This article is the first in Avispa Midia’s series, Chiapas: Disappearing on the Southern Border of Mexico.
It describes the context of the violence between the drug cartels as it has devolved over the past two years and the lives of thousands of residents that are being affected. We will be translating the whole series as they are published.
Human Rights Watch raises its concerns about new proposed migration controls in Texas, which could see persons who aid migrants facing mandatory sentences of ten years imprisonment. “In reality, most of our clients do not hide people, but are arrested for driving undocumented people in their vehicles in the border area…Subjecting people charged with a non-violent driving offense to a mandatory minimum sentence of ten years in prison is so disproportionate and lacking any sense of justice or fairness.”
This is the second installment of the series Chiapas: Disappearing on Mexico’s Southern Border, produced by Avispa Mídia. In the first installment we presented a contextualization of the conflict that has exploded in recent months in Chiapas. (See our blog this Wednesday for the translation of the first installment.)
On October 12, 1492, a new history began to be written: the History of Indigenous Dignity. The strength and determination of the native peoples, cultivated for more than 531 years, acquires new meanings today: the anti-colonial resistance of the first ones, the defense of their territories and ways of inhabiting the world, are a source of knowledge and inspiration in the struggle against predatory and ecocidal capitalism.
The National Indigenous Congress denounces attempts to discredit, delegitimize and criminalize the Zapatista Indigenous Agrarian Movement (MAIZ) through attempts to link it to organized crime.
The Congress further states that, ”as indigenous peoples, Zapatistas and non-Zapatistas, we continue and will continue to resist against the repression that the state exercises through the Armed Forces, the National Guard and the police forces and now against the wave of terror sown by the cartels and the paramilitaries supported by federal and state governments. And we will continue to rebuild autonomous living systems without capitalism or patriarchy that guarantee a dignified life for future generations.”
