Melissa reports on the "Forum on Indigenous Rights and Biodiversity" held in the Montes Azules Bioreserve in February.

 "The land isn’t for sale, and we’re not giving it away either!"

Outside it is blazing hot in the Lacandon Jungle, but inside the church it is shadowy and still.  All around us statues and images of saints and virgens adorned with rare flowers, incense and candles look on.  Children play, babies sleep in laps, and hundreds of indegneous peoples from Chiapas, Oaxaca, Guerrero, Veracruz, Baja California and Tabasco listen to eachother tell their stories of struggle trying to keep their lands, cultures and families alive.  The last week of February I attended this Forum on indigenous rights and biodiversity.  Over 300 indigenous people came together in a village on the border of the Montes Azules Bioreserve in Chiapas to share experiences and formulate action plans.  I have never seen anything like it. 

The conferences I'm used to take place in hotel meeting rooms and convention centers.  People fly in their suits, wielding power point presentations, pie charts and thesis statements.  At this forum, representatives from NGOs, press and indigenous communities alike slept on the floor in school rooms or in hammocks in private homes.  We ate beans and tortillas together in the basketball court. There was much time for eating fresh fruit popsicles and pozole in the heat.  People talked, played, danced, but most of all they shared their common wounds and found support and relief in the numbers gathered together to speak about the rampant injustices they face.

The first day of the Forum was mass catharsis as dozens of individuals stood up to denounce the plight of their communities at the hands of Mexican military, manipulative government programs and international development interests.  Indigenous people told their stories to each other: communities forced to leave their lands in the name of environmentalism while the government gives logging concessions and builds roads to facilitate tourism; a government built sewer system that poisons communities and the “bioreserve;” the illegal sale and promotion of transgenic corn seeds; community members shot, harassed, disappeared and intimidated by military and paramilitary groups.  I was floored by the horrifying testimonials, but more by the strength, unity and commitment to struggle of these people who have already seen so much suffering.

The Forum brought together people affected by Natural Reserves, but it quickly became apparent that all the issues are inextricably linked.  Community members who have been evicted from the Montes Azules bioreserve have been relocated onto land that has been stripped from another community by government land programs like PROCEDE (see January Newsletter). Others have lost land to unwanted government projects like dams, highways, army bases, and petroleum refineries. Others lost resources (like water, wood, corn) to polluting unwanted development.  They have suffered massacres, brutal paramilitary and military violence, intimidation and harassment.  And they are sitting side by side; the Zapatistas, the Abejas, the spectrum of political parties, because they are all embroiled in a struggle against neoliberal development that aims to claim, privatize and comodify their lands, knowledge, livelihoods.  They have several things in common; a deep and understandable distrust of government and outsiders and the demand for justice.

The last day of the Forum was devoted to making action plans.  They created an official statement (see http://chiapas.mediosindependientes.org/), and laid the groundwork for another Forum in the coming year. The theme that continued to surface however, was that everyone must work together to get the word out.  Spreading the word about the struggles indigenous people are facing is essential to curbing violent repression and working towards alternative solutions.  The issue of transgenic crops, for example is now a global one, with its roots (no pun intended) in the United States.  The push to privatize land, seeds and plants will further jeopardize the way of life of Mexican campesinos in coming years.  Unless, of course, inspired, dedicated, determined people from Patagonia to the Northern Canada can form part of or support grassroots movements for change.  This last week I caught a glimpse of the healing, organizing and possibilities that are present when people unite to fight for change.