[IPSM] Marcos Announces Continental Indigenous Encounter for October 2007

[nora butler burke]

Marcos Announces Continental Indigenous Encounter for October 2007

“Let’s invite the indigenous people of Canada and the United States... 
and let’s invite the indigenous people of South America and Central America”

By Kristin Bricker
The Other Journalism with the Other Campaign in Baja California, October 
18, 2006, Narco News

When the Sixth Declaration of the Lacandon Jungle was released in the 
summer of 2005, it soon led to the Zapatistas’ national plan for the 
Other Campaign: Marcos would travel Mexico, listening to the people’s 
struggles in every state and carrying the stories of these struggles to 
the rest of the country. The next phase, in 2007, will bring two 
comandantes of the Zapatista Army of National Liberation (EZLN in its 
Spanish initials) to live and organize in each state. The Sixth 
Declaration also announced their humble intention to expand the Other 
Campaign to the rest of the world, though it did not clarify how. On 
October 17, in the Baja California community of San Jose de la Zorra, 
Delegate Zero revealed the Zapatistas’ next step in the international 
struggle: the Continental Indigenous Encuentro (encounter).

The Indigenous National Congress (CNI), the EZLN, and the Kumiai 
indigenous people instructed Subcomandante Marcos to announce the 
encuentro, set for October 12, 2007 in northwestern Mexico. Marcos said:


Let’s invite the indigenous people of Canada and the United States… and 
let’s invite the indigenous people of South America and Central America, 
and let’s come from all parts of the continent to this indigenous zone 
in the Northwest to say that we are here, and let’s tell our story. And 
it doesn’t matter if they pay attention to us or not, because we’re 
going to pay attention to each other.

October 12, celebrated by some as “Columbus Day,” is the chosen date so 
that indigenous people from all over América “will come here to say that 
after 515 years, they neither conquered nor discovered us. We still 
continue to exist here.”

The specific location for the Encuentro has not yet been announced. 
Several sites are being considered, and the decision will ultimately 
rest on the ability to accommodate so many people.

Baja California is a significant location to announce the encuentro 
because many people don’t realize that indigenous communities exist 
here, even though there are several: Kumiai, Cucapas, Triquis, and 
Mixtecos, to name a few. According to Marcos, the current state 
government does not recognize the indigenous groups in Baja California, 
“even though they were here before it and those who brought it here even 
existed.” Ironically, because groups like the Triquis and Mixtecos (both 
originally from Oaxaca) have crossed state borders imposed on them by 
imperial invaders, the government considers them “immigrants.”