Pararamilitaries Invade and Pillage Zapatista Land

The Zapatista council of good government of the Caracol of Resistance Toward a New Dawn (caracol hacia un nuevo amanecer, La garrucha) denounced yesterday the aggressions undergone on the part of paramilitaries coming from the Ejido Cuxulja, second section, and of the village of Gracias a Dios in the municipality of Ocosingo.

Pararamilitaries Invade and Pillage Zapatista Land.
JBG: we will defend our MOTHER EARTH
Bases of the EZLN will defend themselves for better or worse.

The Zapatista council of good government of the Caracol of Resistance Toward
a New Dawn ( caracol hacia un nuevo amanecer, La garrucha ) denounced
yesterday the aggressions undergone on the part of paramilitaries coming
from the Ejido Cuxulja, second section, and of the village of Gracias a Dios
in the municipality of Ocosingo.

The members of the meeting of the council of good government (JBG), Javier
Gomez Ruiz, Buda Sanchez Hernandez and Roberta Santiz Perez informed that
those people have been causing problems for two years inside land retaken by
the Zapatista Army of National Liberacion in 1994.

They told how from the 20th of February they got to chop down six hectares
of mountain land which were prepared for small holdings around the homes of
compa~eros ezln support bases and where they had planted their coffee plants
fields, and that 300 of their coffee bushes had been knocked down by them.

Also they knocked down 15 pine trees to saw planks and took the wood to
their villages; they destroyed a field separation for cattle and they cut
two rolls of barbed wire; from the cattle fields they removed the cattle
property of the inhabitants of Rosario to put in theirs. They denounced that
the provokers were accompanied by six armed persons.

In addition the JBG informed, that the aggressors are directed by the
village committee of Jerusalem, in charge of which is Guadalupe Santiz
Go'mez, " because the plan of the bad federal and state governments is to
keep up the confrontation against the zapatistas. The idea of the government
is to prevent the work of the other campaign and the route of the commanders
in the 32 states of the Mexican Republic ".

A solution between the parts has been looked for by the council of good
government and the agrarian commissions of Francisco Go'mez r, "but they
have never respected the portion we recovered in 1994. We have knowledge
that this land is been seized by the bank. For us the recovered estates
belong to our Autonomous territory ".

And they warned that good government councils of the five caracoles and the
support bases of the EZLN will defend the lands recovered " for better or
worse with our peoples, for we have already spilled blood to defend our
mother earth. We say to the bad governments: federal, state and municipal,
and to the leaders of the organizations who are provoking problems within
our autonomous territories that, if serious confrontations come to happen,
they will be held responsible.

"We, as zapatistas, are not provoking problems; we are respecting the other
organizations, but if they do not respect us, we will not do it neither, and
we must defend our rights as zapatistas."

Meanwhile preparations for the next stage of the other campaign and the
camps to Actively Defend Nature and our struggling surviving indygenous
cultures both in the south east of chiapas and in the north west of Mexico
in Baja California are underway.

we are not in a hurry because we are going far. it is still a long way. love
and rage.

[Read & Learn more about how the autonomous Zapatista zones operate...should I say CO-operate...then you may understand why they're a threat to 'the authorities']
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