Solidarity with Eloxochitlán de Flores Magón
Excerpts of our translation of the MANIFESTO OF THE FEMALE SELF-DEFENSE FORCES IN SUPPORT OF FREEDOM, «Las Mujeres Mazatecas por la Libertad», Eloxochitlán de Flores Magón, June 2023.
Translation by taller ahuehuete in solidarity.
➥ 5 minutes
«Residents of Eloxochitlán de Flores Magón:
Residents of the Sierra Mazateca:
People of Oaxaca, Mexico and the world:
Comrades:
We, Mazatec Women for Freedom, see with joy the strength shown in the demand for justice in the face of the recent atrocious events where the vicious and irrational use of public force injured and took the life of a minor from Eloxochitlán.
We must not forget the reason why the fifteen-year-old Gelacio P.R. was attacked with disproportionate force. Gelacio opposed the arrest of his father. Thus, he put his body to save his parent from arbitrary detention.
Arbitrary arrests, unjust imprisonment, political imprisonment — they are not unknown issues for the children of Eloxochitlán; they have grown surrounded by them, living in fear and terror before the possibility that someday the armed forces will break into their homes.
The minor Gelacio was originally from the town of Agua Iglesia, where political prisoners Francisco Durán Ortiz and Herminio Monfil Avendaño are from. Herminio was arbitrarily detained on December 14, 2014, without being explained the reasons, much less translated into Mazatec what was happening and why he would be taken to the city of Oaxaca, as he does not speak Spanish and was taken six hours away. In June 2018, the municipal police officers, also armed, detained Francisco, doing so in an irregular manner. Francisco was tortured, there, in front of his children. One of his sons, the fifteen-year-old, ran and managed to get into the van where they threw his father out, but the policemen took him down... Thus, the testimony of Francisco's children spread among the children of Agua Iglesia; therefore, that testimony reached the child Gelacio, a neighbor of Francisco's children.
Our daughters, our children whose fathers or relatives are persecuted in the same way as the political prisoners of Eloxochitlán de Flores Magón, are under the same risk as the child Gelacio because their hearts beat against injustice. We, their mothers, relatives, and comrades know that they would also put their bodies on the line if the armed forces came to ravage our people and homes.
We are not going to allow them to attack us, to reach our homes, where we and our youngest children are. We are not going to allow them to grab our children, brothers, fathers, and husbands. They are innocent! We are free, but they are not, because of the pure whim of power groups that benefit from the political imprisonment of the community members of Eloxochitlán de Flores Magón. Enough is enough! That is why sisters and brothers, with this Manifesto, we form a Women's Self-Defense Committee for Freedom. Our weapons are the truth and the word.
Sisters and brothers: We recognize that to achieve the abolition of a perverted and rotten system of governance and administration of justice, one must first have a heart burning with a desire for justice, which manifests itself in thoughts, words, and actions that condemn and denounce unfairness. That is why we are glad you spoke out against the injustice committed against the child Gelacio. Your messages and accompaniment in the search for the freedom of our political prisoners and persecuted comrades also fill our souls. Because justice has never come from the State or its powers but rather from the flames from below, all burning and united.
Because justice has never come from the State or its powers but rather from the flames from below, all burning and united.
We are Mazatec Indigenous women. Speakers of the Énna language. Women who, for decades, have been fighting for the self-determination of our community; we are peasants, preservers of the ancestral seed, we cultivate coffee. [...] Some of us founded the first community radio, joined the Color of the Earth caravan to accompany our Zapatista sisters. We are women in continuous and itinerant assembly.
We are women who can well be called victims (although we do not like that word very much...) because we are part of the families targeted by the Mexican State since December 14, 2014 — one of us was imprisoned and five more of us were persecuted.
We are witnesses, since our childhoods, of the terror that the caciques [local political elites] impose, especially when they are in partnership with all branches of government, with all the powers of the state. [...] Because there is no law or custom or use that is valid, only the whims and interests of those who want to devour everything: our territory, our homes, our work and our lives.
We saw how in 2011 a group of caciques was reinstated in Eloxochitlán de Flores Magón; this time they put a woman's face on it, that of Elisa Zepeda Lagunas, current Secretary of Women's Affairs and former municipal president and congresswoman. She began alongside her father, Mr. Manuel Zepeda Cortés when he usurped the municipal presidency from 2011 to 2013 when the people did not give him the baton of command. There is no photo of him in the public square receiving the baton. He never had the legitimacy of the people because he fraudulently usurped a position by force that the people never conferred upon him.
Running for office to assert one's will is not a practice in the community, much less forming groups to assemble on the day of the election. But Manuel and Elisa were backed by all the bureaucrats of the State of Oaxaca, who have left in impunity the committed offenses suffered by the community as a whole. From the fabrication of crimes to torture. Since that day in 2011, and until this day, this cacique group pays no regard to the community or our wellbeing. Their calendar is not the Usos y Costumbres but the electoral calendar, the calendar of the rulers.
There is complicity in all the branches of the State, in spite of the fact that it promises to be close to the indigenous communities. The Judicial Power and the Prosecutor's Office are used as an instrument of torture to suffocate our struggle for autonomy.
Comrades: We let you know that we are in moments of anguish, and constantly see police forces in our town; this week a van of state agents was spotted. We fear that they will break into our homes at any moment.
We demand […] the immediate cessation of the preventive imprisonment of the Mazatec political prisoners of Eloxochitlán Jaime Betanzos, Herminio Monfil, Alfredo Bolaños, Fernando Gavito, Omar Morales, and Francisco Durán, since, for them, this is the ninth and fifth year of preventive imprisonment, without trial or access to a sentence. Likewise, we demand the revocation of the 50-year sentence of Miguel Peralta, an unequivocal sign of political persecution.
We demand that governor Salomón Jara Cruz and Bernardo Rodríguez Alamilla, head of the Attorney General's Office of the State of Oaxaca, stop the searches in the homes of the families of the politically persecuted. The politically persecuted are not there, although they have the right to be. They have punctually presented themselves before the courts, which they have won. They also presented letters in August 2022 to the United Nations Office of the Rapporteur on Internal Displacement, assuming that they are arbitrarily displaced due to violating arrest warrants.
As long as there is no justice, there is no peace! No to the militarization of indigenous communities!
[...] We clamor: Enough is enough! Release our prisoners, cease the persecution of the displaced!».
— Excerpts from MANIFIESTO DE LAS MUJERES AUTODEFENSAS POR LA LIBERTAD, Eloxochitlán de Flores Magón, June 2023.
Translation and illustration in solidarity by taller ahuehuete. | ↓
Versión en castellano, cortesía de las compas de RadioZapote aquí.
