Mexico: Solidarity with the Communities in Resistance in Guerrero and Michoacán
We hereby share an unofficial translation of an article published by Mural Newspaper on the 9th of June.
Since February of this year, we have witnessed an escalation in armed drone attacks by organized crime against indigenous communities, particularly in the states of Michoacán and Guerrero, where indigenous peoples have been reclaiming and rebuilding their autonomous systems for years in defense of the land, territory, water, natural resources, and life, denouncing the ineffectiveness of State security forces and their collusion with criminal groups.
In the Montaña Baja region of Guerrero, many of the affected communities belong to the Indigenous and Popular Council of Guerrero-Emiliano Zapata (CIPOG-EZ), and for several years they have been denouncing the complicity of the three levels of government with the criminal group “Los Ardillos,” which seeks to control the territory through bloodshed and death by carrying out countless attacks that have resulted in the forced displacement of more than 2,000 people. In the statement issued by CIPOG-EZ on May 23, titled “Alcozacán Manifesto,” they denounce a war of extermination against the Nahua communities and state that the attacks recorded since May 6 in communities such as Tula, Xicotlán, Acahuehuetlán, and Alcozacán have resulted in mass displacements, burned homes, and armed attacks using drones and high caliber weapons. “We, the peoples of the Montaña Baja of Guerrero, say: Enough of all this pain and death!” CIPOG-EZ is a political organization that has been struggling since the 1990s to defend the autonomy and self-determination of the peoples; it has a presence on the coast and in the mountains of Guerrero and has promoted self-government and self-defense through the Community Police among the Ñu savii, Me’phaa, Nahua, and Ñomdaá peoples as the only alternative in the face of attacks by the State and its legal and illegal security apparatus.
For its part, the Supreme Indigenous Council of Michoacán (CSIM) reports that at least 28 indigenous communities have suffered armed attacks over the past two years. In its May 26 statement, the council notes that over the past four years, 20 members of community patrols or community police forces have been murdered. “The communities are surviving amid criminal siege and government negligence,” they stated. Furthermore, they reported that on May 25, the Indigenous community of Santa María Sevina and a delegation of 32 CSIM communities were demonstrating at the Michoacán Government House to demand security, justice, and peace for Indigenous communities, and for Sevina in particular, when they were repressed by riot police and law enforcement. They faced the same fate on May 11 when they were demonstrating at the Zinahuen toll booth.
Recently in Santa María Ostula, on the morning of May 27, there was another attack with explosives targeting homes and vehicles. At the same time, members of the Navy attempted to enter the community’s beaches, an action that CSIM described as complicity with criminals and harassment of the community. In its statement, the Council also demands the safe return of its missing members, justice for the 42 community members murdered in Ostula, and punishment for those responsible for these acts.
The Supreme Indigenous Council of Michoacán is an autonomous organization of the State’s indigenous peoples, independent of governments, political Parties, and religious orders; it officially began its work in 2015 and currently comprises 80 communities of P’urhépecha, Otomí or Hñahñú, Matlazinca or Pirinda, Nahuatl, and Afro-Mexican peoples.
All these events are not isolated incidents but part of an anti-people and bloodthirsty policy targeting communities that organize in the face of the onslaught by the repressive apparatus of the State and imperialism; after all, it is no secret that the Yankees are deeply involved with criminal groups to profit from the land, natural resources, and impose their mega-projects of dispossession and death. The Mexican State acts indifferently toward the suffering of indigenous communities, not out of negligence, but as a form of punishment against those who dare to raise their voices, repressing those of us who have opposed dispossession and oppression since colonial times.
It is important to strengthen our militant solidarity with the peoples and communities in resistance who are under attack by organized crime and the old Mexican State; to condemn the armed attacks against these communities; and to join the call for justice.
We reiterate that in the struggle for land and national liberation, we must apply the policy of the three fundamental criteria for the liberation of territories and the establishment of embryonic forms of New Power, namely: Self-determination, Self-government, and Self-defense. Only in this way can we wrest power, piece by piece, from the exploiters and oppressors.
