Translations

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We once again repeat we will not ask their approval to be free

Originally posted on It’s Going Down.

okupa-che-auditorio-unamTranslator’s note: The Okupa Che is an auditorium taken over during the 1999-2000 student strike at the National Autonomous University of Mexico, the largest university in Latin America. An autonomous, anti-authoritarian space, it has faced constant repression from state and university authorities. Yorch, a member of Okupa Che, was detained on Wednesday, when police planted a backpack on him containing large quantities of crack, clonazepam and marijuana. He is now being held in a federal prison in Hermosillo, Sonora. Regeneración Radio reports that there is a strong rumor the Federal Police are preparing to evict the Okupa. Several collectives have condemned Yorch’s arrest and the UNAM Academic University Assembly has issued a sign-on letter calling for Yorch’s freedom and an end to attacks on Okupa Che.

Okupa Che
February 25, 2016
Translated by Scott Campbell

To the independent media
To allied collectives and spaces
To the general public

For several years and in various ways we have been denouncing and exposing the campaign of vilification and harassment unleashed globally against the anarchist movement and Okupa Che in particular. No more than three months ago fake text messages directed at specific people in the name of the Office of the President threatened the violent eviction of the space and the possible location and detention of some of its “squatters.” Added to that, various hit pieces in the media have appeared in recent weeks making several claims that are supposedly related to the existence of the space. Periodicals complicit with UNAM’s Office of the President and with the State – La Razón and El Universal, for example – have thrown around conjectures and assumptions about business, drug trafficking and robbery, using the risky and premeditated theory that all of this is overseen by people connected to the squat.

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Oaxaca, the fight for the air

Originally posted on El Enemigo Común

radio-oaxacaBy Jaime Quintana Guerrero
January 20, 2016
Desinformémonos
Translated by Scott Campbell

Bi, in the Binnizaá or Zapotec language, means “air”, means “spirit.” “For us, air not only represents life, it also carries loved ones who have died. When one dies, their spirit becomes air and returns to the people.”

The struggles against the wind farms that abound throughout the state also, then, contain this element: “They want to change the path of the wind, of the air, of our spirits, of our loved ones.”

Carlos Martínez Fuentes, a member of Radio Totopo in Juchitán, Oaxaca, is the one who explained the above. Radio Totopo, with its nine years transmitting together with the spirits in the air, also belongs to the Popular Assembly of the Juchitecan People.

The emergence of the radio was a result of sheer necessity. On the one hand, as a tool in the resistance struggle to Plan Puebla Panama, which includes the wind farm system being put into place between those two locations.

As well, because the tradition of the indigenous peoples of Oaxaca (as with most) is oral. The radio fits perfectly, then. “In Oaxaca, 16 different languages are spoken. The indigenous oral tradition is the key reason behind the existence of community radio stations and community assemblies, their main supporters,” explains José Juan Cárdenas, member of the Integral Community Communication organization.

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We walk together with you!

Originally posted on El Enemigo Común.

miguel-angel-peralta-betanzos

Last April 30, Miguel Ángel Peralta, a member of the Community Assembly of Eloxochitlán de Flores Magón, Oaxaca, was arrested at his workplace in Mexico City by plainclothes agents without an arrest warrant. He was held incommunicado for 20 hours before being presented at the Tlaxiaco prison in the state of Oaxaca. On the ride down, he was beaten and threatened.

Since 2010, Miguel has struggled alongside other members of the Community Assembly against the imposition of the illegitimate Mayor Manuel Zepeda Cortes, who rejected the council members elected according to traditions and customs and set up his own government, bringing a reign of terror, plunder and injustice to Eloxochitlan.

On August 10 2012, Miguel’s father Pedro Peralta was kidnapped, tortured, seriously wounded and locked up in the Cuicatlán prison, where he is still held as a political prisoner for having struggled against the tyranny of the Zepeda Cortés regime.

Miguel and 34 other comrades are charged with the deaths of two people who died in a confrontation on December 14, 2014, between Assembly members and followers of ex Mayor Manuel Zepeda Cortes in Eloxochitlán. Six comrades received bullet wounds in the fray. Eight of the 34 have been arrested and are now unjustly held in the Ixcotel prison, just outside Oaxaca City. Miguel and two other comrades are being held in a 2 x 2 meter punishment cell in Tlaxiaco. On the 20th day of his imprisonment, he wrote the following letter:

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Ayotzinapa: Learn in order to teach

Originally posted on El Enemigo Común.

By Débora Poo Soto
Translated by Scott Campbell
[Spanish original]
May 15, 2015

Ayotzinapa is…

For some; everything, their only option, their best chance, a house, a family, is learning:

They give you, what, food, a bedroom – that’s the room to rest in – the three meals, so for me it means: this Normal [teaching college] is everything. Here there is everything, I have everything […]

They teach you to be humble, here they teach you what is…more than anything the humility to talk with the people, to be sensitive, to respect them, since in this normal they teach you what values are, they teach us to live together with the people and also here they really instill in us to work with the people, with poor people, peasants […].*

Means sharing: the sleepless nights, the tears and happiness, the dreams. It brings with it responsibility, a lot of work and effort in order to get here, in order to enter and to stay.

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