Juan Vázquez Assassinated in Bachajón, Chiapas

Bachajón Ejido Owners Demand that Juan Vázquez Guzman’s Death Not Be Left Unpunished

Juan Vázquez

** The indigenous leader “and Other Campaign” adherent was assassinated Wednesday

** They warn that the struggle over the defense of land and the natural springs “will not diminish”

By: Hermann Bellinghausen, Envoy

San Cristóbal de las Casas, Chiapas, April 28, 2013

The San Sebastián Bachajón ejido owners, adherents to the Other Campaign of the Sixth Declaration of the Lacandón Jungle, in Chilón, Chiapas, demanded that the assassination of their compañero and representative Juan Vázquez Guzmán, which occurred Wednesday, “is not left in impunity” and warned that: “after the compañero’s death, the struggle will not diminish: we will continue forward, because we know well that his death was because of the defense of our Mother Earth because the mountains and the natural springs are masters of those who care for them.”

Directing themselves to the Good Government Junta of Los Altos and the National Indigenous Congress, to which the assassinated leader also belonged, the Tzeltal ejido owners relate that last April 24, at to o’clock “hour of God” (11 o’clock, “national time”) [1], Vázquez Guzmán “was resting in his house when a person came knocking on his door and he was riddled with six high-caliber bullet impacts, and the guy fled in a red pickup truck in the direction of Sitalá.”

In the communiqué “they make known” who Juan Vázquez was: “An active member of the ejido and of the Other Campaign adherents. We walked with him for seven years after the Sixth. On April 18, 2010, he was named Secretary General of the three centers of the ejido.”

On December 24, 2011, municipal and judicial police detained him without showing him an arrest warrant, when he was entering his house, and he was taken to prison number 16 in Ocosingo.” Hours later the then Commissioner Francisco Guzmán Guzmán arrived, “carrying a file in his hand and pointing to Compañero Juan as the leader against the neoliberal project but, thanks to the mobilizations of organizations and the intervention of human rights defenders, he was released at midnight and they returned him to his house without making him sign any release paper asking for pardon and forgiveness.”

On November 26 and 27, 2011, Vázquez Guzmán, “accompanied by Compañero Domingo García Gómez, he participated in a National Indigenous Congress workshop of dialogue and reflection at San Mateo del Mar (Oaxaca).” He was in charge of following up on the case of protective order (injunction) 274/2011 “against the Neoliberalism Project” and the accompaniment of the three political prisoners from his community

He maintained his participation in the political prison forums and the mobilizations for the freedom of the political prisoners in Chiapas, in particular of Alberto Patishtán, “and in all Mexico;” also in mobilizations for the defense of land, like the one on May 7, 2011 in San Cristóbal de Las Casas, and in the Tila and Mitzitón ejidos. He went to the country’s capital “in accompaniment of the liberation of the last five San Sebastián Bachajón political prisoners.” He also appeared in several video messages for distributing the community’s demands internationally.

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Originally Published in Spanish by La Jornada

Monday, April 29, 2013

En Español: http://www.jornada.unam.mx/2013/04/29/politica/020n1pol

 

 

 

Commodification of Nature in Chiapas

Supposed NGOs Drive the “Commodification of Nature” in Chiapas

[A member of the musical group Los Ángeles Azules (The Blue Angels) during the community of San Isidro’s fiestas, in theMontes Azules Biosphere Reserve, Chiapas Photo: Víctor Camacho]

By: Hermann Bellinghausen

“The global strategy of ‘territorial clearing and control’ disguised as a philanthropic ‘conservationist spirit’ answers to multinational corporate interests of what’s called green capitalism, now interested in ecological conservation in the form of natural protected areas of a federal character for the purpose of commodification, appropriation and multi-million dollars in private profit” the environmental organization Maderas del Pueblo del Sureste concluded, after taking a tour, with other civic organisms, through three indigenous communities established in the Montes Azules, threatened with eviction by federal authorities.

For Maderas del Pueblo (Woods of the People), the “common natural wealth” in this and other indigenous regions (biodiversity, forest cover that captures carbon, uncontaminated water, minerals, scenic beauty), is “the invaluable patrimony of the Mexican people;” and some of the world’s most powerful corporations covet it, several already with a presence in the Lacandón Jungle and its surroundings. And it enumerates the sectors: biotechnology and agro-food (Monsanto, Pioneer, Novartis, Bimbo); pharmaceutical (Pharmacia, Bayer, Pfizer, Aventis); automotive and oil (Ford Motor Company, General Motors, Shell, International Automobile Federation); bottling (Coca Cola, Nestlé, Pepsi Cola) and mining (Cemex).

The “conservationist privatization” and the commodification of nature “is impelled by multilateral organisms, financial and for international cooperation,” like the World Bank (promoter of the Mesoamerican Biological Corridor), European Union (Prodesis), the United States Agency for International Development (with the Lacandón Jungle Century XXI Project: Joint Strategy for the Conservation of Biodiversity) and, recently, by agreement of the Conference of the Parties (COP) of the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change, for the “disastrous” program Reduction of Emissions for Deforestation and Degradation Avoided (REDD plus).

Said strategies are operated by allegedly “non-governmental” organizations [NGOs] of a transnational character like Conservation International, Nature Conservancy, World Wildlife Fund, or national like the Mexican Fund for the Conservation of Nature, Pronatura and “very especially” Natural Spaces and Sustainable Development, Mexican Nature and Ecosystems and the Interdisciplinary Center of Biodiversity and the Environment (CEIBA). The latter three, the study emphasizes, are linked to former Secretary of Environment and Natural Resources, Julia Carabias, “who has instrumented ‘green’ businesses in the southern part of the Lacandón Jungle, which range from the commodification of butterflies and ‘environmental services for pay’ projects with funds from the National Forest Commission and Petróleos Mexicanos (Pemex), to hotels for ‘ecotourism’ and scientific tourism in what once was UNAM’s Biological Station at Chajul and [another] at the mouth of the Tzendales River.”

Maderas del Pueblo is clear that the current Chiapas government “has demagogically assumed the ‘ecologist’ and the ‘struggle against climate change’ discourses, utilizing the Lacandón Jungle as a spearhead” and what’s called the Lacandón Community, composed by Lacandóns (the document calls them “Maya Caribes”) and the Tzeltal “sub-comuneros” of Nuevo Palestina and Chols of Frontera Corozal as minority “associates,” to instrument ecotourism projects (“in reality, conventional scenic tourism and an elitist adventure tourism”), as well as pay for environmental services programs and the REDD. To this is added the expansion of African Palm plantations for agro-fuels in the strip that runs from Palenque to Marqués de Comillas.

After establishing the situation in the Montes Azules and in the communities threatened with eviction, Maderas del Pueblo calls on the social and political organizations with presence in the region to “construct a front in defense of land and territory.” The natural riches in the Lacandón region “are strategic to national sovereignty” faced with the “aggressive” territorial alienation underway for the purpose of commodification.

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Originally Published in Spanish by La Jornada

Saturday, June 9, 2012

En español: http://www.jornada.unam.mx/2012/06/09/politica/018n1pol

 

Commodification of Chiapas Forests

The Commodifiation of Forests, Motive for Removing Communities in Chiapas

  ** El Triunfo, the reserve with which the state government entered the carbon credit market

** They accuse that conservation arguments consist of to stop planting corn in the zone

By: Hermann Bellinghausen, Envoy

San Cristóbal de las Casas, Chiapas, May 20, 2012

Among the principal economic motives for removing communities from the forests that they inhabit is the sale of carbon credits, maintain civilian organisms belonging to the Network for Peace Chiapas (Sipaz, Desmi, Frayba and others). At COP 16 (Conference of the Parties) in Cancún, in December 2010, Mexico entered the program Reduction of Emissions product of Deforestation and environmental Degradation (REDD Plus), whose basic idea is that countries that are willing and can reduce carbon emissions that come from deforestation ought to be financially compensated.

In a 122-page report, critical of the rural cities project and environmental policy in Chiapas, divulged this week, the civil organisms remind that, simultaneously, the governor signed an agreement with his then counterparts from California, Arnold Schwarzenegger, and Acre, Brazil, Arnobio Márques de Almeida, which started “a market for buying and selling carbon credits that is part of the project known as REDD Plus.”

In 2009, the Action Program before Climate Change in Chiapas (PACCCH, its initials in Spanish) had been established with support from the British Embassy, Conservation International, a conservationist NGO (“that they use as intermediary with the communities”) and academic institutions like the Southern Border College (El Colegio de la Frontera Sur), which has collaborated to implement the REDD Plus Project with the National Forest Commission; though recently it has attempted to distance itself publicly, it has not done so with sufficient clarity.

The governor of Chiapas, the report emphasizes, “is convinced that adding on to the ‘payment for environmental services’ is a project for life,” and it quotes the governor: “Your children and grandchildren are going to thank him because they are going to live, they are going to receive money for taking care of it, let’s gamble for them, those who are little, so that you have the certainty that your children are going to live in the future, are going to live from conservation of the reserves, from tourism and the production of rubber or palm for oil.”

“Ecological” interests of the development plans imply the commercialization of the forests, for which the authorities consider it necessary “that the communities inside the reserves be relocated or not use the lands for small farming activities, like occurs in El Triunfo, Reserve with which the Chiapas government entered the carbon market.” But the crown jewel in this market, as will be seen in the next reports, would be the Montes Azules Reserve, in the Lacandón Jungle.

The report on the mission of the Network for Peace points out: “As is well known, to the indigenous peoples the corn, which has been cultivated on Chiapas lands since thousands of years ago, has a big nutritional and cultural importance.” Nevertheless, one of the government’s arguments for “conserving biodiversity” consists of stopping the planting of corn. The governor has said that: “it does a lot of damage to the planet, while the reserve, the great wealth that its residents have, would be finished.”

REDD Plus promotes a “productive reconversion” so that the campesinos stop producing their own foods, like corn, and cultivate products for fuels or construction materials (rubber, African Palm). The sale of carbon to transnationals that it seeks to establish in the forests of Chiapas also “implies the displacement of the communities for carrying out another government project: sustainable rural cities.”

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Originally Published in Spanish by La Jornada

Monday, May 21, 2012

En español: http://www.jornada.unam.mx/2012/05/21/politica/014n1pol