Place des martyrs d’Acteal : La otra memoria

Luis Martínez Andrade
Rebelión




W alter Benjamin escribió en la sexta de sus Tesis sobre la filosofía de la Historia que: “Articular históricamente el pasado no significa conocerlo “como verdaderamente ha sido”. Significa adueñarse de un recuerdo tal como éste relampaguea en un instante de peligro…Sólo tiene derecho a encender en el pasado la chispa de la esperanza aquel historiador traspasado por la idea de que ni siquiera los muertos estarán a salvo del enemigo, si éste vence. Y este enemigo no ha dejado de vencer”.

A doce años de la masacre en la comunidad de Acteal –crimen de Estado que continua impune–, donde fueron asesinados 45 indígenas tztoziles entre los que se encontraban niños y mujeres embarazadas. El gobierno de Felipe Calderón del Partido Acción Nacional y la mayor parte de la clase política en México no sólo han mantenido en la impunidad a los autores intelectuales que orquestaron dicha acción como al entonces mandatario Ernesto Zedillo –ahora asesor de diferentes empresas privadas norteamericanas– sino que, además el pasado 12 de agosto la Suprema Corte de Justicia de la Nación, bajo el argumento de que la Procuraduría General de la República había fabricado las evidencias, ordenó la liberación de alrededor de 20 indígenas que habían sido detenidos y culpados por dicha matanza. Posteriormente, el 4 de noviembre, fueron liberados 9 paramilitares más.

Cabe hacer mención que el 21 de abril, el Centro de Derechos Humanos Fray Bartolomé de Las Casas y la organización civil “Las Abejas” habían advertido sobre la posibilidad de liberar algunos paramilitares que habrían participado en el crimen. Sin embargo tanto para la Suprema Corte de Justicia como para los “paladines del sistema”, es decir, para los abogados del Centro de Investigación y Docencia Económica (C.I.D.E.) la inconsistencia de pruebas era motivo para promover un “amparo de juicio” que implicaría, a la postre, la liberación de 20 detenidos. En ese sentido, debemos sumar a la lista de “los mercenarios de la justicia” [1] los nombres de Hugo Eric Flores Cervantes –evangélico y profesor del CIDE– y a Héctor Aguilar Camín –director de la revista Nexos– quienes fueron participes de esa artimaña.

En el marco de una “guerra de baja intensidad” perpetuada por el Ejército Mexicano contra las comunidades autónomas zapatistas, el 22 de diciembre de 1997, alrededor de 90 paramilitares de filiación priista [2] irrumpieron en la capilla donde se encontraban rezando los habitantes de la comunidad autónoma “Las Abejas” para masacrarlos. Es importante hacer mención que el grupo de “Las Abejas” eran simpatizantes de la causa zapatista más no eran zapatista in strictu sensu. Por tanto, la masacre en Acteal respondió más a una política de contra-insurgencia que a un “conflicto entre indios” como solía sostener el entonces secretario de Gobernación y, posteriormente, candidato a la presidencia por el Partido Revolucionario Institucional: Francisco Labastida Ochoa.

Incluso en un artículo publicado el 20 de diciembre de 2007, en el diario mexicano La Jornada, Carlos Montemayor sostenía que era el marco de una estrategia de guerra y, por ende, la lógica de una administración de la guerra se imponía sobre la posibilidad de una solución política.

En un clima de amnesia deliberada, de represión sistemática y de criminalización de los movimientos sociales en México debemos tomar en serio la sugerencia benjaminiana que los muertos no están a salvo. La masacre de Acteal es otro capítulo de la historia que nos advierte sobre el “estado de excepción” como regla en la que vivimos. Sin embargo, el continuum de la historia como proceso cerrado de la temporalidad fetichizada se interrumpió este 22 de diciembre de 2009 en París pues cerca de las 20:41 más de veinte personas se dieron cita en el “crucero” que se encuentra entre la Rue des Martyrs y el Boulevard de Clichy para bautizar dicho crucero con el nombre de: Place des martyrs d’Acteal.

En el “crucero” se encendieron 45 veladoras para recordar a las víctimas. Acto seguido se leyeron cada uno de los 45 nombres y se soltaron al aire 45 globos blancos en rememoración de su muerte. Dicha iniciativa política y simbólica fue organizada por la comprometida asociación Espoir Chiapas [3] y apoyada por el Comité de solidarité avec les peuples du Chipas en Lutte (C.S.P.C.L.) con la intención de recordar los 12 años de la matanza en Acteal, contra la liberación de los 29 paramilitares liberados y contra el aumento de represiones y violaciones a los derechos de los pueblos indígenas de Chiapas.

En analogía con David y Goliat, este pequeño lugar de memoria bautizado por unos instantes –las chispas de Benjamin- Place des martyrs d’Acteal se encuentra en una posición que desafía “desde abajo” a una de las mayores imágenes de la burguesía francesa: la Basilia del Sacré-Coeur construida para festejar el aplastamiento de la Comuna de 1871. Por tanto, éste juego asimétrico de imágenes dialécticas nos recuerda que “desde abajo” se gestan los verdaderos relámpagos de la historia.

La matanza en Acteal no debe ser olvidada sino recordada como un evidente crimen de Estado y, por tanto, se debe actuar en consecuencia exigiendo castigo para los culpables. De momento es la memoria de la “dignidad” quien ya los juzga y repudia.

* Luis Martínez Andrade es Sociólogo. Primer Premio Internacional de Ensayo “Pensar a Contracorriente” en su VI edición.

[1] Para el Subcomandante Marcos, los “mercenarios de la justicia” son aquellos que piensan que la justicia es un fenómeno mediático como lo es la política. Entre ellos se encuentra el juez Baltasar Garzón quien “luce mucho con que persigue a la ETA y en realidad lo único que ha hecho es perseguir a la cultura vasca. Ha cerrado periódicos, encerrados periodistas, y él lo presenta como parte del combate al terrorismo”. Cfr. Corte de Caja. Entrevista al subcomandante Marcos, Laura Castellanos, Endira, México, 2008, p. 105.

[2] Priista : perteneciente al Partido Revolucionario Institucional (P.R.I.), quien gobernó al país durante más de setenta años.

[3] http://www.espoirchiapas.com/

Rival Gangs Doing Business Together in L.A.

Carlos Avilés

La Opinión



LOS ANGELES -- Some neighborhoods in Southern California are experiencing a kind of truce between rival gangs that used to fight each other.

The decrease in gang violence in recent years has led some experts to theorize that gangs are now working together.

The Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) in Los Angeles told La Opinión that although they are not investigating a particular case of collaboration between rival gangs, they are aware of a trend in which gangs of different ethnicities are working together.

“We know Latino gangs are working with African-American gangs to get drugs or arms, and we are already doing intelligence work,” said Robert Clark, special agent with the FBI's Criminal Division. "It's a trend we are seeing among different groups. And I think if they see an opportunity to collaborate across these barriers, they’re going to take it," he added.

Although the LAPD media department said they had not heard of gangs working together, Deputy Chief Michael Moore told La Opinión that they have started to see a “blend” among rival gangs.

"I’m not surprised. The purpose of gangs is to make money," he said. "And although it’s something we hadn’t seen before, I can tell you that we’re aware of it.”

County and federal attorneys have yet to take legal action against these groups, and local police authorities are not investigating any cases related to collaboration between gangs. But the phenomenon is already taking place on the streets of Los Angeles, according to one gang expert.

Robert Lyons, a detective who has worked for years in the gang division of the Los Angeles County Sheriff's Department and who did not return calls from La Opinión before the close of business, told the Wall Street Journal that rival gangs like the Bloods and the Crips in South Central Los Angeles had joined together in criminal enterprises.

"They were talking to each other. There were hugs and handshakes. It was incredible," said Lyons. "Now, instead of having 200 arch enemies fighting against another 200, you have 400 working together against law enforcement agents," he said.

However, Aquil Basheer, a renowned expert who trains gang interventionists at the organization Maximum Force Enterprise, indicated that this phenomenon is not occurring in some gangs in Los Angeles.

"It seems like they are trying to create a monster so they can get more resources to suppress it," he said. "And although that’s needed, there is no proof that the gangs are uniting. I think they’re forgetting that the point is to get resources to prevent young people from getting into that life," he added.

Recently, several members of the Latino gang Hawaiian Gardens were accused of hate crimes against African Americans in what was considered the largest operation ever conducted by local and federal law enforcement agencies.

Authorities have targeted individual gangs in their recent operations; law enforcement has never gone after two gangs that were considered to be rivals.

There are an estimated 41,000 gang members in the city according to the LAPD, and 85,000 in the county according to a report by the California Gang Outreach Committee. Given the number of gang members in the Los Angeles area, this phenomenon seems very far from reality, according to Basheer.

The gang problem has long been a headache for Los Angeles authorities. In the last few years, they have declared an open war on gangs, with huge operations deploying local and state agents, legal restrictions, and efforts in prevention and intervention by the city.

Authorities say these actions have contributed to a historic decline in gang-related crime, which in 2009 was 11 percent lower than the previous year, and 33 percent lower than in 2002, according to the LAPD.

For Earl Ofari Hutchinson of the Urban Policy Roundtable, cooperation between rival gangs can occur only at the level of mafia-style organized crime, as was the case between Jews and Italians during Prohibition in the 1930s.

"Rival gangs are still killing each other, at least those small gangs that fight over graffiti or turf," he said. "But it wouldn’t be a surprise to see that maybe they’re not going to work together, but at least they’re not going to work against each other,” he added.

La Asamblea Legislativa del Distrito Federal aprueba los matrimonios entre homosexuales

ARGENPRESS

La Asamblea Legislativa del Distrito Federal (ALDF, Congreso local de la capital mexicana) aprobó una reforma a la Ley al Código Civil para permitir el matrimonio entre homosexuales, con la posibilidad de que podrán adoptar niños.


La iniciativa de ley, aprobada en lo general y en lo particular, incluye reformas a seis artículos de ese Código, en especial el 146, para que en lugar de establecer que "el matrimonio es la unión libre entre un hombre y una mujer", señale que es la "unión libre de dos personas".


La propuesta adoptada, que fue impulsada por los partidos de la izquierda, que son mayoritarios en la ALDF y en el gobierno de la ciudad, fue aprobada por 39 votos a favor, 20 en contra y 5 abstenciones.


Esas reformas deberán ser ratificadas por el alcalde capitalino, Marcelo Ebrard, la semana entrante, y entrarán en vigor una vez publicadas en la Gaceta del Distrito Federal, donde quedarán promulgadas.


De ser así, a partir del primer trimestre de 2010 podrán celebrarse los primeros matrimonios entre personas del mismo sexo en la capital mexicana.


Este nuevo reconocimiento legal a las parejas del mismo sexo no existe aún en otro país de América Latina, mientras en el mundo sólo están autorizados ese tipo de matrimonios en Suecia, Sudáfrica, Noruega, Holanda, España, Canadá y Bélgica.

Walking Into the Al-Qaeda Trap

Touch Yemen, Get Burned

By PATRICK COCKBURN

CounterPunch

We are the Awaleq
Born of bitterness
We are the nails that go into the rock
We are the sparks of hell
He who defies us will be burned

This is the tribal chant of the powerful Awaleq tribe of Yemen in which they bid defiance to the world. Its angry tone conveys flavor of Yemeni life and it should give pause to those in the US who blithely suggest greater American involvement in Yemen in the wake of the attempt to destroy a US plane by a Nigerian student who says he received training there.

Yemen has always been a dangerous place. Wonderfully beautiful, the mountainous north of the country is guerrilla paradise with well-defended villages and towns clinging to every peak. The Yemenis are exceptionally hospitable, though this has its limits. For instance, the Kazam tribe east of Aden are generous to passing strangers, but deem the laws of hospitality to lapse when the stranger leaves their tribal territory at which time, he becomes “a good back to shoot at.”

The Awaleq and Kazam tribes are not exotic survivals on the margins of Yemeni society but are both politically important and influential. The strength of the central government in the capital Sanaa is limited and it generally avoids direct confrontations with tribes, clans and powerful families. Almost everybody has a gun, usually at least an AK-47 assault rifle, but tribesmen often have own heavier armament.

I have always loved the country. It is it physically very beautiful with stone villages perched on mountain tops on the sides of which are cut hundreds of terraces, making the country look like an exaggerated Tuscan landscape. Yemenis are intelligent, humorous, sociable and democratic, infinitely preferable as company to the arrogant and ignorant playboys of the Arab oil states in the rest of the Arabian Peninsula.

It is very much a country of direct action. Once when I was there a Chinese engineer was kidnapped as he drove along the main road linking Sanaa to Aden. The motives of the kidnappers were peculiar. It turned out they came from a bee-keeping tribe (Yemen is famous for its honey) whose bees lived in hives inside hollow logs placed on metal stilts to protect them from ants.

The police had raided the tribe’s village and had upset and damaged hives for which the owners were demanding compensation. The government had been slow in paying up so to tribesmen had decided to draw attention to their grievance by kidnapping the next foreigner on the main road and this turned out to be the Chinese engineer.

Yemen is a mosaic of conflicting authorities, though this authority may be confined to a few villages. Larger communities include the Shia in the north of the country near Saada with whom the government has been fighting a fierce little civil war. The unification of North and South Yemen in 1990 has never wholly jelled and the government is wary of southern secessionism. Its ability to buy off its opponents is also under threat as its oil revenues fall as its few oilfields begin to run dry.

It is in this fascinating but dangerous land that President Barack Obama is planning to increase US political and military involvement. Joint operations will be carried out by the US and Yemeni military. There will be American drone attacks on hamlets where al-Qa’ida supposedly has its bases. There is ominous use by American politicians and commentators of the phrase ‘failed state’ in relation to Yemen as if this somehow legitimises foreign intervention. It is extraordinary that the US political elite has never taken in board that its greatest defeats have been in just such ‘failed states’ such as Lebanon in 1982 when 240 US Marines were blown up; Somalia in the early 1990s when the body of a US helicopter pilot was dragged through the streets; Iraq after the overthrow of Saddam Hussein; and Afghanistan after the supposed fall of the Taliban.

Yemen has all the explosive ingredients of Lebanon, Somalia, Iraq and Afghanistan. But the arch-hawk Senator Joe Lieberman, chairman of the Senate Committee for Security was happily confirming this week that the Green Berets and the US Special Forces are already there. He cited with approval an American official in Sanaa as telling him that “Iraq was yesterday’s war. Afghanistan is today’s war. If you don’t act pre-emptively Yemen will be tomorrow’s war.” In practice pre-emptive strikes are likely to bring a US military entanglement in Yemen even closer.

The US will get entangled because the Yemeni government will want to manipulate US intervention in its own interests and to preserve its wilting authority. It has long been trying to portray the Shia rebels in north Yemen as Iranian cats-paws in order to secure American and Saudi support. Al-Qa’ida in the Arabian Peninsula (AQAP) probably only has a few hundred activists in Lebanon, but the government of long-time Yemeni President Ali Abdulah Salih will portray his diverse opponents as somehow linked to al-Qa’ida.

In Yemen the US will be intervening on one side in a country which is always in danger of sliding into a civil war. This has happened before. In Iraq the US was the supporter of the Shia Arabs and Kurds against the Sunni Arabs. In Afghanistan it is the ally of the Tajiks, Uzbeks and Hazara against the Pashtun community. Whatever the intentions of Washington, its participation in these civil conflicts destabilizes the country because one side becomes labelled as the quisling supporter of a foreign invader. Communal and nationalist antipathies combine to create a lethal blend.

Despite sectarian, ethnic and tribal loyalties in the countries where the US has intervened in the Middle East. they usually have a strong sense of national identity. Yemenis are highly conscious of their own nationality and their identity as Arabs. One of the reasons the country is so miserably poor, with almost half its 22 million people trying to live on $2 a day, is that in 1990 Yemen refused to join the war against Iraq and Saudi Arabia consequently expelled 850,000 Yemeni workers.

It is extraordinary to see the US begin to make the same mistakes in Yemen as it previously made in Afghanistan and Iraq. What it is doing is much to al-Qa’ida’s advantage. The real strength of al-Qa’ida is not that it can ‘train’ a fanatical Nigerian student to sew explosives into his underpants, but that it can provoke an exaggerated US response to every botched attack. Al-Qa’ida leaders openly admitted at the time of 9/11 that the aim of such operations is to provoke the US into direct military intervention in Muslim countries. It is a formula which worked under President George W Bush and it still appears to work under President Barack Obama.

In Yemen the US is walking into the al-Qa’ida trap. Once there it will face the same dilemma it faces in Iraq and Afghanistan. It became impossible to exit these conflicts because the loss of face would be too great. Just as Washington saved banks and insurance giants from bankruptcy in 2008 because they were “too big to fail,” so these wars become too important to lose because to do so would damage the US claim to be the sole super power.

In Iraq the US is getting out more easily than seemed likely at one stage because Washington has persuaded Americans that they won a non-existent success. The ultimate US exit from Afghanistan may eventually be along very similar lines. But the danger of claiming spurious victories is that such distortions of history make it impossible for the US to learn from past mistakes and instead to repeat them by intervening in other countries such as Yemen.

Patrick Cockburn is the author of 'The Occupation: War, resistance and daily life in Iraq' and 'Muqtada! Muqtada al-Sadr, the Shia revival and the struggle for Iraq'.

"Feria de falsas soluciones"

Entrevista a la feminista brasileña Miriam Nobre sobre el Cambio Climático y la Cumbre de Conpenhague

Daniela Estrada

IPS




La conferencia sobre cambio climático parece una "gran feria de soluciones", donde la gente evita hablar del problema de fondo, que es el cambio del modelo de desarrollo, dijo a IPS Miriam Nobre, coordinadora del secretariado de la Marcha Mundial de las Mujeres.

Nobre, ingeniera agrónoma y feminista brasileña, arribó el martes a Copenhague para participar en el Klimaforum, la cumbre de la sociedad civil paralela a la 15 Conferencia de las Partes de la Convención Marco de las Naciones Unidas sobre el Cambio Climático, inaugurada el lunes y que se extenderá hasta el 18 de este mes.

La Marcha Mundial de las Mujeres, liderada por Nobre, es un movimiento feminista internacional que nació en 2000 y está organizado en 71 países.

Empezaron con una campaña contra la pobreza y la violencia de las que son víctimas la población femenina y para 2010 están preparando su tercera acción internacional con cuatro objetivos: autonomía económica de las mujeres, lucha contra la violencia, paz y desmilitarización y promoción del bien común y los servicios públicos.

Antes de detenerse a conversar con IPS, Nobre participó en una reunión de coordinación con representantes de otros movimientos y organizaciones no gubernamentales en unos de los espacios del colorido Klimaforum, donde sen han programado centenares de charlas, muestras, exhibiciones de filmes documentales y espectáculos musicales y teatrales.

IPS: ¿Qué propuestas o demandas traen a Copenhague?

MIRIAM NOBRE: A Copenhague venimos articulados con (las no gubernamentales) Vía Campesina y Amigos de la Tierra Internacional y estamos denunciando las falsas soluciones a los cambios climáticos, que tienen que ver con la producción de los monocultivos, los agrocombustibles y la privatización de la naturaleza, como los créditos de carbono.

También estamos en diálogo con otras organizaciones que trabajan el tema de la deuda climática, como es el caso de Jubileo Sur.

Asimismo, nuestra presencia acá tiene que ver con un sentido de urgencia.

Hay una sensación de que algo debes hacer ahora, pero que no se puede aceptar, por este tema de la urgencia, un chantaje donde se nos imponga un mal acuerdo, donde no se reconozca la desigualdad de clase, de país y de género en el tema de los cambios climáticos.

IPS: ¿En qué actividades participarán?

MN: Tenemos un taller que se llama "Feministas en lucha contra las falsas soluciones del cambio climático y contra la privatización de la naturaleza", donde escucharemos cómo está el proceso de negociaciones, porque las mujeres son sujetos políticos importantes en este tema.

También recordaremos los vínculos y las fricciones que hay entre el movimiento ecologista y el feminista y cómo están viviendo las mujeres los efectos del cambio climático y las resistencias, las alternativas que ellas están construyendo.

Además tendremos otra actividad con la Coalición Mundial de los Bosques sobre la soberanía alimentaria y energética como soluciones reales a los cambios climáticos.

IPS: ¿Por qué son importantes las mujeres como sujetos políticos en las negociaciones sobre cambio climático?

MN: Hay toda la experiencia de las mujeres campesinas, pescadoras, que siguen afirmando sus maneras tradicionales de producir el alimento y que entonces son una alternativa real a la sociedad dependiente del petróleo y de los combustibles fósiles.

Y hay también toda la relación que nosotras hacemos con lo que es la fragmentación y la mercantilización de los cuerpos de las mujeres y la fragmentación y la mercantilización de los territorios mismos.

IPS: ¿Cuál es su percepción del avance de las negociaciones mundiales en Copenhague?

MN: La primera impresión que tuve es que la gente viene mucho con el sentido de vender sus soluciones, el agrocombustible, el mercado de carbono.

Da una sensación de una gran feria de soluciones, que pasa por alrededor del problema, que es la necesidad urgente de un cambio profundo del sistema, del modelo, de cómo organizamos la producción y el consumo.

Es como si la gente siguiera evitando discutir lo que, de hecho, es necesario hacer.

Young Tribal Activists Nix Coal, Embrace Green

Ngoc Nguyen

New America Media

Wahleah Johns grew up near the coal mines of the Black Mesa region of Arizona and experienced first-hand the toll that mining takes on people, the land and the groundwater. Her community, Forest Lake, was one of several communities atop Black Mesa, where Peabody Energy ran the largest strip mining operation in the country on Indian land until recently.

Today, Johns, 34, co-directs the Black Mesa Water Coalition, a grassroots organization of Native American and non-Native activists in Flagstaff, which combines the goals of traditional environmentalism with the commitment to Native culture and reverence for the land.

Johns and the Coalition are not unique among American Indians. But their activism against fossil fuels and polluting power plants and for sustainable, environmentally friendly growth reveals a generational schism within the largest Native American tribes that has profound economic and political implications for the future. That schism was brought into sharp relief in September when the Hopi government banned local and national environmental groups, including the Sierra Club and Natural Resources Defense Council, from their lands.

The Navajo Nation supported the ban and pointed the finger at local and national environmental groups, calling them “the greatest threat to tribal sovereignty.” What triggered the ban was the environmentalists’ opposition to tribal government’s support for coal mining and power plants.

While tribal leaders blame outsiders, Native American activists on and off the reservations pose the real challenge to economic policies and leadership, and the very ideas of Native cultural ties to the environment. Young Navajo and Hopi tribal leaders – mostly women – are working to create a green economy, infused with indigenous knowledge and values. Their vision collides with that of their tribal governments, who have long depended on coal royalties to prop up the tribal economies.

Increasingly, grassroots environmental groups and their allies are viewed as a threat to those revenues. They were instrumental in pushing for the closure of the Mohave coal-fired power plant in Laughlin, Nevada, in 2005. The tribe netted upwards of $8.5 million a year from the sale of coal to fuel the plant.

Lillian Hill, a Hopi environmental activist, was among those who opposed the Mohave plant. She says she could be exiled from the reservation for carrying out her work to protect age-old aquifers.

“I’m not fearful of being banished from my homeland, because I have a connection to my homeland…and that goes beyond government,” says Hill, 28, an organizer with Native Movement. “I’m fearful for the future, because our tribal government and world governments are not looking beyond profit margin.”

The coal for the Mohave Generating Station came from Hopi lands, as did the water used to ferry the mineral via a pipeline across state lines. Young tribal leaders like Hill grew up witnessing springs, a source of water for drinking and farming, dry up, and become contaminated with heavy metals from mining operations.

Hill says what she’s most worried about is that “there might not be enough water for future generations.”

The Hopi government says their economy would “collapse” without coal revenues. But young Native American activists say those profits come at the cost of their own physical and cultural survival.

“As Indian people, we’re economically dependent on our own cultural destruction,” says Navajo activist Jihan Gearon.

Gearon, 27, who hails from Fort Defiance, a town near the Navajo Nation capital of Window Rock, says she grew up “poor.” Her house had no running water, so Gearon used to help haul water home to be used for cooking, cleaning and bathing.

She remembers that the men in her family worked hard, mainly doing construction work. One uncle worked “blasting stuff” in the coal mines of the Peabody Western Coal Company. Her grandfather labored in an old saw mill.

“That’s the first industry people exploited, our timber,” Gearon says. She came to realize the extent of the exploitation of natural resources on tribal lands when she went to college at Stanford University. There, she realized that tribal dependence on the extraction and sale of coal, water and other natural resources was out of sync with traditional native teachings.

“Our traditional culture is about protecting the environment, and being minimalist and living in a balanced way with the environment,” Gearon says. “We realize that [the earth] takes care of us so we need to take care of it.

“On the other hand, for many of us, our only base for economic income is through the destruction of the environment -- digging it up, cutting trees, burning it, exploiting and destroying it. And, in the process, we create pollution that makes our people sick.”

In college, Gearon met other tribal youth, who were interested in bringing their knowledge back to the reservation. She now works as an organizer on energy issues with the national nonprofit organization Indigenous Environmental Network.

Wahleah John’s group pushed for the closure of the Mohave power plant. They want the Navajo Nation to end its dependence on fossil fuels and transition to a more sustainable economy. They formed a coalition to push for green jobs legislation. The coalition scored a victory when the Navajo Nation became the first tribe in the nation to pass green jobs legislation. Passed in July, the Navajo Green Economy Act establishes a commission and fund to spur green jobs.

“We wanted to give back to local people and community that often get ignored,” says Johns, who adds that her people have been engaged in sustainable practices for a long time. “We want to support weavers co-ops, organic farms, organic ranching. A majority of people on the reservation still grow their own food and raise sheep, cattle and horses.”

Johns was recently appointed to sit on the five-person Green Economy commission (confirmation pending). To date, the Navajo Nation has invested no money in the green jobs fund, Johns says.

“We constantly have to prove ourselves, and show them this can work,” she says. “We have to brainstorm with leaders on how to tap into funding.”

Hill of Native Movement also wants to see green jobs benefit local people. She says tribal governments negotiated agreements to sell coal and water rights well below what they were worth, and corporations were not held accountable for environmental degradation. And, in the end, she says, coal royalties “benefited just a few people in the Hopi nation and community.”

Gearon of the Indigenous Environmental Network says large-scale renewable energy projects like wind turbine farms may not benefit local people. Gearon favors community or small-scale energy projects, locally owned and operated, in which the energy produced is used to power Navajo homes. Ironically, while the Four Corners region is currently home to two mega coal-fired power plants – Navajo Generation Station in Page, Ariz., and the San Juan Generating Station in Farmington, N.M., nearly half of Navajos do not have electricity.

Sustainable practices and green jobs creation are critical strategies for tribal members to provide for themselves, says PennElys GoodShield, director of the Sustainable Nations Development Project in Trinidad, Calif. “My take is providing food, water, shelter, and growth for our national growth before we go commercial,” says GoodShield. “Lots of people on our reservation have no electricity. There’s lots of work we have to do to sustain ourselves to act as a sovereign nation.”

Her organization trains tribal youth across the country and fosters leadership on sustainability issues. In northern California where the Project is based, GoodShield says, members of local tribes including the Yurok, Hupa, and Karuk have tapped energy from the many creeks on the reservation by building “micro hydroelectric” devices from parts purchased at local hardware stores and car alternators. GoodShield says she’s working to raise funds to support these small-scale energy projects that can generate enough power for several households.

Hill says people can draw upon traditional knowledge to find modern solutions to climate change. The use of natural building materials such as bale and straw in homes can promote energy efficiency. Another example is dry farming, an ancient Hopi agricultural technique that optimizes rainwater storage in the land to grow crops.

“We basically look at the landscape as a whole and identify the watershed,” she explains. “Rainwater flows off the mesa into valley where farmland is located.” Hopi farmers cultivated varieties of corn, beans, squash and melons that could survive during drought conditions.

Gearon and Johns attended the 11-day climate change summit in Copenhagen that ends today. Traditional knowledge and indigenous wisdom are messages they carried with them to the conference, where world governments will wrangle over how to cap greenhouse gas emissions blamed for warming the earth to dangerous levels.

As world governments, including the United States, look to energy policies that could ramp up nuclear and clean coal technology and a market-based system for capping carbon dioxide emissions and trading the credits (cap and trade), the women say these policies will continue to harm health and the environment.

Gearon will tell the Navajo parable she learned from her elders.

“Black Mesa is a woman, and we’re taught that coal is her liver. Everything on her is a part of her body and coal is her liver…What coal does in the ground-- it filters out the water,” Gearon says. “In order to make money, we’re taking out her ability to clean herself and clean our water that we drink in the region.”

Los artesanos de Chichén Itzá en resistencia

Juan Cristóbal León Campos

Rebelión




La guerra de conquista iniciada hace más de cinco siglos sobre los pueblos originarios de América aún hoy continúa. La característica principal de los gobiernos es su desprecio a las culturas indígenas y al patrimonio cultural e histórico de nuestro país. Para los poderosos los indígenas solo sirven si están muertos, los que están vivos y trabajan son condenados a las peores condiciones de marginación y explotación.

En Yucatán, esta situación es clara, los campesinos mayas son despojados de sus tierras mediante engaños y fraudes, y reprimidos con violencia si deciden denunciar tales acciones del gobierno. Ese es el caso de los ejidatarios de Oxcum que en el 2006 y 2007 resistieron con dignidad tales atropellos. Un caso ejemplar del desprecio hacia la cultura indígena, es el que se desarrolla en la zona arqueológica de Chichén Itzá, donde permanecen en conflicto los artesanos mayas y los intereses privados de los gobernantes y burgueses empresarios.

Herederos de una histórica tradición los artesanos mayas trabajan todos los días en condiciones extremas al interior de Chichén Itzá. Su presencia se remonta al menos a la década de los 20. En la actualidad son aproximadamente 800 artesanos-comerciantes, de los cuales dependen por lo menos 6000 personas. Viven en los alrededores de Chichén Itzá en más de 20 pequeñas comunidades (entre ellas Pisté, Xcalacoop, San Felipe, Tohopkú, Yaxché), donde la situación económica es extrema por las condiciones de abandono en que se encuentran.

Desde años atrás los diferentes gobiernos junto al INAH, han pretendido expulsarlos de su propia tierra, en 1996 la policía los desalojó utilizando gases lacrimógenos, dañando en ese entonces a nuestros niños y algunas mujeres embarazadas. Permanecen en constante amenaza de un nuevo acto violento del gobierno, reciben a diario muestras de desprecio, y hostigamiento por parte de Hans Thies Barbachano quien se hace llamar “legitimo dueño de Chichén Itzá”. Han denunciado por todos los medios su situación, recibiendo por parte del gobierno nula respuesta, pues es evidente la inclinación que las autoridades tienen por Barbachano.

Como si el desprecio a su trabajo y su cultura fuera poco, desde 1997, se ha comenzado a convertir a Chichén Itzá en un centro comercial. Se efectúan grandes eventos “culturales” sin importar el daño que estos ocasionan a los vestigios de la zona arqueológica. Luciano Pavaroti, Placido Domingo, Sara Brightman son los principales artista