The Vicam Declaration: "we will defend mother earth with our lives" (Bellinghausen)

The Vícam Declaration: “we will defend mother earth
with our lives”

The Vícam Declaration:
"we will defend mother earth with our lives"
by Hermann Bellinghausen
Originally published in La Jornada
Translation by Zapagringo

Vícam, Sonora, October 14. The rebellion that will
shake the continent will not repeat the paths and ways
of others that have changed the course of history,
subcomandante Marcos proclaims tonight in the closing
ceremony of the Encuentro of the Indigenous Peoples of
América. "When the wind that we are dies down," he
adds, "a new time will open in which we will be all of
the colors."

After greeting in the languages of Yoeme, Castilian
["Spanish"], and English, and taking words from the
Yaqui tradition, Marcos declares before the audience,
which has doubled itself on this night in Vícam: "The
four wheels of the vehicle of money are rolling again
over the path of the blood and the pain of the peoples
of the continent," in what he calls "the largest war
in the history of humanity, which is already 515 years
old." The war that they commemorate every October 12.

This war now reproduces "the age and methods of the
great trusts and estates, of the epoch in which the
crowns of Europe dominated through blood and fire."
Referring to the repression that armies and
paramilitary forces use, "just as in the times of the
Conquest," in order to eliminate entire populations.

"Nevertheless, something has changed: there has never
been so much destruction and stupidity by the
governments, such brutality against the earth and
people." Because, indicates the Zapatista delegate,
"it happens that they are killing the world." They say
that it is "electoral democracy" that thing with which
the "bossy people" make the "business" of bringing the
world to catastrophe. There above "there is no hope
for the Indian peoples."

In this encuentro, "memory has been the invisible
thread that unites our peoples," explains Marcos, and
concentrates the cause of their struggles into just
one word, which comes from the birth of humanity:
"freedom". It is what the people want, he continues,
"and it cannot exist without justice or democracy." It
trusts that there will be "a world without rulers,"
something that "seems impossible" today.

They denounce the growing plunder of the land

In turn, the Rarámuri Francisco Palmo reads the final
declaration of the Encuentro of the Indigenous Peoples
of América. It is directed against the arrogance of
power, because the plundering of the land and
resources of the people "grows with each passing day."
But, it adds, "the resistance and indignation of the
people grows as well."

The 570 delegates from 67 indigenous peoples, coming
from 12 american nations, affirmed, in the Declaration
of Vicam: "We are descendents of the peoples, nations
and tribes that first gave name to these lands; that
were born of mother earth and maintain a sacred
respect towards her that provides us with life and
keeps us in death; thus we declare to the entire world
that we will care for and defend mother earth with our
lives." They tell of the "pain suffered from the
attack of the invaders, supported in the false
arguments of cultural exclusivity and arrogant
civilizing presumptions, with the purpose of
plundering our territories, destroying our cultures
and disappearing our peoples."

The participants in the encuentro proclaimed their
historic right to free self-determination, "respecting
the different ways that, for the exercise of this, our
people decide, according to their origin, history and
aspirations." Also, they reject "the war of conquest
and capitalist extermination imposed by the
transnational companies and the international
financial organizations in complicity with the great
powers and nation states."

They express their rejection of "the destruction and
sacking of mother earth by means of the occupation of
our territories for industrial, mining, agribusiness,
touristic, savage urbanization and infrastructure
activities, as well as the privatization of the water,
land, forests, oceans and coasts, biological
diversity, the air, the rain, traditional knowledge
and all that is born of mother earth."

They oppose "the registration of the land, coasts,
waters, seeds, plants, animals and traditional
knowledges of our peoples with the aim of privatizing
them," and they reject the occupation and destruction
of sacred centers and places, as well as the
mercantilization of their culture. They also reject
the Escalera Náutica or Sea of Cortés megaproject and
the construction of the coastal highway inside of
Yaqui territory.

The encuentro ratifies its rejection of the 2010
Winter Olympics "in Vancouver, Canada on sacred
territory, stolen from the Turtle nation with the goal
of installing ski runs."

They denounce that the war of conquest and capitalist
extermination "worsens like never before the
exploitation of the members of our peoples on
plantations and in sweatshops, or as migrants in
cities and distant countries, where they are hired in
the worst conditions, finding themselves in situations
of slavery and forced labor."

The rejections extend to the big transnational stores,
"that plunder the economic resources of the
communities," and to neoliberal policies, which
debilitate communitarian economies and food
sovereignty and result in the loss of native seeds.
They commit to seek the integral reconstitution of
their peoples and to strengthen their cultures,
languages, traditions, organization and
self-government.

"Supported in our culture and vision of the world, we
will reinforce and recreate our own educative
institutions, rejecting the educative models that the
nation states impose on us to exterminate our
cultures."

They pronounce against "all form of repression towards
our peoples, expressed in the militarization and
paramilitarization of our territories, forced
displacement, mass deportation, the imposition of
borders in order to divide and fragment, and the
imprisonment and disappearance of those who struggle
for the historic revindication of our peoples".

The absent indigenous "political prisoners" are a
strong "presence". Some sent greetings from El Amate
(Chiapas) and Molino de Flores (Texcoco, in particular
the Mazahua Magdalena García Durán). "They were" the
Oaxacans of Loxicha, San Isidro Aloapam, the
organization VOCAL and other members of the Popular
Assembly of the Peoples of Oaxaca; also the Zapatista
prisoners in Tabasco, as well as the Lakota leader
Leonard Peltier. They demanded immediate freedom for
all.

The Yaqui of Vicam and from other towns came in great
numbers to the closing, in which the traditional
dances of the Deer and the Pascola were offered. Thus,
nearly 3 thousand people participated in the
culminating moment of the encuentro.