This communiqué comes from the Indigenous community of Santiago Xanica in the southern sierra mountains of Oaxaca. The communiqué demands recognition of an Indigenous municipal council in the community, following almost three years of incompetence by the supposed elected municipal authority. The original in Spanish was published by Noticias de Abajo ML and can be found here.
To the People of Oaxaca
To the People of Mexico
To the National and International Human Rights Organizations
To the Media
We are an Indigenous community situated in the southern sierra mountains of Oaxaca—a community that for nearly three years has not had an authority that attends to the necessities of the municipality and its agencies. Ricardo Luria, since the moment in which he was elected municipal president, has not worked with any of the communities, but rather lives in the capital of the state of Oaxaca, abandoning the necessities of greatest importance, which are health and education.
Faced with this total abandonment, the community of Santiago Xanica, with the support of the municipal agencies, decided to create a municipal council that would serve as an authority for the remainder of the year, and as such, provide attention to the problems of the municipality. In the month of February, as inhabitants of Santiago Xanica, we decided to mobilize to achieve recognition of this council. During this mobilization we were threatened by personal of IEEPCO who also took our compañero Gerardo Froilán hostage accusing him of destroying furniture in the offices of IEEPCO. These accusations as we already know were false and only meant to delegitimize the just movement of our community.
Since there was no response on part of IEEPCO, we asked the Chamber to disappear the power in the municipality of Xanica and to recognize the municipal council. However, this process was stopped by a conversation bought by the supposed municipal mayor who we know well only obeys the orders of Ricardo Luria.
In light of this man’s actions, we have decided to carry out a caravan on Tuesday June 25th leaving from Santa María Huatulco toward the capital and Mexico City to demand that the decisions taken by the community be respected. We demand that the state put a stop to this man that for nearly three years has taken the resources destined for our people.
We are a community in struggle and we will not give up until our communities have an authority elected by them themselves, which truly attends to the problems of the people.
We make a call to the social organizations to support us and to be vigilant for any retaliation against the people of Santiago Xanica.
Enough looting and robbery of Indigenous communities!
We demand recognition of the municipal council!
Santiago Xanica, Miahuatlán, Oaxaca
June 24th, 2019