Statement Of Solidarity For The Indigenous Governing Council (CIG) Mexico – Idle No More

The First Continental Summit of Indigenous Nations, Pueblos and Organizations was convened in Teotihuacan, Mexico in 2000. Previously, there were realized two Continental Indigenous Encounters, building up to the summit, in 1990 in Quito, Ecuador and then in 1993, in Temoaya, Mexico. The Second Continental Summit Abya Yala occurred in Quito, Ecuador (2004), then to be followed by the third in Iximche, Guatemala (2007); the fourth in Puno, Peru (2009); and then the fifth in Cauca, Colombia (2013).

At the fifth summit in 2013, at the request of the representatives of the Civic Council of Indigenous and Popular Organizations of Honduras COPINH led by Berta Cáceres, the summit plenary agreed in consensus to organize the Sixth Continental Summit Abya Yala in Honduras.

On March 2, 2016, armed men murdered human rights defender Berta Cáceres in her home in the town of La Esperanza, Department of Intibucá, Honduras. The family of Berta and the Civic Council of Popular and Indigenous Organizations of Honduras (COPINH) immediately requested an independent investigation due to concerns that Honduran authorities would not identify the intellectual authors of the crime. The call for an independent international investigation continues now in 2018, even as the country of Honduras suffers yet another political coup being instituted by the elite power structures of that country, with open support from the US government and military apparatus.

In solidarity on the ground in Honduras as recently as 2016, as secretariat of the Continental Commission Abya Yala have maintained contact and solidarity with the COPINH, and fully intend to fulfill their responsibilities to the intergenerational trajectory of the Continental Summit Abya Yala, along the path of Self Determination and Tradition as surviving Original Nations of Indigenous Peoples of the Great Turtle Island Abya Yala [America].

Ever since the First Continental Indigenous Encounter in Quito, Ecuador (1990), TONATIERRA has persevered as an agency of continuity and communications for the Continental Indigenous Movement, operating as Secretariat for the Continental Commission Abya Yala.

Most recently, the Continental Commission Abya Yala was asked by the Mapuche Nation to participate in an International Indigenous conference, preceding the arrival of Pope Francis to Chile in January of 2018.

MEXICO

She is known as Eréndira, a princess of the Purépecha Nation, daughter of a Purépecha King who had succumbed to the domination of the Spanish invasion of Mexico in 1519. According to the legends, Eréndira refused to submit to the Spanish invaders, and led an armed revolt against their forces that inspires the resistance movement of the Indigenous Peoples of Mexico still today.

In May of 2017, in San Cristobal de la Casas Chiapas the National Indigenous Congress of Mexico convened a gathering that resulted in the founding of the Indigenous Governing Council of Mexico, the CIG. The Indigenous Governing Council (CIG) then appointed Maria de Patricio Martinez, of the Nahua Nation as their national spokeswoman, and immediately nominated her as a candidate for the 2018 presidential elections.

One of the strongest elements of representation in the CIG is the Purépecha Peoples of Cherán, Michoacán. The Indigenous Purépecha community of Cherán is the only municipality in Mexico where there are no elections, as its inhabitants chose their authorities and their Council, in accord with their Indigenous Customs and Traditions.

On January 18 the 32-year-old social activist of this indigenous community, María Guadalupe Campanur, was found dead. Her body was found in a state of putrefaction and with a knife wound in the neck, on the road to Carapan-Uruapan.

On January 21, in the same state of Michoacán Mexico, the Caravan For Life being led by Maria de Jesus Patricio Martinez was attacked and the independent media journalists covering the Caravan for Life were threatened and robbed of their equipment.

The attack on Maria de Jesus (MariChuy for the Indigenous Peoples of Mexico)—as the spokeswoman for the Indigenous Governing Council (CIG) Mexico—came she is engaged in the Mexican presidential elections as a candidate nominated NOT BY ANY POLITICAL PARTY, but instead by the surviving Indigenous Nations themselves via the National Indigenous Congress (Congreso Nacional Indigena) as a collective political movement of national Indigenous Self Determination.

During the Tour for Life, MariChuy spoke out against the murder of María Guadalupe Campanur T. of Cherán. She refused to stay silent. She refused to accept the murder of yet another (5 in Michoacán just this year) Indigenous Woman, another victim of the narco-state in Mexico.

The attack on the Caravan for Life on January 21 in Michoacán cannot go unchallenged, it cannot be allowed to be normalized or sanitized by the mass media and even worse, we cannot allow the complacency and complicity of “Silence Gives Consent” to be the policy of pathology that has resulted in so many, too many, many times too many MISSING AND MURDERED INDIGENOUS WOMEN across the centuries of CONTINENTAL genocide and colonization here our homelands of the Great Turtle Island Abya Yala.

We are also calling for official communiques of condemnation by the Indigenous Peoples of Turtle Island to be directed to the Mexican Ambassador to Canada, Mr. Dionisio Pérez Jácome Friscione, Ambassador and the US Ambassador to Canada, Kelly Craft.

WE DEMAND!
1) Accountability for the murder of María Guadalupe Campanur and the attack on

MariChuy and the Caravan for Life in Michoacán;
2) Guarantees of Protection for the
Indigenous Governing Council (CIG) Mexico, and

their spokeswoman Maria de Jesus Patricio Martinez;

3) Protection for the Right of Mobility and Free Expression, and Access to Justice for the Indigenous Peoples of Mexico;

4) Recognition, respect, and guarantees of protection for the Right of Self Determination of Indigenous Peoples of Mexico, including the right of Self Government in accord with their customs and traditional such as being exercised by the Purépecha Pueblo of Cherán;

5) January 26, 2018 also marks 40 months since the Forced Disappearance of the 43 Ayotzinapa Students in Iguala, Guerrero. The issues of complicity of the Mexican military apparatus in conjunction with the federal, state, and local levels of government and police operating in criminal collusion with narco-cartels tied to the heroine drug trade in Chicago and Atlanta, USA have yet to be clarified and brought to justice. Instead the government of President Enrique Peña Nieto continues to cover up the violent assault on the 43 students on the night of September 26, 2014. We demand international accountability, a diligent, professional and impartial investigation, punishment for the guilty parties as well as support and protection for the families of the 43 Ayotzinapa students.

6) We call for the Mexican federal government to take responsibility for the current political violence in Oxchuc, Chiapas, being that although the Electoral Tribunal of the State Chiapas ordered the Institute of Electoral and Citizen Participation of Chiapas (IEPC), through TEECH / JDC / 19/2017, to proceed to recognize the right of the people of Oxchuc to choose to their municipal authorities, through their own customary regulatory systems as an Indigenous Pueblo, without the presence of political parties, to date the IEPC has ignored that mandate of the Court. This omission, opened the door for political parties to intervene in the municipality, and foment the current wave of violence. On January 24, an armed group attacked the local population and left 3 people killed, 18 injured and 3 people seriously hospitalized. We join in the demand by the Tseltal of Oxchuc that the IEPC execute the judgment of the Court and that the government of the state collaborate in good faith. The present wave of political violence must be be investigated and the aggressors punished.

7) We demand full recognition, respect, and guarantees for the right of Free, Prior, and Informed Consent of Indigenous Peoples in Equality as Peoples, with equality in right of Self Determination to all other peoples, in particular as may being negotiated presently in terms of the “modernization” of the North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA) between the government of Canada-US-Mexico.

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FOR MORE INFORMATION CONTACT:

Russell Diabo
Spokesperson,
Defenders of the Land Network

Janice Makokis Spokesperson,
Idle No More Network

Cell: (613) 296-0110 Cell: (780) 915-0310

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