EZLN Support Bases Ask the Global Community for Support
** They are from San Marcos Avilés, municipality of Sitalá
** They report constant aggressions, robberies and threats
By: Hermann Bellinghausen, Envoy
San Cristóbal de las Casas, Chiapas, July 24, 2012
“The PRIístas make us suffer a lot, we no longer want that,” express support bases of the Zapatista National Liberation Army (EZLN, its initials in Spanish) in comunidad San Marcos Avilés (municipality of Sitalá, in the traditional zone of the Tzeltals), upon making a call to international solidarity. They denounce constant aggressions, robberies and threats of expulsion: “When we plant our milpa, although it is corn, we cannot carry it to our house. They come to steal the beans, the (sugar) cane and bananas. As for the cane, they cut it all and that is pure evil. Although we plant and we work, they finish it off and now there is nothing.”
The indigenous Zapatistas add: “The political parties take advantage of everything that we plant.” The current situation of the families in resistance “came to pass because what we are demanding has no importance to the authorities of the government of Felipe Calderón and Juan Sabines Guerrero. They even started to enter the houses. Some had horses, cattle; we had all of that before the arrival of our suffering. Some had cement, sheet metal, rods for constructing their houses, a store, a car. They stole everything.” Besides, “we cannot enjoy the fruits of our labor with our children, since they are the ones who consume it, those (from the) political parties, the PRI, PRD and PAN.”
In a video divulged last night, the indigenous, with faces covered, argue in Tzeltal in favor of autonomous education: “We give a lot of importance to the school. We want there to be a good teaching for the children, a good learning, a good example. We see that the government has its schools, but it is not a good education nor do they teach our children well, and what they teach has nothing to do with us. Thus we opened our school.” This gave the officialists a pretext to attack the Zapatista families and expel them in 2010, after classes were started on August 16 of that year.
“In the following days a compa that lives down there was cited by the official authorities. When he presented himself with another compa at the official agency, they wrote a document that they attempted to make them sign so that there would no longer be EZLN support bases here. Our compañeros refused. Authorities and aggressors held them enclosed, and afterwards wanted to send them to prison.”
They remember the origin of the persecution that they suffer now: “We constructed the school that is found up there. That day they wanted to again destroy the sheet metal. The aggressors were not in agreement and the authorities agreed to run us out of our homes one time. They discussed their plans to mistreat us with the government. They brought machetes, sticks and stones in their hand.” As a consequence, they stayed “under a tree” for “one month and three days,” covered “with pieces of broken tarps. It was the rainy season and the children slept in the mud; there were no tortillas to eat nor pozol to drink.”
A concealed woman intervenes: “They don’t take us into account, they look at us like dogs. They said that to me when I had my son in the mountains.”
Upon calling upon civil society and the solidarity organizations to stop this escalation of violence that makes them fear a new eviction, they declare: “We are going to continue. We are not committing any crime. We have the right to struggle so that they take us into account. What we are asking for is liberty, justice and peace. We are not afraid because we know clearly what we are seeking and how we want to live. Men, women youth and children are in struggle. So, we want you to know the bad government’s crime here in San Marcos Avilés.”
