Editorial "Lucha Indígena" no. 77‏ Idle No More and Zapatists.

This is the editorial from Lucha Indigena, Hugo Blanco's newspaper....more here in Spanish

 

         Mexico and Canada: A POWERFUL NATIVE PRESENCE

 

In December the native people of this hemisphere gave rise to two striking events.  The more notable of these, unquestionably, was the silent march in the rain, with fists raised and faces covered, of 40 thousand natives in five cites of Chiapas state, Mexico.  We can assure you that it was a clangorous silence, which forced the news media -- which have been telling us that zapatism is in steep decline, now almost nonexistent -- to hear it.

     The march took place on 21 December, the day the ancestors of today's Mayan shopkeepers had identified as the start of a new era, and for which traders and other frauds predicted the end of the world.  The directory of the Zapatist National Liberation Army (EZLN) issued the following brief communiqué:

     "Now are you listening?  That is the sound of your world tumbling down.  It is the sound of our world rising up.  Day is becoming night, and night is turning into day."

     The Zapatists have shown that they are alive and stronger than ever, an obstacle to the system's cowardly attacks through its goon squads on the communities that support Zapatism.  Later they communicated that they are becoming ever stronger in self-government, housing, health and education.  They also announced that they are now building bridges to coördination with other movements.  It was in this respect that the youth movement Yo soy123 arose in repudiation of President Peña Nieto.

     The other important movement is the recently organized, militant Idle No More in Canada.  The native people of that country have placed themselves in the vanguard of those who are struggling in defense of the environment against the extraction and transport of oil and gas, as well as against open-pit mining.  Idle No More, the strongest native upsurge in Canada in many years, has passed through several cities, blocked highways in protest, set up camp in public places and demonstrated in front of government offices.

     These two developments are a great boost to our spirits.  This is something we very much need in Peru, where the news are no nearly so uplifting.  Here we find President Humala adding to his well-earned reputation as a traitor and assassin -- as the people of Cajamarca are well aware -- that of hypocrite.  In Europe he proclaimed that his government gives priority to water rights.  In reality he, as a servant of predatory foreign companies, is launching deadly attacks on the very defenders of water and life.