Luis Hernandez Navarro on April 16, 2019
Photo: Bill Hackwell
Native Mexican Teresa Castellanos has spent the last six years of her life defending the land of her people. She is spokesperson of the Permanent Assembly of Morelos Peoples. She also heads the Huexca committee in resistance, which defends those affected by the Morelos Integral Project and a thermal plant.
Teresa was granted the Sergio Mendez Arceo human rights award this year to acknowledge her struggle. Together with Aurora Valdepeña, she was granted the 2018 Prize for women’s creativity by the Women’s World Summit Foundation. In 2015, she was a finalist in the international Front Line Defenders Award for Human Rights. As she has suffered persecution, she and her two daughters were forced to join the Protection Mechanism for Human Rights Defenders and Journalists.
Her struggle follows the Zapatista tradition and the Jaramillista movement, deeply rooted in the people’s imagery of that region, in South-Central Mexico. An Emiliano Zapata that has nothing to do with official ceremonies to honor him or the story told by Academic historians. This has to do with a Zapatismo that has stood before Agricultural mechanization of peasant unions and the attempts of several governments to present themselves like his embodiment.
Teresa is the expression of that living Zapatismo, away from the cardboard cutouts standing in national lottery agencies. Interviewed by journalist Daliri Oropeza, she explained the roots and reasons of her struggle.” It is about an ideal we have. I’m proud of having been born in the land of the Zapatista. Not only for doing things or having Zapatista blood but for having that ideal, recognizing that there were several people who fought for the good of the people, just as General Emiliano Zapata did for land, water, mountains, freedom. 100 years after his murder, his ideal is still alive. We will continue resisting. We have resisted all these 100 years,” she said. And she added: “I’ve admired Gen. Emiliano Zapata a lot. My whole life, since I was in high school, I would remember and go to look at magazines about Emiliano Zapata.
Because of that legacy, in an event in which hundreds of peasants and natives commemorated the 100 anniversary of Emiliano Zapata’s murder separated from the Government’s last April 10 event,” Teresa said, “ We are against AMLO (President Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador) because he is against us. We wanted to talk to him but he did not want to.”
Her severe words (shared by those attending the event) has a story behind it. In May 2014, in South-Central state of Morelos, Lopez Obrador said in a rally, “We do not want to build a pipeline or a thermal plant or mines because they will destroy the land and pollute water.” And he added, “Mexico is not a land of conquerors or for foreigners to come and appropriate everything. Just imagine that they want to build a thermal plant in Anenecuilco (a town in Morelos), the land where the best social leader in Mexico’s history was born. It’s like if they build a hazardous waste facility or a thermal plant in Jerusalem.”
Nevertheless, Lopez Obrador’s words blew away with the wind when he took office as President. On February 10, the President contradicted his words. Opponents to the Morelos Integral Project answered yelling, “Water yes, thermal no!” Lopez Obrador responded, “Listen, you extreme leftists, you are nothing but conservatives to me.” He went on to say there would be a referendum that could be contested by the population.
Days later, activist Samir Flores, a key leader in the struggle against the thermal plant and organizer of Morelos people, was shot dead in the doorsteps of his own house. President Lopez Obrador, instead of suspending the referendum, went on.
“The killing of Zapata was very painful for all of us, just as it is with the lose of our comrade Samir Flores.” Teresa said to a journalist, “I don’t know if it is a coincidence but 100 years after the killing of General Emiliano Zapata, they killed a comrade with his exact same ideal. Even though he does not share the blood of the General, he is not a relative, but he had that same ideal and he thought and talked just like him. And he fought for people’s freedom and for a change.”
On February 11, a day after being accused of being conservative, the Permanent Assembly of Morelos Peoples sent a letter to the President saying: You have insulted us. Part of your democratic speech was used to describe us with negative words without knowing us or knowing us, we are not sure which it was. And she warned, “If you do not suspend the thermal plant in Morelos, there will not be any legitimate homage to Zapata on behalf of the Government.”
From Zapata to Zapata. Almost two months after the letter was sent, journalists told that while hundreds of peasants honored General Zapata protesting against the project, the official stand for the 100 anniversary was empty. Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador was forced to carry out his event in Cuernavaca, 86 kilometers away from the place Zapata was killed.
https://www.jornada.com.mx/2019/04/16/opinion/018a2pol
Source: La Jornada, translation Resumen Latinoamericano, North America bureau