"We don’t want dialogue, we just want them off our land”

"We don’t want dialogue with the government, we just want them off our land”: San Sebastián Bachajón, Chiapas.

Ejidatarios from San Sebastián Bachajón in Chiapas remain committed to continuing their activities, after the events of January 9, when at least 900 members of federal and state police forced them off the lands they had recuperated on December 21. “They will not desist until state forces leave their lands; they don’t want dialogue with the government”, says lawyer.

DESINFORMÉMONOS

Mexico City, January 13, 2015. Members of the ejido (or ejidatarios) of San Sebastián Bachajón in Chiapas remain committed to continuing with their activities, after the events of January 9, when at least 900 members of federal and state police forced them off the lands they had reclaimed on December 21. “They will not desist until state forces leave their lands; they don’t want dialogue with the government because it is judge, jury and executioner in the conflict and they perceive it as the principal cause of tension in the zone”, explains the lawyer Ricardo Lagunes, legal representative of the Tseltal group. He adds that, for them, the current task is one of internal organization, which has been visibly altered by the violence brought in by the government. “For them organization is difficult, because they have to defend themselves from attacks carried out with high-calibre firearms by the State Police”.

San Sebastián Bachajón is one of the largest ejidos in Mexico, made up of 70 thousand hectares; it is a zone of great biodiversity and natural beauty which political interests perceive as an area with potential for the development of tourism. The land is rich in natural resources, green forest, wildlife and water. The waterfalls of Agua Azul are among the most popular tourist attractions in the state of Chiapas; at certain times of the year, they take on a turquoise hue which makes them even more attractive to foreign tourists.

The Tzeltal ejidatarios maintain an intermittent blockade on the Ocosingo-Palenque highway by the Agua Azul junction, which began on January 11 in response to the violent expulsion carried out by the state government, and members of state and federal police, as a sign of protest at the state’s insistence on appropriating their ejido land.

In 2007, the members of the ejido declared themselves adherents of the Sixth Declaration of the Lacandon Jungle, exercising and establishing the right of their people to self-determination. They then erected a toll booth in their territory, with the aim that tourists wanting to visit the waterfalls could pay them a reclamation fee. With the funds raised, they decided in an assembly to use it to support the ill members of the ejido and the families most in need, the journalist Gloría Muñoz explains in her opinion column in the newspaper La Jornada.

In March 2011 ex-governor of Chiapas Juan Sabines Guerrero brought together representatives of the Bachajón ejido, those from the Agua Azul zone and all cabinet members of his state government; they subscribed to a “convention 274” whereby the two peoples would commit to donate those lands to the state so that a single toll booth could be set up. “The state was to govern the highway through the Secretary of Hacienda in Chiapas and the federal government’s Commission for Protected Natural Areas, although the Agua Azul zone isn’t even in this category”, the lawyer explains.

In a lawsuit (amparo) placed by indigenous members of the ejido, they appealed against the convention signed in 2011. “I believe that the members of the ejidohave about a 95% chance of obtaining a ruling protecting their collective rights, we are waiting for this ruling because the Third Collegiate Tribunal of Tuxtla Gutiérrez sent the document of appeal in November 2014 to the Supreme Court of Justice laying out the highly relevant reasons that this case should be resolved, and developed into a broader statement about indigenous rights”, Lagunes states. The lawyer adds that these are wider issues that the Court has been reticent to address, even in such important cases as those of the Yaqui tribe in Sonora, who have been fighting against Independencia Aqueduct, a waterway which will dry up a river sacred to the tribe.

The Court, the ejidatarios’ legal representative charges, has focused on the issue of consultation, but has never looked at deeper issues such as autonomy or the self-determination of indigenous peoples. Further, it wants to subject them to the authority of the State; “the indigenous peoples of Mexico, according to the government’s laws, have no rights to be truly respected as such, and are forced into particular political frames without having their rights as natives peoples recognized in any clear and specific manner”, relates Ricardo Lagunes.

The Supreme Court returned the document of appeal to Tuxtla Gutiérrez. For the lawyer it is no coincidence that the minister handling the case, the Chiapanecan Luna Ramos, is one of the most conservative, and he suggests that the decision to return the document was for political, rather than legal, reasons.

With an injunction, the Third Collegiate Tribunal ordered all the authorities of the government of Chiapas not to continue with their forcible eviction of San Sebastián Bachajón. The decision to reclaim lands on December 21 was due in part to a legal foundation giving the community court backing on the matter of their rights: “for the Tzeltal ejido members the legal arguments in their favour give them even more rights to continue defending their struggle and reclaiming their lands”, Lagunes declares.

Yesterday, January 12, around 160 members of the State Police arrived to the community of Xanil, located about five kilometres from the Agua Azul junction. This community is distinguished by having a large presence of groups supportive of the present government; there, as in Pamala, a community at the same distance from the junction but towards Palenque, they are organizing groups of people close to the terrains of conflict in which state police are active. As the lawyer explains, these groups are being organized to reinforce sections of the police in possible evictions.

On the highway that travels to Ocosingo from the Agua Azul zone, there is also a group of people simulating a blockade to put pressure on the government to give in to its demands to forcibly evict the ejidatarios of Bachajón. “For the ejidatarios it is clear that it is the very same government [behind these actions], because it is the government that has the greatest interest in evicting them from their land to eventually exercise power over it”, Lagunes declares.

The current atmosphere in this zone is one of tension. There is a continuous presence of police officers and helicopters, and the indigenous people are convinced that at any moment they will be forced from their land. Confronting this possibility, at the site of the blockade, is a group of international human rights observers who are accompanying the indigenous people, and are attentive to any violation of their rights.

The demand of the inhabitants of Bachajón is that the State and its security forces immediately leave their lands, and that the land commissioner commit to not handing their lands over to the government, as well as that the income made from the Agua Azul zone be managed by the ejido itself and not by a governmental entity. If not, such an entity should operate in a transparent fashion and orient its administration towards providing benefits to the community, Lagunes states.

“We ought to recognize that legal time does not correspond to social time, but perhaps next month there will be a fundamental resolution about the ruling and the violations of human rights on the part of State actors in the forced evictions, [nonetheless the ejidatarios] will continue in their struggle, exploiting all possible legal and political channels”, the lawyer Ricardo Lagunes concludes.

Translated by Andrew Green

http://desinformemonos.org/2015/01/no-queremos-dialogo-con-el-gobierno-solo-que-se-vayan-de-nuestras-tierras-san-sebastian-bachajon-chiapas/

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