Space of Struggle, Semilla Digna, August 31, 2017
To the Councils of Good Government
To the National Indigenous Congress
To the Indigenous Government Council
To the Media
To the National and International Sixth
To the Human Rights Organizations
We want to publically denounce the problems with which we are living in the communities of Cruzton, Candelaria el Alto, municipality of Venustiano Carranza and San Francisco, municipality of Teopisca. We want to denounce the attempts at the dispossession of our lands by the bad governments through organizations with which they have contracts.
In the community of Candelaria el Alto, we are resisting and struggling for land and territory. Recently, threats and aggressions against us have increased where we are protecting our land. There, heavily armed, masked groups have arrived to threaten us. Recently, a worker of Jesus Orantes (Chuz Orantes) named Vicente Ramírez (aka el Poli) and others, José Luis de la Cruz and Amador Solano de la Cruz, were there threatening to take things further by waiting for us on the road.
In the community of Cruzton a group of Guadalupe Victoria keeps invading our land and territory. The same group carried out an armed operation, surrounded us with bullets and ambushed us, killing our comrade Rodrigo. They have the support of the organization FNLS, who want to plant confusion with falsehoods regarding the cowardly attack and assassination. They want to take advantage of that confusion while continuing to threaten us with death.
Also in the community of San Francisco, groups and governmental organizations have threatened us with the violent group lead by Pedro López Girón. Since July of 2016, he has disrupted the peace in our community. Pedro Hernández Espinoza and Juan Hernández Molina contracted López Giron. The group has arrived violently, on various occasions, with sticks and machetes, verbally threatening to rape women and to remove us from our recuperated lands.
As Semilla Digna, we also denounce the aggressions we have received in San Cristobal de las Casas on various occasions on behalf of the same organizations that the bad governments send into our communities. We see clear that the government wants to take control and dispossess us from our lands in order to let in the companies. Thus, they are sending people from different organizations with which they have contracts, to plant fear, kill us and dispossess us from our lands and territories. We are defending these lands and territories from the organizations. They do not love the earth but rather receive a lot from exchanging it. Thus, achieving their goal of seizing our lands and passing them over to the grand capitalist businessman and landowners. We see clear that the government is very interested in our lands because of the growing threats and aggressions toward our communities. The earth is not under negotiation. We love and defend it.
We demand respect for our lands and territories, justice against the aggressions and the cowardly execution of our compañero Rodrigo. We also demand that the bad government stop sending organizations to manipulate and dispossess us from our lands. To the compañeras and compañeros we ask you to be attentive to what could happen because the aggressions are increasing against our communities. We will keep you informed of what happens.
Land and Freedom!
Compa Rodrigo lives and the struggle continues!
Never more a Mexico without us
Space of Struggle “Semilla Digna”, adherents of the Sixth Declaration of the Lacandona Jungle of the EZLN, members of the National Indigenous Congress
Translated from the original here: http://komanilel.org/2017/09/01/denuncia-de-semilla-digna-por-intentos-de-despojo-de-tierras-en-sus-comunidades/