Solidarity Azqueltán 7 years of AUTONOMY
Dear Compañer@s from the Wixárika and Tepehuana / Tepecana community of
San Lorenzo de Azqueltán in Jalisco, Mexico (CNI-CIG)
The collectives, organizations and individuals who sign this letter, celebrate and honor the struggle of your community as you celebrate the Seventh Anniversary of the consolidation of and creation of your Autonomous Community of San Lorenzo de Azqueltan on November 21st and 22nd. Due to the current pandemic situation, we understand that the risk is too high for us to attend your next celebration/ceremony. But we look forward to attending the inauguration of your Autonomous Clinic when the situation improves. We will accompany your prayers in solidarity from our geographies, as you celebrate your anniversary with your traditional Wixarika and Tepehuana/Tepecana ceremony.
We also take this opportunity to denounce all the repression that the community of Azqueltán has suffered recently. We know that because of your resistance in defense of Mother Earth and in the construction of your autonomy, you have suffered kidnappings, armed attacks and death threats, all with the aim of intimidating the members of your community into giving up the lands you and your ancestors have cultivated for centuries. These sacred lands belong to your community, you have legally reclaimed your land using the property title you have had since 1733. We repudiate the actions of the rich and the bad government that prevents the recognition of this title and that is dedicated to dispossessing the community's land.
The following attacks are examples of retaliation and discrimination that undermine the community's efforts to protect its territory and assert its rights as an autonomous indigenous community, including the election of indigenous communal authorities and the recovery of invaded lands.The machinery of the municipal government, with the supposed purpose of opening a highway near the sacred site of Los Pilares, has been invading and destroying fences in the agricultural plots of several comuneros.
- A year ago, on November 3, 2019, before the planned celebration of the sixth anniversary of the autonomous community, the president of the security council Noé Aguilar Rojas, and two other community members were brutally beaten, forcing the celebration to be postponed. . When the injured arrived at the hospital, they were discriminated against and denied medical attention.
-On January 10, 2020, Jesús Manuel Aguilar Hernández, defender of mother earth and member of the National Indigenous Congress, was shot with a 38 caliber weapon by Flavio Flores alias “La Polla”, a local rancher known as the leader of the hoarders of land.
- On March 22nd, Camerino Márquez Aguilar and Genaro González Bañuelos, two elderly men from the community, were attacked once again by people in the service of Flavio Flores (“La Polla”) and by employees of the municipal government of Villa Guerrero, Jalisco : Teódulo Pérez Martínez together with Abram Pérez Bañuelos, Jairo Pérez Bañuelos and Aldo Herrera González.
Despite the fact that those guilty of these violent attacks, have been denounced on various occasions, instead of being detained, the government/ municipal government of Villa Guerrero has not taken action to punish them, but instead continues to encourage violence and confrontation. This stance of the government at all levels is consistent within a racist and neoliberal capitalist state that has tried through various means to deprive indigenous peoples. Among other dispossession strategies, the government attempts to break down communal property and create individual private property so that indigenous peoples' lands can be sold and made available for capitalist extractive projects that plunder natural resources and leave the land destroyed and impoverished.
We understand that autonomous indigenous communities such as the Indigenous Autonomous Community of San Lorenzo Azqueltàn are in the first line of resistance, and they are an example for all of us. Thus,
We support our sisters and brothers of San Lorenzo Azqueltán in their brave fight in defense of their lands and ancestral sacred ways of life.
We support the formation of autonomous communities as a form of resistance to capitalist privatization that paves the way for extractive industries and other forms of life that are so harmful and destructive to humans and our natural environment.
We must united to protect all that remains of these sacred environments and resources so that future generations have a chance to survive against the civilization of death.
Long live the autonomous Wixárika and Tepehuana / Tepecana AUTONOMOUS COMMUNITY of San Lorenzo de Azqueltan!
Their struggle is our struggle!
VIVA AZQUELTÁN!!!
VIVA LA AUTONOMÍA!!!
