As the hot desert sun began fading into a cool desert evening, the Other Campaign’s Karavana arrived in Rancho el Peñasco (Big Rock Ranch), Sonora, Mexico, between the towns of Santa Ana and Magdalena de Kino. The Quiché Biodiversity Center is located on the ranch and contains a hostel, a kitchen, an outdoor eating area and enough room to create a meeting space. A large bus contained the Karavana traveling with the Other Campaign on its tour of Northern Mexico. Subcomandante Marcos arrived in a van. He was accompanied by a personal security guard and indigenous leaders from the region and from the National Indigenous Congress, as well as a survivor of the police terrorism in San Salvador Atenco.
The Karavana was immediately whisked into the hostel for dinner and emerged an hour later to participate in a sacred fire ceremony. The meeting with indigenous peoples of the Tohono-O’odham nation began around 7:00 in an outdoor manger for the lambs which are bred commercially on the ranch. One by one, traditional authorities and representatives of the different tribes went to the head table, sat down next to Marcos and talked about the problems they faced as indigenous peoples. Many of the authorities were women. The animals were either quite excited by the crowd of approximately 250 people or upset because we had taken over their space. Their “baas” were heard throughout the evening.
The US/Mexico border runs through the Tohono-O’odham lands and divides the people. Border patrols damage the fragile desert ecology. Tribal members live on both sides of the border and have different perspectives on immigration and on solutions to the problems arising from this unnatural division. They asked Marcos to help them unite. As each speaker finished, Marcos rose to shake hands with them, contributing to an atmosphere of warmth and friendship.
After two hours of indigenous speakers, the coordinators surprised all of us in the crowd by requesting the participation of those folks who were present from organizations in the United States. The majority of people present were from the US side of the border, a mix of border activists (we were meeting just 60 miles south of the border), some indigenous people and many Chican@s. A friend of mine met one of the indigenous coordinators of this meeting at a Border Summit of Indigenous Peoples and he had urged her to attend the meeting near Magdalena. He also urged her to invite her friends to come. I received her email invitation. The coordinator, Gregorio, guaranteed that all would be welcome. Now, Gregorio was calling the different organizations to the front table to give their word.
In addition to the Chiapas Support Committee, there were representatives from Just Coffee and No More Deaths, as well as several student groups. Cecile Lumer represented Citizens for Border Solutions. Marcos listened attentively to another two hours of presentations. Again, each speaker was seated next to Marcos and he rose to shake hands with the speaker as each one concluded his or her presentation. When I was called to the front table to meet Marcos and say a few words, I noticed that his eyes twinkled with warmth and good humor.
I presented the Subcomandante some tobacco and a little money for gasoline from the Chiapas Support Committee.
The compañero from San Salvador Atenco spoke about the political prisoners and a representative of the National Indigenous Congress denounced the betrayal of the San Andrés Accords by the three political parties and denounced the creation of a so-called National Indigenous Convention to support Andrés Manuel López Obrador (AMLO).
Finally, at 11:00 at night, Marcos began his talk, sprinkled with a bit of English. He acknowledged those of us from the US with lighter skin by telling the following story:


“Our elders, our chiefs, say that the gods made the world, that they made the men and women of corn first. And that they specifically put in them the heart of corn. But that the corn ran out and that some men and women didn’t get a heart. But also the color of the earth ran out, and they began to look for other colors and then the heart of corn touched people who are white, red or yellow. So there are people here who don’t have the dark color
of indigenous people, but have the heart of corn, so they are here with us.”


He then began to talk about the impending destruction of indigenous lands throughout Sonora and Northern Mexico by tourist projects and hotels. He specifically mentioned the Escalera Nautica (Nautical Stairway), a series of marinas for pleasure boats on the Coasts of the two Bajas, Sonora and Sinaloa. He also mentioned plans to place garbage dumps and toxic waste dumps with their poisons on indigenous Sonoran land.
Marcos’ message urged indigenous peoples to unite and struggle against these threats to their land. Marcos spoke about the war of annihilation against the undocumented. He said they (Marcos and the Karavana) had crossed the border for a little while on their way to Magdalena and, at one point, he told the crowd: “We want this border to disappear.”
______________________________________


Chiapas Support Committee
P.O. Box 3421
Oakland, CA 94609
e-mail: cezmat@igc.org
(510) 654-9587
www.chiapas-support.org
www.RadioZapatista.org

original article aqui;
http://www.indybay.org/newsitems/2006/10/24/18323054.php?show_comments=1#18323084

Here's some info about the struggles facing the Cucapa nations on both sides of the US/MEX border after decades of drought from dams and diversions on los rios de Colorado (Colorado River watershed) where industrial agriculture corporations steal rio agua from the Colorado, coercing the drought stricken cucapa to abandon their time tested indigenous traditions of food gathering on the colorado delta and face assimilation (cultural genocide) in the maquiladora sweatshops along the nearby border..

Sacramentan's Report on La Otra Campana en Tijuana

by Dan Bacher

Tuesday Oct 24th, 2006 5:08 PM

Here's my brief, impressionistic report on the meeting with Subcomandante Marcos of the EZLN in Tijuana during the Zapatista's La Otra Campana taking place throughout Mexico:

SubMarcos Asks Adherents in Tijuana to Bring the Walls Down!

by Dan Bacher

The Zapatista Commission meeting in Tijuana was great, with Subcomandante Marcos (Delegado zero) taking notes and listening to representatives of the South Cental LA urban farmer coalition, gay Chicanas and Chicanos, Food Not Bombs, the IWW (Patricia Nuno), homeless coalition organizers, student activists from UCLA and CSU Northridge and immigrant rights representatives. The day before focused on maquiladora workers, mostly women, who are exploited by U.S. companies in northern Mexico. The Brown Berets provided security for Marcos, as well as speaking about counter military recruitment and immigration.

After the hearing on Thursday, Marcos gave a summary of what people had talked about and urged people to take down the walls between each other, as well as the wall being proposed along the border. When Marcos speaks, he is very soft spoken and humble, yet very forceful. His words have a distinctive poetic cadence.

"The Wall is is not just along the border," Marcos said. "The walls are put up against Chicanos, against those who speak in Spanglish, against women, gays, children and elders. The wall reproduces itself in each part of each home, in the street and it is not just erected by those above. We build them ourselves."

Before the commission hearing, "El Sub" as the locals call him, spray painted his revolutionary placaso on the walls of the mulitkulti, a movie theatre on Constitution Avenue. There is no roof on it; I guess it burned down. The day before, he got out of the Zapatista bus and pissed on the border fence!

It was a great gathering of folks on both sides of the border working against their repressive governments. The hearing was followed by a huge public meeting on Avenida Constitucion in front of the multikulti. Don Juan, a Mixtec Indian leader from Oaxaca, talked about the rebellion there and then Marcos gave a great speech, slamming imperialism and corporate globalism and talking about his journey throughout Mexico.

After the big rally, there was a press conference, with only independent and left media invited (I love it - no corporate media allowed!) I was only about 7 feet from him. IndyMedia Tijuana, San Diego and Sacramento were all there, along with Al Giordino of Narco News. I was one of the three "adherents" from Sacramento - the other two were Mario Galvan and Nancy Lehman.

Mexico is ready for revolution. You have the Zapatista liberated zones in Chiapas and 12 guerrilla groups operating now throughout Mexico; the Oaxaca rebellion where the teachers, peasants and workers have taken over all of the radio stations, tv stations and government offices; the battle for human rights in Oventic; and the refusal of the people to accept right winger Calderon's stolen election.

After the press conference, there was a concert with groups from both Mexico and the other side of the border; I wasn't able to stay for it. There were big banners and murals on the wall of the former theatre, calling for release of political prisoners and solidarity with the rebellions in Atenco and Oaxaca. However the Zapatista movement many years ago laid down its arms and is now a non violent resistance movement.

The organizers had free food for the delegados: bagels, pan dulce, soup, and yes, soy ceviche. What really made me feel good is that the majority of people there were youth in their late teens and twenties. Some started spontaneously dancing in the street. Young anarchistas were there in large members, along with Marxist group adherents. There was a great poster on the wall of the multikultii that said "We Support Our Troops" in red, white and blue and below it "Rage Against the Machine." In the photo between the slogans was masked Zapatista guerrillas - OUR troops! You get it? That rocked!

Seeing so many youth there gave me hope that we can - and must - change things in both Mexico and here in the Belly of the Bush.

On the next day, Marcos went to Mexicali to speak up for the fishing rights of indigenous people. Fishermen in Mexico, just like here in California, are having their fishing rights stripped through an unholy alliance of corporate "conservation" groups and the federal and state governments. They do it under the guise of creating "marine protected areas" and "bioreserves," rather than tackling the real problems that cause fishery declines - water exports, water pollution, habitat destruction and industrial plunder of fisheries by global corporations. Here's the story from narconews:


Marcos: The Zapatistas Will Defend the Cucapa and Kiliwa Peoples of Baja California

The Kiliwa Had Declared a “Death Pact” After the Government and Gringo “Conservation” Groups Forbade Them from Fishing; Next Fishing Season Will See a Zapatista Camp on Their Lands

By Kristin Bricker

The Other Journalism with the Other Campaign in Baja California
October 22, 2006

MEXICALI, BAJA CALIFORNIA: Delegate Zero announced a bold new step in the Other Campaign October 20 in El Mayor, Baja California: a Zapatista camp in the Cucapa and Kiliwa indigenous communities, located just outside of Mexicali, to protect them during the upcoming fishing season and prevent a “death pact” from being fulfilled. He also shed further light on the next phase of the Other Campaign.

The Cucapa and Kiliwa indigenous communities are facing extinction. Of the Cucapas, less then 300 remain; of the Kiliwas, 54. While the government does not concern itself with preserving their culture, traditions, and very existence, it is very concerned about the fish they rely on for their very survival.

The federal government, with the support of “conservation” organizations such as the World Wildlife Fund and Conservation International (who are notorious for protecting endangered species by kicking endangered peoples out of their land), turned the waters they’ve fished for generations into the Biosphere Reserve of the Upper Gulf of California on June 10, 1993, because it was “in the public interest,” according to the official website of the government’s National Commission of Protected Natural Areas. The website also notes that 77 percent of the people who live in and around the reserve rely on fishing for their livelihoods, so it is unclear which public interest the fishing ban in the protected area serves.

The problem isn’t that the Cucapas and the Kiliwas don’t want to preserve the endangered fish and dolphins. They point out that it is in their best interest to protect the species they rely upon for their livelihood, and they want very much to be custodians of the river and its fish, as they have been for generations. Hilda Hurtado Valenzuela, the secretary of the Cucapa fishing cooperative, maintains that the Cucapas and Kiliwas are not responsible for the over-fishing, though they bear the brunt of its consequences. She says that they never intentionally fished the endangered species, though if they happened to catch some they used them for their own consumption – they never sold them. Now, she says, they don’t even do that, because if they get caught taking a protected fish from the river they will go to jail, or worse.

To protect the endangered fish, armed federal soldiers constantly patrol the reserve and accost the fishermen who come to fish. Hilda Hurtado Valenzuela recounted to Subcomandante Marcos how soldiers detained her pregnant daughter, who was trying to fish, by pointing their guns at her belly. Furthermore, the community has approximately thirty outstanding warrants for illegal fishing, including one for seven kilograms of fish.

Cross-Border Solidarity

In protest against the forceful dispossession of their lands and the destruction of their culture, the Kiliwas took a death pact. The women have agreed to stop having children, and the Kiliwas will die with this generation. Marcos, however, intends to use the power of the Other Campaign to convince them that they are not alone, and that it is not worth it to die from a death pact when they can die fighting.
When community members finished explaining their struggle and their death pact to the Sixth Commission, Delegate Zero requested an intermission and private meeting with community authorities. When they returned to the public forum, Marcos publicly disclosed the results of the meeting.

He proposed to the Cucapa and Kiliwa authorities, in the name of the Zapatista communities, that a Zapatista camp be created during the 2007 fishing season, beginning at the end of February and ending in mid-May.

In announcing the call for a Zapatista camp, Delegate Zero said, “We have decided to send an urgent message to the Mexicans and Chicanos north of the Rio Grande to come here in order to maximize the number of people here, create a safe space, and protect the Cucapa and Kiliwa community during the fishing season.” He later elaborated that these activists will form a peace camp in the community and brigades that will accompany the fishermen and fisherwomen to the river. The Mexicali adherents to the Other Campaign will meet next week to begin to organize the action. Marcos promised, “The only thing that will keep us from coming here is a formal request from the Kiliwa and Cucapa authorities.”

This request isn’t likely to come. In reaction to Delegate Zero’s proposal for a Zapatista camp, Hilda Hurtado Valenzuela, a Cucapa authority herself, said, “We’re very happy to have someone come here and give us a hand because we’ve already petitioned the government, gone through mediation – all the legal routes.” Their requests and negotiations with the government have not produced any positive results.

The proposed Zapatista camp in El Mayor could very well change the route of the next phase of the Other Campaign, when two comandantes go to each zone to live there and organize. Marcos revealed that the proposal to adherents for the next phase will include the following: that they will organize the tour in December, release the First Declaration of the Other Campaign in January, and begin the next phase of the Other Campaign in February with the Kiliwa in the Mexican northeast – not in the southwest, as had originally been planned.

Narco News is funded by your contributions to The Fund for Authentic Journalism. Please make journalism like this possible by going to The Fund's web site and making a contribution today.

El Sub takes a leak on the border fence (courtesy of indymediatijuana)
by Dan Bacher Tuesday Oct 24th, 2006 5:08 PM


Cucapa's fish scarcity result of Rio Colorado dams/diversions

by no fresh agua = salinity of delta fishery

Tuesday Oct 24th, 2006 7:01 PM

The Cucapa's main problem with access to their fishery over the last several decades are the dams and diversions of fresh Rio Colorado agua away from the delta, leaving the bioregion with increased salinity from the Sea of Cortez as quality fresh water for thousands of years supported a vibrant ecosystem is now lacking (several decades) since the presence of the Rio Colorado dams..

"Fifty miles south of the U.S. border in Mexico's Baja California, the great river of the West that I had followed from beginning to end was gone, the water in its bed a shallow, narrow sump of salt and pesticide-laced runoff from crop irrigation.

"Es nuestra vida -- It is our life," said El Coyote, summing up 2,000 years of his people's sustenance from this area. But for half a century the delta had been dying, and with it the Cucapa culture. No longer can tribal members hunt mule deer, plant squash with the floods, harvest wild salt grass, or eat fish three times a day. Several species of fish and plant life have disappeared. The settlement has shrunk to about 85 families. The once rich estuary is filled with weeds, trash, and occasional swamps of unhealthy water -- barely enough to float their boats. Last year, the fourth year of drought, the water dropped to its lowest level in tribal memory. The Cucapa were lucky to eat fish once a week.

"We are the river people. We' re still here," said Ricardo. "But what river? I haven't seen it. It doesn't get this far."
"
read on @;
http://carbon.cudenver.edu/stc-link/weblink/water/materials/carrier.html

Scientists claim that with only a 1% increase in fresh rio water reaching the delta the ecosystem may recover. However, the GW bush regime will not even give the Cucapa residents 1% fresh water, instead they allowed additional diversions of freshwater to unsustainable agribusiness, golf course lawns, etc.. in the hot, dry desert ecosystem..

"The ruling flies in the face of the well-recognized principle of international environmental law that each country has not only the sovereign right to manage its own affairs but also the solemn responsibility to ensure that activities within its borders do not cause environmental harm elsewhere. The over-riding issue here is one of cross-border equity. By modern standards, the U.S. basically stole the Colorado River from Mexico -- and continues to steal it every day it does not allow sufficient water to cross the border to provide for the reasonable ecological, economic and cultural health of the delta and gulf."

"This decision tramples on the commonsense notion that the United States should be a good neighbor, said David Hogan, Rivers Program Coordinator for the Center for Biological Diversity. "Apparently it's not enough for the U.S. Government to ignore our own environment – we're wrecking Mexico's as well. It's snubs like this that lead to international political hostility toward our country."

read on @;
http://www.defenders.org/releases/pr2003/pr040203.html

For detailed info on the Colorado delta ecosystem, download a sample chapter of Charles Bergman's "Red Delta: Fighting for Life at the End of the Colorado River" @;
http://www.plu.edu/~bergmaca/books/books.htm

The Cucapa face cultural genocide as they find life in the formerly productive Colorado delta now nearly impossible as lack of fresh rio water makes the salinity of the Sea of Cortez almost unbearable for indigenous aquatic species. Also a lack of mineral sediment input from rio flows negatively effects the base level of the food pyramid (ie., plankton), a major source of biomass for the fish..

If the Cucapa cannot live in their Rio Colorado delta ecosystem, they are coerced through hunger and poverty into workplace assimilation (ie., loss of culture) through the maquiladora sweatshops nearby along the border, or worse yet enscripted into near slavery conditions across the imaginary border into the US industrial agriculture plantations who steal their rio agua to begin with. Again, we're back to the logical fallacy of growing temperate climate adapted iceberg lettuce in the HOT DRY Imperial Valley desert ecosystem, drawing up so much water over long distances that they pull along some perchlorate in the process..

"Perchlorate, which impairs the thyroid’s ability to take up iodide and produce hormones critical to proper fetal and infant brain development, has contaminated almost 300 drinking water sources and farm wells in California and an unknown number of sources in at least fifteen other states. Sources known to be contaminated include the Colorado River from near Las Vegas to the Mexican border — the primary or sole source of irrigation water for farms in California, Arizona and Nevada that grow the great majority of the lettuce sold in the U.S. during winter months."

read on @;
http://www.ewg.org/reports/rocketlettuce/

Tepary beans and other drought tolerant native food crops could solve the problems of drought in the delta by requiring less irrigation water and giving the Colorado delta 1% or more fresh rio agua to restore their ecosystem fishery. Then the Cucapa could remain in the delta with their culture and food web intact (ie., restored to pre-dam conditions of abundance), and local campesino farmers could grow tepary beans in desert community gardens on either side of the imaginary border through the desert ecosystem..

"In addition to the potential health benefits of traditional desert foods, agricultural and economic factors strongly favor their production. Marty Eberhardt the director of the Tucson Botanical Gardens, pointed out that the plants that produce these foods are naturally adapted to growing under conditions of high heat and little water.

Government food programs replaced the tepary bean, which is rich in fiber, protein, iron, and calcium, with the pinto bean, which is far more quickly digested and also lower in protein.

Martha Burgess, education director of Native Seeds/ Search, a seed bank and research and education organization here that studies and promotes the use of native desert plant foods, said, for example, that "If tepary bean plants are given lots of water, they produce tons of foliage and few beans," adding, "But if the plants are starved of water, they put their effort into flowers and seeds and produce beans that can have as much protein as soybeans."
"

read on @;
http://www.spmesquite.com/articles/ancientfoods.html

Economics cannot be seperate from ecology, the genocide perpetuated against indigenous nations residing on both sides of the Mexico/US border (Seri, Cocapa, Tohono O'odham) via forced assimilation, deprivatrion of native food webs, etc.. can be halted by a return to ecological sanity as if Madre Tierra mattered. Like the sangre flowing through her veins, los rios cannot continue to be blocked, the Rio Colorado dams represent cholesterol blocking the flow of Madre Tierra's life blood, and we certainly will not sit back and allow our nurturing Madre to have a heart attack from foolish political decisions and agua theft from industrial agribusiness..

Say adios to the dams blocking the Rio Colorado's agua, they're a comin on down!!





viva marcos
by bianca

Thursday Oct 26th, 2006 8:50 AM

that photo is hilarious and you weren't kidding about the pipe.
http://deletetheborder.org/node/1650

you of course mean the one that seperates mexico and GUATEMALAN - right?



Mexican Immigration Policy for GUATEMALAN IMMIGRANTS

as reported by
Amnesty International


while Mexico cries foul on us immigration policies, lets look at how
THEY handle illegal immigration from Guatemala to their south.....

The federalizes apprehend the immigrants at the boarded if possible, or shortly after the Guatemalans are trucked to the boarder in cattle trucks where the federalizes strip them naked, then beat them senseless and drag them back across the boarder.

When the federalies where questioned about this practice they responded , these peons need to be taught a lesson, how dare they violate our boarders. they have no rights here. and we can do what ever we want.

this practice has gone on for years despite the objections of
Amnesty International and other human rights organizations there have been countless deaths and injuries associated with this inhumane treatment.

What the Mexican military does to people from Guatemala isn't any reason for the US military to brutalize Mexican civilians who are economically coerced to enter the US. Using that logic, we could compare the Mexican military's violent incursions into Oaxaca, Chiapas, Morelos, etc.. against indigenous people and conclude that the US military should murder and terrorize indigenous nations in north america. Of course nobody except an extreme fascist would agree with this fallacy, so let's not apply the good for the goose, good for the gander arguement based on the Mexican military's violence against indigneous people of Guatemala, Chiapas, Oaxaca, etc..

However, since it was brought up, let's leave no stone unturned and further investigate the effects of neoliberal colonialismo on the Mex/Guatemalan border also..

Here's the deal about the border state of Chiapas;

"For communities in Chiapas, Mexico's poorest state, neoliberal economic policies like NAFTA and Plan Puebla-Panama escalated an ongoing assault on their rights and resources. To qualify for entry into NAFTA, the Mexican government passed a land privatization law in 1992. Many campesino communities saw this law as the final blow to the land reform enacted by the Mexican Revolution of 1910."

read on @;
http://www.madre.org/countries/Mexico.html

When we read about the situation across the imaginary border from Chiapas, Mexico, we find similar problems in Guatemala under PPP;

"The PPP would dam the Usumacinta River bordering Mexico and Guatemala, the largest river between Texas and Venezuela, to generate electricity on the scale of Egypt's Aswan Dam. Plans for constructing two dams 132 and 330 feet high would create reservoirs each over twenty miles long, displace tens of thousands of indigenous people, and flood up to eighteen ancient Mayan sites. Not by coincidence, the dams would also permit military control of the river, which is a haven to migrants and smugglers and, not accidentally, borders the eastern edge of the zones now controlled by the Zapatista rebels."

read on @;
http://www.globalexchange.org/countries/americas/mexico/ppp/680.html

The pattern that emerges is one of hostile and aggressive governments of the US, Mexico, Guatemala, etc.. that use police/military violence to enforce the domination of for-profit corporations on the regional indigenous peoples (ie., Western Shoshone, NTS, nuclear radiation in Newe Sogobia, etc..)

If anything the only point is that similar to the US/Mex border, the border between Mexico and Guatemala also needs to be only in the physical sense of the Rio Usumacinto and nothing else. Local Mayan and bioregional indigenous sovereignty and autonomy needs to become a reality in Chiapas, Guatemala, Newe Sogobia and up north to the Inuit nations in Alaska. The police and military of the US, Canada, Mexico, Guatemala needs to step back and return their uniforms to their governments, once again becoming members of communities, families and not enforcers of corporate WTO/NAFTA neoliberal globalismo. The NAFTA documents can be shredded and put to good use as kindling in thousands of cooking fires across the americas..

NO MAS NAFTA!! NO CAFTA!! NO FTAA!! NO PPP!!

"How Will the PPP Harm Guatemala?

The possible exploitation of the natural resources of the northern Petén region by the biotech industry as part of its drive to exploit the coveted "Meso-American Biological Corridor".

An electrical interconnection agreed upon by Mexico and Guatemala. A corollary to this project is the very worrying plan to build

5 hydroelectric damn in the Usumacinta River, which would result in environmental damage and displace communities alongside the river.According to studies, these proposed damns would flood 10-12 million square kilometers, roughly one third of the Petén.
The plan calls for an oil pipeline to be constructed between Mexico and Guatemala, which would go through the protected Maya Biosphere, and possibly as far as Costa Rica.

Although Guatemala has 21,000 square miles of rainforest, almost half (9,000 square miles) is threatened by the PPP. Already, nearly 60% of the Laguna del Tigre National Park has faced adverse affects from construction of a highway. A road built in the 1980s to facilitate oil exploration also created an opening for a large-scale illegal logging operation.
The PPP would displace many indigenous people throughout Central America from their rural homes to cities. No doubt, it would also result in factories (maquiladoras) mirroring those that exist along with U.S.-Mexico border as a result of NAFTA. There would be little environmental and safety standards and workers would be subject to long hours with low pay.
Land privatization is a key component of the development plans of the PPP, facilitating the shift to a maquiladora development model in which indigenous populations are displaced and their former lands sold to large multinational corporations."

read on @;
http://www.nadir.org/nadir/initiativ/agp/free/imf/america/txt/2002/1024ppp_guatemala.html

Then delete the artificial military/political border boundaries that seperate and isolate indigenous communities across the americas from interacting with one another in autonomous collectives..