On August 5 and 6, 2023, 181 women delegates and councilwomen of the CIG-CNI, 27 girls and boys, 14 comrades and 7 support comrades from the Afro-Mestizo, Afro-Mexican, Binni Zaa, Chol, Chontal, Coca, Kora, Guarijío, Kumiai, Maya, Mazahua, Mazateca, Mepha, Mestizo, Na savi, Nahua, Nayerí, nuntajiyi, Ñhañhu, Odame, Otomi, Purépecha, Rarámuri, Tojolabal, Totonaco, Tzotzil, Tzeltal, Wixárika, Yaqui and Yoreme peoples met at the Samir Flores Soberanes House of Indigenous Peoples and Communities in Mexico City.
During this meeting, the women denounced the megaprojects that are currently advancing throughout Mexico and the various attacks against women defenders of water, their lands, traditions and territories. They pointed out and discussed how the current system destroys nature and the communities that relate to it. In the statement they made public, in which they reflect part of what they worked during these days, they also said: “we recognized the capitalist, racist and colonial patriarchal power system in the megaprojects, in the mining concessions, in the logging, in the repression, in the overexploitation of water, in the contamination, in the persecution”. They discussed how megaprojects “attempt to eliminate the sources of hope for the women and peoples of the world who struggle for a world of peace, justice, freedom and joy.”
The dialogue focused on their communities: they talked about the ones they have today and the ones they want to build. They talked about patriarchy and the violence they experience individually and collectively. They shared experiences and knowledge, both old and new, in order to continue walking, resisting and fighting for the protection of water, nature and their territories.
They made a call to:
- To continue organizing as women to continue the struggle and maintain the hope that, in a few years, girls and boys will see the war and violence against women as a simple memory that will never be repeated because that is what they see on the horizon.
- To continue participating in the assemblies, in the positions, in the decision making from their way of being women and to invite other compañeras to join the struggle.
- To the National Indigenous Congress to meet to prepare actions around October 12 for its 27th anniversary.
- To the communities, organizations, collectives and civil society in general to remain attentive to what is happening in Zapatista territory and to generate actions in our geographies that demand a halt to the war against the Zapatista communities and peoples.
- To continue consolidating networks and bridges between us women and with the peoples of the world who resist against this system of death, because this struggle is for life.
You can see the full statement in Spanish here:
PRONOUNCEMENT OF THE NATIONAL WOMEN’S MEETING OF THE NATIONAL INDIGENOUS CONGRESS-INDIGENOUS COUNCIL OF GOVERNMENT
AUGUST 6, 2023
30 years after the Zapatista women (compañeras) achieved the approval of their Revolutionary Women’s Law, which has allowed them to put into daily practice a world free of machismo and violence, and together with the compañeros, in autonomy, to participate in the construction of a dignified life, which is a source of inspiration for our struggle in our territories, on August 5 and 6, 2023, we gathered on August 5 and 6, 2023 in the First Internal Meeting of Women of the National Indigenous Congress (CNI), in the building recovered by the Otomi Community Resident in Mexico City and converted into the “House of Indigenous Peoples and Communities Samir Flores Soberanes” 181 women delegates and councilors of the CIG-CNI, 27 girls and boys from 1 to 12 years old, 14 compañeras and 7 support comrades.
We participate from the Afro-Mestizo, Afro-Mexican, Binni Zaa, Chol, Chontal, Coca, Kora, Guarijío, Kumiai, Maya, Mazahua, Mazateca, Mepha, Mestizo, Na savi, Nahua, Nayerí, Nuntajiyi, ñhañhu, Odame, Otomi, Purépecha, Rarámuri, Tojolabal, Totonaco, Tzotzil, Tzeltal, Wixárika, Yaqui, Jalisco, Michoacan, and Yoreme peoples from the states of Baja California, Campeche, Mexico City, Chiapas, Chihuahua, Chihuahua, Colima, Mexico State, Guerrero, Jalisco, Michoacan, Wixárika, Yaqui and Yoreme from the states of Baja California, Campeche, Mexico City, Chiapas, Chihuahua, Colima, State of Mexico, Guerrero, Jalisco, Michoacán, Morelos, Nayarit, Oaxaca, Puebla, Querétaro, Quintana Roo, Sonora, Tlaxcala, Veracruz and Yucatán.
We are the women who fight, who organize ourselves, who learn to say NO to mistreatment, NO to silence, NO to war; we learn to take care of ourselves, to respect each other, to motivate ourselves; we invite ourselves to participate in the struggle for the defense of the territory and of all life. We call ourselves hope because we take it as our responsibility to ensure a tomorrow for future generations.
We offered our energies to the four cosmic points, we remembered our history as women of the CNI and we recognized the system of capitalist, racist and colonial patriarchal power in the megaprojects, in the mining concessions, in the logging, in the repression, in the overexploitation of water, in the contamination, in the persecution. When the military, the cartels, the megaproject companies arrive, such as the inter-oceanic corridor, the “Mayan Train” and the Morelos Integral Project, which are accompanied by multiple forms of dispossession of ejidos and communal property, destruction of life and territories with industrial parks, development poles, toxic waste dumps and energy projects such as gas pipelines; exploitation of hydrocarbons in our territories. With this, we lose peace, violence increases against us, against our daughters and sons, against people of sexual diversity and against our partners; they turn us into sexual objects, they disrespect us, they kidnap us, they sell us, they rape us, they beat us, they kill us. Women defenders of Mother Nature and the rights of our peoples who confront these megaprojects are criminalized, harassed, discredited, slandered, imprisoned, tortured, and murdered.
They destroy the Mother Earth that feeds us, they pollute the air we breathe and the water we drink. They drive us from our own territories, force us to take refuge in the mountains or migrate to the cities. We get sick and in the health centers they do not give us quality care, they discriminate against us; they exercise obstetric violence against us; there are no medicines or materials; we have to buy everything and we have no money. In the schools, they continue to marginalize our cultures; the majority of the teachers despise peasant life and our ancestral knowledge; they instill in our daughters and sons the false ideas of progress instead of love for the land and our cultures and many of them allow themselves to be carried away by the attraction of easy money and fall into the nets of all kinds of illicit trafficking.
They try to control our peoples with their crumbs of projects, with fear or division.
The maximum expression of this patriarchal and colonial capitalist system is the permanent war, in Mexico, against the Zapatista Peoples and the indigenous National Congress, which at this moment keeps us in a state of alert due to the intensification of harassment and attacks against our peoples and in other places in the world, such as in Kurdistan. They are trying to eliminate these sources of hope for the women and peoples of the world who struggle for a world of peace, justice, freedom and joy.
But we resist and we will resist to go against the tide. Women and men defend and resist from the strength of our assemblies, from our spirituality and ancestral medicine, from the knowledge of our grandmothers and grandfathers and those we are building, from the spaces of healing that we recover, from the networks that we build among our peoples and with our brothers and sisters in other regions of the planet and with our comrades in solidarity in the cities.
We also know that the patriarchy is very large but that it descends and inhabits us, hurts us and we are fighting to eradicate it. We see that it is urgent that we strengthen this fight that we have already started from our bodies and our territory. For this reason we demand:
Stop the imposition of mega-projects of death, such as the Mayan Train, Inter-Oceanic Corridor and the Morelos Integral Project.
Stop the war against the Zapatista peoples and communities and the National Indigenous Congress.
From this meeting of women we call:
- To continue organizing ourselves as women to continue the fight and maintain the hope that, in a few years, girls and boys will see the war and violence against women as a simple memory that will never be repeated because that is what we see on our horizon.
- To continue participating in the assemblies, in the roles, in the decision making processes from our way of being women and to invite other compañeras to join the fight.
- To the National Indigenous Congress to prepare the actions around October 12 for our 27th anniversary.
- To the communities, organizations, collectives and civil society in general to remain attentive to what is happening in Zapatista territory and to act in our geographies that demand a halt to the war against Zapatista communities and peoples.
- To continue consolidating networks and bridges between us women and with the peoples of the world who resist against this system of death, because this struggle is for life.
FOR THE INTEGRAL RECONSTITUTION OF OUR PEOPLES,
NEVER AGAIN A MEXICO WITHOUT US
NEVER AGAIN A MEXICO WITHOUT US, WOMEN WHO FIGHT
MEETING OF WOMEN OF THE CNI/CIG
(Translation from Spanish by the Americas Program team)
