:: Defense of Natural Resources and the Environment
La Parota
In 2003, the peasant farmers living in the region that would be affected by the construction of the hydroelectric dam, La Parota, located south of Alcapulco, founded the Council of Collective Land and Communities in Opposition to La Parota (CECOP).
In 4 years, they have succeeded in canceling a bidding process for the construction of the dam by private companies, which had already been opened by the Federal Commission of Electricity (CFE). They have also prevented the Mexican government from issuing a decree expropriating land in the region.
The Legal Front
Since 2005, various collective land assemblies have been held around whether to permit the beginning phases of the project. The CECOP, advised by the Montaña Tlachinollan Center for Human Rights, took legal action challenging the assemblies held in four communities (Cacahuatepec, Los Cuajes, La Palma y Dos Arroyos), in which the peasant farmers had supposedly agreed to the expropriation of their land. In 2006, the farmers passed several resolutions in favor of CECOP, which should have impeded the CFE and any federal or state authority from entering these communities to oversee any work related to the hydroelectric project while legal processes had not been finalized.
Despite the resolutions, the state government and the CFE continue to bring in machinery and engage in roadwork needed for the construction of the dam. On September 12, 2007 a federal judge ordered CFE to suspend work on the hydroelectric dam, which was seen as a victory for CECOP.
The International Front
Since its creation, CECOP has also succeeded in bringing attention to their defense of land on a national and international level. For example, in March of 2006, CECOP presented its case in front of the Latin American Water Tribunal (TLA), an international authority on environmental justice and ethics, which positioned itself against the construction of the dam and advised suspending the project.
In various instances, the United Nations has demonstrated concern and has reported irregularities around the project. Rodolfo Stavenhagen, UN Special Rapporteur on Indigenous Peoples, denounced the “abuses and violations of indigenous peasant farmers from the State of Guerrero who are opposed to the dam construction project, La Parota, on their territory, and which the state insists on completing without the free consent of the population.” (August 2006)
In May of 2006, the U.N. Committee on Economic, Social, and Cultural Rights expressed its concern for the lack of consultation with indigenous communities, as well as, the environmental damage implied in the project.
In the beginning of March, the representative for the United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights in Mexico, Amerigo Incalcaterra, visited the area of La Parota to meet with the people that would be affected from the communities of Garrapatas and Tasajeras, and confirmed the lack of information and transparency around the project.
Amnesty International has documented since 2004 the violence that has emerged around the dam project of La Parota, in particular the homicide of three persons, and death threats made against a local activist. The organization is unaware of any progress made in the official investigations of these incidences.
Carrizalillo is a community that belongs to the municipality of Eduardo Neri in the Tierra Caliente region. Ten years ago, mining companies began to show up on these collective lands (1200 ha). 970 hectares of land were soon in the hands of these companies. An abusive contract was made with collective landholders. In the first year, it was calculated that the company was going to make 126 million dollars. Meanwhile, many people in the municipality do not even have electricity, potable water, access to healthcare, schools…
The community began to realize that the benefits would be greater for the mining company than for the community.
On January 8, 2007, the community decided to organize the Permanent Assembly of Collective Landholders and Workers of Carrizalillo and demand their rights. They set up a roadblock in front of the principal entrance of the mine exploited by the company Luismin (part of the multinational Goldcop of Canada that has mines in Mexico, Central America, Brazil, and Argentina).
On January 25, 2007, police forces attempted to remove protestors. Many were beaten and locked up for three hours. However, with little time, protestors once again blocked the road. As a result of the people’s determination, a process of negotiation was started.
On April 1st, a comprehensive agreement was agreed upon, which in principle is beneficial for the community of Carrizalillo, but above all sets the ground to construct a more equitable relationship between the company and collective landholders who own the land.
The ties between regional local bosses, authorities, and military officials, with the drug-trafficking in between, gives one an idea of the context in which ecologically minded peasant farmers of the Sierra de Petatlán and Coyuca de Catalán come up against.
The president of the Women’s Organization of Petatlán and Coyuca de Catalán, Celsa Baldovinos, is the wife of Felipe Arreaga, an ecologist and peasant farmer who was unjustly imprisoned in 2005. The women created an organization to fight against contamination and deforestation provoked by the secret and immoderate cutting down of trees. The organization is currently made up of 60 women from different communities.
The organization has various reforestation projects of red cedar, forest and river cleaning campaigns created to halt the fires that have devastated the region, and vegetable planting projects that involve all of the family, and which represent an effort to recuperate food independence. The organization has a “savings bank” by which they loan money at 5% interest in cases of necessity. For those who are not good at saving, they loan money at a bit higher interest rate and the borrowers are incorporated into the organizations projects.
In 1991, the Guerrero Council of 500 Years of Indigenous Resistance, Black and Popular (CG5000ARINP) was formed, an umbrella of main indigenous organizations inspired by the protests against celebrations of the 500 years of the Conquest of America by the Spanish. The council made visible the struggle of the people in the State of Guerrero, attended international events, participated in positions of popular representation, and obtained positions within indigenous bureaucracies. The movement neared itself to the EZLN, and had great success in organizing marches, such as the “You Are Not Alone” march in 1994. In 1995, the movement incorporated itself into the Community Police in the region of Costa-Montaña and was the motivation behind the creation of the Indigenous University of Guerrero.
The council became a powerful political force, holding political positions in national and international spaces, like the National Plural Indigenous Assembly for Autonomy (ANIPA), the National Coordinating Committee of Indigenous Women, and the National Indigenous Congress (CNI). They have also had representatives in the House of Representatives, in the former National Institute of the Indigenous (INI), and in important political positions, such as the President of the Indigenous Affairs Committee in the House of Representatives.
The community police were created in 1995 in face of high levels of delinquency in the region of Costa Montaña and an official judicial system considered to be corrupt and monocultural. The communities organized themselves so that they could have their own Community Public System of Security. Without limiting itself to the field of security, they are also generating their own justice system and re-education through the rescue of their own system of norms and without leaving aside the positive rights proposed in Mexico.
In 1998, the Regional Committee of Community Authorities (CRAC) was created, a community entity in charge of providing community-based justice. Within it, there is a focus on re-educating delinquents: they do not talk about punishment, but rather of sanctions, reconciliation, or reparation for damages.
For several years amuzgos and nahuas communities from the municipality of Xochistlahuaca have focused on their struggle for their collective rights as indigenous peoples. In 2000 and 2001, Xochistlahuaca became known for one part of the communities’ decision to defend their right of self-determination and elect officials according to their customs. That began the construction of an autonomous structure in the autonomous municipality of Suljaa’, parallel to the official municipality. The then president of the municipality, Aceadeth Rocha Ramírez, pressured majority officials within the communities of the municipality for the purpose of obtaining and maintaining control. The rupture of the social fabric that this has generated and the confrontation between its members still continue to damage peaceful co-existence in the municipality.
The radio transmitter Ñomndaa, a word that means water in amuzgo, in Xochistlahuaca, was born as an initiative of the autonomous municipality of Xochistlahuaca, as an instrument to strengthen its own autonomous project. It began transmitting its radio waves on December 20, 2004, making it the first radio broadcast in amuzaga. Xochistlahuaca is the fourth municipality of the country with a majority indigenous population relatively monolingual, in which 72% only speak amuzgo. The objective of the radio program has been to strengthen the right of the amuzgo community to maintain their language, culture, and identity. They argue that the San Andrés Accords and the Convention 169 of the International Workers Organization, which recognizes the collective rights of indigenous peoples and tribes, support the right to their own radio broadcast. Despite these protection of their rights, they have suffered various forms of harassment.
OPIM and OPFM
In light of the poverty and marginalization experienced by many in the municipality of Ayutla de los Libres in Costa Chica, Guerrero, indigenous groups began to organize themselves in 1994 with the creation of the Independent Organization of Mixteco and Tlapaneco People (OIPMT). In 2004 the OIPMT divided itself into two parts so as to better promote the interests of the two groups that speak different languages:
the Mixtecos (or na saviin their language) created the Organization for the Future of the Mixteco People (OPFM),
nd the Tlapanecos (or me 'phaa in their language) founded the Organization of the Me 'phaa Indigenous People (OPIM).
These groups have worked to defend the rights of indigenous peoples and to oppose the ongoing militarization of Mexican society. For this very reason, both the OPFM and the OPIM have been victims of the ongoing criminalization of social protest in Guerrero.
The OPFM and OPIM have represented the indigenous individuals Valentina Rosendo Cantú and Inés Fernández Ortega who claim to have been victims of torture and sexual violence by the military in 2002. These cases were accepted by the Inter-American Commission on Human Rights (IACHR) in December 2006 and referred to the Inter-American Court on Human Rights in May 2009 in the case of Inés and August 2009 for that of Valentina. Obtilia Eugenio Manuel, member of OPIM and its president since January 2009, has acted as translator during these judicial proceedings and has accordingly received constant death-threats against her person and that of her family-members.
In other news, 5 OPIM members were arrested for murder in April 2008. Amnesty International has stated that the evidence presented against them was fabricated, and that this course of events likely finds its basis in the commitment of the accused to the defense of human rights. The five, indeed, were adopted by Amnesty as prisoners of conscience in November 2008. Thanks to the support provided by the Human Rights Center of Tlachinollan Mountain, four of the imprisoned were released in March 2009. Raúl Hernández, for his part, remains incarcerated, but an ongoing campaign is working toward his release as well.
With regard to the OPFM, Raúl Lucas Lucía and Manuel Ponce Rosas (president and secretary of the organization, respectively) were kidnapped, tortured, and executed in February 2009. The Human Rights Center of Tlachinollan Mountain criticized the slowness with which the investigation into their disappearances was conducted, together with the lack of results ultimately found. The Center also lamented that the investigation failed to draw links between the crimes and the human-rights work of the victims. Some of the family-members of Raúl and Manuel have received death-threats demanding that they cease their criticisms of the investigation.
Since January 2005, the Inter-American Commission on Human Rights has granted an increasingly large number of requests for precautionary measure by members of OPIM, OPFM, and the Human Rights Center of Tlachinollan Mountain. The total reached 107 at the beginning of 2009.
Inspired by the processes of the Peoples Popular Assembly of Oaxaca, in October 2006, 30 grass-roots organizations and union leaders established the Peoples Popular Assembly of Guerrero (APPG). The assembly demanded Governor Zeferino Torreblanca Galindo take measures to address diverse petitions on social and agrarian issues, as well as, set-backs in the area of education within the state, primarily in the indigenous areas of la Montaña.
The groups making up the APPG include, the State Coordinating Committee of Education Workers (CETEG), university unions, the Federation of University Students of Guerrero, the Committee on Community Development, the Popular Revolutionary Front, the Front of Popular Defense, Calpulli Tecuanichan Indigenous Organization, the Left Social Movement and the Nationalist Socialist Front.
State Coordination for the Defense of the Territory
On June 16, 2007, as part of the state forum “Roads of Resistance” that was held in Tlapa de Comonfort for the 13th anniversary of the La Montaña Tlachinollan Center for Human Rights, the State Coordination for the Defense of Territory was created. Its goals are to gain respect for and protect the rights of indigenous communities, such as the right to land and territory and the right to natural resources*.
The International Front
The ties between regional local bosses, authorities, and military officials, with the drug-trafficking in between, gives one an idea of the context in which ecologically minded peasant farmers of the Sierra de Petatlán and Coyuca de Catalán come up against.
In 1991, the Guerrero Council of 500 Years of Indigenous Resistance, Black and Popular (CG5000ARINP) was formed, an umbrella of main indigenous organizations inspired by the protests against celebrations of the 500 years of the Conquest of America by the Spanish. The council made visible the struggle of the people in the State of Guerrero, attended international events, participated in positions of popular representation, and obtained positions within indigenous bureaucracies. The movement neared itself to the EZLN, and had great success in organizing marches, such as the “You Are Not Alone” march in 1994. In 1995, the movement incorporated itself into the Community Police in the region of Costa-Montaña and was the motivation behind the creation of the Indigenous University of Guerrero.
The community police were created in 1995 in face of high levels of delinquency in the region of Costa Montaña and an official judicial system considered to be corrupt and monocultural. The communities organized themselves so that they could have their own Community Public System of Security. Without limiting itself to the field of security, they are also generating their own justice system and re-education through the rescue of their own system of norms and without leaving aside the positive rights proposed in Mexico.
For several years amuzgos and nahuas communities from the municipality of Xochistlahuaca have focused on their struggle for their collective rights as indigenous peoples. In 2000 and 2001, Xochistlahuaca became known for one part of the communities’ decision to defend their right of self-determination and elect officials according to their customs. That began the construction of an autonomous structure in the autonomous municipality of Suljaa’, parallel to the official municipality. The then president of the municipality, Aceadeth Rocha Ramírez, pressured majority officials within the communities of the municipality for the purpose of obtaining and maintaining control. The rupture of the social fabric that this has generated and the confrontation between its members still continue to damage peaceful co-existence in the municipality.
In light of the poverty and marginalization experienced by many in the municipality of Ayutla de los Libres in Costa Chica, Guerrero, indigenous groups began to organize themselves in 1994 with the creation of the Independent Organization of Mixteco and Tlapaneco People (OIPMT). In 2004 the OIPMT divided itself into two parts so as to better promote the interests of the two groups that speak different languages:
