May 21, 2007

Zapatistas Announce Intercontinental Indigenous Encounter for October 2007!

Indigenous Representatives from All América, and the World, to Gather October 11-14 near Guaymas, Sonora

When the Sixth Declaration of the Lacandon Jungle was released in the summer of 2005, it soon led to the Zapatistas’ national plan for the Other Campaign: Delegates would travel Mexico, listening to the people’s struggles in every state and carrying the stories of these struggles to the rest of the country. The next phase, in 2007, will bring two comandantes of the Zapatista Army of National Liberation (EZLN in its Spanish initials) to live and organize in each state. The Sixth Declaration also announced their humble intention to expand the Other Campaign to the rest of the world, though it did not clarify how.

On October 17, in the Baja California community of San Jose de la Zorra, Subcomandante Marcos revealed the Zapatistas’ next step in the international struggle: the Continental Indigenous Encuentro (encounter).

The Indigenous National Congress (CNI), the EZLN, and the Kumeyaay indigenous people instructed Subcomandante Marcos to announce the encuentro, set for October 12, 2007 in northwestern Mexico.

Marcos said:

"Let's invite the indigenous people of Canada and the United States… and let's invite the indigenous people of South America and Central America, and let's come from all parts of the continent to this indigenous zone in the Northwest to say that we are here, and let's tell our story. And it doesn't matter if they pay attention to us or not, because we're going to pay attention to each other."

October 12, celebrated by some as "Columbus Day," is the chosen date so that indigenous people from all over América "will come here to say that after 515 years, they neither conquered nor discovered us. We still continue to exist here."

The specific location for the Encuentro has not yet been announced. Several sites are being considered, and the decision will ultimately rest on the ability to accommodate so many people.

Baja California is a significant location to announce the encuentro because many people don’t realize that indigenous communities exist here, even though there are several: Kumeyaay, Cucapas, Triquis, and Mixtecos, to name a few. According to Marcos, the current state government does not recognize the indigenous groups in Baja California, “even though they were here before it and those who brought it here even existed.�? Ironically, because groups like the Triquis and Mixtecos (both originally from Oaxaca) have crossed state borders imposed on them by imperial invaders, the government considers them “immigrants.�?

( by Weypimus - from http://www.indigenius.biz/blog )

"An encuentro!…an encounter! While Harper, Bush and Calderon push forward with "deep integration" via the "Security and Prosperity Partnership for North America", from below and to the left comes a movement towards the re-integration of Turtle Island. We indigenous Peoples long for the healing of our wounded Turtle Island. Western Civilization is the cause of the wound, and seems to be in a suicidally terminal phase. Western Civilization's masses are welcomed to Turtle Island; healing the wound will require transformation of western civilization before it commits suicide and destroys itself and much of life on earth...

Security and prosperity as construed by Harper/Bush/Calderon are privileges reserved for a certain elite section of the North American population, measuring about 1% of population total, but who control, through private claims to ownership, a majority of productive assets in North America, and, through that physical control, exert control over the political and social content of day-to-day life for Turtle Islanders, house blend or imported.

The necessary ingredients to produce security and prosperity for this tiny elite are insecurity and poverty for an overwhelming majority of the people living within the trading realm of the Harper/Bush/Calderon free trade zone. The economic agenda that they promote has been completely discredited throughout the world, wherever it has been tried, like in the laboratories of Chile and Argentina in South America, and Indonesia in South Asia. Notice how democratically elected governments had to be overthrown, and brutal military juntas installed, before the experiments could be carried out.

From below and to the left, without media coverage, without all expenses paid travel, without teams of highly-paid consultants constantly troubleshooting every obstacle, without hapeas corpus-free police, military, intelligence, and black-ops forces to take out opposition during the run for power….comes an indigenous encuentro…scheduled for Columbus Day, 2007, no less.

Pass the news along and start making arrangements!

http://www.narconews.com/Issue45/article2641.html
http://www.narconews.com/Issue45/article2637.html

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