Black Lives Matter in Mexico

Black Lives Matter in Mexico

By Beverly Bell, JUNE 2020 WITH A LOW BOW TO THE LIVES AND THE MOVEMENT 1 _Note: This series began as a broader photo project with my daughter in our home in Chiapas, Mexico, during the COVID quarantine of 2020. As protests sparked by the murder of George Floyd gained steam in the US during the summer of 2020, the series increasingly came to focus on Black Lives Matter. _ _Translation of text in cover photo: Black lives matter. During the past three and a half years, police have killed 755 African Americans in the U.S. A Black person is 2.5 times more likely to die this way than a white. Less than 1% of police who have committed murder have been found guilty. The continual slayings are only one indicator of the structural racism on which the U.S. was founded – a “slave republic,” as Jamie Raskin calls it - and which is still at work today. _ _George Floyd * Breonna Taylor * Eric Garner * Aiyana Stanley-Jones * Rayshard Brooks * Tony McDade * Kayla Moore * Alexia Christian * James Brown * Alton Sterling * Tamir Rice * Dreasjon Reed * Ahmaud Arbery * Javier Ambler * Sean Reed * Philando Castile * Oscar Grant * Tanisha Anderson * Rekia Boyd * Natasha McKenna * Michael Brown * Sandra Bland * And more than four million since the first Africans were kidnaped and enslaved. Presente! (Latin American term meaning, “The one lost is here with us now!”) _ My daughter Azalia enthusiastically collaborated with me on the posters on our front door, both from her personal commitment to justice and as part of home school - spanning social studies, art, and math classes. Having grown up in one of the fiercest Indigenous territory and rights organizations in Latin America, Azalia knows a thing or two about people’s lives mattering ...or not. In her group alone, the Civic Council of Popular and Indigenous Organizations of Honduras (COPINH), at least 90 members, Lenca Natives all, have been assassinated by policemen or corporate- or landowner-paid hit men. Of this political moment in the U.S., Azalia said, “The people are showing their strength in the streets. We hope the movement continues strong, so that Black brothers and sisters have justice and their right to life.” Hooray for all of you who are arising for the first time against the destruction of Black lives, bodies, hearts, souls, dreams, and futures. Hooray for those of you who have been at this a long time, with special shout-outs to Lolis Elie, Sr. and Leon Waters, both of New Orleans. Hooray for all who have fought back across the centuries, starting with Africans resisting their own, and their brethren’s and sistren’s, kidnaping and enslavement.* After George Floyd’s murder, Van Jones, crying on a televised news show, captured the power of this moment: “Somebody killed a Black man, and everybody cares.” A number _* The commerce of African people was first documented in 1444, when Portuguese traffickers kidnaped a large number from what is now Mauritania and sailed them to Europe. Today, more people are enslaved than during the time of the Transatlantic slave trade: 45.8 million in 2016, according to the U.N. International Labor Organization. They are of all races and parts of the world. To learn more and get involved, see Free the Slaves. _ 2 of people in our town expressed to me their horror about race-based police brutality in the U.S., of which they have just become aware. I just found this English-language graffiti, clearly intended for a foreign audience. Beyond this and my front door, there is no local Black Lives Matter movement. Instead, I focus on an equivalent movement in Mexico, one for Indigenous lives. Indigenous Peoples in Mexico According to the last Mexican census, 17 million people – 21.5% of the population – self-identify as Indigenous. In addition to the census famously undercounting, many more Indigenous people do not publicly identify as such for a variety of reasons. Mexico is home to 78 Native groups and 62 Native languages, which are considered “national languages” with the same legitimacy as Spanish – theoretically, though not in fact. The southernmost state of Chiapas has the second highest Indigenous population, reportedly containing 13% of Mexico’s Original Peoples – though again, the number is surely much higher. The state hosts 56 languages besides Spanish, and 12 legally recognized peoples, the dominant two being the Mayan sub-groups of Tzeltal and Tzotzil. The Mexican Revolution (officially 1910-1920, though it actually continued for years longer) was waged by Indigenous Peoples who claimed rights over their land, labor, and persons. Many of the Revolution’s gains, primarily the protection of ejidos, communal right to Indigenous and campesino lands, were subsequently partly or entirely betrayed by government and business. However, much of the pride, and some elements of the power, of Indigenous and campesino peoples remain. Just as most everything that makes my hometown of New Orleans special – strong community, thriving street culture, public music and dance, food, much of the architecture, etc. – is due to its Black African- and Haitian-descent population, so most of Mexico’s beauty and magic lie in its Indigenous history and people. And... As with African Americans in the US. South, Indigenous Mexicans are at the bottom of all socio-economic statistics. Again as with Black U.S. Southerners, Indigenous lands – even when officially titled – are regularly stolen. In another parallel, the structural violence against Indigenous people dates from even before the nation’s birth. Also like African Americans, when Indigenous people resist, they are often brutally repressed or and/or assassinated. And despite this, in both cases, rebellion is strong. Repression of Indigenous Peoples and Theft of Their Territories Mexico is a signatory to Convention 169 of the U.N.’s International Labor Organization, which mandates “free, former, and informed consent” by the relevant Indigenous 3 community as a condition for projects being conducted on, under, or above their lands or waters. The government consistently violates this obligation. In 2021, Mexico held first place in the world for the highest number of assassinations of land and environmental defenders, according to the group Global Witness. Fifty-four of the 200-plus murders of activists in 2021 were in Mexico, more than one-quarter of the global figure. Countless individuals, like Mexican territory and rights defenders Bety Cariño and Mariano Abarca, have been assassinated for defending their ancestral – and legally protected – lands, waters, communities, and rights. Indigenous lands are often seized for hydroelectric dams, mining, tourism, and other mega-projects. In this context, Indigenous Peoples’ protection and defense of their territories become threats to capital.

_For the Defense of Territory: Samir in Our Memory _ One of those assassinated was Samir Flores Soberanes, a Nahual land and territory defender, and a member of the National Indigenous Council. Samir was gunned down in 2019 while fighting a planned thermal-electric plant and pipeline on Nahual lands. The Mexican government ruled that the murder – two shots to the head – was unrelated to the plant. No perpetrator in any of the three above-mentioned cases, or the countless more, have been prosecuted. _Samir Lives _ Before the Spanish arrived in lush Chiapas in the early 1520’s, all lands belonged to Indigenous people. Today, there is a good chance that any mountain you see hugging San Cristóbal, like most lands in the state, is already stolen or currently in contestation. As for the role of the Catholic Church in all this, locally and around Latin America... well, you know. San Cristóbal’s surname of 4 “de las Casas” comes from Bartolomé de las Casas, born circa 1484: Spanish colonizer, bishop, and landowner. He kept enslaved Native people until 1515, when he had an epiphany, gave up his human property, and became an active advocate for the rights of Indigenous Peoples. By a fantastic leap of logic, he promoted as an alternative the enslavement of Africans. Later, he came to categorically denounce enslavement, no matter of whom, and to promote “human dignity,” the precursor to “human rights.”

Sa_n Cristóbal hosts more than thirty Catholic churches and several defunct convents. _

Al_l children and youth have the right to [their Indigenous] identity. _

Mural in front of a Mayan youth center. Indigenous Peoples under President López Obrador Andrés Manuel López Obrador came to power in December, 2018 with a commitment to change the state’s relationship with the nation. This has not occurred, however. The police and military are effectively their own empire, and are closely allied with narco and 5 other organized crime empires. To be sure, the president has little control over the extreme violence and extortion of these sectors. Still, in important ways, he has betrayed his promises to the citizenry, and is now mucking about dangerously with Indigenous organizations and lands. In one example, he formed the National Institute of Indigenous Peoples, a government body mandated with creating policies and programs on everything Indigenous... with zero buy-in from, or accountability to, anyone Native. As another example, López Obrador’s “Mayan train” project will cut through fragile ecosystems and Indigenous territories in Chiapas and other southern states - all to give fun little rides to vacationing tourists. Opposed by most who live on the impacted lands, con- struction of the train is nevertheless set to commence in April or May, 2021. For a good analysis of López Obrador’s blunders and betrayals vis-a-vis Mexico’s Indigenous population, read here . No t_o the Mayan Train_ : The stealth spray-painter was clearly caught mid-message. The Indigenous village of Xochicuautla lost its land and its peace when a company illegally put a private mega-highway right through it. Though in the state of Mexico, the community could just as well be in Chiapas, where the graffiti appears, because the story has repeated across Mexico thou- sands of times over: homes, farms, waters and other commons of nature, stolen by private interests backed by the government. Xoc_hicuautla is not for sale. We love it and will defend it. _

Be_low: We are missing 30,043. Wake up, Mexico_ . This figure is way too low; the number of people shot, secretly buried, and/or disappeared since the 2006 start of the so-called drug war is 40,000 to 60,000. Many, probably most, of the victims are Indigenous. The perpetrators are not only narco-cartels, but also their accomplices in the police and army. 6 A_yotzi lives_ . The “43” in the “30,043” figure used above refers to the number of Indigenous students in a rural teacher training school in Ayotzinapa, state of Guerrero, whom police burned to bone shards and ashes in 2014 – as usual, in collusion with their friends in organized crime. The caught-on-videotape act of police barbarity, lies and cover-up, and subsequent impunity had the same impacts as George Floyd’s murder: serving as a national symbol of lives that don’t matter to the powers that be, breaking the business-as-usual pattern, and provoking a sustained public response of rage. And as with police killings of Black men and women in the US, almost no perpetrators have been held accountable, and few changes in policy have been made. Violence and Impunity Go Far beyond Indigenous Peoples Labor unionists and anti-government activists are also common targets of the police and army. And as with the Indigenous population, other sectors are organized and resistant. _Liberty for all political prisoners in the country. _ 7 Electric polls everywhere read: _Alive they took them, alive we want them back. _In the poll on the left, every small pink dot is a photograph of a disappeared person. Each face represents a lacuna within the nation. _Stop state terrorism! _ _The virus is the state. _ 8 A message to the state: _Justice, neither pardon nor forgetting. _ The Zapatista Army of National Liberation: The Hope Lives My and others’ research shows that there is no necessary correlation between a spike in repression and a spike in resistance. Many factors go into activating social movements, repression being only one. But the correlation is now in play among Indigenous people in Mexico, as in the US. The Mexican equivalent of Black Lives Matter, in visibility and impact if not in political strategy, is the Zapatista Army of National Liberation, or ELZN by its Spanish acronym. Members appeared on the balcony of the municipal building in San Cristóbal de las Casas on January 1, 1994, the day the North American Free Trade Agreement went into effect. The men and woman declared an armed uprising “against neoliberalism and for humanity.” The originality and viability of their philosophies, messaging, organizational structure, and gains shook Mexico and the world.

_Zapata: the hope lives. _ Emiliano Zapata, co-leader of the Mexican Revolution, was part Nahual Indian. Twenty-six years later, the Zapatistas’ global influence has abated, predictably; sites of inspiration shift. But they are still politically active and influential in Chiapas, and are still living with the fruits of their revolution, though not fully, and never securely. These fruits include: autonomous lands, self-governance, public voice, greater justice, more rights, and better social infrastructure for their communities, such as health care and education. They also claim great advances in gender equity, but I for one am not convinced. 9 They still hold occasional global gatherings, such as the “Second International Gathering of Women in Struggle” last December. Moreover, their ways of seeing and shaping the world, and power structures within it, continue to permeate movements and autonomy experiments across the globe. _Long live the new Zapatista snail shells. _ The rebels recently expanded, from five to ten, the number of “snail shells” or caracoles, invoking the worldwide Indigenous symbol of interconnectness, the spiral, for their auto- nomous political and cultural epicenters. The Zapatista Army of National Liberation is only one of many Mexican movements, though it is by far the best- known and influential, nationally and globally. Another is the National Indigenous Congress (CNI by its Spanish acronym), a coalition of Native peoples and communities from across the country, which came together in 1996 to unite and build political strength and thus win power, rights, and autonomy. A third body is the Indigenous Council of Government (CNI), launched in 2017 to bring Indigenous Peoples effectively into national polical processes. Every new effort has faced many challenges, particularly from the government, which is intent on undermining the processes. But movement is afoot. _Congress of Indigenous Movements: May the Earth tremble at its centers. _ 10 San Cristóbal de las Casas serves as base for commerce and bureaucratic requirements for Indigenous communies from many miles around, and is the urban center of the Zapatistas. Much of the art around town bows to the heritage, resistance, and ongoing contributions of Indigenous Peoples. Right: _Another world already exists, and it is called First Peoples. Their mother is the earth; their father, the sun; their home, the universe. _This painting, seen in poster form all around town, is by Beatriz Aurora. Below left: _Resistance 1492 _ Below right: the logo of the Mayan Woodcutter Collective 11 The principal call of the 1910-1920 revolution, “Land and Liberty,” has yet to be fulfilled. On the fight goes, especially in Chiapas, a predominantly rural state, and the poorest of all. Chiapas has a 75% poverty rate, poverty being defined by the World Bank at US$1.90 per day. Both paintings feature revolutionary hero Zapata. The top one reads Land and Liberty. The paintings were done by teenaged members of the “Alternative Group” in San Cristóbal. 12 Above: _Land, democracy, and social liberation. Independent Federation of Agricultural and _ _Campesino Workers, _one of many such groups around Mexico. Poster in a tortilla shop. Below: What it’s all about, community land on which to live in peace and plant. 13 The following three words serve as an appropriate response to the current state of: safety for Black and Indigenous humans, democracy, social well-being, guarantee of rights, economic security, and a lot more that citizens and immigrants in the US should be able to count on, but cannot. But there exist other responses, such as the three beautiful and hopeful twords with which we close. 14 15