On the most recent It’s Going Down podcast, a compa and I discuss the cases of Indigenous political prisoner Fidencio Aldama and politically persecuted Indigenous anarchist Miguel Peralta in so-called Mexico. We also touch on topics such as migration and neoliberal megaprojects. Have a listen here!
Originally published on Avispa Midia.
By Ñaní Pinto
Translated by Scott Campbell
The Mexican government, through the Ministry of Economy, announced that the first tenders towards the creation of planned industrial zones in the Interoceanic Corridor of the Isthmus of Tehuantepec (CIIT), in Oaxaca, will be open for bids in February.
“We hope that each development zone will generate investments of around one billion dollars,” said Raquel Buenrostro Sánchez, Minister of Economy, who anticipated that, in addition to government investment, resources from the United States government will be forthcoming.
At the end of 2022, the former head of the CIIT, Rafael Marín Mollinedo, announced that ten plots of land were ready for the construction of industrial parks. “At the beginning of the year, they will be opened for bidding so that developers can take charge and fill them with businesses,” he said in an interview with an infrastructure industry media outlet.
Continue reading
By Gloria Muñoz Ramírez, Desinformémonos
Translated by Scott Campbell, On Mastodon
Eloxochitlán de Flores Magón | Desinformémonos. The demand for the freedom of the seven Mazateco political prisoners was the focus of the international event organized to mark the 100th anniversary of the death in prison of Ricardo Flores Magón, an anarchist precursor of the Mexican Revolution who questioned power until his death, which occurred on November 21, 1922 in a U.S. prison. The revolutionary was born in Eloxochitlán, Oaxaca, and here, after a series of commemorative acts organized by the community, it was announced that the prisoners – held in three different prisons – will remain on hunger strike until governor-elect Salomón Jara Cruz opens a dialogue with their relatives to facilitate their release.
In a letter sent from the prisons of Villa de Etla, Taniveth, and Cuicatlán, Oaxaca, Jaime Betanzos, Fernando Gavito, Alfredo Bolaños, Omar Hugo Morales, Herminio Monfil, Isaías Gallardo and Francisco Durán recalled that the federal government recognized them as political prisoners in December 2018. At that time, they noted, “it was recognized that we are Indigenous people whose rights have been violated and that crimes were fabricated against us.”
Continue readingOriginally posted on It’s Going Down.
The following is a statement from the Oaxacan Assembly in Defense of Land and Territory, translated by Scott Campbell, regarding the launch of a new permanent campaign against extractivist, neoliberal megaprojects.
Launch of the Campaign: “It’s Not Development – It’s Dispossession!”
We, the communities and organizations that have joined together since 2019 as the Oaxacan Assembly in Defense of Land and Territory, today, November 20, 2021, on the 111th anniversary of the Mexican Revolution, declare the following:
Thanks to the long struggles of our ancestors against the conquistadores, colonizers and invaders who for centuries tried to dispossess us of everything that gives us life and sustenance, the First Peoples of Oaxaca still retain our communal and ejidal lands, as well as our territories and autonomy as communities and municipalities. We are still here as Afro-Mexican, Amuzgo, Binizaa, Chatino, Chinanteco, Chocholteco, Chontal, Cuicateco, Ikoots, Ixcateco, Mazateco, Mixe, Mixteco, Náhuatl, Tacuate, Triqui, Zapoteco y Zoque peoples, and all the men, women, and others who have their blood in our veins and maintain their culture in our daily lives. We inhabit and work our ancestral territories, developing our own forms of knowledge and at the same time enriching the world with them, in a reciprocal and respectful manner. Thanks to this connection to territory, Oaxaca and all of Mexico has great cultural and ecological richness and diversity that those who seek to harm us so often boast about.
The peoples of Mexico today commemorate the invaluable struggle of our general Emiliano Zapata, speaker of the Nahuatl language and son of the people of Morelos, and our immortal Ricardo Flores Magón, Oaxacan and son of the Mazateco people, who together with thousands of Mexicans gave their lives for justice and for a dignified life for the peasants, the workers, the dispossessed, the Indigenous peoples of Mexico.
Continue readingOriginally posted on It’s Going Down.
The following piece by Erika Lozano, published by Desinformémonos and translated by Scott Campbell, discusses the hunger strike started by women from Eloxochitlán de Flores Magón, Oaxaca, demanding the release of seven political prisoners from the community.
Mazatec women encamped in front of the Federal Judiciary Council in Mexico City to demand the release of their relatives after seven years in prison. Argelia Betanzos, Bertha Reynosa and Carmela Bonfil, from Eloxochitlán, Oaxaca, demanded a meeting with the president of the council, Arturo Zaldívar Lelo de Larrea.
“What brings us here is desperation, since the innocence of our family members has been proven by legal evidence, as has the fabrication of the crimes of which they are accused,” explained Betanzos during an interview. She is the daughter of prisoner Jaime Betanzos Fuentes, and she started a hunger strike on Tuesday, May 25, stating she will not leave until she has an answer. She also denounced that “using the pandemic as a pretext,” there has been no progress in the case on the part of Oaxacan authorities.
Continue readingOriginal posted on It’s Going Down.
On Tuesday, May 18, around 120 students from the Mactumactzá Rural Normal School blockaded the Chiapa de Corzo-San Cristóbal highway in Chiapas, Mexico. The students were protesting changes to the admissions process to the school that would disadvantage working class, rural and Indigenous students. Seen as an attempt to change the makeup of the student body or as a step towards closing the school (which has already been closed four times by the Mexican state), students took to the streets, along with others who joined in solidarity.
In response, Chiapas State Police brutally attacked the blockade, firing tear gas and beating students with batons. In total, 95 people were arrested, 74 women and 19 men, all but two of them students. All 95 were moved to the high-security prison of El Amate. During the course of the arrests and transfer, the women students were forced to strip naked and were sexually assaulted by police. All those arrested are facing charges of rioting with a gang enhancement, violent robbery, damages, and attacks on the public peace and the bodily and cultural integrity of the state.
Continue reading
Teaching Resistance: Radicals, Revolutionaries, and Cultural Subversives in the Classroom is an impressive anthology coming out next month from PM Press incorporating a wide variety of voices examining the practice of radical education both inside and outside the classroom. I’m honored to have a piece included in the collection that chronicles and analyzes the militant 2016 teachers’ strike in Mexico which occurred across several states, was met with severe state repression, and led to broader popular rebellion, particularly in Oaxaca. (Here’s a piece from 2016 providing a brief snapshot of some of the events of that struggle.)
In order to print and distribute as many copies as possible, PM Press is running a Kickstarter campaign through which folks can pre-order the book. There are ten days left on the campaign and I encourage you to support it if you’re able and please help spread the word. Here’s more info on the book:
Teaching Resistance: Radicals, Revolutionaries, and Cultural Subversives in the Classroom is a collection of the voices of fierce, activist educators from around the world with a focus on those in and around DIY/punk subculture who engage inside and outside the classroom from pre-kindergarten to university.
More than just a book for teachers, Teaching Resistance is for anyone who wants to explore new ways to subvert educational systems and institutions, collectively transform (and re-imagine) educational spaces, and empower students and other teachers to fight for genuine change. Topics include community self-defense, Black Lives Matter and critical race theory, intersections between punk/DIY subculture and teaching, ESL, anarchist education, Palestinian resistance, trauma, working-class education, prison teaching, the resurgence of (and resistance to) the Far Right, special education, antifascist pedagogies, and more.
Thanks for supporting radical education and radical publishing!
Originally posted on It’s Going Down
From El Istmo es Nuestro
Translated by Scott Campbell
#ElIstmoEsNuestro
Isthmus of Tehuantepec
June 2019
The Isthmus of Tehuantepec is a region of Mexico shared by the states of Oaxaca and Veracruz. It is the narrowest part of the country between two oceans: the Pacific to the south and the Atlantic to the north (better known as the Gulf of Mexico), and a meeting point between flora and fauna from the north and south. These characteristics make the Isthmus the most biologically diverse area of the country, an invaluable richness of life concentrated on the territories of 11 different Indigenous peoples. Eight with ancestral lands (Zapotec, Mixe, Ikoots, Zoque/Chimalapa, Zoque Popoluca, Chontal, Chochoco and Nahua) and three peoples who migrated due to displacement and forced relocation (Chinanteco, Mixtec, and Tsotsil). Indigenous peoples who to this day have resolutely protected the natural wealth of our territories.
Facing the imminent threat of the Fourth Transformation government and President Andrés Manuel López Obrador (AMLO) to impose on the peoples of the Isthmus of Tehuantepec, the people of Mexico, and the nation itself, the so-called “Integral Development Plan for the Isthmus of Tehuantepec – Interoceanic Train” (popularly known since 1996 as the “Isthmus Megaproject”), and considering that:
Originally posted on It’s Going Down
A CODEDI highway blockade in November 2017.
Via Centro de Medios Libres
Translated by Scott Campbell
Below is a translation of the most recent statement from the Committee for the Defense of Indigenous Rights (CODEDI) following the ambush and killing of three of their members last night. In the audio interview below, Abraham Ramírez Vázquez, the head of CODEDI and former political prisoner, states the ambush was orchestrated by the judicial police (the armed wing of the state prosecutor’s office) and was ordered by the governor of Oaxaca, Alejandro Murat. For background on CODEDI and its origins in Santiago Xanica, see this article.
The organization CODEDI (Committee for the Defense of Indigenous Rights) is an autonomous organization that works for the indigenous communities of the Southern Mountains, Central Valleys and Coast of Oaxaca, in solidarity with all just causes. We currently work with 50 communities, creating the dream of living in autonomy through daily practices, with more than 20 years serving the peoples of Oaxaca. We are part of different alliances in the state, country, and world; alliances based in processes of autonomy and struggle. The leader of our organization is Abraham Ramírez Vázquez, an indigenous leader from Santiago Xanica who was imprisoned from 2004 to 2011 by order of former governor José Murat, the father of the current governor.
Originally published on It’s Going Down
On Tuesday, September 19, a powerful earthquake struck central Mexico. With a magnitude of 7.1 on the Richter scale and the epicenter just south of the city of Puebla, it has caused numerous deaths and widespread damage in Mexico City and the neighboring states of Puebla, Morelos and the State of Mexico, along with reports of loss of life and structural damage as far south and west as the states of Oaxaca and Guerrero.
Dozens of buildings collapsed in Mexico City alone and at the time of this writing at least 230 people have been reported as killed. The earthquake occurred just hours after a national earthquake drill and commemoration of the 32nd anniversary of the 1985 quake in which more than 10,000 people were killed. The 1985 tragedy is a seminal moment in modern Mexican history not only for the massive devastation caused but also due to the negligence, corruption and opportunism which marked the government’s response, especially when contrasted with the tremendous mobilization and solidarity of civil society in successfully self-organizing rescue efforts in the face of the state’s abdication of responsibility.
Falling Into Incandescence 