[IPSM] Marcos Announces Continental Indigenous Encounter for October 2007

[fiona at resist.ca]

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

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.”