, as in the progressive government in Argentina where extractive projects were militarised, as in Chile in Walmapu in Mapuche territory where today there are more soldiers than during the neoliberal governments, there could even be the same number as during the Pinochet dictatorship. The analysis of the EZLN in the 4th world war made 20 years ago is more than true, we are in a war of dispossession to obtain territories for big capital.

Also, we have to look at drug trafficking as a perfect symbol of capital, what they represent: dispossession through violence, accumulation of capital. It is very difficult to draw a line between drug trafficking and power because there is an alliance between these drug trafficking groups, the oligarchies and big business.

In the face of this panorama of dispossession, we must also recognise that there is a pattern of growth and multiplication of autonomies throughout Latin America. For many peoples, autonomy has been felt as a common goal, this is a victory, giant steps. A common sense of the peoples, and also very rich in diversity and forms, based on their traditional ways and what they can create.

These models of autonomy also have this main characteristic which is self-defence as a fundamental tool, many defend themselves with community guards, others with balaclavas, others with hoods, or with handkerchiefs.

Finally, we must recognise spirituality as a fundamental element that sustains resistance; spirituality is to speak of women and the bond of woman-life-mother earth. Spirituality is what allows us to sustain ourselves for a long time in these struggles that have no end, because they are an eternal circle, without the objective of taking power; spirituality is the pillar that keeps us going.

 

• Vilma Rocío Almendra Quiguanásdel (Cauca, Colombia)

«It is difficult everywhere, in all the nation-states where they have wanted to crush those of us who live there, they have wanted to take away everything beautiful, such as spirituality.

We are critical of peace processes if they come from those who live in power, from those who have the weapons. What we said before these agreements were signed was that this was a neoliberal peace, a peace with capital that was going to allow them to enter our territories.

They deceived us with these promises of peace, while they continue to kill those who defend everything, the land, the water, and the territory. They have killed thousands of comrades, the most rebellious, the most revolutionary people, they have killed those who truly believe in Mother Earth, the people who know how to read the birds, who know how to be in contact with the wind. The people they continue to kill are not the most visible people who are negotiating, they are the ones who put their chests out, in the territories.

It must be said that the Regional Indigenous Council of Cauca, until 2009, was the indigenous movement best known for its resistance, for its way of questioning the state, the largest Mingas (community tasks/protests) were held, with up to 80,000 people marching to Bogotá, thousands of comrades who are prepared to die for the territories.

Until those years, 2008-2009, we had territorial control of Cauca, the government saw the strength of the resistance and said, «we have to break it», and that’s when this cancer began to enter the communities, which is drug trafficking.

They began to co-opt leaders, and today territorial control is no longer in the hands of the authorities, but of the armed actors. Ten indigenous authorities have been killed in the last three years. We see the recruitment of our youth and children who fall prey to the easy money that is being made.We see the recruitment of our youth and children who fall prey to easy money because the state structure impoverishes you.

What do young people prefer? 7 dollars as a day labourer for 10 hours of work in a coffee harvest, or thousands of pesos to be with these drug trafficking groups: they give you a motorbike, they give you a mobile phone, they pay you well, you just have to kill and kill your own.

But we have to be clear, the narco-paramilitary states are the ones who take all the profits, it is in their interest to kill, but the ones they recruit are the most enslaved and the most killed within these crime and drug groups.

She concluded by saying that there are very beautiful things, like flowers that break the cement, in Cauca we have managed to liberate Mother Earth, to sow with the cycles of the moon, to sow everything organic, we have achieved relationships that are not patriarchal, not colonial, and not state-run. If we achieve this relationship with the Earth, we also achieve it with our daughters, with our sons, with our partner».

• Dilda – Women of Kurdistan,

«Until women are liberated,  people won’t be liberated. Women were the first colonies.

Democratic confederalism is the hope for the Kurdish people and all the peoples of the world, it is a way to preserve Mesopotamia and the ancient peoples of the Earth. The way of creating life in Rojava shows the world that the nation state is not the only option, there is another way and it is possible to govern oneself. This is the main reason why they are afraid of us and attack us.

For us, the relationship between Mother Earth and Mother Woman is fundamental, that intimate relationship between women and nature, we seek to destroy the dominant male way of thinking. To fight with ourselves to transform ourselves in order to remove this system of male domination, our motto is woman, life and freedom.

Our strength does not come from states, but from the beautiful solidarity between peoples, their presence strengthens us, our fellow guerrillas in the mountains of Kurdistan are generating hope.

We need to unite, wisdoms, hopes, dreams, experiences of peoples, women and dissidences that fight against the system. To defend the revolution of Kurdistan, is to defend the revolution of women»

• Ana Esther Ceceña

«It is at stake to see who gets the power of this world –  the rules of the game and the way of life, the biggest dispute is between the United States and China.

The southeast of Mexico has characteristics within this geopolitical rearrangement that interest these powers that want to control territories in order to create a competitive force. A key factor for the United States is the rearrangement of North America and the union of these zones; the attempt to control these territories will be increasingly stronger due to the threat of China and these alliances; it is becoming more acute in the economic sphere – they are looking for more supplies of productivity, territory, culture.

We see this with the United States visiting southeast Mexico, their defence groups are observing, watching; they assure their companies that their investments are safe, that they are already opening up territory.

It is not a way of becoming overwhelmed, it is a way of understanding and from there starting from strategies, asking ourselves how we approach these disputes over territories between powers, how we defend our lives, forms, ways, and which one has to prevail.

There is also a strategy of dispossession of everything symbolic, spiritual, cultural; an example is all this destruction of archaeological treasures on the route of these trains, the bulldozers break them, destroy them, and those that are not, they take them away, they steal them. All that is found is history, and it is being destroyed for the sake of a progress that is no such thing.

The questions are how to rebuild the territory, how to rebuild our culture and way of life without ceasing to recognise the roots, the history and the geography to which we belong».

• Carlos González

«Capitalism is going through a profound crisis in several senses that deepened after the pandemic, we are talking about a pre-pandemic world and a post-pandemic world. The pandemic exploited the crisis of the capitalist system: unemployment, inflation, crisis of food networks, new recession in the United States.

We are talking about a global civilisational crisis that forces us to have the fortitude to do something no small thing, which is the destruction of this patriarchal and capitalist system. We can no longer propose policies, government proposals or legislative reforms that fall by the wayside.

This is what happened with the Mining Law, which was sent to the Chamber of Deputies with important elements to reduce mining activity, to take away control of water, and to reduce the immense wealth that mining produces. It reaches the Chamber of Deputies and they begin negotiations with companies, with Canadian companies, and they change the initiative. The president did not defend this law.

We have no use for half measures. We need commitment, because what is at stake is life. The Transisthmian Corridor, the Mayan Train, the Morelos Integral Project, and the Santa Lucia Airport are all united projects. And the ultimate purpose of this project is to rearrange borders, they will be curtains for migration, they will be projects of complete territorial development.

We must recognise two lights of hope today; the struggle of women in all its forms, even if we men are concerned that they break windows and scratch monuments, insignificant things in the face of the violence they experience. The other light is the light of the native peoples who are fighting to defend their territory; we have to nourish these two lights, make them grow and bring them together».

Sharing between different struggles and movements

After the main presentations, the members were divided into different groups that were able to listen in more depth to the struggles and resistance of many other communities and collectives, as well as to share experiences of autonomous organisation, self-management, art and culture in order to build other worlds.

These are some of the themes that were included in the Gathering:

• Report on the observation mission in Guerrero, CIPOG-EZ and the Montaña de Guerrero.
• Xenophobia and discrimination in El Salvador
• Indigenous prisoners and torture
• UCIZONI Tierra y Libertad camp
• Context in Kurdistan
• Popular Education in Ecuador
• Articulation in Yucatan against the «Mayan» Train
• The struggle of indigenous peoples in Colombia
• Stop Cop City in Atlanta
• Feminicides in Mexico
• Community economics and feminism

The gathering continued on Sunday 7 May, when they  articulated struggles in defence of life.

Demand Freedom for Political Prisoner Manuel Gómez Vázquez

The Network of Resistance and Rebellion Ajmaq participated in the forum in Palenque, with the reading of a communiqué about the situation of arbitrary deprivation of liberty of Manuel Gómez Vásquez, a young Mayan-Tzeltal peasant of 22 years, who was part of the Support Base of the Zapatista Army of National Liberation (BAZ).

On 4 December 2020, Manuel was arrested by an armed civilian group, who tortured him physically and psychologically, and the next day handed him over to the Public Prosecutor’s Office to incriminate him for a crime he did not commit. To date, he has been deprived of his liberty for 2 years and 3 months, without a sentence or a fair trial.

Manuel is originally from the Autonomous Rebel Zapatista Municipality, Ricardo Flores Magón, Caracol IX, in Ocosingo (Chiapas). He is currently being held in the Centro Estatal de Reinserción Social de Sentenciados número 16 (State Centre for Social Reinsertion of Convicted Persons number 16).

The Good Government Council and the Fray Bartolomé de las Casas Human Rights Centre have pointed out that this imprisonment is due to his work as a Zapatista Support Base, as the Public Prosecutor’s Office lacks evidence to accuse him.

PRONOUNCEMENT OF THE INTERNATIONAL GATHERING THE SOUTH RESISTS 2023

(From ASSEMBLY OF INDIGENOUS PEOPLES OF THE OAXACAN ISTHMUS IN DEFENCE OF THE LAND AND TERRITORY APIIDTT).

 

«Global Corporate Capitalism, Planetary Patriarchy, Autonomies in revolt».
CIDECI-UNITIERRA / CARACOL JACINTO CANEK 7th May 2023. 

To the General Command of the EZLN:
To the National Indigenous Congress:
To the Indigenous Council of Government:
To the national and international organisations that struggle and resist:
To the free, alternative, independent media or whatever they call themselves:
To the peoples of Mexico and the world:

From the heart of the land where dignified rage was born, grew and reproduces itself, the rebellious peoples of the geographies of the South Southeast who take part in the caravan The South Resists 2023, Binnizá, Ayuuk, Nahua, Nuntajiyi (Nuntajuyi), Maya, Chol, Zoque, Tzeltal, Tojolabal, Tsotsil and mestizos, convened by various organisations of this geography and by the National Indigenous Congress, we travelled through the territories affected by the interconnected military megaprojects, the ill-named Mayan Train and the Interoceanic Corridor. We arrived at the Zapatista territory of CIDECI-UNITIERRA / Caracol Jacinto Canek in San Cristóbal de las Casas, Chiapas, where we met with many other peoples and organisations of the original peoples and urban areas of the southeast of the country and many other regions of our Mother Earth to share the pains, hopes and strategies of articulation, to learn from the struggles of other geographies and to continue weaving solidarity networks of resistance and planetary rebellion.

From 25 April to 4 May, the members of the Caravan El Sur Resiste travelled through communities and towns in eight states of the Mexican Republic; Starting from the community of El Progreso, municipality of Pijijiapan, with a stopover in Tonalá, we travelled along the coast of Chiapas and crossed the Isthmus of Tehuantepec, from the Binniza community in resistance of Puente Madera, municipality of San Blas Atempa, passing through the rebel camp «Tierra y Libertad» in the Aayuuk community of Mogoñe Viejo, municipality of San Juan Guichicovi, both communities in the state of Oaxaca, and arriving at the Nahua community of Oteapan in the south of Veracruz. From there, we set off for the Mayan territories of the Yucatan peninsula, crossing the state of Tabasco through Villahermosa and the coastal community of El Bosque, devoured by the sea due to global warming, arriving in Candelaria, Campeche, and following the route to the community of Zakí, today called Valladolid in Yucatan, and the community of Noj Kaaj Santa Cruz, today Felipe Carrillo Puerto in Quintana Roo, returning through Xpujil again in Campeche territory to return to Chiapas and meet the Zoque, Chol, Tsotsil, Tojolabal and Tzeltal peoples, with a stop in Palenque, crossing the region of Los Altos to reach our final destination, Jovel, today San Cristóbal de las Casas.

Throughout this journey, our hearts, feelings and thoughts were open to listening and observing the multiple pains and destruction caused by the voracity of the great global capitalism that we felt in our own bodies through the constant harassment of our caravan by the police and military forces of the Mexican state.

In these times of global geopolitical rearrangements in which the big capitals of the Western and Asian blocs are accelerating the process of this new stage of the war of colonisation, disputing the territories of our Planet, destroying the mother earth and destroying our Planet’s natural resources. disputing the territories of our Planet, destroying mother nature, dispossessing, exploiting and expelling peoples and murdering and disappearing those who oppose them, we note the complicity of states and organised crime in its various forms, all of them bloodthirsty.

We affirm that we are facing the greatest expression of the patriarchal power system inherited from thousands of years ago and installed in our lands more than 500 years ago with the genocidal European invasion. We witness its devastating effects on our territories, but we also feel with great strength the resistance of our peoples, who have safeguarded our very existence as original peoples.

In this global readjustment, the Mexican Southeast and the Isthmus of Tehuantepec play a strategic role in the interests of global corporations to unite the Pacific Ocean with the Atlantic Ocean by land in just 200 kilometres and to facilitate the transport of goods, hydrocarbons and other subsoil resources. The inter-oceanic corridor has been a place of transit for the trade routes of the peoples since ancient times, but during colonial times and the dictatorship of Porfirio Diaz, as well as during the governments of the 20th and 21st century, they have tried to appropriate it without success, due to the historical resistance of the peoples of the region.

This government that calls itself the government of the fourth transformation is no different, as it is contemplating the modernisation of the ports of Coatzacoalcos and Salina Cruz, the construction of a highway and the modernisation of the railway for freight trains that will not only connect the two ports but also the train that they call the Mayan train in the Yucatan Peninsula.

That is why we say that the Interoceanic Corridor, the Train misnamed Maya and the Morelos Integral Project in the centre of the country are part of a network of interconnection and energy supply for the corporations that will operate in the south of the country and Central America, most of them of private and foreign capital.

A high-voltage line and the extension of the isthmus gas pipeline will be installed to connect with the new maritime pipeline that will bring fracking gas from Texas to our lands. This project will be built along the coast of Veracruz, in the vicinity of the reef system, from Tuxpan to Coatzacoalcos and with another maritime branch to the new Dos Bocas refinery, also part of this megaproject.

This infrastructure reflects the deepening of a model, based on the extraction of fossil fuels, which during the 20th century accelerated, in a way never seen before, the indicators of pollution and global warming, reinforced by supposedly clean energies in the hands of big foreign capital, which does not represent any just energy transition for the people.

Indeed, the project does not only contemplate the construction of these infrastructures but also the opening of new territories for the extraction of hydrocarbons, mining and the implementation of industrial and wind farms as well as the construction of new urban centres for semi-enslaved national workers, but mostly migrants who, by order of the master of the North, will be detained at the Isthmus, turning this territory into a new wall of human containment.

In the Mayan territories of the Yucatan Peninsula and the states of Chiapas and Tabasco, a new territorial reordering is being gestated in order to put it at the service of the big capitals of the tourist and industrial developments.

n drogas baratas como el cristal, se convierten en sicarios y terminan asesinad@s.

 

The Caravan witnessed the devastation of the jungle to make way for train tracks, hundreds of kilometres and millions of trees cut down where the deer and jaguar used to walk. The flows of the sacred water are being modified with catastrophic consequences for the people they will name in the future as natural disasters.

In Mayan territories that were victims at the beginning of the 20th century of the Genocide promoted by the State during the Mayan Social War, today the train and the megaprojects that are illegally imposed are part of the new genocidal practices.

To the construction of the train is added: the installation of 21 stations and tourist development zones, wind and photovoltaic parks, thermoelectric plants, breweries, pig farms, palm, soy and other monoculture crops, as well as large real estate developments, hotel complexes, shopping centres, casinos, restaurants and everything necessary for the large masses of tourists expected to arrive on the peninsula, provoking dispossession, voracious extractivism and the destruction of the Mayan peoples’ ways of life.

Both on the peninsula and in the Isthmus, through disinformation and false promises of well-being linked to the deceptive use of concepts such as progress and development, where social programmes have played a fundamental role, many people remain silent and do not organise, even knowing and seeing the growing violence and the destruction of the territories, out of fear of violence, separation from the community and the possible loss of social programmes.

But the evils that come with these mega-projects of death are becoming more evident every day. All these infrastructures represent the dispossession of our territories for the benefit of big capital as part of a project operated by the Mexican armed forces, army, navy and national guard in coordination with the police and migratory bodies and in collusion with the organised crime cartels and the consequent expansion of the capitalist and patriarchal criminal economies.

We heard and witnessed that the first of the dispossessions is that of ancestry and communality, because when we are stripped of our sense of belonging to Mother Earth we cease to feel her, to listen to her and to feel her pains. First they strip us of our memory and our spirituality so that they can strip us of our way of life, our roots and the earth, because those who no longer see her as a mother, but as a commodity to be bought and sold, get rid of her without thinking about what those who only want to exploit her will do to her, uproot its trees and poison it without caring about the destruction of our communities and our ceremonial centres, the contamination of the air, the land and the waters, springs, rivers, lagoons, seas and the cenotes that are the waters of the bowels of our mother.

We saw how the sea is literally and tragically swallowing the community of El Bosque in Tabasco, as a consequence of climate change caused by planetary mega-pollution, particularly by the energy model based on the fosil extraction, which this government and big capital are pushing.

We also note the terrible increase in a culture of violence that has permeated the whole of society, from the communities to the city neighbourhoods, with drug trafficking, extortion, and the charging of extortion fees, particularly affecting young people, women, migrants, and environmental and human rights defenders.

More and more young people from indigenous communities and poor urban neighbourhoods are falling victim to drug trafficking networks, as one of the few «alternatives» to overcome this disaster, destroying their own brains with cheap drugs such as crystal meth, becoming hired assassins and ending up murdered.

In particular, we note the increase in gender violence, from family violence to feminicide, with the terrifying figure of 13 women murdered daily in our country, and a clear increase in repression against those who oppose megaprojects, defend territory and denounce impunity and chains of complicity, repression that ranges from threats, forced displacement, imprisonment, disappearances and assassinations.

We identify the racist policies, the strategy of persecution and the stigmatisation of the National Institute of Migration against our migrant brothers and sisters who denied entry into the country to our comrades from Honduras, Guatemala and El Salvador.

 

 

We note the systematic violation of the rights of indigenous peoples and particularly the right to self-determination and autonomy, the exercise of which is essential to rebuild from our ancestral cultural roots a free and dignified life based on communality through decision-making in assemblies, with full respect for women, other women, young people, children and children’s rights, and in particular the right to self-determination and autonomy with full respect for women, other women, youth, children and the elderly, and in harmony with nature.

We noted the pressure from all the government agencies, starting with the agrarian attorney general’s office, to transfer the agrarian nuclei and indigenous communities to full ownership and thus put an end to the social ownership of the land, which represents the strength of our struggles.

But in contrast to all these calamities, the Caravan also allowed us to travel through hope and life, to meet the countryside and its native seeds that are being protected by peasant hands. We felt the joy of rebellious music that excites hearts and inspires resistance. We enjoyed art as a front of struggle that with its colours, sounds and noise allows us to continue in the joyful rebellion.

The Caravan allowed us to meet the jungle that resists. Where the trees are cut down, life springs up again. We listened to the birds and their messages, drank the crystal clear water from the wells and breathed the clean air of rural life. We met peoples and communities who are organising themselves, resisting and not allowing dispossession or even the entry of companies into their territories. They are also taking steps to recover ways of life that build autonomies that offer hope for humanity. On the other hand, we find rebellious cities that build collectivity and autonomy in the midst of urban monsters where love for the land and territory flourishes once again.

We offer to mMother Earth, we invoke the spirit of Fire, Water and Air, recognising that long struggles are sustained by spirituality linked to territory and our ancestry. Knowing that we do not seek a final victory but that we struggle just as our grandfathers and grandmothers did and before them, our ancestors and as our children and grandchildren will continue to do. As we reaffirmed in the 10 working groups of the South/Southeast meeting on 5 May, we are building other possible worlds by celebrating what we are harvesting and recognising that our strength comes from memory and wisdom as peoples who struggle. We have reflected that we resist by embracing the values of living a full and dignified life close to the Land, such as growing our food, traditional medicine, and safeguarding our peoples through community guards.

We recognised that even in the midst of all the destruction of the capitalists there are many achievements that we are reaping: The first and most important is that after 500 years of attempts to exterminate us, we are still here, the community-based organisation against dispossession, the land recovered in different towns, the struggle of women for the recognition and exercise of their rights, the struggle for water, the release of political prisoners, the relocation of the train stations in Mérida and Campeche, the establishment of zones free of extractive projects, the preservation of languages and traditional festivals, and the construction of autonomies.

After the caravan and our internal gathering, 940 people from 40 native peoples of the world, from 27 states of the Republic, from 30 countries and from 10 autonomous regions met at the International Gathering «Global corporate capitalism, planetary patriarchy, autonomies in rebellion». We listened to the words of 5 speakers to analyse and study the geopolitical situation of the world, of Mexico, specifically of the south-southeast and the global south. We also listened to the sharing of experiences of struggle from all these regions as well as proposals to continue the construction of autonomy.

The sisters and brothers of Abya Yala from Guatemala, El Salvador, Costa Rica, Honduras, Colombia, Ecuador, shared with us the situation they have to face and we noted that this predatory capitalist system is acting in the same way in all geographies where the peoples still protect natural and cultural assets and life itself. But in the same way we note the joy, the strength and the living organisation of the organised peoples

Denouncements:

We denounce the violent eviction of the encampment Tierra y Libertad as well as the imprisonment of 6 comrades perpetrated by the navy and the state police on April 28, one day after the passage of our caravan. We demand that the government of Oaxaca and the federal government immediately cease the harassment against defenders of land and territory, particularly in the case of the Tierra y Libertad camp in the Isthmus, and that the arrest warrants against 17 members of the community of Puente Madera, San Blas Atempa, be dropped, and the acquittal of David Salazar, who is on trial.

We repudiate the racist and rights-violating migration policy of this government that prevented the entry of the daughter of comrade Berta Cáceres by prohibiting her from flying to Mexico City with all her papers in order, and the harassment of 7 Central American comrades at the border post in Tapachula, Chiapas.

We demand the revocation of the illegal assembly of March 5, 2023 in the ejido Nicolás Bravo, where the stop of the so-called Mayan train was illegally approved in favour of the Azcarraga group, owners of Televisa, and which will damage more than 100 Mayan ceremonial centres.

We demand the cancellation of the eviction order of the community of Emiliano Zapata III municipality of Candelaria Campeche promoted by the supposed owner Fernando Oropeza Arispe and ordered by the civil judge of first instance of the state of Campeche. Likewise, the cancellation of the arrest warrants for the community members.

Immediate cancellation of the work on the so-called Mayan train, especially the illegal construction of section 7, the installation of the military casino and the tourist development in the community of Xpujil, since despite the definitive suspension granted by a federal judge, SEDENA continues its construction in contempt of the federal order.

Cease the pressure of the Agrarian Procurator’s Office on the communities and ejidos (communal organization) to convert the socially owned lands to full ownership, putting an end to the collective lands of the country’s indigenous communities.

Urgent and immediate relocation of the El Bosque community in the municipality of Centla, Tabasco, who are displaced environmental victims of global warming produced by the voracious extractivist system that continues to depredate and deforest the territories.

We demand the immediate release of all political prisoners in this country, political prisoners in solidarity with the voice of Amate, Fidencio Aldama, the prisoners of Eloxochitlan de Flores Magón, Oaxaca, all those unjustly imprisoned for defending water and territories, and the comrade Manuel Gómez Vázquez, support base of the EZLN, and the revocation of the sentence of 50 years against Miguel Angel Peralta Betanzos, persecuted political prisoner of Eloxochitlan.

We firmly accompany and join the demand of the families of the victims of feminicidal violence in Mexico to achieve truth, justice, reparation and non-repetition, not only for the women who have been violated but particularly for the children (daughters, sons, sisters and brothers), collateral victims of this infamous violence in this country that insists on sowing fear, death and impunity. No forgiveness, no forgetting! Punishment for the guilty! (facebook: @FeminicidiosCrimenesdelesahumanidad, @FatimaVariniaEnTuHonorYRecuerdo, @JusticiaParaLupitaBastida)

In the case of the ejido of Tila, Chiapas, we demand the execution of the RAN ruling in favour of the recovery of the 130 hectares that the municipality has taken from them.

We demand the presentation alive of the thousands of disappeared people in the country, of the community member Antonio Díaz Valencia and the lawyer Ricardo Lagunes Gasca who were disappeared due to a conflict between the community of Aquila, Michoacán and the Canadian mining company Ternium.

Justice for the 43 disappeared normalistas in Ayotzinapan, because they were taken alive, we want them alive!

We affirm loud and clear and from our hearts that fight and organise, that we will continue to meet and articulate with other struggles around the world.

Neither the National Guard, nor the navy, nor the army will stop us!

While you are destroying, we are building.

Caravan and International Gathering El Sur Resiste

#THE SOUTH RESISTS