Aguas Blancas: Our time, however, is one determined by the fall of the empire
In the meantime, shortages of grains, food, and gasoline are approaching.
The public eruption of the EZLN on January 1, 1994, marked a decade of landless campesino uprisings. They were characterized by immiseration, oppression, and violence.
The genocidal massacre of Aguas Blancas —June 28, 1995— faced frequent disputes over the appropriateness of its nomenclature. Categorizing it as a regional dispute, a massacre, or a low-intensity genocide was put to debate since the attributes of this tragedy differed from the conventional perceptions of political resistance at first sight. For many, naming it a genocidal massacre recovered the weight of the annihilation perpetrated by the State when confronted by communitarian insurgency.
This genocidal massacre belongs to a cobweb of policies "seeking the extermination of peasant leaders that began in the 1960s, and continues to this day" stated Abel Lopez, advisor to the Vicente Guerrero Indigenous and Campesino Organization.
For Luis Hernández Navarro it was a thread of the large net manifesting a continuity of the Dirty War policies: the military and political repression implemented by the corporations in command of the Mexican State, aimed at dismantling the political and armed movements formed in opposition to capital and the national regime.
We translate, in solidarity, a communiqué commemorating the 27th anniversary of the massacre, as penned by the Campesino Organization of the Sierra Sur.
The OCSS is an independent collective from Guerrero, one of the furthest southern points of the Mexican nation-state. The group is composed of relatives of persons who were forcefully disappeared, caught in the storm of an era drenched by State terrorism’s deluge. Or, according to the official narrative, mere fatalities.
Twenty-seven years after the massacre and the case — and its perpetrators — continue free, enjoying full impunity.
Bureaucracy emerges as a device of domination, while the network that links death with profit operates as an essential matrix of power. From that moment on, force makes the law and the law has as its content force within itself.– Achille Mbembe
Aguas Blancas
TO THE ZAPATISTA ARMY OF NATIONAL LIBERATION
TO THE NATIONAL INDIGENOUS CONGRESS
THE INDIGENOUS COUNCIL OF GOVERNMENT
TO THE NATIONAL AND INTERNATIONAL SEXTA
TO THE NETWORKS OF RESISTANCE AND REBELLION
TO THE FREE AND DIGNIFIED MEDIA
TO THE ORGANIZATIONS OF DIGNIFIED STRUGGLES
TO THE PEOPLE OF MEXICO,
27 years without justice!
Twenty-seven years after the Aguas Blancas massacre, the ex-governor Rubén Figueroa remains unpunished1.
We neither forgive nor forget.
We will continue to demand justice as long as we are alive.
Time continues to find us determined and combative.
This time, however, is one determined by a fallen empire: the United States. That nation said it would return Afghanistan to the Stone Age after 20 years of invasion, yet came out with its tail between its legs. It is still the most powerful in the world, but it is losing strength.
The U.S. drives economic wars such as the one surrounding the 5G mobile network, the business of aluminum, or the boycott of Chinese and Indian goods: their reaction toward commodities supplying food and energy. The nation participates in interventionist wars such as those in Iraq, Afghanistan, and Syria. Indirect wars such as the one in Ukraine. The nation-state hopes, among other objectives, to dominate the European gas and oil markets.
This is a time in which a rearrangement is taking shape. In which the failed empire of Russia tries to protect its areas of influence, while Europeans and North Americans are encircling it. And another empire, China, advances and silently strengthens its economic structures.
Let's see what the new economic restructuring has in store. In the meantime, shortages of grains, food, gas, and gasoline are approaching. And the cause is not only the war but the increase in prices. And the scarcity can be felt in our immediate surroundings.
This system, which cannot emerge from its chronic crisis of capital surpluses being unable to combine in a profitable way the surplus of labor power, relies on the accumulation of profits through plunder. The plundering of water, land, forests, minerals, biodiversity, knowledge, labor force, forced dispossession of communities, etc.
In present-day Mexico, while the war on drugs is considered to be over, militarization proceeds, and surely in the next presidential election campaign it will once again be promised to come to an end.
The end of neoliberalism is publicly announced, and yet the plundering continues. In the name of the fight against huachicol2 and crime, social and political control is exercised. And legitimized.
They talk about politics, but it is the continuity of the war by other means. It is a legal civil war.
They also call it foreign direct investment, free trade agreements, humanitarian aid, financial bailouts, investment, and foreign philanthropy. The jargon seeks to cover up the violent reality.
A discursive veil is placed over every act of war.
It is the discourse that seeks to accustom us to the attacks and deaths of ordinary people, in particular the death of women, journalists, and community mobilizers.
A bellicose process comprising multiple actors, whether governmental or non-governmental (mercenaries, paramilitaries, common criminals, traffickers), claiming today to be "morenistas" and tomorrow they will change their jersey easily, as if nothing had happened. We observe a war machine that cannot be controlled.
We see an army and a navy turned into formidable political forces disproportionately growing along with their budgets, in the name of security.
We live in a daily reality that tells us that where federal and state forces are gathered to "fight crime", homicides and attacks increase. The tendency is not to win the war but to maintain it.
Capitalism creates criminals as well as crime, and both become fundamental to sustaining this social structure.
While the discourse says otherwise, the different federal, state, or municipal security corporations continue to signify repression and, in the best of cases, active or passive accomplices, simple bystanders. Are not they commonly seen coexisting with a crime or covering for it? With groups such as Paz y Justicia, Los Chinchulines, Mascara Roja or the Movimiento Indígena Revolucionario Anapatista (MIRA) in Chiapas or "Los Ardillos" in Guerrero. The case of the 43 missing students in Iguala is a clear example.
There is safety and democracy for capital. And, for the communities, danger and economic hardship; this attracts investors.
It is not enough to stop granting mining concessions.
Open-pit mining continues to depredate the territory of the peoples and devastate nature, while violence against the communities is carried out by private actors for the benefit of the companies. A CLEAR EXAMPLE OF RESISTANCE IS BEING PUT UP BY COMRADES FROM THE "UNIFICATION OF TOWNS AND COLONIES AGAINST MINING IN MORELOS", WHO ARE PART OF THE NATIONAL INDIGENOUS CONGRESS THAT JUST CELEBRATED THEIR FIRST NAHUA ASSEMBLY ON APRIL 23 AND 24 WHERE THEY DECLARED THEMSELVES TOWNS AND COLONIES FREE OF MINING, MAKING IT CLEAR THAT IT IS OF NO BENEFIT TO THEIR TOWNS AND COLONIES AND WILL ONLY LEAVE THEM WITH AN ECOCIDE THAT THEY ARE IN TIME TO AVOID3.
And within this reality, the pandemic uncovered more injustices. The so-called neoliberal policies dismantled the health system. They tried to reduce spending as little as possible and increase profitability.
In this militarized Mexico, that guarantees the profits of big business, effective defense for the people can only be provided by the people through their collective self-defense. Decided by the community assembly, comrades from the mountains, members of the POPULAR INDIGENOUS COUNCIL OF GUERRERO-EMILIANO ZAPATA ARE A CLEAR EXAMPLE OF GIVING A DIGNIFIED FIGHT.
The time of crisis is also a time to build our common agricultural production, to collectively plant and strengthen collective farming. To reinforce and strengthen the health system in the towns where we live, giving it a communal character. To denounce, to mobilize, to fight. To unmask those who were crooks yesterday, and who are government authorities today.
Punishment for Rubén Figueroa, responsible for the Aguas Blancas massacre.
Stop the attacks against CIPOG-EZ comrades in the communities of Guerrero's highlands region.
Stop the forced displacement of families and communities by violent acts in the states of Guerrero, Michoacán and Chiapas.
No to mining in Mexico!
Freedom for Gilberto Aguirre Bahena! Benito Bahena Maldonado should return alive to his community. The live reappearance of the 43 missing students from the Ayotzinapa Rural School, and retribution to those responsible! Not one more death in the land! The Aguas Blancas massacre will not be forgotten!
FOR THE UNITY OF INDIGENOUS WORKERS AND PEASANTS!
PEASANT ORGANIZATION OF THE SOUTHERN HIGHLANDS
O.C.S.S.
Translated from the original communiqué, as published by the National Indigenous Congress.
According to Arturo Ortega Morán, the word huachicol comes from the Latin word "aquati", which means watered down.
Tequila and brandy vendors who diluted the drinks with water began to be named the appellation of guachicolero or huachicolero. Similarly, they began to call those fuel traders who lowered their gasoline or oil with water.
Emphasis kept, following the original text.