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Zapatistas confirm solidarity with Palestine at the National Indigenous Congress

By Brenda Norrell

Indigenous Resistance

Photo EZLN collective

Zapatistas affirmed their solidarity with Palestine, during the opening of the National Indigenous Congress in the Zapatista Stronghold of La Realidad, Chiapas, near the Guatemalan border.

Comandante Tacho, spoke to Indigenous Peoples from throughout Mexico, as they arrived for the National Indigenous Congress, August 4 -- 8, with a press conference planned for Saturday in the jungle stronghold.

Comandante Tacho said the people of Palestine, like the Indigenous Peoples, will survive the Conquistadors and oppressors.

“We grew, forgotten by the powerful, for 500 years in all of the corners of our Mexican homeland. We as originary peoples were ignored, deceived, forgotten, exploited, and enslaved in their dominion for more than 500 years.

“And now, through the rise of the neoliberal powers, the machine of destruction appears once again to disappear our peoples.

“They have made it bigger and more modern, supported by laws and bad governments, in order to invade us once again.

“It has a new plan of dispossession, dispossessing us of our mother earth using the machinery of the power of money, looting the riches that mother earth has held and kept safe for millions of years.

“With this machine comes the death and destruction of our peoples and our mother earth.

“When we say these two words so well known by our peoples—these words of death and destruction—our heart and our gaze goes to the PALESTINIAN people. We hear and read what they say about ‘the conflict in Gaza,’ as if there were two equal forces confronting each other, and as if saying “conflict” would hide the death and destruction such that death would not kill and destruction would not destroy.

“But as the indigenous people that we are, we know that what is happening there is not a ‘conflict’ but a MASSACRE, that the government of Israel is carrying out a war of extermination upon the PALESTINIAN people. Everything else is just words to try to hide reality.

“But we also know, as the indigenous people that we are, that the PALESTINIAN people will resist and will rise again, that they will once again begin to walk and that they will known then that, although we are far away on the map, the Zapatista peoples embrace them today as we have before, as we always do, with our collective heart.”

As Guardians of the Land, Comandante Tacho spoke of the struggle to defend Mother Earth.

"That is why we have to struggle together to defend ourselves and to defend our mother earth.

This is the earth from which we were born, that gave us life, and in which we will rest eternally.

That is why we are all the colors that we are, all of the languages that our hearts speak; that is why we are peoples, tribes, and nations. We are the guardians of these lands, of this country Mexico, of this continent and of the world."

Comandante Tacho welcomed Zapatistas from communities and the national delegates:

NAHUAS

PURÉPECHAS

MAYA PENINSULARES

MAZAHUA

ZOQUE

WIXARIKA

MIGRANTE

TEPEHUANO

COCA

HÑAHÑU

MAYO

TRIQUI

NAZA BI

BINNI ZAA

CHINANTECO

IKOOT

AFROMEXICANO

POPOLUCA

TZOTZIL

CHOL

TOJOLABAL

TZELTAL

TOTONACO

CHOL

KUMIAI

AMUZGO

HUARIJIO

MIXE

ÑHATO

CHONTA

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