Press Release/Statement
24 September 2024
● With the same arguments of ‘progress’ and ‘development’ of the PRI and the PAN, the obradorist government has led the dispossession and destruction of indigenous territories in the Mexican south-southeast.
● Faced with environmental restrictions in the US, Chinese, Canadian and US companies are promoting a network of gas pipelines in Mexico. Low-cost fossil energy, extracted by fracking in the US, increases risks in the Gulf of Mexico and communities in the southeast.
● The new internal colonisation: organisations, communities, peoples and neighbourhoods in the South/Southeast of Mexico denounce territorial reordering in favour of large national and transnational capital.
● They denounce the imposition of 12 industrial parks on indigenous territories in the Isthmus of Tehuantepec as part of the Interoceanic Corridor. Reconfiguration and transformation of the landscape threatens ancestral communities.
● The destruction continues under military command in the interconnected mega-project ‘Mayan Train – Interoceanic Corridor’. Military hotels are added in Natural Protected Areas while displacement, violence and organised crime are on the rise.
We are the organisations, communities, peoples and neighbourhoods of the South/Southeast of the country that convened in April and May 2023 to the Caravan and International Meeting ‘The South Resists’ with the aim of denouncing the destruction caused by the interconnected military megaproject ‘Mayan Train – Interoceanic Corridor’ and to articulate ourselves for the resistance and the sowing and raising of good systems of life for the peoples.
Today, on the 24 of september of 2024, when the first six-year term of office led by the MORENA party is about to end and the second one to begin, we declare that the capitalist economic and energy policy promoted for more than 30 years by the PRI and the PAN in favour of big transnational capital continues with more force and more destruction with the new hegemonic MORENA party.
Our peoples have taken care of nature in these territories: the jungles, the forests, the water, the wind, the sea. These places are sacred and strengthen our spiritualities and our ways of life. The Obrador government claims, under the narrative of ‘progress’ and ‘development’ that, at last, a government has looked at the south-southeast of Mexico, thatnow we are going to develop, that we are going to get out of poverty with the Mayan Train and the Interoceanic Corridor, but we protest because unfortunately they have turned their eyes to plunder and destroy us with their trains, gas pipelines, hotels, real estate developments and industrial parks. These megaprojects promote an economic model based on a model that compromises in a very negative way the future of our Mexican territory and therefore of our lives and those of future generations.
The current Obrador government has taken on the task of facilitating the territorial expansion of this capitalist model in the south-southeast of Mexico by imposing two emblematic projects: the Interoceanic Corridor of the Isthmus of Tehuantepec and the misnamed Tren Maya, which are reconfiguring a region that is home to indigenous peoples such as the Maya, Zapotec, Mixes, Zoques, Ikoots, Chontales, Nahuatl, Nuntajiiyi'(Popolucas), Chinantec and Afro-Mexicans, who have settled in these territories ancestrally and were never properly consulted (about these megaproyects).
As a result of these violations of national laws and international treaties, various indigenous and non-indigenous organisations have filed more than 50 legal appeals, as is the case of the Regional Indigenous and Popular Council of Xpujil (CRIPX), which has a definitive suspension in its favour that prohibits the continuation of the ‘Maya’ train and its related projects in the municipality of Calakmul, where militarisation has arrived with force. As in the case of the litigation in Tramo 5 Sur, these suspensions have not been respected and the works continue. The violations of the rights of indigenous peoples, in the same way as the environmental impacts, have been cumulative and synergistic.
The railway lines of the Mayan Train are subjugating the Mayan jungle, collapsing and contaminating the cenotes that are our source of life, as well as diverting and obstructing the underground riverbeds, estuaries and mangroves, which are the veins of our territories. In addition, tourism and real estate projects are being carried out, such as military hotels, one of them in the heart of the Calakmul Biosphere Reserve, where different communities have been displaced under the pretext of ‘conservation’, as well as hundreds of ‘ecological’ housing developments in the Yucatan Peninsula.
Across the Isthmus of Tehuantepec, they are modernising the tracks of the old Porfirian Interoceanic Railway as well as the ports of Salina Cruz in Oaxaca and Coatzacoalcos in Veracruz, and building a highway. The rail system will extend from the ‘Mayan’ Train to the Interoceanic, crossing the state of Tabasco and from Ciudad Ixtepec to Tapachula, increasing commercial connectivity and facilitating the flow of goods through the Isthmus of Mexico for the benefit of large corporations, as an alternative trade route to the obsolete Panama Canal between Europe and Asia. At the same time, they are planning to build and modernise a network of pipelines to transport fracked gas in Texas.Since the United States currently prohibits the installation of gas liquefaction plants on its coasts, they send their surplus gas to Mexico through the maritime pipeline ‘La Puerta del Sureste’, as a backbone for the supply of electricity to industrial parks, hotels and other associated projects, which deceive with an ‘economic spill’ based on the exploitation of semi-slavery labour.
The government also plans the imposition of 12 industrial parks along the inter-oceanic route (4 in Veracruz, 6 in Oaxaca and 2 in Chiapas) with European, North American and Asian capital. This industrial development implies more dispossession of land, loss of peace, security and freedom, affecting the local communities that have inhabited and cared for these territories for generations. It destroys the community , reciprocal relationships, our collective consciousness and the mother nature that provides us with a dignified life. An example of this is the Pitayal forest in the municipality of Puente Madera, Oaxaca.
All this implies a growing militarisation. The government has handed over the construction of the Mayan Train to the Ministry of National Defence and the Interoceanic Corridor to the Ministry of the Navy. This not only reinforces the imposition of these projects, but also seeks to guarantee the interests of capital at the expense of the rights of indigenous peoples and the integrity of the territory. Militarisation in no way guarantees the security of the population, since, as we have seen throughout the country, the armed forces DO NOTHING to stop the humanitarian disaster caused by the presence of organised crime, which turns the transit of migrants and the lives of our communities in the South/Southeast into a martyrdom, and in a particularly dramatic way, in the state of Chiapas, where our sisters and brothers are forced to flee to Guatemala.
We want to say to those who have a conscience and a heart, to those who have ears to listen, that we are here, with our eyes open. Social assistance programmes, a right won in favour of our grandparents, young people, women and others, should not be a reason to blind our eyes to the economic and energy model being promoted, which negatively compromises the future of our Mexican territory and therefore of our lives and those of future generations.
We invite you to join this network of resistance, to articulate ourselves, to honour the memory and teachings of our ancestors through the continuity of the struggle and care for the territory, to guarantee the future of the next generations with a just and harmonious coexistence between human beings and with Mother Nature that gives us life.
¡¡¡¡¡¡¡EL SUR RESISTS, IT EXISTS BECAUSE IT RESISTS!!!!!!!
NATIONAL INDIGENOUS CONGRESS
(and other struggles)
