Solidarity with the people of San Salvador Atenco in Mexico Defending their lands and opposing the new airport in Mexico City! British companies are involved! Take action! In 2001, the indigenous common landholders of San Salvador Atenco in Mexico were successful in their fight against the building of a new airport in Mexico City on their ancestral farm lands. The Peoples Front in Defence of the Land (FPDT) became emblematic for their highly symbolic machetes, and their determined resistance. In May 2006, the government seized its chance to punish the community for defeating this megaproject. Following an attack characterised by extreme police brutality and violent repression, 2 young people were dead, 26 women raped by the military police, many injured, and 217 people arrested. 9 leaders of the Atenco farmers were illegally sentenced to 31 years, 2 for 67 years, and one for 112 years. The people organised, and a national and international campaign for the liberation of the prisoners was launched with the support of the Zapatista-inspired Other Campaign; the prisoners were finally absolved and freed in 2010. The man responsible for ordering this repression and the rape of the women was the former governor of the State of Mexico, Enrique Peña Nieto. He is now the President of Mexico, and the Atenco issue was the shame of his presidential campaign. Two years later, on 3 September 2014, he announced the plans for a new, much larger, international airport in the same area to the east of Mexico City. The new airport will have six runways and be able to handle 120 million passengers a year, four times the capacity of the existing airport; it will cost an estimated £5.5 billion, and have an associated large scale urbanisation project, known as Future City. The people of Atenco have known this was coming for a long time, and were ready to renew the fight in defence of their lands. For years the National Water Commission (CONAGUA) has been using pressure tactics to convince people to sell their lands. The FPDT and their lawyer are currently denouncing the illegal changing of the titles to the lands from social (communal) to private as a means to evict the original inhabitants. The FPDT are currently involved in a legal struggle to reverse this procedure. Members of the group were physically attacked by hired thugs, resulting in fifteen people being wounded. The violence and the threat to their lands has never gone away. Now they are asking for our help again. The struggle and resistance of the people of San Salvador Atenco is symbolic of struggles going on throughout Mexico and Latin America, where the indigenous peoples are defending their lands, their mother earth, against megaprojects being set up by their governments for the benefit of transnational corporations. They are struggling for land, life, freedom, for communal and collective values. “The land is not for sale. She is to be loved and defended.”
Posted on: Fri, 19 Sep 2014 10:23:27 +0000
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