By: Regeneración Radio
Lerma, Estado de Mexico
“It is not to party, but to make it known that here we continue resisting”, said Alicia Bustamente, a woman from the community. She was referring to the “Dialogue of Knowledges: Defend Life, Defend the Mountain,” that took place one year after the illegal invasion of the Grupo Higa. The Otomí community has resisted for ten years, refusing to disappear.
The highway project advances more and more. The conjunction of asphalt—waste—contamination is realized in parts of the State of Mexico, where a little bit of clean air can still be breathed.
On April 22, machinery of the Grupo Higa, in conjunction with the state police, demolished the house of doctor Armando García, inhabitant of the Indigenous community of San Francisco Xochicuautla. His house was located in a section of the 960,000 meters of forest that the highway project Toluca-Naucalpan seeks to devastate.
The dialogue, besides being an exercise of collective memory, served to share experiences learned during this process, like resisting projects of displacement and destruction that are constantly springing forth in the country.
América del Valle, of the Frente de Pueblos en Defensa de la Tierra, clarified that there is no recipe; in each community there is a different experience. “We have a demolished house but we continue to construct moral victory which is as necessary in these times as the air we breathe, to withstand adversity what we are experiencing in the state of Mexico, in the country of Mexico and in the entire world,” he said.
In recent days, Semillero Itinerante of the State of Mexico, a group of organizations and inhabitants of this area, confirmed that “against the PRIISTA steamroller and its intimidating plan,” they will raise their voice to begin a strong process of information and resistance. The elections are approaching and this group, that is part of the Indigenous community of Xochicuautla, refuses to be a bastion of the PRI—a party that has handed the communities over to the owners of mega-projects.
Translated from the original here: http://regeneracionradio.org/index.php/represion/despojo/item/4789-xochicuautla-un-pueblo-que-se-niega-a-desaparecer-dialogo-de-saberes
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