MILITARY & GEOGRAPHERS PLAN INDIGENOUS DISPOSSESSION

MILITARY & GEOGRAPHERS PLAN INDIGENOUS DISPOSSESSION

MNN. Sep. 12, 2009. Colonists Canada, US and Mexico formed a political block to better control Indigenous territories, labor and resources.

In 1973, Henry Kissinger said that depopulation should be the highest priority of foreign policy towards less developed countries. The US needs our resources. [www.findsomequotes.com/henry-kissinger-new-york-times-oct-28-1973].

Indigenous are the greatest resisters of global control by international banksters. We assert autonomy, self-determination and human rights by communally holding our territory. It’s an obstacle to theft by US political and economic interests.

The US military and geographers have a plan to dissolve indigenous autonomy, self-determination and resistance.

In 2005, the US Department of Defense gave Kansas University $500,000 to map communally-held indigenous land in the Mexican states of San Luis Potosi and Oaxaca. The professors and US Foreign Military Studies Office FMSO at Fort Leavenworth Army Base are implementing the “Mexico Indigena” program to privatize Indigenous communal lands.

The Officers are trained in land and resource theft at the US Army School of the Americas. They also learn to torture and set up death squads in Latin America.

Propaganda is spread that our communities are breeding grounds of crime and insurgency. They advise doing away with our communities.

Land data and military strategy was carried out in Colombia [Mapping Colombia: Land Data and Strategy]. At the same time, the FMSO assessed so-called guerrilla armies, terrorist organizations and Indigenous defenses.

As part of NAFTA the Mexican President revoked Article 27 of the constitution that turned communal land grants over to the indigenous in 1912.

On January 1, 1994, the day after NAFTA went into effect the Zapatistas captured a third of the state of Chiapas.

Oaxaca State is extremely wealthy in natural resources. It is a site for NAFTA based mega industrial projects known as Plan Puebla Panama such as highways, railways, ports, wind energy, mines, agribusinesses, and maquiladora-style assembly plants. Indigenous communities are pushed off their land, used for cheap labor or robbed of their livelihood.

A geographer at the University of the Earth in Oaxaca City saw the danger. Mapping was combined with US military aid known as the Merida Initiative, to displace Indigenous communities, remove hot spots and control the region. Natural and mineral resources could then be stolen by government and its transnational allies.

On June 14, 2006 a teacher’s union strike in Oaxaca City erupted. It was a popular Indigenous uprising of farm workers, teachers, students, housewives, and laborers. The people wanted traditional land tenure and self-governance.

The Oaxacan People’s Popular Assembly APPO took over the state’s capitol city for six months. It was organized under the Indigenous principle of leading by obeying the people and through consensus.

They occupied state, local, and federal government offices and took over food, water, transportation and communication. The state police started murdering, disappearing, raping, torturing and drive-by shooting. The movement temporarily eroded.

The “Mexico Indigena” mapping project then moved to a biologically diverse and mineral-rich region in Oaxaca.

In southern Mexico territory and culture are together. Constant propaganda devalues Indigenous culture.

Holding land communally maintains indigenous culture, life and identity. The capitalists can’t overcome our birthright and natural relationship with the land. International law provides that changes can only be made with our full knowledge and consent, which we’ll never give. Removing the artificial borders between Canada, US and Mexico is for the immigrants and foreigners, not us.

 

Mexican standoff

The following appeal is from one of our readers in the South. They are in the same struggle as us. Please lend them your support.Greetings Friends:I am contacting interested friends to ask your help in bringing an increased national and international eye to the critical situation in Oaxaca, where the
potential for an imminent violent blow-up is very high.

The good news from Oaxaca is that the people are standing firm against the formal announcement this morning from President Fox and Abascal, the Secretary of the Interior, that troops will be sent into Oaxaca, pending “approval” from Fox, which
locals feels is a given. There is rumor that one plane has arrived.

The people are barricading the city today and are planning their defense. The general strike planned for Thursday and Friday, is still scheduled- this will be a complete shut down of the city, all business, universities, and offices closed.

This is a pronouncement from Oaxaca, Mexico where the teacher’s strike has become a united people’s movement for basic human rights:

Pronouncement

The National Indigenous Congress CNI) “recognizes, salutes and is part of the movement of sisters and brothers of the 16 Indigenous Communities of Oaxaca. The un-postponable renouncement of Ulises Ruiz would put an end to impositions; it would result in respect and recognition of the autonomy and free determination of our Oaxacan Indigneous Communities and to the cancellation of the mega-privatization projects in the south of Mexico”.

In the Declaration of Cheran, the CNI demands the immediate liberation of Indigenous political prisoners of San Salvador Atenco and Oaxaca,
who “continue experiencing a repugnant show of “governability”, in our country. They cannot continue being political prisoners at the imposition
of neoliberal projects on our lands and territories”.

This information if translated from The Jornada out of Mexico City; Ulises Ruiz is no longer recognized by the people as the governor of the state of Oaxaca, and cannot freely walk the streets, much less govern. AMF

Some ideas: spread the word throughout the global Indigenous support networks, call radio and TV stations, newspapers and magazines, request an update on Oaxaca, and tell them what is happening; contact churches, Amnesty International, Human Rights Watch; post flyers about the situation, contact Democracy Now, the only national news program with any regular information on Oaxaca, for their schedule of reports
on Oaxaca and post it as well as send it to interested people by internet; use the internet to spread the word; contact congress people, please include us in your prayers.

4000 teachers continue the walk they started last thursday from Oaxaca to Mexico City to bring yet more attention to the crisis, though Oaxaca currently dominates Mexican news. Its more than curious that we hear nothing in this in the U.S. Nor
anything about the fact that Mexico currently has two president-elects as a result of the recent fraudulent election, Andres Manuel Lopez Obredor, who has the support of the people, and Felipe Calderon, elected through Choice Point, the same company that managed Florida during the last presidential election in the U.S.

There is plenty of current information available to those who read spanish through the La Jornada, Oaxacos Citricos; and less in English from John Ross, Narco News, even some headlines through Google.

Gracias, thank you.

Un abrazote,

Ann Miller Frances
blancanegro@earthlink.net

poster: Thahoketoteh