Zapatista Sixth Commission
Mexico
4 of September, 2021.
To whom it may concern:
In accordance with the Zapatista Good Government Councils, the CCRI-CG of the EZLN and the indigenous Zapatista communities, we declare the following:
First: In recent days we have witnessed the inhumane treatment by the Mexican State of migrants trying to leave the silent and invisible trap in which they find themselves in the city of Tapachula, Chiapas, Mexico.
Second: As in previous governments, the Mexican government promises sanctions for the “excesses” committed by agents of the National Institute of Immigration (INM) in response to citizen complaints and claims of these cruelties. This promise is nothing but another lie. The agents are told that this will be said publicly, to avoid pressure from so-called public opinion, but that they should continue with their manhunting methods without fearing the consequences. No migrant should go beyond Chiapas.
Third: Even among the elements of the so-called National Guard there is discontent. Because they were told that their mission was going to be to fight organized crime, and now they have them as dogs of prey hunting dark-skinned people. Because that is the instruction: hunt down anyone with dark skin color: “Stop any fucking black person you come across,” is the order. It is a foreign policy statement.
Fourth: The indoctrination of the agents of the National Institute of Immigration borders on the ridiculous. They are told that they are defending Mexico from an invasion, as an INM official brazenly declared. It would not hurt for the National Institute of Immigration to take some basic history classes — now that classes are back in session– to understand that those who are invading are from the United States government, which is imposing this migratory policy that contradicts the entire history of the Mexican State’s foreign policy.
Fifth: The maneuvers carried out by the INM to keep human rights organizations and the press from documenting its actions remind us of what the Salinas de Gortari government did in the first days of 1994, when it closed all access to the Lacandon jungle to prevent people from knowing what it was doing. And the manhunt for migrants reminds us of the Zedillo government that, in 1995, sent dogs after us.
Sixth: It is embarrassing enough for a government that calls itself progressive to bow to the foreign policy of the U.S. government, without adding its imitation of how the Chiapas landowners, just a few years ago, used to subjugate their peons. According to the religious references that are so dear up there [in government], it is preached: “may your left foot not know who you are kicking with your right foot.”
Seventh: We call upon every honest and sensitive person to demand that this situation be stopped now. And that, to the extent of everyone’s possibilities, humanitarian aid be provided to the migrants.
For our part, the Zapatista indigenous communities, through their 12 Good Government Councils and the Zapatista Sixth Commission, have collected a modest amount of money, which will be sent to some of the shelters or organizations that do humanitarian work with migrants in Chiapas.
We call on the Sixth National, the Networks in Resistance and Rebellion, the collective “The Hour of the Pueblos has Come” the Non-Governmental Organizations and people of good will throughout the world to do what they can to, first, stop the hunt perpetrated by the INM with the support of the National Guard, and, second, to improve the living conditions of the migrant population present in this geography called Mexico.
Just like these migrant brothers and sisters and those of us who are extemporaneous, the day will come when we will all be migrants and extemporaneous on this planet. And whoever does not have the color of money, will be persecuted, hunted, confined, disappeared, eliminated.
Hence, against xenophobia and racism, the struggle for life.
From the mountains of the Mexican Southeast.
Subcomandante Insurgente Moisés Subcomandante Insurgente Galeano.
Mexico, September 4, 2021.
This communiqué was published September 4th, 2021. http://enlacezapatista.ezln.org.mx/2021/09/04/contra-la-xenofobia-y-el-racismo-la-lucha-por-la-vida/