The Edinburgh Chiapas Solidarity Group is one of many groups across the world 
which support the Zapatistas in their struggle. Our main purpose is to raise awareness of the Zapatista struggle and to give practical help wherever possible.
We aim to do this by organising talks, film showings, benefit gigs, street stalls and direct actions as well as publishing articles. We import Zapatista produce such as coffee, clothing and jewellery for sale with the money going directly back to the communities.
In Spring 2004 the Edinburgh-Chiapas Solidarity Group and the Glasgow Zapatista Solidarity Group twinned with the '16 de Febrero' Zapatista autonomous municipality. The municipality is in a poor, rural community which lacked access to basic medical care and education. We have raised funding that enabled the community to build a health clinic in their area and further help is now needed to purchase medical equipment and supplies.
The EdinChiapas group is part of the 'UK Zapatista Network'.
Campaign "A thousand rages, one heart: the Zapatista communities live! "
Since the arms uprising of the Zapatista National Liberation Army, the Zapatistas have been the recipients of attacks, harassment and assaults in an attempt by the bad government to put an end to those who have announced the existence of another possible world. However, the resistance and struggle of the Zapatista communities, along with men and women from Mexico and the world, have succeeded not only in thwarting the attacks of the bad government, but also in highlighting the progress made by the compas in building their autonomy. This experience has been, and continues to be, an example to follow for the different struggles of those from below (los de abajo).
The Sixth Declaration of the Lacandon Jungle grew out of the organisation of the EZLN, which again and again has built bridges of contact with those from below. The callout transcends those in solidarity with the Zapatistas and convenes all to organize together in a national struggle against capitalism.
Due to the anticapitalist nature of this initiative and the decision of so many to join it, the bad government sees in the Other Campaign a real threat to its power and its system. The government's repressive strategy to slow down the advance of the Other began with the repression of 3 and May 4 in Atenco, while at the same time attacks on the communities escalated.
The Zapatistas say the army has resumed its patrols in La Garrucha
The Zapatista Good Government Junta (JBG) of La Garrucha reports:
-
increases in army patrols and helicopter overflight
-
increases in government-backed paramilitary activity in the communities
-
attempts to take back land recuperated by the Zapatistas in 1994
-
government attempts to buy loyalty with building materials
-
government intention to divide communities
-
government intention to provoke Zapatista supporters to retaliate and thus provide a justification for military intervention
-
evictions of communities in Montes Azules to make way for luxury tourism, biopiracy and a hydroelectric dam on the Jatate River.
"Hiding behind environmental pretexts, they clear the way for the entry into the jungle of the big investors, the exploitation of the area for luxury tourism, and the appropriation of biological resources for patenting".
Mitzitón: God’s Army must leave now.
Mitzitón is a small Tzotzil community, located in woodland near to San Cristóbal de Las Casas. The majority of the inhabitants are adherents to the Other Campaign, and grow and care for the local trees. There have been problems in this community for the past thirteen years, since members of an evangelical group, Alas de Aguila, Eagle Wings, part of a larger paramilitary organisation, Ejército de Dios, the Army of God or God’s Army, came to live in Mitzitón. They have, since 1997, the year of the Acteal massacre, refused to take part in any of the collective work of the community or to contribute to its costs. To the great concern of the majority, members of the organisation have been indiscriminately cutting down the trees which are loved and nurtured by the rest of the inhabitants.
“They are guilty of the crimes of murder, torture, kidnapping, rape, illegal felling of trees, and trafficking in migrants. We demand the government relocates the criminal delinquent paramilitaries”
Report on today's demonstration at the Mexican Embassy in London: Freedom and Justice for Atenco!
Demonstrators calling for freedom for the Atenco prisoners in Mexico protested for over 3 and a half hours in front of the Mexican Embassy in London today 29th June. The protest was part of an International Day of Action, coinciding with the Supreme Court of Justice of the Mexican Nation meeting to decide the future of 12 political prisoners from the small town of San Salvador Atenco near Mexico City.
Protestors defied police to take up position directly in front of the Embassy entrance, refusing police orders to move to the opposite side of the road. After around 20 minutes the possibility of arrest under the Public Order Act forced the dozen or so demonstrators to move a few yards back to a traffic island in the middle of the road.
Nevertheless leafleting continued right in front of the Embassy while Mexican revolutionary songs blasted out a message of defiance. Certainly the Embassy authorities were well aware of the protest as their Security officers were filming and photographing demonstrators.
"The Atenco prisoners have been imprisoned for the crime of standing up for the poor peasant farmers of the area," said Esther McDonald of the UK Zapatista Solidarity Network, who organised the protest. "It was therepresentatives of the state who committed violent atrocities at Atenco: Amnesty International has detailed shocking systematic sexual assaults and rapes by the police on 26 women during and after the police assault on Atenco in May 2006."
The events of 3rd /4th May 2006 were sparked off when police tried to arrest peasant farmers selling flowers in the street. When locals went to the flower-sellers aid and drove off the police, a massive state force gathered and then invaded Atenco. Police killed two youths, Alexis Benhumea and Francisco Javier Cortes, and arrested over 200 people. Dozens of homes were invaded without warrants, and hundreds of people were tear-gassed and beaten. Police subjected 26 women to serious sexual assaults, including rape, in attacks described by Amnesty International as "torture".
Freedom and Justice for Atenco
Demonstrations are taking place today, in cities throughout the world, because the Supreme Court of Justice of the Mexican nation (SCJN) is meeting to decide the future of 12 political prisoners from the small Mexican town of San Salvador Atenco who are currently serving sentences of up to 112 years.
On the 3rd and 4th of May of 2006, in one of the worst cases of police brutality in recent Mexican history, more than 3,500 agents of the Mexican security services attacked the population of San Salvador Atenco. The attack began when the people organised to stop the violent expulsion of flower vendors from a central square in nearby Texcoco, near Mexico City.
San Juan Copala: On the second caravan and the autonomous project
May 18, 2010
To the Honest Local, National and International media
To the Other Campaign
To the Social Organizations
To the People of Mexico
To the Non-governmental Organizations
Twenty days after the brutal murder of our comrades ALBERTA CARIÑO TRUJILLO AND JYRI JAAKKOLA, along with others wounded by high-caliber weapons in the hands of groups completely identified with the state, there has been no justice. This impunity has favored this paramilitary group which calls itself a “SOCIAL ORGANIZATION” (UBISORT), so that it again commits another attack against the inhabitants of the AUTONOMOUS MUNICIPALITY, obeying the orders issued from the halls of government, kidnapping on May 14 comrade MARGARITA LOPEZ MARTINEZ and SUSANA MARTINEZ, holding them for approximately two hours during which they received all kinds of threats, and on May 15, this same group, commanded by RUFINO and ANASTACIO JUÁREZ HERNANDEZ, kidnapped twelve inhabitants of the AUTONOMOUS MUNICIPALITY of San Juan Copala for an entire night; during which time they were beaten, threatened and stripped of all their belongings, including the food which they had previously bought in Juxtlahuaca, as well as money, most of it which was to pay for the Opportunities program. They are: FELIPA DE JESÚS SUÁREZ, JOAQUINA VELASCO AGUILERA, MARTIMIANA AGUILERA, ISABEL BAUTISTA RAMÍREZ, MARCELINA RAMÍREZ, LORENA MERINO MARTÍNEZ, LETICIA VELASCO AGUILERA (CHILD), ROSARIO VELASCO ALLENDE (CHILD), JOSEFA RAMIREZ BAUTISTA (CHILD), TWO CHILDREN OF FOUR YEARS OF AGE AND A ONE-YEAR-OLD BABY.
Autonomous healthcare in the Zapatista communities: "You can't think about health and not think about the river."
This article is based on information provided by a compa who has been working to train health promoters in two different areas of Chiapas. He stressed that he could only discuss healthcare in two of the five caracoles, the self-governing geographical regions into which Zapatista territory is divided. Each caracol is autonomous; they all start from the same idea - land and freedom - and the same principles, based on democracy, liberty and justice, but each area has developed distinctly, with a different programme, and a different way of doing things.
Opening of the micro-clinic in Zapatista Autonomous Municipality "16th February", built by the voluntary work of the local indigenous people, with the aid of funds from Scotland
Activists Murdered by State-Backed Paramilitaries in Mexico
I
nternational Solidarity Needed for Autonomous Municipality
On 27th April 2010 state-backed paramilitaries opened fire on an international aid convoy heading for the besieged autonomous municipality of San Juan Copala in the state of Oaxaca, southern Mexico.
Beatríz Alberta Cariño, director of the Oaxacan organisation CACTUS ( the Centre for Community Support Working Together ) and adherent of the Zapatista-initiated Other Campaign, and Jyri Jaakkola, a human rights observer from Finland, were shot dead, and several people were wounded.
Amnesty International has condemned the attack, by the paramilitary group UBISORT, which has been acting with total impunity in this area, populated by the indigenous Triqui people. Local activists are demanding that the state governor Ulises Ruiz stop the financing and arming of such paramilitaries.
The aid convoy comprised members of the Popular Assembly of the Peoples of Oaxaca (APPO), Oaxacan Voices Building Autonomy and Liberty (VOCAL), the grass-roots Section 22 of the teachers union, the community group CACTUS, and the Independent Movement of Triqui Unity and Struggle (MULTI), accompanied by international human rights observers.
Since January San Juan Copala autonomous municipality has been cut off by paramilitaries. As a result, write VOCAL "the children cannot go to school, and the community is without electric light, without drinking water, without doctors and health care...."
¡Zapatista! Speaker from Chiapas, Mexico in Scotland
Tuesday 20th April in Glasgow and
Wednesday 21st April in Edinburgh
Autonomy, repression and resistance
Education, Health, Land,
Justice, Self-Government...
Walking New Paths
Glasgow Public Meeting
7pm Tuesday 20th April
Room 3 Queen Margaret Union
22 University Gardens
G12 8QN
Edinburgh Public Meeting
7.30pm Wednesday 21st April
Augustine United Church
41 George IV Bridge
EH1 1EL
All Welcome!
Despite attacks from both Mexican government forces and paramilitaries, the Zapatistas continue to develop their autonomous communities. Education, health care, justice, women's rights, communal land, decision-making and self-government....in all these areas the indigenous people in Chiapas are walking new paths. Outside of and in opposition to the 'government/ big business system, they are creating autonomous structures which reflect local people's needs.
Get Involved
We invite you to join our email list (sign up here) and to attend our regular organising meetings.
Edinburgh Chiapas Solidarity Group,
c/o 17 West Montgomery Place
Edinburgh
EH7 5HA
Scotland
Email: edinchiapas@yahoo.co.uk
The EdinChiapas group is part of the 'UK Zapatista Network': ukzapatistas.wordpress.com
