Camila Vergara reports on the London leg of Mexico’s National Indigenous Congress European tour, where delegates spoke about struggles in Mexico and nourished international relationships.
From 28 September – 1 October, two delegates from Mexico’s National Indigenous Congress (CNI) Jesús y Pedro*, gave a series of talks in London. This was the most recent leg of their three-month tour through Europe. The events were hosted at Goldsmiths University, King’s College London, and the Kurdish Community Centre in Haringey, and organized by grassroots groups in London and the Europa Zapatista network. They addressed Indigenous struggles in Mexico and the state of human rights in the country today, and served as an opportunity for the delegation to build ties with organizations and activists in the UK.
At a time of ongoing land dispossession in service of extractive projects and of pronounced violence against human rights and climate defenders, particularly in Indigenous territories, Jesús and Pedro hope the tour will allow the CNI to ‘keep articulating our goals, keep sharing information, and keep strengthening international solidarity networks as our people’s resistance and rebellion continues’
‘From below and on the left’
Since its inception in 1996, the CNI has been a powerful front against capitalist and ecologically destructive forces and has provided a space for members of Mexico’s more than 40 Indigenous communities, nations, and tribes to discuss alternative visions of development. The CNI was born out of popular mobilization sparked by the EZLN (Zapatista Army for National Liberation) uprising in the state of Chiapas two years prior. It proposes an end to the economic and political structures that fuel exploitation and dispossession, ‘from below and on the left’ (desde abajo y a la izquierda), and demands that Indigenous self-determination be upheld and communities’ rights respected.
The CNI pushes the Mexican state to honour the spirit of the San Andrés Accords – the agreements reached between the EZLN and government regarding Indigenous rights and autonomy – and its motto, ‘¡Nunca más un México sin nosotros!’ (Never again a Mexico without us), speaks to its members’ shared vision for Mexico’s Indigenous people to be active agents in shaping the country and making decisions for their own communities.
Strengthening international ties
Regular national and international speaking tours, including recent visits to Europe in 2021 and 2023, have been important for building solidarity with both Indigenous and non-Indigenous people around the world and for raising awareness of the CNI’s many active struggles around Mexico. The current CNI tour aims to build relationships and reach wider, international audiences.
Over the course of the week’s three events, Jesús and Pedro, who belong to the Ñu Savii people in the state of Guerrero and the Wixarika and Naayeri people in the state of Nayarit, respectively, spoke to attendees about the CNI’s mission, about the threat posed by extractive projects and drug trade-related violence, and about their communities’ own experiments with developing fully autonomous schools, police forces, health clinics, and media.
Both delegates’ territories have been sites of struggle against proposed extractive or infrastructure projects in recent years. ‘Capitalism and extractivism are very present in my territory’, Pedro said, ‘particularly in the form of mining, hydroelectric dams, and touristic zones, which privatize beaches and affect our ceremonial sites’. Pedro explained how, under the banner of the CNI, the four nations that call Nayarit home (Wixarika, Mexika, O’dam, and Naayeri), together with affected non-Indigenous communities and civil society organizations, had successfully managed to halt the construction of some of these hotels, mining sites, and dams on sacred islands and rivers through protests and legal battles.
‘We do not matter to the government’
In other parts of Mexico, including in Jesús’ state of Guerrero, where the expansion of drug cartels presents an additional layer of danger, defending land against these projects and defending themselves against state and narco violence has led communities to create autonomous police forces.
During the tour, Jesús presented on the origins of the community police force, the Consejo Indígena Popular de Guerrero – Emiliano Zapata (Popular Indigenous Council of Guerrero-Emiliano Zapata; CIPOG-EZ), as well as on its structure and the threats, assassinations, and disappearances members had suffered as a result of their organizing. ‘We are faced with two narco-paramilitary groups and have been reporting and giving details to the state continually due to the many disappearances we’ve had: over 50 compañeros from the CIPOG have been disappeared’, he said, ‘but it seems the government does not care about this information’.
Jesús drew parallels with perhaps the most infamous case of forced disappearance in the country in recent years, the case of 43 disappeared students from his home state. ‘As in the case of the 43 brothers from Ayotzinapa, we know it is the military, colluding with delinquent groups. We know we do not matter to the government and that […] in practice they continue to allow us to be displaced, and they continue to disappear us’.
Unable to rely on the state for security and law enforcement, his community has constructed its own apparatus, forming its own ‘house’ of justice and police force accountable to a community assembly. It has sustained this model for nearly 30 years. Jesús himself has served as a community police officer and later as the elected regional commander in charge of hundreds of servicemen and women, a position that is reassigned every three years to prevent corruption. ‘As community police, we defend the land, we defend the forests, we do not allow anyone to enter into our territory, and this system has helped to defend the peace in the state of Guerrero’, he explained, though he worries for the alarming rates of disappearances, assassinations, and imprisonment of community organizers of the CIPOG-EZ and other autonomous projects in today’s climate of increased militarization and cartel activity.
Autonomous community schooling
The tour’s events emphasized that the task of defending one’s rights and worldview does not lie solely in these protests and police forces. Communities within the CNI have also worked to create autonomous schools, and Pedro, himself a teacher who helps maintain a school system in his community, spoke to audiences about these models. ‘In these schools, we seek to strengthen young people’s culture and identity, because the education offered by the Mexican state is a more individualistic and western one. […] Newer generations start to forget their people’s history […] and become more individualistic’.
The autonomous school system he has developed with his community instead teaches young people about their own territory, about sacred sites and holidays, and about traditional crafts in addition to a complete curriculum that is consistently rooted in local life. ‘I started to work more community-related topics into subjects,’ Pedro told LAB. Concepts in mathematics, for instance, might be taught through embroidery or the mapping of land, or the periodic table through material found in the territory. ‘I’ve tried to make it all more practical to community life. It makes more sense to [the students], and they learn better’.
Given the lack of official recognition and state funding, the community maintains full freedom over the curriculum, while depending mainly on the voluntary efforts of elders skilled in traditional crafts and teachers like Pedro. Though this lack of resources presents challenges, people have worked to keep the schools open and autonomous.
Independent media
The delegates spoke of similar efforts to maintain autonomous media and health clinics in their territories and elsewhere. Jesús spoke of preparations to launch a community radio station in his region, which he hopes will allow them to bring local news, particularly about the CIPOG-EZ, to residents, in their native language and from their own perspective, as well as to inform them on resistance struggles nationally and internationally, so they can continue to take inspiration from radical alternatives.
Jesús reflected on this principle of autonomy and on the importance of looking to these parallel struggles. ‘Our only alternative is to build our own autonomous systems, because we can no longer find another way to survive except through solidarity, which is what the CNI offers. You gain a lot of knowledge about how people have organized in other places, and we take from those experiences to build our own ways of resistance, all together’.
This sentiment extended to audiences abroad. ‘We are coming here now in order to keep building this network, and so that we can make people here feel like they are part of the same arm of a common humanity, whether they are Indigenous or not’, Pedro said at the closing of the tour’s final talk. ‘At the end of the day, we are all human beings. We believe in people here, and we believe in ourselves, and we believe that another world is possible.’
We believe in people here, and we believe in ourselves, and we believe that another world is possible.
In earlier stages of the tour, the CNI delegates were joined by an activist from the Fray Bartolomé de Las Casas human rights centre (CDH Frayba), who was unfortunately unable to travel to London due to illness. The talk at University of Goldsmiths on 28 September was also co-hosted by Hannah Meszaros-Martin from Forensic Architecture, who presented on its Ayotzinapa platform, allowing for a discussion on human rights violations and impunity in Mexico more broadly.
Having visited Denmark and Finland prior to arriving in London, the delegates will continue on to France, Italy, and Spain before returning to Mexico.
*Pedro and Jesus requested we didn’t use their surnames.
