Protest at the Mexican Consulate in Glasgow at 1pm on Sat 29 July against the attacks on the Zapatistas
The Scottish Anarchist Network write:
“We are organising a protest in Glasgow against the Mexican Consulate, Mexican state — in particular President Obrador and Governor Rutilio Escandon — and ORCAO, outside of the Mexican Consulate, located on 230 Balmore Road, Glasgow, G22 6JJ. (ORCAO are the paramilitary group who carried out recent armed attacks on several Zapatista communities)
We are planning on holding a demonstration at the address mentioned, on Saturday the 29th of July, 1pm. The address is nearby to the Possilpark and Parkland train station. The protest might become a recurring event until our demands, to stop the violence against the Zapatistas and Chiapas, are met by the Mexican state.”
Join if you can, all welcome
Messages of support to be read out at the protest can be sent to scottish_anarchists@googlegroups.com
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Since their uprising in 1994 the Zapatista indigenous movement in Chiapas, south east Mexico has been creating autonomous communities based on grass-roots democracy and communal control of land, with their own autonomous schools, health clinics and justice systems. The Mexican state sees this as a threat to their own power and, having failed to crush the movement, have long used paramilitaries to attack the Zapatistas.
Recently there has been an upsurge in attacks :
On May 22nd, 2023, Jorge López Sántiz was gravely wounded in an attack by the Organization of Coffee Growers of Ocosingo (Orcao) in the Zapatista autonomous community of Moises Gandhi.
From June 19th to June 22nd, 2023 ORCAO carried out ongoing attacks involving high-caliber weapons and burning of land in the communities of Emiliano Zapata, San Isidro y Moisés y Gandhi.
In response to these and other incidents, the head of the federal executive, President Andrés Manuel López Obrador, on at least three occasions denied the gravity of the violence in the state and tried to undermine the credibility of reports submitted by human rights organizations. On July 12, he blamed independent media for exaggerating the violence and human rights groups for sowing division in the communities.
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Below link to letter to the Mexican Ambassador to the USA with comprehensive info and background to the current and recent attacks on the Zapatista communities
Stop the War against the Zapatista peoples