Every day in Mexico it is increasingly dangerous to be a journalist. During protests or events criticizing the Mexican government, public security forces often take or even destroy journalists’ equipment. According to a list published by the Committee to Protect Journalists (CPJ), Mexico is among the top twelve countries in terms of impunity for the murder, disappearance, and abuse of journalists.
The backdrop of the whole situation, declares the former Naa Savi coordinator, includes mining projects and companies who want to enter the area. “If we allow the army to enter communal territory, they will never leave. The government has its eye on exploiting the mines, they want us to fight amongst ourselves, so that they can come in and militarize the territory. That’s the bottom line here.” Carrasco believes it’s false that the government is fighting organized crime because “they are fighting the Indigenous people, that’s their goal.”
UNESCO designated the Yasuní National Park as a world biosphere reserve in 1989 because it contains 100,000 species of animals, many which are not found anywhere else in the world. Each hectare of the forest reportedly contains more tree species than in all of North America. Not drilling in the pristine rainforest would both protect its rich mix of wildlife and plant life and help halt climate change by preventing the release of more than 400 million tons of carbon dioxide into the atmosphere.
A bill that would regulate large-scale mining operations is making its way through Uruguay’s two houses of parliament, despite a lack of political consensus and vocal opposition from environmental organisations and other sectors of civil society. The proposed legislation declares that large-scale mining would serve the “public interest”. But critics charge that the bill was drafted to serve the interests of the Aratirí project planned by the Indian mining group Zamin Ferrous, aimed at the production of 18 million tons of iron ore annually.
Colombian Armed Forces have brutally attacked members of the “Paro Agrario” National Farmers and Popular Strike, with at least four to five persons dead and reports of hundreds wounded. Colombia’s President Juan Manuel Santos, dismissing strikers as vandals, has ordered the militarization of the capital city of Bogotá and places throughout the country, vowing to deploy 50,000 soldiers.
On Friday, July 26, policemen burst into the office of the CNTC (National Center of Rural Workers) in El Progreso, Yoro, and arrested Magdalena Morales, the CNTC Regional Secretary for the Honduran department of Yoro. Magalena is charged with usurping land as part of the criminalization campaign against campesinos in the Sula Valley to the benefit of large sugar companies. She is just one of 52 campesinos with legal proceedings against them because the Agua Blanca Sur land struggle.
Yes, the Bowman expeditions are back, rebooted by a Department of Defense Minerva grant, and soon to arrive in all seven Central American countries. To study which indigenous peoples, exactly? Usually in academia such things are not secret, but this project involves the US military.
Indigenous representatives gathered from across the country on August 9 in a local school in the municipality of Totonicapán demanding that the state honor their rights to self determination. This event, convened by the 48 Cantones of Totonicapán, was one of 25 acts of protest nationwide, including road blockades at strategic points throughout the country marking International Day of the World’s Indigenous Peoples.
From August 12-16 the zapatistas opened the doors to their caracoles, communities and hearts to 1630 students enrolled in the first grade of “the escuelita (the little school): freedom according to the zapatistas.” The escuelita didn’t have formal classrooms with a rigid schedule and teachers imparting their knowledge. Instead it featured immersion based learning, grounded in the daily tasks of constructing autonomy. This included grinding corn, weeding onion crops, collecting firewood, and washing your clothes in the river.
There will be a before and after the Little Zapatista School; of the recent one and those that will come. It will be a slow, diffuse impact, which will be felt in some years but will frame the life of those below for decades. What we experienced was a non-institutional education, where the community is the educational subject. Face-to-face self-education; learning with the spirit and with the body, as the poet would say.
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