A day in Chiapas not so unlike a day in Bahrain – oppressive misery and looting in the forecast

Chiapas: Indigenous Ch’oles block highway in north of the state
5 February, 2013 – SIPAZ blog

On 5 February, in observance of the 96th anniversary of the Mexican Constitution, approximately 450 Ch’ol women and men who pertain to the organization Laklumal Ixim (Our People of Maize) initiated a highway blockade on the Yajalón-Tila route so as to demonstrate that nearly two months into the administration of the new state government, “the communities and peoples continue to experience abandonment, misery, and looting.” In the communique participants denounce that “the ‘National Crusade against hunger’ is a farce that seeks merely to share crumbs to our communities that experience poverty, while our natural resources are handed over to foreign firms for exploitation. This is all a part of a strategy of counter-insurgency.” Furthermore, the members of the organization demand “that the Chiapas state-government cease this strategy of looting and abandonment toward the indigenous and campesino communities of the state, and that they instead attend to our demands and needs: a just price for electricity in accordance with the poverty of our people, quality healthcare and education, dignified infrastructure (homes, works, and roads), support for coffee-growers, projects and programs of support for the countryside to help women and men of indigenous communities, respect for our rights–ejidal, communal, and indigenous–cessation of the strategy of division and confrontation among communities as promoted by the FANAR (previously PROCEDE) that is being promoted above all by the agrarian governmental agency.” …source