Agrarian communities under fire.
We publish this unofficial translation of an article of Periódico Mural.
Subdued by the siege of paramilitary groups, crime and the Mexican army, the agrarian communities in Mexico are experiencing firsthand a reactionary civil war where the dead are the people.
Although these attacks are perfectly documented, the presidential rhetoric assures that the self-proclaimed fourth transformation has solved practically all the problems that afflict the impoverished masses of the countryside, and to demonstrate this it creaks about its assistance-counterinsurgency programs such as sowing envy, destroying the future, corporativization of property, etc. as if it were a democratic conquest. Nothing more foreign to reality!
The electoral use of these programs has served to coerce the decisions of individuals within the communities, atomizing the power and sovereignty of community assemblies. Likewise, the discretionary use of institutions has served to impose decisions crossing bourgeois legality itself, regulations and international standards, simulating consultations and trampling on the rights of the people. When a community or a group of inhabitants of a locality dissatisfies or invokes their right of access to information, the bureaucrat AMLO disqualifies them by calling them “conservatives, right-wing fifis.” When communities resort to the law with protection lawsuits or other resources, they are immediately stigmatized in the morning press conferences [of AMLO] by asking them “where were you 6, 12 or 18 years ago?” . When these same communities respond in the streets with organization and resistance, then the discourse is in charge of the reactionary armed forces, whether called paramilitaries, crime or the army.
If before the PRI [Institutional Revolutionary Party] bought and co-opted the agrarian representation bodies or the local authorities to impose its holy will, now the 4T [fourth transformation] ensures that the weapons end up persuading not only the authorities, but also the residents.
Throughout AMLO’s government, various voices from the people’s left (that is, really) have denounced that reactionary violence against indigenous peoples and rural communities continues to grow. A report from the Alas y Raíces microsite of the EDUCA organization mentions that until December 2023 there were recorded… “200 attacks on the life of activists, these attacks include: disappearances, homicides and extrajudicial executions, and they coincide with the six-year term of Andrés Manuel López Obrador. In this scenario, 176 activists were murdered, 20 activists remain missing and 4 were found alive. ” The report documents the murders of Luis Armando Fuentes Aquino, Jesús Manuel García Martínez and Félix Vicente Cruz , all of them members of the Current of the People – Red Sun in the Isthmus of Tehuantepec where the people firmly oppose the imposition of the Interoceanic Corridor .
The war against the people extends throughout the national territory, and as we can see after the latest statements of the EZLN presented in a series of installments on its web portal , it has influenced decision-making for the new social structure of Zapatismo. In his most recent speech during the celebrations for the 30th anniversary of the armed uprising, The insurgent subcommander Moisés highlighted some of the particularities of this new form of organization based not on the individual but on “the commune”; and he addressed in general terms the context that the people experience… “We are going to follow that path and we are going to defend ourselves. We don’t need to kill soldiers and bad governments. But if they come we will defend ourselves. ”
Denying the reactionary war against the people in our country is now impossible. Now we are beginning the first days of 2024 with the news that in Chicomuselo, Chiapas, cells of a criminal cartel have attacked different meetings in ranchos, generating mass forced displacements in Nueva Morelia and El Limonar, respectively; while in Guerrero the community of Buenavista de los Hurtado was attacked with drones and hitmen from another cartel. The common denominator in these cases is the control of the territories and the need of the latifundium to appropriate the ownership of the land to dismantle the communal property, while the authorities of the different levels of government remain on the sidelines as if the shots were not fired, heard or seen.
The events that occurred in Texcatitlán, State of Mexico allow us to see the immediate future of community organization: the masses are going to arm themselves to defend their lands, their territories, their lives and their freedom.
More and more rural communities are deciding to dust off the weapons with which they accompanied Zapata and Villa in the quest to carry out the agrarian revolution that is still pending.
