A Phantom in Northeast Mexico: Zapatismo

Year 22 of the Struggle and 13 of the War Against Obscurity and Lying

By Alejandro de la Torre
Dossier Político

April 29, 2007

At the moment, ten EZLN commanders find themselves in three states in northeast Mexico: Baja California, Baja California Sur, and Sonora.

You read it right – ten commanders, five indigenous women and five indigenous men, of the Clandestine Revolutionary Indigenous Committee – General Command of the EZLN, the same who, after long consultations with thousands of insurgents and zapatista bases, gave the order January 1, 1994 to start the war against the national government until overthrown, then headed by Carlos Salinas de Gortari. It was the first Declaration of the Lacandona Jungle.

From that point the indigenous movement started to gain national and international respect, becoming the vanguard of the fight in defence of humanity and against the neoliberalism that threatens the very existence of the earth.

In Mexico, with the zapatista struggle and the Mexican people, the system has been forced to change laws and, although the neoliberal model hasn’t changed, the power structure that benefits a despotic oligarchy headed by multimillionaire monopolies (Carso, Cemex, Televisa, Gruma, etc.) is at risk of being destroyed and replaced.

Despite all this, the television, radio, and print media in Baja California and in Sonora, totally in the service of economic and political power, have created an information siege instead of carrying out their duty to report on the problems of indigenous communities, dispossession and destruction of natural resources. They have lent themselves to the degrading and diverting of information against these.

Comandante David, Comandante Tacho, Comandanta Susana, Comandanta Yolanda, Comandanta Sandra, Comandante Emiliano, Comandanta Eucaria, Comandanta Kelly, Comandante Eduardo, Comandanta Dalia, Comandante Guillermo and Subcomandante Marcos are coming as delegates of the Sixth Declaration of the Lacandon Jungle issued in June 2005, now in it’s second phase. In the first phase Delegate Zero (Marcos) was sent across the country to listen to the pains and struggles of the Mexican people, taking the word of the EZLN and of the anticapitalist movement formed by leftist political and civil organisations.

This excersize in struggle is called The Other Campaign. It’s objective is to build a national program of struggle from which the poor, indigenous, campesinos and workers demand social justice. They push for the struggle for human rights of men, women, children and those of the sectors marginalised by capitalism. And to build another Mexico, another Sonora, another future.

In this second phase of The Other Campaign the delegates of The Sixth Commission will work with indigenous communities and with rural and urban communities in north Mexico until May 2007, generating an organisation for struggle and unity along with the center and south of the country.

It is a pacifist and civil fight in Sonora and Baja California involving members of the Cucapás, Kilihuas, Pápagos, Od’ham, Yaquis, Mayos and Pimas indigenous people, along with campesinos, workers, university students, women, migrants, intellectuals, etc.

The work started in the Cucapá community El Mayor, where the government has prevented the indigenous from fishing corvina; in April 2005 the army confiscated their fishing materials and stripped them of fishing permits.

In Sonora dispossession against Seris, Yaquis, Mayos and Pimas is the order of the day. The state government plans to sell the Gulf of California seaboard, including Isla del Tiburón. to national and foreign millionaires. Meanwhile some Yaqui heads are receiving government help in the meantime, and the great majority of Yoeme suffer hunger and malnutrition. Dispossession from large land acquisitions against indigenous Mayans and repression of the Pima community together are demonstrations of the high level of marginalization of more than a million people in rural towns and popular neighbourhoods where they earn less than two days minimum wage a week, while businesses in the capitalist regions grow fat, as the area is fertile terrain for tourist, industrial and transnational investment.

These are sufficient elements to justify the presence of the Zapatista command in the region that will unite with the Sonoran defiance, identity and progress and not what the rich pride themselves on which are fallacies and lies.

The Sixth Commission arrived with us, The Other Campaign committee in Cajeme, last Saturday April 7, on it’s way to El Mayor in Mexicali. We welcomed them as brothers and took care of lodging and security for about fifteen comrades. The commanders, people with great dignity and humility, said goodbye with such gratitude that it will remain in our memories and hearts.

The Other Campaign will bear fruit in the conscience of the Sonora people and we will have them soon.

Originally published April 25 in Spanish