NATIONAL INDIGENOUS CONGRESS
Violence Escalated Against the Indigenous Peoples of Mexico
The National Indigenous Congress (CNI) expresses its deep concern for the wave of violence and militarization sweeping indigenous zones across the country. Precisely within the framework of the electoral process, the indigenous communities are being pressured and terrorized. This is a campaign which debilitates the traditional forms of democracy unique to the indigenous peoples, and which pressures them to cast their vote, based on fear, in favor of the party of State.
We will mention here some of the most important events of this aggressive wave. We condemn the arrests of Juan and Marcos Zamora Gonz·lez, Chinateco leaders of the Indigenous Council of Uxpanapa (CIUX), jailed for political reasons in the Port of Veracruz. The CNI further considers as a grave act the harassment toward the Nahua leader Rogelia Justo, from the Sierra de Manantl·n in Jalisco, threatened with death and accused of illegal acts which she had nothing to do with. In the same state, Carlos Ch·vez, of the Jalisco Association in Support of the Indigenous Peoples (AJAGI) has resisted a wide range of intimidations and threats.
At the moment of issuing this declaration, JosÈ Pacheco Pineda, president of the Independent Campesino Organization of Indigenous Communities (OCICI), based in Chilapa, Guerrero, remains disappeared, after having been kidnapped on June 27th. In Veracruz, on June 15th, the Popoluca leader Albano Manuel GarcÌa, member of the National Coordinating Commission of Indian Peoples (CNPI), was assassinated by machete blows in Sabatnas, in the municipality of Zoteapan, Veracruz, without any of his killers being detained.
And of course, Chiapas has felt this rebound of violent harassment against the indigenous peoples with particular intensity. In this state, the violence has been directed at the community and social leaders. The efforts to push for a forced and unilateral remunicipalization, without taking the representative social leaders into account, and the lack of punishment for paramilitary groups, which in the northern zone of the state have played a leading role in violent acts these past weeks, are just some of the ways in which the confrontations within the communities are fomented. The militarization of wide zones of the state, in particular in the highlands and the jungle, today has a weight which surpasses any previous mark. It has been reported, for example, that on the road which passes through the community of La Realidad, military convoys pass three times a day with 180 soldiers each, armed with much more than electoral propoganda.
These are the most grave of the actions which have been reported in the indigenous regions, but they are not the only ones. Members of the CNI continue to report actions of intimidation and an increase in the militarization of the Huasteca region of Veracruz, the South Sierra of Oaxaca, the eastern and central zones of the Yucat·n penninsula, and diverse regions of Guerrero. The paramilitary groups and assassins hired by the caciques are not only active in the state of Chiapas. In the states of Veracruz, Puebla, Oaxaca, and Guerrero, groups also exist which are similar to the sadly famed "Paz y Justicia", active in the northern zone of Chiapas.
To this increase in violence is added the harassment against diverse indigenous regions which have expressed their will to not participate in the electoral process culminating on July 6th. In this sense, it is worth mentioning the constant aggressions suffered by the Mazateca zone of Eloxochitl·n and the Mixe region, both in Oaxaca. The frequent denouncements which arrive at the CNI's Follow-Up Commission, coming from the majority of the indigenous regions of the country, show that there is a campaign which conditions public services and the carrying out of important paperwork in return for votes in favor of the PRI; and in which the campaigns of the representatives of the ruling party are backed up with the distribution of diverse "support" for the communities, such as food, construction materials, student scholarships, and others.
The campaign of harassment is complemented with the unilateral closing down of spaces for the indigenous peoples which have been won in their struggle for better conditions. Proof of this is the restrictive policy applied to the National Pedagogical University in the Ajusco, where the corresponding authorities, justifying their actions with "educational decentralization", refuse to announce the convocation for a bachelor's degree in Indigenous Education for 1997-1998. We consider that this action is an attack against one of the projects destined to form indigenous educational specialists who have helped the indigenous peoples for more than twelve generations.
These are not isolated incidents, but rather an integral strategy impelled by the government of Zedillo in order to limit the process of autonomous organization of the indigenous peoples who have backed the struggle of their brothers and sisters of the Zapatista Army of National Liberation.
For all of the above, the CNI demands that the government of Zedillo cease the repression and the harassment against the Mexican indigenous peoples and organizations. In particular, the CNI demands the release of Juan and Marcos Zamora Gonz·lez, the respect for the physical integrity of Rogelia Justo and Carlos Ch·vez, the presentation with life of Professor JosÈ Pacheco Pineda, and punishment for the murderers of Albino Manuel GarcÌa.
The CNI also demands the withdrawal of the military units currently installed in the indigenous regions of the country.
The members of the Follow-Up Commission of the CNI consider that in their regions, the conditions of security and equity for the current electoral process do not exist. The National Indigenous Congress makes an urgent call to the organizations of civil society to pronounce themselves against this escalation of violence we suffer as indigenous peoples of Mexico.
Never Again a Mexico Without Us!
Follow-Up Commission
National Indigenous Congress
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