Mexico

Salvador Campunar, a Purhépecha Indian comunero, Claudio Carrasco of the Guerrero Community Police Force, and Guillermo Hernandez, a member of the Tepoztlán community, explain that community justice systems, rooted in ancient traditions, essentially respond to the village councils. They also comment that they act as part of a more complex system of autonomy for the villages, whereas vigilante autodefensas, self-defense forces, act on behalf of private groups.

[…]

The papers on every news kiosk in Mexico City in late August, 2013, blared denunciations: “Imagine – Mexico Without Soccer!” screamed one newspaper. Pictures of crying children stuck outside of a stadium clutching the colors of their favorite team were plastered on the front page of another paper.

[…]

Although in Mexican law it is illegal for citizens to bear most firearms, especially those of military grade and caliber, the self-defense groups adamantly declare that it is their right to protect themselves and their communities against equally armed criminal groups. “We are doing nothing wrong, we are protecting the people, people who are tired of injustice and organized crime,” said Estanislao Beltrán Torres, one of the movement leaders, in an interview with the newspaper Milenio.

[…]

Being close to Miguel Alemán, operational base of the paramilitaries of Desarrollo, Paz y Justicia, the small Chol Maya community of Susuclumil (Municipality of Tila) had been chosen to host the pre-hearing of the Permanent People’s Tribunal (TPP, as per its Spanish acronym), in a chapter that is focused on the counterinsurgency war unleashed in Chiapas after the 1994 Zapatista uprising.

[…]

Mexico City’s extensive subway system, constantly packed with its 5 million daily users, has just become one of the most expensive public transit systems in the world.  A basic daily commute in the city can account for a minimum of one sixth of one’s daily salary. Confronted by this daunting reality, hundreds of residents participated in turnstile jumping protests in the majority of major train stations on the first day of the fare hike.

[…]

At 10:00pm, everyone congregated around the makeshift stage in the schoolyard to hear an address by the Comadantes. Before the crowd of supporters, Comandanta Hortensia delivered a speech with a call to continue the struggle. It is time to strengthen and globalize the resistance and rebellion,” said Comandanta Hortensia.

[…]

The main challenge in Mexico today is to resist a wave of violence that is dispossessing and oppressing people, and which may precipitate increasingly brutal state repression and even a vicious civil war. At the same time, we need to connect the points of resistance, giving them an organizational form adapted to their nature. What is needed is to build a political force that can stop the ongoing disaster, prevent its continuation, and begin to reorganize society from the bottom-up.

[…]

The EZLN is a synthesis, a social process which manages to bring together a wide range of social demands, traditions of struggle, and currents of critical thought present throughout the history of Mexico and the world; at the same time it recovers new approaches relevant to their times.

[…]

The first part of this work, “The Guerrilla Nucleus”, was published yesterday and covered the political military predecessor which led to the EZLN, that is to say the National Liberation Forces (FLN). In this second installment we give a synthesis of the long tradition of resistance of the indigenous peoples of Chiapas.

[…]