Juan Villoro
On September 11, Sebastián Núñez Pérez and José Antonio Sánchez Juárez, members of the Good Government Council of the Caracol “Floreciendo la Semilla Rebelde“( Flourishing the Rebel Seed), were on their way to San Cristóbal de Las Casas to see off the Zapatista delegation that was traveling to Europe when they were intercepted by members of Orcao (Regional Organization of Coffee Growers of Ocosingo), which for months has been intimidating the inhabitants of the Moisés-Gandhi autonomous community.
The Zapatista van was found in the town of 7 de Febrero, municipality of Ocosingo, where Orcao has its headquarters. The incident was denounced by the Fray Bartolomé de Las Casas Human Rights Center, which on April 12 had also suffered the kidnapping of two of its members.
The Orcao offered to free the detainees on condition that the Zapatista Junta would come to the site. This was clearly a trap to exchange some prisoners for others.
On Monday the 13th, the collective “Llegó la Hora de los Pueblos”, (The People’s Hour Has Arrived), of which I am a member, reported the kidnapping to the Interior Ministry. It was known where Sebastián and José Antonio were and who held them. What did the government do? Absolutely nothing.
Thanks to the parish priests who officiate in the region, the detainees were released on Sunday, September 19. Chiapas has become a bastion of organized crime and paramilitary groups. Neither the state government of Rutilio Escandón nor the federal government are taking measures to avoid the powder keg that presages a fire.
The reality of the indigenous peoples could not be more worrisome. Victims of centuries-old dispossession, they have not stopped defending their natural resources. This resistance, which should be seen as a benefit for society as a whole, has endangered their lives. While in Mexico, Canadian companies practice open-pit mining in conditions prohibited in their country, those who oppose the devastation of the biosphere are murdered. In 2019, the Mexican Center for Environmental Law registered 39 aggressions against environmentalists. In 2020, that violence increased significantly: 18 murders, 65 attacks, and 90 aggressions. Most of the victims have been indigenous, and in 40 percent of the cases, there was the involvement of government agencies.
Just a few months ago, the Yaqui leader Tomás Rojo opposed the Independencia aqueduct that would deprive the Yaqui communities (with 40,000 inhabitants) of water to take it to Hermosillo, was murdered. From Chiapas to Sonora, Mexico is a country where defending the land means irrigating it with blood.
But instead of intervening in the world of facts, the government seeks to alter the labyrinth of symbols. Indigenous people who dare to exist suffer all kinds of risks. Their murderers are not prosecuted, but palliatives are sought, such as changing the statue of Columbus for the cyclopean head of an indigenous woman. Without any discussion, the project was commissioned to the artist Pedro Reyes, of proven trajectory but who in no way represents the female gender or the indigenous communities. One colonialism replaced another. Fortunately, the nonsense is being reconsidered.
To think that the problem is not in reality but in the statues is equivalent to assuming that discrimination is limited to the past and does not concern the present.
The request that Spain and the Vatican ask for forgiveness for the Conquest is in the same vein. The destruction of the pre-Hispanic cultural heritage has been, fundamentally, the work of independent Mexico. About 70 percent of the population spoke an indigenous language at the end of New Spain. Today only 6.6 percent speak them.
Instead of assuming the responsibility that corresponds to it in the face of reality, the government chooses to sanction a 15th-century Genoese sailor and send letters to the pilot of the boat of St. Peter.
Historian Federico Navarrete has recalled that only one percent of the combatants belonged to Cortés’ troops during the fall of Tenochtitlan. Subsequently, a narrative was constructed that credited the triumph exclusively to the Spaniards and presented an enterprise of domination as an evangelizing project. Today the government proposes another ideological discourse. Meanwhile, the descendants of the original peoples suffer from humiliation.
This was originally published in Spanish by Reforma on September 24, 2021.