To the people of Mexico and the world.
The National Indigenous Congress – Indigenous Governing Council condemns the cowardly attack by members of the paramilitary group called the Regional Organization of Coffee Growers of Ocosingo (ORCAO), who last Saturday, August 22, around 11:00 a.m., stole and burned the facilities of the New Dawn of the Rainbow Center of Commerce, which is located in the site known as the Cuxuljá crossroads, in the Lucio Cabañas Autonomous Municipality, within the official municipality of Ocosingo, Chiapas.
The paramilitary organization ORCAO has maintained constant pressure and violence on Zapatista communities for years; As is the case with the Autonomous Municipality of Moisés Gandhi, to prevent autonomous organization, to privatize the lands that have cost the struggle and organization of the original Zapatista support bases, to intimidate and threaten the comrades who from below continue betting on hope, such as the various aggressions against comrades of the National Indigenous Congress, who were raped and kidnapped by ORCAO paramilitaries, the Chinchulines and people from the MORENA party.
We denounce the war that, from above, is being deployed against the organization of the Zapatista communities, at the same time that from above the bad governments seek to impose, throughout the country, mega projects of death which we oppose and will oppose, because we are not willing to give up our territories and allow the destruction promised by the powerful.
We hold the paramilitary organization ORCAO, the MORENA party, the state and federal governments, who have not stopped sowing violence in the region responsible for these events, whose goal is to strike not only at our sisters and brothers in the communities which are the support bases of the EZLN, but to all the peoples who dream of the struggle for life, of healing our mother earth and not letting it be privatized, and that the capitalist bosses and bad governments never return to the Zapatista autonomous territories, and that this light continues to flourish in the territories of the original peoples of the CNI-CIG and all of humanity.
We call on our comrades in support networks and networks of resistance and rebellion to speak out and mobilize against the war of extermination, which is dangerously intensifying against our sisters and brothers of the Zapatista communities, who teach us to never stop sowing rebellion and hope.
Sincerely,
For the complete restoration of our communities,
Never Again A Mexico Without Us
National Indigenous Congress – Indigenous Governing Council
This communiqué was originally posted in Spanish by the National Indigenous Congress – Indigenenous Governing Council on August 24th, 2020. http://www.congresonacionalindigena.org/2020/08/24/cni-cig-repudia-la-agresion-en-contra-de-las-comunidades-bases-zapatistas-y-llama-a-la-solidaridad/. This English interpretation has been re-posted by Schools for Chiapas.