So i went to that meeting, at the organization enlace civil, and went to a two hour meeting. enlace civil helps send international observers out to the zapatista villages. the observers are there to ensure that if the mexican military comes in to do any forced relocations or to just shoot some civilians, that someone sees and can report what happens.
in the meeting the 8 of us who were there for the acampamentismo were brought up to speed on the history of the political situation here in Chiapas, here is a fairly good english account of the history. it also went into the plan pueblo panama, here is a good article about that terrible possibility. after the meeting i helped pilar explain what we had just heard to bodhi, since his spanish isn`t as good. i go back to the office on the 2nd to find out which village i will be going to, i plan to go for 2 weeks, but depending on how needed i am (as i understand it, in this season there are generally the fewest international observers), i might stay for an entire month.
it was really insiteful but at the same time depressing to learn all of this information about what is planned for this part of the world. if you can`t be bothered to read the plan pueblo panama link, then i`ll try and paraphrase it in a nutshell: the plan puebla panama is a set of projects concerning the seven southernmost (and poorest) states of mexico, and all of central america down to panama. This part of the world has some of the richest reserves of resources and a wide range of genetic samples from species and plant life. there are many objectives. for instance, they want to build either a paved or traintracked corridor from guatemala through chiapas to ports on the carribean and atlantic for easier shipping to the eastern seaboard of the united states. that way it would be easier to build maquiladoras in guatemala or el salvador for example, where the minumum wage is much lower then the 5 dollars and change paid in the u.s. or the 3 dollars they have to pay in northern mexico.
that`s only one facet. a major concern is the water reserves in chiapas, located in the montes azules region, east of here. add that to the bio-speculating that goes on, in which medical companies try and obtain land so that they can isolate new medical compounds and patent them, and the reason for all the relocations of native villages becomes obvious. throughout the region they`ve been implimenting the plantation of genetically altered seeds and of vegetation not native to region, for instance, eucaliptus and african palm, which both suck all the nutrients out of the soil and render it useless even for grazing cows.
you might be asking, who are the ^they^ he`s talking about? for the planting and seed stuff, it`s monsanto and pulsar sabio, for the paving of roads and the maquiladoras it`s the governments themselves, their elected officals paid by multinational corporations.
it`s been good for me to start paying attention to things. it`s been quite a while. still processing what i can do to help, i feel like my biggest gift is the little tiny bit of translating i`ve been doing lately. yesterday this girl named jenka was putting together a radio piece for free speech radio news, about some forced relocations. she had a sony viao and sound forge, an audio editing program, and some interviews in spanish. i helped translate them, then did one of the voiceovers in english. you can hear that piece on the website, i think monday it will be up, it will have some title related to chiapas and zapatistas.
ok gonna go do something else.