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page last updated 1-13-22
Supporting Active Nonviolence in Mexico:
On the Frontlines with Pietro Ameglio
IF is raising funds to support the crucial work of Pietro Ameglio, who for decades has promoted active nonviolence in Mexico and across Latin America. An activist, popular educator, university lecturer, and author, Pietro was a co-founder and leader of the Movement for Peace with Justice and Dignity (MPJD) that emerged in 2011 to challenge drug-war violence, increasing militarization, and human rights violations in Mexico. His nonviolence education programs are in constant demand across Mexico, and he has helped organize and lead numerous nonviolent direct action campaigns. more information on Pietro
He is a co-founder (1987) and leader of Servicio Paz y Justicia (Peace and Justice Service/SERPAJ) in Mexico. SERPAJ is a Latin American network working in 13 countries to promote human rights, social justice and nonviolent culture and struggle. Your contributions make possible the modest stipend that allows Pietro to dedicate himself to the nonviolence education and organizing work.
IF accepts tax-deductible contributions through check or credit card. If writing a check for a specific project, designate the project on your check, and please make it payable to: IF 160 Sunflower Lane Watsonville, CA 95076
On the Frontlines with Pietro Ameglio
IF is raising funds to support the crucial work of Pietro Ameglio, who for decades has promoted active nonviolence in Mexico and across Latin America. An activist, popular educator, university lecturer, and author, Pietro was a co-founder and leader of the Movement for Peace with Justice and Dignity (MPJD) that emerged in 2011 to challenge drug-war violence, increasing militarization, and human rights violations in Mexico. His nonviolence education programs are in constant demand across Mexico, and he has helped organize and lead numerous nonviolent direct action campaigns. more information on Pietro
He is a co-founder (1987) and leader of Servicio Paz y Justicia (Peace and Justice Service/SERPAJ) in Mexico. SERPAJ is a Latin American network working in 13 countries to promote human rights, social justice and nonviolent culture and struggle. Your contributions make possible the modest stipend that allows Pietro to dedicate himself to the nonviolence education and organizing work.
IF accepts tax-deductible contributions through check or credit card. If writing a check for a specific project, designate the project on your check, and please make it payable to: IF 160 Sunflower Lane Watsonville, CA 95076
Mexico Nonviolence: Letter from Pietro Ameglio, October 2021
Join the Fast for Peace and for Our Disappeared!
Cuernavaca, Morelos, Mexico
October 28, 2021
Dear compañeras and compañeros of IF,
I will always be thankful for the opportunity that the good spirit gave us in this life to cross paths in the building of a more human world, rooted in nonviolence, justice and peace. We don’t know how that spirit will continue to intertwine our connections between us. We leave that open in a spirit of trust and hope. Christmas is approaching, and the end of a year marked by this terrible, global pandemic and a human species that has not ceased to explore new forms of action, reflection and social relations. We sail on in this same boat of challenges and uncertainties.
I greatly value your material, moral and human commitment to support and get close to justice and peace projects in Latin America. I have had the opportunity to see up close some of those projects and groups, and I have been impressed by the opportune and key choices you had made. In turn, I believe that the form of the cooperation between you and I (which ostensibly is support for me personally but is actually collective because I always have worked with and for others) has been an experiment, as Gandhi would say, that has been challenging and that I hope has been positive and constructive for all involved. I have been very grateful to all of you and to the good spirit because it has made it possible for us here to work full time with whatever energy and skills we have to share, to accompany the struggles and the capacity building in nonviolent civil resistance in Mexico, and at times elsewhere in Latin America and in India. What I have most appreciated is the freedom and the trust that you have extended to me and to the groups with which we have worked in active solidarity, where we have learned much more than we what we have been able to impart.
I’m not entirely clear how this past year has been in your land. The year before saw so many radical, nonviolent social struggles, from which we learned and were touched deeply by, such as Black Lives Matter after the murder of George Floyd and other African-Americans, and the campaign against the re-election of Trump. The situation in Mexico is in some respects different. There are plenty of examples of racism and political polarization, but at least we have a government that has more dignity [than the Trump administration] and is closer to the people and the needs of the majority, and is not repressive.
October 28, 2021
Dear compañeras and compañeros of IF,
I will always be thankful for the opportunity that the good spirit gave us in this life to cross paths in the building of a more human world, rooted in nonviolence, justice and peace. We don’t know how that spirit will continue to intertwine our connections between us. We leave that open in a spirit of trust and hope. Christmas is approaching, and the end of a year marked by this terrible, global pandemic and a human species that has not ceased to explore new forms of action, reflection and social relations. We sail on in this same boat of challenges and uncertainties.
I greatly value your material, moral and human commitment to support and get close to justice and peace projects in Latin America. I have had the opportunity to see up close some of those projects and groups, and I have been impressed by the opportune and key choices you had made. In turn, I believe that the form of the cooperation between you and I (which ostensibly is support for me personally but is actually collective because I always have worked with and for others) has been an experiment, as Gandhi would say, that has been challenging and that I hope has been positive and constructive for all involved. I have been very grateful to all of you and to the good spirit because it has made it possible for us here to work full time with whatever energy and skills we have to share, to accompany the struggles and the capacity building in nonviolent civil resistance in Mexico, and at times elsewhere in Latin America and in India. What I have most appreciated is the freedom and the trust that you have extended to me and to the groups with which we have worked in active solidarity, where we have learned much more than we what we have been able to impart.
I’m not entirely clear how this past year has been in your land. The year before saw so many radical, nonviolent social struggles, from which we learned and were touched deeply by, such as Black Lives Matter after the murder of George Floyd and other African-Americans, and the campaign against the re-election of Trump. The situation in Mexico is in some respects different. There are plenty of examples of racism and political polarization, but at least we have a government that has more dignity [than the Trump administration] and is closer to the people and the needs of the majority, and is not repressive.
Grave site showing remains.
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VI National Search Brigade poses for a group photo with images of their disappeared family members.
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What continues to be a plague in our society is the war that besieges us. It is not a “war on drugs” but rather a war for monopoly control that groups, both legally constituted and criminal, are trying to establish on every street corner of the country. They seek free reign for their approximately 25 different kinds of criminal activity (according to research on the subject). Of those, drug trafficking represents around 60%, and in many cases it is not even the principal or the most lucrative criminal activity. Each one of these powerful groups has similar social identities, but with different people. They all include politicians and officials at the local, state and national levels, business people who handle money laundering, police and military personnel, both active and retired, organized crime cartels, and sectors of civil society who are on the payroll or allied in an infinite number of forms. On August 30, the government released updated figures on the number of disappeared: 91,000! The family members estimate that the real number may be three times that. Murders in the last ten years are well above 300,000, according to the organizations of family members of the disappeared. And now we have tens of thousands of people who have been displaced by the violence, since there are parts of the country where it is impossible to safeguard one’s life without working for one of the cartels.
This issue ties in with another that we face together, which is international migration, especially from Central America and the Caribbean. According to agreements with the U.S., Mexico is required to stop migrants here in Mexico. It is a situation of immense and terrible human dimensions. As I write, a caravan of at least 3000 people, mostly Haitians, has just set out from our southern border, headed for your border.
In truth, we don’t really know what to do in order to humanize these situations and move them toward peace and nonviolence. We discuss them and seek to act collectively. We organize ourselves in networks of all kinds. We try varied experiments all over the country, some very valuable and effective at the local level. We seek to emulate positive historical experiences from Mexico or from other countries, especially from Colombia. But there is an ever-growing fissure in the social and political fabric that we are not able to heal or to diminish as long as the violence and impunity continue. The national government has many positives that we have not seen in previous governments, but the state and county governments are full of corruption.
This issue ties in with another that we face together, which is international migration, especially from Central America and the Caribbean. According to agreements with the U.S., Mexico is required to stop migrants here in Mexico. It is a situation of immense and terrible human dimensions. As I write, a caravan of at least 3000 people, mostly Haitians, has just set out from our southern border, headed for your border.
In truth, we don’t really know what to do in order to humanize these situations and move them toward peace and nonviolence. We discuss them and seek to act collectively. We organize ourselves in networks of all kinds. We try varied experiments all over the country, some very valuable and effective at the local level. We seek to emulate positive historical experiences from Mexico or from other countries, especially from Colombia. But there is an ever-growing fissure in the social and political fabric that we are not able to heal or to diminish as long as the violence and impunity continue. The national government has many positives that we have not seen in previous governments, but the state and county governments are full of corruption.
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Brigade members digging.
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Even so, we believe we are a land of hope because of the courageous and creative people who seek to build truth, justice and peace where and how it is possible. For the last two weeks, we were with the VI National Search Brigade of Family Members of the Disappeared and Murdered in Morelos, where I live. It was organized by Enlaces Nacional (National Network of Family Members of the Disappeared), with its more than 160 collectives of family members from around Mexico. More than 250 family members traveled from all over the country (some of them supported by your generous funding), along with a large number of solidarity activists. These family members, some of them very poor, organized brigades to search for clandestine graves. They searched in all kinds of terrain: mines, forests, hills, canyons, roadsides. Others searched to find the disappeared alive in jails, hospitals, and dive bars. Some searched in forensic centers to identify human remains. Some visited schools, churches and mayors’ offices to raise awareness among the population and the authorities.
In order to find clandestine graves, the key is to get information about the places that the criminals use, which is a tricky, potentially treacherous, process. So this year we created a campaign called, “I am the way, the truth and the life,” using the famous phrase of Jesus, where the way is the route to the grave site, the truth is to know what happened, and the life is that that family might regain the capacity to live in a human manner, because people with disappeared relatives are barely surviving, rather than truly living. For this campaign, “mailboxes of peace,” simple cardboard boxes, were created and placed in churches of different denominations where people could anonymously leave maps and information about the graves. This worked very well, to the point where we received so many tips that the brigade is returning to Morelos in November to carry on the search.
In order to find clandestine graves, the key is to get information about the places that the criminals use, which is a tricky, potentially treacherous, process. So this year we created a campaign called, “I am the way, the truth and the life,” using the famous phrase of Jesus, where the way is the route to the grave site, the truth is to know what happened, and the life is that that family might regain the capacity to live in a human manner, because people with disappeared relatives are barely surviving, rather than truly living. For this campaign, “mailboxes of peace,” simple cardboard boxes, were created and placed in churches of different denominations where people could anonymously leave maps and information about the graves. This worked very well, to the point where we received so many tips that the brigade is returning to Morelos in November to carry on the search.
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“Mailboxes of Peace" placed in churches proved to be an effective means of collecting anonymous tips on possible clandestine grave sites.
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Morelos is a dangerous state because of the level of criminal activity. The message repeated by the family members in their public talks illustrates their level of courage, generosity and commitment: “We left our families and work to come here for two weeks, traveling from afar, knowing that our loved ones are not buried here. But what brings us here is that we don’t want what happened to us to happen to you. We are not requesting your help. What we want is to warn you what may happen if you don’t take action now.” I have seen over and over again over the last ten years, in a very moving manner, how average people, including mostly people who started out very conservative or politically unengaged, have become public figures defending human rights and social activists, not just on behalf of their loved ones but for everyone. They are the greatest peacebuilders and social activists in Mexico, together with the indigenous and campesino communities who are defending their lands, culture and natural resources.
Another phrase used by the families, 90% of whom are women, is, “We are not searching for the guilty; we are searching for treasures.” They are not seeking guilty verdicts or prison sentences but rather just to find bones or personal belongings and to be able to give their loved ones a proper burial so that they can finally rest in peace.
My other great teachers of peace and nonviolence these last few years have been the youth. Their questioning, challenges, indignation, and rebellion in the face of injustice and authoritarianism have been real sources of mutual growth. And always in actions and reflections regarding concrete situations, both close at hand and further away. We have created a Culture of Peace and Nonviolence Collective at the UNAM (National Autonomous University of Mexico). For me it is a small miracle, given my earlier experiences, that continues to be strong. Some of the youth have been working together with me for 8-10 years, and new ones are always joining. Important aspects of the work include formation in peace and nonviolence, social science research, and direct action. On their own, they have created many workshops, courses, and forms of action that they have taken to community centers, campesino and indigenous communities, migrant shelters, and schools and universities all over the country.
In July, in what was for us a new challenge, we made a film on the nonviolent struggle of the social uprising that began last April in Colombia. (Colombia: Stop in order to advance twice as far. National Strike and Nonviolent Resistence: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=22PB4i124aQ We have received a lot of positive feedback on the film, including from Gandhian activists in India. It is proving to be a useful tool for education in nonviolence. A couple of us went to Colombia earlier this year as part of an international human rights mission. Now we are putting together a second educational video on the nonviolence of the search brigades of the families of the disappeared here in Mexico. We are learning as we go. We don’t know much about video production, but we are passionate about peace and nonviolence, and we trust the good spirit and the power of the marginalized. Just as you do.
I send you a big and grateful hug. We carry on, united in the power of truth!
Pietro Ameglio
Another phrase used by the families, 90% of whom are women, is, “We are not searching for the guilty; we are searching for treasures.” They are not seeking guilty verdicts or prison sentences but rather just to find bones or personal belongings and to be able to give their loved ones a proper burial so that they can finally rest in peace.
My other great teachers of peace and nonviolence these last few years have been the youth. Their questioning, challenges, indignation, and rebellion in the face of injustice and authoritarianism have been real sources of mutual growth. And always in actions and reflections regarding concrete situations, both close at hand and further away. We have created a Culture of Peace and Nonviolence Collective at the UNAM (National Autonomous University of Mexico). For me it is a small miracle, given my earlier experiences, that continues to be strong. Some of the youth have been working together with me for 8-10 years, and new ones are always joining. Important aspects of the work include formation in peace and nonviolence, social science research, and direct action. On their own, they have created many workshops, courses, and forms of action that they have taken to community centers, campesino and indigenous communities, migrant shelters, and schools and universities all over the country.
In July, in what was for us a new challenge, we made a film on the nonviolent struggle of the social uprising that began last April in Colombia. (Colombia: Stop in order to advance twice as far. National Strike and Nonviolent Resistence: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=22PB4i124aQ We have received a lot of positive feedback on the film, including from Gandhian activists in India. It is proving to be a useful tool for education in nonviolence. A couple of us went to Colombia earlier this year as part of an international human rights mission. Now we are putting together a second educational video on the nonviolence of the search brigades of the families of the disappeared here in Mexico. We are learning as we go. We don’t know much about video production, but we are passionate about peace and nonviolence, and we trust the good spirit and the power of the marginalized. Just as you do.
I send you a big and grateful hug. We carry on, united in the power of truth!
Pietro Ameglio
June 2020, "Viralize Solidarity
Vigil of family members of the disappeared in a church in Guerrero, Mexico, 2019
We were not able to hold our annual Latin America Dinner this year because of shelter-in-place, but we came up with a good alternative. For years, proceeds from the dinner have gone to support the innovative nonviolence education and organizing work of Pietro Ameglio in Mexico. In lieu of the dinner, we arranged a teleconference on the theme “Viralize Solidarity" with Pietro and a group of IF supporters who tuned in. In it, Pietro articulated the nonviolence pedagogy that he has developed over the last several decades, with its emphasis on cutting through concepts and illusions to drill down to the lived realities of participants, provoking significant shifts in perspective and new intellectual and moral insight (“ruptures”), and, rather than simply following the teaching or the footsteps of famous nonviolent movement leaders, instead nurturing autonomous thinking and action that are authentic and thereby more resilient. He also talked about the strategy of combining a country’s "moral reserve” with direct actions of relentless persistence as a powerful tool of nonviolent social change.
The conversation, including the questions and comments from the other participants, was wide-ranging and touched on his work with youth as well as with the families of the disappeared, some of the international links and work in which he and his co-workers are involved, and the raging anti-racism protests in the U.S. taking place at the time of the call and how heartening they have been from a Mexican perspective.
The conversation, including the questions and comments from the other participants, was wide-ranging and touched on his work with youth as well as with the families of the disappeared, some of the international links and work in which he and his co-workers are involved, and the raging anti-racism protests in the U.S. taking place at the time of the call and how heartening they have been from a Mexican perspective.
Mexico Nonviolence: Letter from Pietro Ameglio, December 2019
Vigil of family members of the disappeared in a church in Guerrero, Mexico, 2019
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Excavation of a clandestine mass grave by family members of the disappeared, Guerrero, Mexico, 2019
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"Peace and Nonviolence Laboratory” workshops, Mexico City, 2019
United in the spirit of peace and nonviolence, a spirit that, like the wind, we hear but do not know from where it blows or to where it goes
Dear friends of IF,
I am very happy to once again share with you some reflections and a message of hope at this time of year that calls us to slow down, to review our path over the last year, and to ask ourselves where we shall go in the coming year.
I expect you will have a tumultuous year, agitated, polarized, unpredictable, with the presidential election whose results will not only have immediate political, social and economic effects all over the world, but which also may bear on the survival of our species, as we saw in the climate summit in Madrid in December. I often tell my students that the deepest level of the work of peace building and nonviolence is the “humanization” of our species, which persists in committing too much genocide and other forms of brutality for it to call itself fully human.
Mexico is slowly changing with respect to justice and the division of wealth, thanks to the new government of Andrés Manual López Obrador. At the same time, with issues like security and immigration the situation has not yet improved and there is too much pressure from and dependence on Trump and the United States. Here in Mexico, every time you walk out your door, you face uncertain prospects about coming back alive and well. This is especially true for young people and women.
Dear friends of IF,
I am very happy to once again share with you some reflections and a message of hope at this time of year that calls us to slow down, to review our path over the last year, and to ask ourselves where we shall go in the coming year.
I expect you will have a tumultuous year, agitated, polarized, unpredictable, with the presidential election whose results will not only have immediate political, social and economic effects all over the world, but which also may bear on the survival of our species, as we saw in the climate summit in Madrid in December. I often tell my students that the deepest level of the work of peace building and nonviolence is the “humanization” of our species, which persists in committing too much genocide and other forms of brutality for it to call itself fully human.
Mexico is slowly changing with respect to justice and the division of wealth, thanks to the new government of Andrés Manual López Obrador. At the same time, with issues like security and immigration the situation has not yet improved and there is too much pressure from and dependence on Trump and the United States. Here in Mexico, every time you walk out your door, you face uncertain prospects about coming back alive and well. This is especially true for young people and women.
"Peace and Nonviolence Laboratory” workshops, Mexico City, 2019
We are working closely with the networks of families of the disappeared, participating in actions and search missions looking for clandestine graves. In January I took my teenage son with me on one of these missions to enable him to be more sensitive to this human tragedy. The closeness with the victims is fundamental if we are to avoid our own dehumanization and simply becoming accustomed to the fear, the violence, and the stunning statistics on the casualties. Our SERPAJ (Servicio Paz y Justicia) group, together with the Peace and Nonviolence Collective at the national university are increasingly committed to the struggle of the families. What we have tried to offer, which has been gratefully received, is the necessity, from the perspective of strategic nonviolence, of raising the level of nonviolent action to non-cooperation or civil disobedience around the issue of identifying the human remains that are found. The forensic and genetic analysis process is very expensive, specialized and slow. It ends up re-victimizing the victims because, when they do find remains, they long to know if they are of their loved one, but all too often, they just don’t get answers.
Currently the most prominent social mobilization in the country, as elsewhere in the world, is the struggle of women (feminists or not) against gender violence, a struggle in which we are fully involved. There has been a powerful national explosion of action since last September. It has included symbolic, political and nonviolent actions and also some violence. There is a lot of talk about how the rage felt by the women justifies any kind of action. We have shared with them the idea that the rage, indignation, and anger are important moral values in a struggle, but they can’t by themselves guide the choice and form of actions because all too easily that may lead to stigmatization and hatred and from there to more violence.
Currently the offices of the Department of Philosophy and Letters of the UNAM (National Autonomous University), the largest and most important in Latin America, are occupied by protesting women. That is where I teach and where the Peace and Nonviolence Collective is based. The occupation is by a group of feminist students, including several of mine. Some of them are radicalized in the line of “insurrectionist anarchism”. Sometimes they push an ideology that promotes destruction and violence for their own sake, without worrying about the consequences, with the idea that from them something new will come. Outside of the department offices there is a banner that says, “Let everything that has to burn, burn,” written with letters in the form of flames. We have always strongly supported feminist causes, both with actions and with research. But the problem that I see now is that the actions they are using are means that are not in accord with the ends they are seeking. It has been very hard for these young people to see that active nonviolence can produce much more in the way of results. They are very ideological. Since some of them are my students, and they like and respect me a lot, I have been in continual correspondence for more than a month, very direct and frank as it should be among people in struggle, but with theory and practice that are real.
Currently the most prominent social mobilization in the country, as elsewhere in the world, is the struggle of women (feminists or not) against gender violence, a struggle in which we are fully involved. There has been a powerful national explosion of action since last September. It has included symbolic, political and nonviolent actions and also some violence. There is a lot of talk about how the rage felt by the women justifies any kind of action. We have shared with them the idea that the rage, indignation, and anger are important moral values in a struggle, but they can’t by themselves guide the choice and form of actions because all too easily that may lead to stigmatization and hatred and from there to more violence.
Currently the offices of the Department of Philosophy and Letters of the UNAM (National Autonomous University), the largest and most important in Latin America, are occupied by protesting women. That is where I teach and where the Peace and Nonviolence Collective is based. The occupation is by a group of feminist students, including several of mine. Some of them are radicalized in the line of “insurrectionist anarchism”. Sometimes they push an ideology that promotes destruction and violence for their own sake, without worrying about the consequences, with the idea that from them something new will come. Outside of the department offices there is a banner that says, “Let everything that has to burn, burn,” written with letters in the form of flames. We have always strongly supported feminist causes, both with actions and with research. But the problem that I see now is that the actions they are using are means that are not in accord with the ends they are seeking. It has been very hard for these young people to see that active nonviolence can produce much more in the way of results. They are very ideological. Since some of them are my students, and they like and respect me a lot, I have been in continual correspondence for more than a month, very direct and frank as it should be among people in struggle, but with theory and practice that are real.
"Peace and Nonviolence Laboratory” workshops, Mexico City, 2019
The initial direct action of the strike of the young women was very important for shattering the normalization of the gender harassment and violence that they and other women at the university face on a daily basis. But now there is a need for dialogue and negotiation with the authorities and the university community in order to achieve their demands. And for that they don’t need an occupation/shut down so much as an open and cooperative department with the participation of all. But they are afraid that if they end the occupation they will lose their leverage in negotiations. This seems opposed to the logic of nonviolence, which is that you strengthen your moral power by drawing the broader community into your struggle.
There is much more to share with you, and to hear from you as well. I can also mention that SERPAJ and the Collective had a “child” of sorts: the publication of our book “Tejiendo alternativas: hacia una cultura de paz y noviolencia” (“Weaving Alternatives: Towards a Culture of Peace and Nonviolence”), a manual for workshops that we worked on for three years. We sent a copy to IF. It is now being used in many different places and groups. It is like our business card/letter of introduction, humble but real and useful for others, especially those most affected by violence.
As the number of young people in the Collective grows, using the manual develops their skill set, and they are becoming more and more autonomous in leading workshops and in developing new workshop designs. They now travel on their own all over the country. Recently, they were invited by, among others, the Mexico City government to present a series of eight workshops on the theme “Peace and Nonviolence Laboratory” at the historic Colegio de San Ildefonso museum and cultural center in the city center of Mexico City. This represents an important milestone in the growing interest in active nonviolence and in the emerging profile of the Peace and Nonviolence Collective as a resource on these issues.
I send you an affectionate hug, with gratitude for your prayers and your support, without which it would be impossible for us to reach so many places and undertake so many actions. And not just me, because a good deal of the support you send is shared with the young people of the Collective to support their efforts. I ask that the good spirit may be a “lamp for our feet and a light for our path” in this coming year of so many struggles for peace and that we may face those struggles with hope and with our strength renewed.
Pietro
There is much more to share with you, and to hear from you as well. I can also mention that SERPAJ and the Collective had a “child” of sorts: the publication of our book “Tejiendo alternativas: hacia una cultura de paz y noviolencia” (“Weaving Alternatives: Towards a Culture of Peace and Nonviolence”), a manual for workshops that we worked on for three years. We sent a copy to IF. It is now being used in many different places and groups. It is like our business card/letter of introduction, humble but real and useful for others, especially those most affected by violence.
As the number of young people in the Collective grows, using the manual develops their skill set, and they are becoming more and more autonomous in leading workshops and in developing new workshop designs. They now travel on their own all over the country. Recently, they were invited by, among others, the Mexico City government to present a series of eight workshops on the theme “Peace and Nonviolence Laboratory” at the historic Colegio de San Ildefonso museum and cultural center in the city center of Mexico City. This represents an important milestone in the growing interest in active nonviolence and in the emerging profile of the Peace and Nonviolence Collective as a resource on these issues.
I send you an affectionate hug, with gratitude for your prayers and your support, without which it would be impossible for us to reach so many places and undertake so many actions. And not just me, because a good deal of the support you send is shared with the young people of the Collective to support their efforts. I ask that the good spirit may be a “lamp for our feet and a light for our path” in this coming year of so many struggles for peace and that we may face those struggles with hope and with our strength renewed.
Pietro
Mexico: Update from Pietro Ameglio, July 2019
Rapinoe and Rackete: Two captains of civil disobedience to inhuman orders
By Pietro Ameglio
A version of this article appeared in Desinformémonos, 12 July, 2019, México
https://desinformemonos.org/rapinoe-y-rackete-dos-capitanas-de-la-desobediencia-debida-a-ordenes-inhumanas/
Carola Rackete and Megan Rapinoe are two young women, both captains in their very different domains, one of the sea and the other of soccer/football, just over thirty years old, German and American respectively who, in recent days, decided to defy authority, in different but equally radical ways (“radical” in the sense of going to the root), to show us all the way to build a “moral border” in one’s own identity, by openly and publicly challenging authorities who carry out inhuman policies.
Civil disobedience against Salvini
Carola Rackete, captain of Sea Watch 3 (650 tons displacement, Dutch flagged search and rescue ship), which is part of a German NGO (headquartered in Berlin) of the same name which rescues shipwrecked migrants on the Mediterranean Sea, on 29 June, docked her boat at the Italian port of Lampedusa, in Sicily, in defiance of orders not to do so, in the process ramming a Coast Guard launch which –invoking jurisdiction over Italian territorial waters—was determined to stop her. As a result, she saved 40 migrants she had previously rescued from the waters of the Mediterranean.
The migrants and crew were reaching the limits of survival, and in total desperation; this was the deciding factor for the captain to adopt this moral and practical decision, made especially acute by waiting for 48 hours in front of the port for permission to land. The punishment requested by the extreme right wing Italian government was ten years imprisonment on the grounds of disobedience, attacking a warship, aiding clandestine immigration, and navigation in restricted zones.
“It was not an act of violence, but of disobedience… I was under no obligation to obey,” said Carola. The Italian authorities were ordering her to take the migrants back to Libya, a country at war from which they had fled.
Captain Rackete also added: “I feel the moral imperative to help somebody who has not had the same opportunities I had… I know what I’m risking, but the 42 shipwrecked migrants were in a very serious condition. I brought them to safety”.
Her moral imperative is very clear: disobedience in the face of what is inhuman as a personal and social “virtue” with the intent of “doing good”. In other words, humanizing the species.
How many inhuman orders were there against the crew of the Sea Watch 3? How many acts of individual and collective disobedience did Carola, her crew and the migrants have to commit? How many intellectual, epistemological and moral ruptures did they have to face in order to say “no!” and “enough!” to the authorities? Here we see the challenges that all of us have to overcome before we can achieve a real construction of the knowledge –individual and social— necessary for justice, peace and nonviolent resistance.
It has been interesting to behold, too, the international campaign by all sorts of actors, including the German government, to put pressure on Italian Prime Minister Mateo Salvini –leader of the ultra-right League Party—stating innumerable valid reasons and heaping praise on Carola’s humanitarian action, which ultimately secured her release. It seems quite clear, then, that Rackete’s civil disobedience action was not only individual, but also part of a long, collective humanitarian culture of repudiation of the legality and legitimacy of inhuman actions, without which our species would still be, culturally, stuck in the Stone Age. Furthermore, it is clear in this case that the decision-making process also involved her entire crew, her organization, and the migrants.
Complementing these international political actions, which included demonstrations, media work, social network campaigns, etc., a boat belonging to a Spanish NGO which carries out similar rescue missions on the seas –Proactiva Open Arms—put into port in Strasbourg, near the headquarters of the European Union parliament, to denounce all actions that criminalize migrants and to declare that they were “putting out to sea again to rescue men, women and children who needed it.”
So the unjust and inhuman authority decided to stop the spiral of civil disobedience that it saw unfolding. Here we see the use of a nonviolent weapon, a kind of “political judo”, in which the punishment that Salvini attempted to impose on Carola rebounded against him, affecting his international moral legitimacy and creating a high political cost, as a result of which he was obliged to give way. We observe, once again, that the first nonviolent weapon or confrontation –the first battle, as Foucault would call it—is mounting a moral challenge.
It was a campaign in which nonviolent actions escalated, demonstrating the “relentless persistence” needed to proportionately oppose an action of state violence of that level. It was a struggle which offered a clear example of the power of nonviolent actions when they are well networked, when they are backed by moral and practical determination that is willing to contemplate non-cooperation and civil disobedience, and when part of society’s moral reserve (for example, the political class, governments, intellectuals, artists, the Pope…) “puts its body on the line” in direct, frontal and open support of a legitimate and just action.
Gandhi, Mandela, Martin Luther King, César Chávez, the Zapatista movement, many ethnic, African and peasant peoples… Jesus himself were always very clear about their struggles, always prioritizing moral law over written law, legitimacy over legality. Gandhi – who made distinctions between civil and individual, direct and indirect disobedience—proclaimed, as the cornerstone of the construction of personal and collective morality, that: “Civil disobedience
is the civil violation of immoral and oppressive laws… We obey the law based on our conscience, not through fear of punishment. Civil disobedience is an inalienable right of each citizen. To waive this right means giving up what it means to be human.”
Non-Cooperation against Trump
“I wouldn’t go to the f***ing White House,” said Megan Rapinoe when faced with the possibility of an invitation from President Trump to the U.S. women’s soccer team which was competing (and later won) the World Cup in France. The now world champion – who also received the Golden Ball and Golden Boot individual awards - had already expressed openly, when she didn’t sing the National Anthem nor place her hand on her heart, that she rejected Trump. Not accepting an invitation to the White House is an action of non-cooperation with authority, in the understanding that, if someone goes to publicly associate with that individual, he/she is directly or indirectly signaling approval of him in his other actions, and is giving him greater moral power to continue with his inhuman deeds.
Her action, like that of Carola, is not simply an act of individual rebellion. Both are part of a collective culture that decides to publicly and openly oppose orders from authorities responsible for inhuman acts. Similar to Rapinoe’s case, in recent years we have seen a series of significant public expressions of non-cooperation towards Trump on the part of outstanding U.S. athletes, which kicked-off in August 2016 when Afro-American football quarterback Colin Kaepernick knelt during the National Anthem as an act of protest against the murder of the Afro-American population at the hands of policemen:
“I am not going to stand to show pride in the flag of a country that oppresses black and other people of color.”
Similarly, Rapinoe declared: “Being gay and American, I know what it means to look at the flag knowing that it does not protect all your liberties.”
Due Disobedience to any Inhuman Order
This phrase, which refers to the disobedience that is appropriate or owed to inhuman orders, reflects much of our deepest conception of the type of knowledge we must build at intellectual, epistemological and moral levels to allow us to advance in the construction of peace based on nonviolence or other forms of struggle, in an effort to humanize our species. It was coined by eminent Argentine sociologist Juan Carlos (Lito) Marín after long decades of struggle, reflection and social research on the process of the construction within a society of an “anticipated obedience to orders to carry out a punishment when an authority demands it.”
As sociologist Myriam Fracchia correctly notes: “To disobey an inhuman order, that is, an order that exerts harm on another or on oneself, is a moral weapon, and the greatest challenge posed by nonviolent action.” (J.C.Marin, Conocimiento y desobediencia a toda orden inhumana {Knowledge and Disobedience to any Inhuman Order}, Prologue by Myriam Fracchia, Cuernavaca, UAEM, 2014: 11).
In the Final Declaration of the XXII Congress of the Latin American Association of Sociology (ALAS) in Concepción, Chile in October 1999, this principle was taken up again: “We unanimously affirm that, in the ethical practice of our profession, social scientists cannot limit themselves to formulating a diagnosis of their societies without knowing and facing the multiple dimensions in which the legal monopoly of violence is exercised in an inhuman and arbitrary manner in our continent. Thus, we posit the urgency of collaborating in the construction of a moral judgment that would enable breaking with forms of uncritical obedience to authority, making observable and promoting the due disobedience of any inhuman order.”
This theoretical and practical construction requires the complexity of many dimensions. One of the first is to render “observable” all inhuman or unjust actions and to allow these actions to generate in our personal and social identities a “dignified anger” (Zapatista movement) or a “capacity for indignation” (Hessel), keeping in mind the admonition of Hannah Arendt: “…the clearest sign of dehumanization is not anger or violence, but the evident absence of both.“
But… Indignation at what?
Towards inhuman orders, which means increasing in each one of us the knowledge necessary to pull apart this type of command that the social order imposes on us with the message that they are totally normal.
How can we face these orders that dehumanize us and dehumanize the person who issues them?
Another fundamental dimension is to become aware, as Stanley Milgram used to say, that “disobedience is the ultimate instrument by means of which we can end a tension. It is anything but easy…” Therefore, it is not a matter of willfulness, improvisation, or idealism unrooted in a “reality principle”, a careful analysis of a situation. Instead it must be built and put into practice as a public action, taking into account the accumulated historical and personal knowledge of the subjects involved.
There is an urgent need for social struggle to build peace with justice. We must promote this kind of capacity building and nonviolent civil resistance actions, including the possibility of non-cooperation and civil disobedience that is proportionate to the level of belligerent actions that we endure. Nothing less will suffice. We need more conscienticized bodies (what Marín calls moral weapons) on the line, starting with our own.
Affectionately!
Pietro
By Pietro Ameglio
A version of this article appeared in Desinformémonos, 12 July, 2019, México
https://desinformemonos.org/rapinoe-y-rackete-dos-capitanas-de-la-desobediencia-debida-a-ordenes-inhumanas/
Carola Rackete and Megan Rapinoe are two young women, both captains in their very different domains, one of the sea and the other of soccer/football, just over thirty years old, German and American respectively who, in recent days, decided to defy authority, in different but equally radical ways (“radical” in the sense of going to the root), to show us all the way to build a “moral border” in one’s own identity, by openly and publicly challenging authorities who carry out inhuman policies.
Civil disobedience against Salvini
Carola Rackete, captain of Sea Watch 3 (650 tons displacement, Dutch flagged search and rescue ship), which is part of a German NGO (headquartered in Berlin) of the same name which rescues shipwrecked migrants on the Mediterranean Sea, on 29 June, docked her boat at the Italian port of Lampedusa, in Sicily, in defiance of orders not to do so, in the process ramming a Coast Guard launch which –invoking jurisdiction over Italian territorial waters—was determined to stop her. As a result, she saved 40 migrants she had previously rescued from the waters of the Mediterranean.
The migrants and crew were reaching the limits of survival, and in total desperation; this was the deciding factor for the captain to adopt this moral and practical decision, made especially acute by waiting for 48 hours in front of the port for permission to land. The punishment requested by the extreme right wing Italian government was ten years imprisonment on the grounds of disobedience, attacking a warship, aiding clandestine immigration, and navigation in restricted zones.
“It was not an act of violence, but of disobedience… I was under no obligation to obey,” said Carola. The Italian authorities were ordering her to take the migrants back to Libya, a country at war from which they had fled.
Captain Rackete also added: “I feel the moral imperative to help somebody who has not had the same opportunities I had… I know what I’m risking, but the 42 shipwrecked migrants were in a very serious condition. I brought them to safety”.
Her moral imperative is very clear: disobedience in the face of what is inhuman as a personal and social “virtue” with the intent of “doing good”. In other words, humanizing the species.
How many inhuman orders were there against the crew of the Sea Watch 3? How many acts of individual and collective disobedience did Carola, her crew and the migrants have to commit? How many intellectual, epistemological and moral ruptures did they have to face in order to say “no!” and “enough!” to the authorities? Here we see the challenges that all of us have to overcome before we can achieve a real construction of the knowledge –individual and social— necessary for justice, peace and nonviolent resistance.
It has been interesting to behold, too, the international campaign by all sorts of actors, including the German government, to put pressure on Italian Prime Minister Mateo Salvini –leader of the ultra-right League Party—stating innumerable valid reasons and heaping praise on Carola’s humanitarian action, which ultimately secured her release. It seems quite clear, then, that Rackete’s civil disobedience action was not only individual, but also part of a long, collective humanitarian culture of repudiation of the legality and legitimacy of inhuman actions, without which our species would still be, culturally, stuck in the Stone Age. Furthermore, it is clear in this case that the decision-making process also involved her entire crew, her organization, and the migrants.
Complementing these international political actions, which included demonstrations, media work, social network campaigns, etc., a boat belonging to a Spanish NGO which carries out similar rescue missions on the seas –Proactiva Open Arms—put into port in Strasbourg, near the headquarters of the European Union parliament, to denounce all actions that criminalize migrants and to declare that they were “putting out to sea again to rescue men, women and children who needed it.”
So the unjust and inhuman authority decided to stop the spiral of civil disobedience that it saw unfolding. Here we see the use of a nonviolent weapon, a kind of “political judo”, in which the punishment that Salvini attempted to impose on Carola rebounded against him, affecting his international moral legitimacy and creating a high political cost, as a result of which he was obliged to give way. We observe, once again, that the first nonviolent weapon or confrontation –the first battle, as Foucault would call it—is mounting a moral challenge.
It was a campaign in which nonviolent actions escalated, demonstrating the “relentless persistence” needed to proportionately oppose an action of state violence of that level. It was a struggle which offered a clear example of the power of nonviolent actions when they are well networked, when they are backed by moral and practical determination that is willing to contemplate non-cooperation and civil disobedience, and when part of society’s moral reserve (for example, the political class, governments, intellectuals, artists, the Pope…) “puts its body on the line” in direct, frontal and open support of a legitimate and just action.
Gandhi, Mandela, Martin Luther King, César Chávez, the Zapatista movement, many ethnic, African and peasant peoples… Jesus himself were always very clear about their struggles, always prioritizing moral law over written law, legitimacy over legality. Gandhi – who made distinctions between civil and individual, direct and indirect disobedience—proclaimed, as the cornerstone of the construction of personal and collective morality, that: “Civil disobedience
is the civil violation of immoral and oppressive laws… We obey the law based on our conscience, not through fear of punishment. Civil disobedience is an inalienable right of each citizen. To waive this right means giving up what it means to be human.”
Non-Cooperation against Trump
“I wouldn’t go to the f***ing White House,” said Megan Rapinoe when faced with the possibility of an invitation from President Trump to the U.S. women’s soccer team which was competing (and later won) the World Cup in France. The now world champion – who also received the Golden Ball and Golden Boot individual awards - had already expressed openly, when she didn’t sing the National Anthem nor place her hand on her heart, that she rejected Trump. Not accepting an invitation to the White House is an action of non-cooperation with authority, in the understanding that, if someone goes to publicly associate with that individual, he/she is directly or indirectly signaling approval of him in his other actions, and is giving him greater moral power to continue with his inhuman deeds.
Her action, like that of Carola, is not simply an act of individual rebellion. Both are part of a collective culture that decides to publicly and openly oppose orders from authorities responsible for inhuman acts. Similar to Rapinoe’s case, in recent years we have seen a series of significant public expressions of non-cooperation towards Trump on the part of outstanding U.S. athletes, which kicked-off in August 2016 when Afro-American football quarterback Colin Kaepernick knelt during the National Anthem as an act of protest against the murder of the Afro-American population at the hands of policemen:
“I am not going to stand to show pride in the flag of a country that oppresses black and other people of color.”
Similarly, Rapinoe declared: “Being gay and American, I know what it means to look at the flag knowing that it does not protect all your liberties.”
Due Disobedience to any Inhuman Order
This phrase, which refers to the disobedience that is appropriate or owed to inhuman orders, reflects much of our deepest conception of the type of knowledge we must build at intellectual, epistemological and moral levels to allow us to advance in the construction of peace based on nonviolence or other forms of struggle, in an effort to humanize our species. It was coined by eminent Argentine sociologist Juan Carlos (Lito) Marín after long decades of struggle, reflection and social research on the process of the construction within a society of an “anticipated obedience to orders to carry out a punishment when an authority demands it.”
As sociologist Myriam Fracchia correctly notes: “To disobey an inhuman order, that is, an order that exerts harm on another or on oneself, is a moral weapon, and the greatest challenge posed by nonviolent action.” (J.C.Marin, Conocimiento y desobediencia a toda orden inhumana {Knowledge and Disobedience to any Inhuman Order}, Prologue by Myriam Fracchia, Cuernavaca, UAEM, 2014: 11).
In the Final Declaration of the XXII Congress of the Latin American Association of Sociology (ALAS) in Concepción, Chile in October 1999, this principle was taken up again: “We unanimously affirm that, in the ethical practice of our profession, social scientists cannot limit themselves to formulating a diagnosis of their societies without knowing and facing the multiple dimensions in which the legal monopoly of violence is exercised in an inhuman and arbitrary manner in our continent. Thus, we posit the urgency of collaborating in the construction of a moral judgment that would enable breaking with forms of uncritical obedience to authority, making observable and promoting the due disobedience of any inhuman order.”
This theoretical and practical construction requires the complexity of many dimensions. One of the first is to render “observable” all inhuman or unjust actions and to allow these actions to generate in our personal and social identities a “dignified anger” (Zapatista movement) or a “capacity for indignation” (Hessel), keeping in mind the admonition of Hannah Arendt: “…the clearest sign of dehumanization is not anger or violence, but the evident absence of both.“
But… Indignation at what?
Towards inhuman orders, which means increasing in each one of us the knowledge necessary to pull apart this type of command that the social order imposes on us with the message that they are totally normal.
How can we face these orders that dehumanize us and dehumanize the person who issues them?
Another fundamental dimension is to become aware, as Stanley Milgram used to say, that “disobedience is the ultimate instrument by means of which we can end a tension. It is anything but easy…” Therefore, it is not a matter of willfulness, improvisation, or idealism unrooted in a “reality principle”, a careful analysis of a situation. Instead it must be built and put into practice as a public action, taking into account the accumulated historical and personal knowledge of the subjects involved.
There is an urgent need for social struggle to build peace with justice. We must promote this kind of capacity building and nonviolent civil resistance actions, including the possibility of non-cooperation and civil disobedience that is proportionate to the level of belligerent actions that we endure. Nothing less will suffice. We need more conscienticized bodies (what Marín calls moral weapons) on the line, starting with our own.
Affectionately!
Pietro
Serpaj Activists
Cuernavaca, December 12, 2018
Dear friends of IF,
I send you warm regards and my best wishes that this year has been one of positive experiences for you, your families and your friends.
I am writing you on this day that is so significant in Mexico, the feast day of the apparition of the Virgin of Guadalupe. It is the greatest feast day in a country that, before it is Mexican, is Guadalupen. Fr. Donald Hessler, the Maryknoll missionary who did so much to introduce the idea of nonviolence in Mexico during the 1970s and who taught us so much, used to tell us how the true message of Mary of Guadalupe to the Indian Juan Diego, who was oppressed by the Spanish, was kept hidden for so long, but that it was recorded in the Nican Mopohua, a book written by indigenous Nahuatl in their language during the 16th Century [ED: the date of the apparition is 1531]. The message resonates profoundly with the Gospel and the liberation of the oppressed. The Virgin never speaks with the bishop. She only speaks with great tenderness and firmness with the enslaved Indian who is charged with being a messenger to the religious authority. Fr. Donald always insisted that what Mary asked of Juan Diego were the two virtues of nonviolence: humility and audacity.
I think that these two values are important for understanding what has happened this past year with the presidential election in Mexico, as well as with our personal and collective work, of which you are an important part because of your support and confidence. The evening of the July 1 elections was very special for millions of people in this country. Nobody can take away from us that moment of feeling that the powerful had suffered a “partial defeat.” We knew that that next day they would begin to negotiate, to try to corral, to threaten the new government so that could carry on their business behind the backs of the people. But that night the people defeated them. Over the years, we have been involved in many struggles against the powerful, and we do not regret undertaking them. But it is also true that many times it has been the powerful that have given us “partial defeats,” achieving their objectives while abusing human rights, justice, and environmental protection.
The triumph of the new president, Andrés Manuel Lopez Obrador, with more than 30 million votes and unprecedented majorities in both houses of Congress, was a massive nonviolent action of the people who were fed up with so much corruption and an economic model that makes us increasingly poor and less in control of the natural resources of the country. It was a hard blow, somewhat unexpected, for the political and economic elite. There are some people coming in with the new administration who have a history of honesty and service to the people. They are bringing with them initiatives to improve distribution of government spending to benefit the people, to put the brakes on the corruption and impunity, and to promote peace in the country. But there are plenty of contradictions, imposed by outside forces, as well. A Truth Commission is to be established to investigate the genocidal killing of the 43 students from Ayotzinapa in 2014 at the same time as a new National Guard, in the form of militarized police, is to be created. There is talk about support for youth, vulnerable populations and indigenous while at the same time they proceed with plans for large-scale infrastructure and extractive industry projects in the Southeast that represent a direct threat to peasant and indigenous communities.
From a nonviolence perspective, for this political change in Mexico to be a true hope with real change for the people and not just illusions and empty words, it is critical that civil society exercises its power and social control over the authorities and their allies, obliging them, as the Zapatistas say, to “rule by obeying” the people.
One of the main social actors in this process of change is the families of the disappeared (more than 40,000 people have gone missing in Mexico), of the murdered (more than 250,000 in 10 years), and of those who have been forcefully displaced by the war (hundreds of thousands in the country). A key indicator will be whether the families are listented to in policy making and whether the disappeared are found. Currently we are participating in preparations for the IV Search Caravan for Disappeared Persons which will take place in Guerrero in January (for which your financial support is being very helpful). [ED: These caravans have uncovered large numbers of clandestine mass graves across Mexico.]
Another key actor in determining the potential for change is the youth of the country. We have the privilege of working with and learning from many of them and their groups on issues of nonviolence and peacebuilding.
A huge student movement exploded at the UNAM (National Autonomous University) in September and lasted a couple of months. It was provoked by an armed attack on students on campus in the middle of the day by thugs whose objective was to destabilize the university. In response, tens of thousands of youth filled the streets with the demand: “No more violence at the universities!” There were student strikes at a number of universities, governed by popular assemblies of the students. As a result there were changes in university regulations and security practices. This movement was very important in a country where so many church, university, artistic and intellectual leaders have kept quiet instead of protesting in public spaces against the violence and the complicity of the authorities.
A number of the youth who have worked with us for years, leading workshops and organizing nonviolent actions, were among the student leaders of the protests. This social movement gave them the opportunity to apply what they have learned about theory and practice and to be active participants in the reflection and planning process in order to choose the best forms of nonviolent struggle for achieving peace on the university campuses. We also did a social science research project, based on student surveys, on the main incidents of violence at one of the schools within the university. With this objective data, we demanded that the department directors take immediate action to reduce the violence. This sort of training is very important for the youth. Being able to marshal scientific data is a powerful tool in nonviolence.
It was important for me to observe how simple efforts over years could all of a sudden flourish and have such a strong influence on a national mobilization as big and important as the recent student movement. It is a bit like the Gospel. One plants seeds without knowing when the fruit will be harvested or by whom. I have always believed that critical reflection, social science research and nonviolent direct action are different sides of the same coin and are all indispensable.
The student mobilization was followed by many actions in support of the Migrant Caravan from Central America to the U.S. that evoked so much solidarity around the country. Beyond the origin and particular form of the Caravan and how it played out in the political process in the U.S., the Caravan showed itself to be a legitimate form of nonviolent action by people who are overwhelmed by violence and economic misery and who, instead of falling into the violence all around them, decided to walk (like Gandhi, the Zapatistas and so many others) and to suffer in order to express their determination to seek justice and peace. The migrants too are peacebuilders.
I have just returned from a visit to the Gujarat Vidyapyth university, founded by Gandhi in Ahmedabad, India in 1920. I was there for an international conference of activists and academics focused on peace and nonviolence. I had been invited to share our Latin American experiences in these areas with the English speaking world (U.S., Europe, Asia, Oceana, and Africa) with whom, because of the language difference and other factors, it is difficult to have exchanges. We believe that we bring original experiences that can be helpful for struggles elsewhere, and viceversa. My presentation on 30 years of personal and collective experience was entitled “Disobedient Peace.” In it I reflected on how we can construct subjects capable of “disobeying inhuman and unjust orders” that we are given. This process is at the center of all that we do. I think it is both an idea and a lived experience that can be helpful in any part of the world.
It was gratifying to share the experience in India with three of my students who are specializing in Gandhian Studies at the Gandhian university. Each year we try to send students there to learn and to deepen their personal commitment. It is something of a mystery how we manage to do it, because they don’t have the necessary financial resources, but they work hard and they find them. They all come back changed and feeling more committed. The Rector of the university invited us to teach a one-month course next year, sharing experiences of nonviolence and Gandhian culture from Mexico and Latin America as a way of broadening and updating the dissemination of Gandhian nonviolence. It is a challenging offer, and I don’t know if I will have the energy to do it, but it is a way of supporting this culture that unites us.
Very well; I won’t go on any longer. With a grateful heart for this sharing of life and spirit that has brought us together, I send you my best wishes for a Christmas full of peace, joy, and hope for you and your loved ones.
Affectionately!
Pietro
Dear friends of IF,
I send you warm regards and my best wishes that this year has been one of positive experiences for you, your families and your friends.
I am writing you on this day that is so significant in Mexico, the feast day of the apparition of the Virgin of Guadalupe. It is the greatest feast day in a country that, before it is Mexican, is Guadalupen. Fr. Donald Hessler, the Maryknoll missionary who did so much to introduce the idea of nonviolence in Mexico during the 1970s and who taught us so much, used to tell us how the true message of Mary of Guadalupe to the Indian Juan Diego, who was oppressed by the Spanish, was kept hidden for so long, but that it was recorded in the Nican Mopohua, a book written by indigenous Nahuatl in their language during the 16th Century [ED: the date of the apparition is 1531]. The message resonates profoundly with the Gospel and the liberation of the oppressed. The Virgin never speaks with the bishop. She only speaks with great tenderness and firmness with the enslaved Indian who is charged with being a messenger to the religious authority. Fr. Donald always insisted that what Mary asked of Juan Diego were the two virtues of nonviolence: humility and audacity.
I think that these two values are important for understanding what has happened this past year with the presidential election in Mexico, as well as with our personal and collective work, of which you are an important part because of your support and confidence. The evening of the July 1 elections was very special for millions of people in this country. Nobody can take away from us that moment of feeling that the powerful had suffered a “partial defeat.” We knew that that next day they would begin to negotiate, to try to corral, to threaten the new government so that could carry on their business behind the backs of the people. But that night the people defeated them. Over the years, we have been involved in many struggles against the powerful, and we do not regret undertaking them. But it is also true that many times it has been the powerful that have given us “partial defeats,” achieving their objectives while abusing human rights, justice, and environmental protection.
The triumph of the new president, Andrés Manuel Lopez Obrador, with more than 30 million votes and unprecedented majorities in both houses of Congress, was a massive nonviolent action of the people who were fed up with so much corruption and an economic model that makes us increasingly poor and less in control of the natural resources of the country. It was a hard blow, somewhat unexpected, for the political and economic elite. There are some people coming in with the new administration who have a history of honesty and service to the people. They are bringing with them initiatives to improve distribution of government spending to benefit the people, to put the brakes on the corruption and impunity, and to promote peace in the country. But there are plenty of contradictions, imposed by outside forces, as well. A Truth Commission is to be established to investigate the genocidal killing of the 43 students from Ayotzinapa in 2014 at the same time as a new National Guard, in the form of militarized police, is to be created. There is talk about support for youth, vulnerable populations and indigenous while at the same time they proceed with plans for large-scale infrastructure and extractive industry projects in the Southeast that represent a direct threat to peasant and indigenous communities.
From a nonviolence perspective, for this political change in Mexico to be a true hope with real change for the people and not just illusions and empty words, it is critical that civil society exercises its power and social control over the authorities and their allies, obliging them, as the Zapatistas say, to “rule by obeying” the people.
One of the main social actors in this process of change is the families of the disappeared (more than 40,000 people have gone missing in Mexico), of the murdered (more than 250,000 in 10 years), and of those who have been forcefully displaced by the war (hundreds of thousands in the country). A key indicator will be whether the families are listented to in policy making and whether the disappeared are found. Currently we are participating in preparations for the IV Search Caravan for Disappeared Persons which will take place in Guerrero in January (for which your financial support is being very helpful). [ED: These caravans have uncovered large numbers of clandestine mass graves across Mexico.]
Another key actor in determining the potential for change is the youth of the country. We have the privilege of working with and learning from many of them and their groups on issues of nonviolence and peacebuilding.
A huge student movement exploded at the UNAM (National Autonomous University) in September and lasted a couple of months. It was provoked by an armed attack on students on campus in the middle of the day by thugs whose objective was to destabilize the university. In response, tens of thousands of youth filled the streets with the demand: “No more violence at the universities!” There were student strikes at a number of universities, governed by popular assemblies of the students. As a result there were changes in university regulations and security practices. This movement was very important in a country where so many church, university, artistic and intellectual leaders have kept quiet instead of protesting in public spaces against the violence and the complicity of the authorities.
A number of the youth who have worked with us for years, leading workshops and organizing nonviolent actions, were among the student leaders of the protests. This social movement gave them the opportunity to apply what they have learned about theory and practice and to be active participants in the reflection and planning process in order to choose the best forms of nonviolent struggle for achieving peace on the university campuses. We also did a social science research project, based on student surveys, on the main incidents of violence at one of the schools within the university. With this objective data, we demanded that the department directors take immediate action to reduce the violence. This sort of training is very important for the youth. Being able to marshal scientific data is a powerful tool in nonviolence.
It was important for me to observe how simple efforts over years could all of a sudden flourish and have such a strong influence on a national mobilization as big and important as the recent student movement. It is a bit like the Gospel. One plants seeds without knowing when the fruit will be harvested or by whom. I have always believed that critical reflection, social science research and nonviolent direct action are different sides of the same coin and are all indispensable.
The student mobilization was followed by many actions in support of the Migrant Caravan from Central America to the U.S. that evoked so much solidarity around the country. Beyond the origin and particular form of the Caravan and how it played out in the political process in the U.S., the Caravan showed itself to be a legitimate form of nonviolent action by people who are overwhelmed by violence and economic misery and who, instead of falling into the violence all around them, decided to walk (like Gandhi, the Zapatistas and so many others) and to suffer in order to express their determination to seek justice and peace. The migrants too are peacebuilders.
I have just returned from a visit to the Gujarat Vidyapyth university, founded by Gandhi in Ahmedabad, India in 1920. I was there for an international conference of activists and academics focused on peace and nonviolence. I had been invited to share our Latin American experiences in these areas with the English speaking world (U.S., Europe, Asia, Oceana, and Africa) with whom, because of the language difference and other factors, it is difficult to have exchanges. We believe that we bring original experiences that can be helpful for struggles elsewhere, and viceversa. My presentation on 30 years of personal and collective experience was entitled “Disobedient Peace.” In it I reflected on how we can construct subjects capable of “disobeying inhuman and unjust orders” that we are given. This process is at the center of all that we do. I think it is both an idea and a lived experience that can be helpful in any part of the world.
It was gratifying to share the experience in India with three of my students who are specializing in Gandhian Studies at the Gandhian university. Each year we try to send students there to learn and to deepen their personal commitment. It is something of a mystery how we manage to do it, because they don’t have the necessary financial resources, but they work hard and they find them. They all come back changed and feeling more committed. The Rector of the university invited us to teach a one-month course next year, sharing experiences of nonviolence and Gandhian culture from Mexico and Latin America as a way of broadening and updating the dissemination of Gandhian nonviolence. It is a challenging offer, and I don’t know if I will have the energy to do it, but it is a way of supporting this culture that unites us.
Very well; I won’t go on any longer. With a grateful heart for this sharing of life and spirit that has brought us together, I send you my best wishes for a Christmas full of peace, joy, and hope for you and your loved ones.
Affectionately!
Pietro
Watch a 15-minute video entitled "Weaving a Culture of Peace in Mexico". This video describes the work of the Peace and Nonviolence Collective in Mexico City, a group of young activists that emerged from some of the classes Pietro taught.
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Cuernavaca, December 29, 2017
Dear friends of IF, The year is ending and I wanted to renew my communication with you and to share something of this past year which has been too fast and intense for all of us, for you with Trump and for us for the relentless, high level of violence that we are experiencing. (2017 was the most violent year in Mexico in 20 years.) The year has passed in the blink of an eye. I often wanted to stop for a moment and collect my thoughts but it seems that I was never able to do so. So let me try now. A short time ago, I received a message from a good friend in Colombia, someone very committed to peace and nonviolence, and someone wise about hope. In it he said, “We have many goals, and we work for them, doing everything we can, but with the certainty, so as to not lose hope, that it does not depend on us. It is Life that does the necessary tallies. And along the way, that awareness adds a bit of humility to our efforts.” In “God’s sense of humor”, to quote a phrase of our mentor Fr. Donald Hessler, life has united us in a collective, communitarian project of nonviolent struggle for justice and peace in Mexico. That is something I never forget. Our collaboration with you gives me strength but also a greater sense of commitment and responsibility. 
SERPAJ Activists
The ending of one year and beginning of another lends itself to deeper reflection about what we have done and what we want to continue. We can share details about our activities at another time, in the annual report that we always send. Turning to that sense of the deeper strategy of this past year, I have come to see, based on my continual observation of our social movements and struggles and of this state of my life, that the key task is the formation of young people who can continue and improve all the justice and peace processes in which we are involved and who serve the poorest and most marginalized communities, ethnic groups and persons. I have seen too many times how very constructive processes fall apart because key leaders are forced to pull out, whether because of violence, repression or different kinds of personal situations. The Achilles heel has been not thinking carefully about who will be able to continue the process with at least equal or greater force. It is imperative that we deal seriously with the challenge of assuring the sustainability of social struggles and the building of a culture of peace and nonviolence, without over dependence on specific leaders
When I speak of formation in peace and nonviolence, I am referring to the development of persons with the capacity to think critically and autonomously, with their own head, not simply repeating the actions and phrases of other great leaders which in the present context may not be useful or may even be risky. There is a strong tendency to emulation because of the great leaders that have existed in history. In this sense, the formation of young people, assisting them to learn to think for themselves, takes a lot of time and lots of reading and direct experience of different kinds of civil resistance. I have been deepening my reflection on how to make real in my practice the phrase of John the Baptist who responded when asked about Jesus: “I must decrease, he must increase.” Fr. Donald always challenged us with the exhortation that the children should be “better” than their parents, the students should be “better” than their teachers, etc. During this past year, we have seen some significant growth in the number of youth who have joined our Peace and Nonviolence Team at the UNAM (National Autonomous University) and there are now 20 who now have at least three years working together and who |
have greatly deepened their commitment and their knowledge. This process has included a number of international exchanges lasting from several weeks to a year. These include the Escola de Cultura de Pau (Culture of Peace School) at the Autonomous University of Barcelona, the Gandhian university in Ahmedabad, India and the summer course offered at the Middlebury Institute of International Studies at Monterey [editor’s note: Former IF board member Pushpa Iyer is the director of that program]. These exchanges have enabled us to connect with and even become part of important international nonviolence networks.
At the same time, on the national scene, the enormous levels of violence and social fear and the catastrophic earthquakes in September have opened opportunities for us to do what Gandhi called “Constructive Program” in many communities in Mexico City and central and southeastern Mexico and to develop new ties and networks for the future. We also undertook a campaign across the entire UNAM, including graphics, articles, performances and workshops, to promote community reflection on how peace can only be the fruit of justice and community organization and not the result of more police, fences and the closing of public spaces, as the authorities are insisting. We also undertook actions to pressure the university authorities to provide legal, technical and political support for the families of university students who have been disappeared or murdered. All of this capacity-building work and nonviolent action for peace help us to be better equipped, organized, committed and linked in networks of action and mutual security in the face of all the violence that may be coming with the presidential election in July 2018 as well as with the repercussions of the draconian Interior Security Law that was recently approved. Representatives of the United Nations and Amnesty International have criticized the new law as a grave threat to human rights because it gives the armed forces and the president carte blanche to confront whatever they consider threats to “internal security” (which seem to be primarily anything that threatens the money of investors). That includes marches and demonstrations. It is yet another way of increasing the criminalization and repression of social movements. Finally, I want to share a bit about my involvement in the Catholic Nonviolence Initiative, which is being promoted by many religious and laypersons around the world. It began with an international conference at the Vatican in April 2016 and the work continues now through a number of commissions. I am part of Roundtable 5 on the theme of “The Power of Nonviolence.” One of the key objectives is for Pope Francis to issue an encyclical on nonviolence and “Just Peace” that would supersede traditional Catholic Church teaching on “Just War”. I don’t know what will come of this initiative. It would be a bit of a miracle if the Pope issued an encyclical that proclaims an explicit commitment of the global church to nonviolence. But I am encouraged by the commitment and enthusiasm and excellence of the people involved in the project. And the initiative was able to draft an historic statement on peace and nonviolence that was the basis of the annual proclamation that the Pope issued on the occasion of the World Day of Peace last year (January 1, 2017). Well, perhaps I went on too long, but these are some basic reflections on the legacy of the past year and the challenges that 2018 poses. I am so grateful for your support and confidence, which mean so much to me. I trust that, in whatever form it may take, we shall continue to confront those challenges together, in body and spirit, with humility and determination. Peace and joy for you and your loved ones, Pietro |
Cuernavaca, April, 2017
Once again I am happy to renew our long-distance dialogue and our commitment to continue to struggle together to build justice and peace in Mexico. I mention first the idea of justice (both social and legal) because it is what we are most lacking in Mexico, and without it, it is not possible to even begin to speak of peace.
I also reiterate my gratitude toward you, both individually and collectively, for trusting in our and my work and for stepping forward to share generously a part of this path.
This month we commemorate the assassination, 98 years ago, of the Mexican revolutionary leader, Emiliano Zapata, as well as the vile assassination, 49 years ago, of Martin Luther King. I read recently about the remembrances in the US this month of the 50th anniversary of King’s Riverside Church speech, “Beyond Vietnam: A Time to Break the Silence,” and its profound relevance to today. In a certain sense, what many, very diverse social sectors in Mexico are trying to do today is precisely “break the silence” and challenge the normalization of and impunity for violence that depends on that silence.
Martin Luther King and Zapata were two great leaders of social struggle, intimately united with the people. They had more things in common than differences, even if they chose paths of struggle that appear opposed. The moral force of each of them, the trust the people placed in them, and their relentless persistence in the pursuit of truth and justice were unbreakable.
I just came from a meeting at the university with a couple who are my age, old friends, Gerardo and Norma Gomez. They had to flee Morelos three years ago, because at that time, Norma and three of her girls were kidnapped by an organized crime gang, which operated in apparent collusion with the police. Gerardo works in natural medicine, they have scant resources, and the whole family had to go to live in the state of Mexico, 3 hours from Cuernavaca, in a very small and poor town. Their life has been very hard, and all as a result of their work with the Movement for Peace with Justice and Dignity. We have tried to help them during these years. Several organizations, including ours, are trying to build a security strategy that will enable the family to return to Cuernavaca next July. The risks are very real, but they have asked us to confront them together.
A couple of months ago, a long-time member of our SERPAJ group who works in indigenous communities in Tabasco was kidnapped. He was released after a day, but he had to pay a large ransom. He has not returned to his town. Instead he is living clandestinely.
Kidnapping, and displacement from one’s home (something which I experienced at the end of 2011 and the first part of 2012 because of the attack we suffered when we were traveling to visit the indigenous community of Ostula) is commonplace in Mexico, whether the victims are movement activists or just normal citizens. And always we see in these situations the complicity of the government, whether national, state or local, with organized crime. The government that is supposed to protect us instead is colluding with the very criminals who are victimizing us. It makes us feel vulnerable and hesitant to travel about.
The principle national drama these days is that of the victims of forced disappearance. Their family members continue to discover clandestine graves all over the country, oftentimes as a result of anonymous tips from gangsters or from local people. Sometimes the graves are the work of organized crime and sometimes they are the work of the government. (In the latter case, typically government officials have buried unidentified crime victims, without even preserving DNA samples for later identification.) It is incredible how, seemingly every week, mass graves are discovered, with dozens of bodies. Just a couple of weeks ago, here in the state of Morelos, a grave was discovered with 46 bodies, including one of a high school girl wearing her school uniform. Recently the National Human Rights Commission (CNDH) published a report noting the discovery of 855 clandestine graves between 2007 and 2016. The report also noted that the official government figure for the number of disappeared is 32,236. If that is the official figure, we can only imagine what the real figure is.
And the government and the political class act as if everything is normal!
The search of the family members for their disappeared loved ones is something we have to support, however we can, and very carefully so as not to expose ourselves, especially the youth, to unnecessary risk.
I have had a lot of contact with the organizations of family members of the disappeared. In fact, some of the funds you sent us during the first quarter of 2017 were used to support the caravans of family members in their search for mass graves. In an exemplary manner, they have decided that it is up to them to take on this task that the government will never do, because the government itself shares the responsibility for those disappearances. This is what Gandhi called non-cooperation, and what the Zapatistas call autonomy.
To add to the drama, in the last couple of months, with total impunity and even in front of their family members, four journalists have been murdered, including Miroslava Breach, a very well-known reporter for the national newspaper La Jornada. [Ed. Note: A fifth journalist, Filiberto Alvarez, was killed on April 29.] It is a global scandal. Last year, Mexico was the third most deadly country in the world to practice journalism.
In the midst of this situation, our peace and nonviolence work has focused on two areas: 1. Support for social movements in the form of workshops, study materials, public talks and panel discussions, mediation between the government and different social movements (teachers, family members of the disappeared, peasant and indigenous communities who are defending their territory and natural resources); 2. Leadership development in particular with young activists and teachers on themes related to their struggles, with an eye toward creating a national network of youth who are building peace in the midst of terrible violence. (In May we will probably have a second planning retreat focused on building such a network.)
The work of formation in nonviolence and peace is very complex, and slow, especially in the context of the violence and instability here in Mexico today. We believe it is something that should be done well and carefully rooted in historical issues; in values and spirituality; in a strong moral foundation capable of confronting adversaries and society; in nonviolent tactics, actions and strategies; and in the ability to do clear analysis of what is happening where the activists are engaged in struggle, because if the analysis is wrong, their very lives could be at risk. My experience, and the reality that my energy is not as great as it was when I was younger, have taught me that this approach is very important in order to ensure that this culture of peace may grow and spread and not be dependent on any one person.
For example, during Holy Week some members of our Peace and Nonviolence Collective at the UNAM (National Autonomous University in Mexico City) worked with the migrant movement of Fr. Solalinde in Ixtepec (Oaxaca) and with the Zapatista movement in their conference in Chiapas entitled “The Walls of Capital, The Cracks of the Left”. Others lead workshops that they themselves designed in two poor and violent neighborhoods of Mexico City, Santa Fe and Tepito. The workshops, which are for women, youth or children, cover peace and nonviolence in human relations, in gender relations, in sexist language, in the body, and in direct action for peace. In addition, some of the women from our Grial-Serpaj group went to Chiapas to work with women there on health issues.
Another of our groups, “We Miss Them” (Nos Hacen Falta), which works to find UNAM students who have disappeared and to pressure the university to support the families in their search, is organizing a national conference in the near future, with accompanying actions.
I am happy that the youth from our peace and nonviolence collectives are preparing a video on their work to share with you. They have been thinking about and discussing it and working with a lot of enthusiasm on it. I’m happy they will have this direct contact with you.
We are all very clear that all of this is what we call “ant” work; small steps, lots of ants. The results are modest but real: the organizing work, including direct actions; the leadership development of the youth and women; the concrete actions for peace and nonviolence that they undertake in their distinct situations in Mexico.
I send you my best wishes for strength and inspiration in the Spirit to sustain you in your work and in your lives. We carry on closely united, thanks to your generous sharing.
In friendship,
Pietro
Once again I am happy to renew our long-distance dialogue and our commitment to continue to struggle together to build justice and peace in Mexico. I mention first the idea of justice (both social and legal) because it is what we are most lacking in Mexico, and without it, it is not possible to even begin to speak of peace.
I also reiterate my gratitude toward you, both individually and collectively, for trusting in our and my work and for stepping forward to share generously a part of this path.
This month we commemorate the assassination, 98 years ago, of the Mexican revolutionary leader, Emiliano Zapata, as well as the vile assassination, 49 years ago, of Martin Luther King. I read recently about the remembrances in the US this month of the 50th anniversary of King’s Riverside Church speech, “Beyond Vietnam: A Time to Break the Silence,” and its profound relevance to today. In a certain sense, what many, very diverse social sectors in Mexico are trying to do today is precisely “break the silence” and challenge the normalization of and impunity for violence that depends on that silence.
Martin Luther King and Zapata were two great leaders of social struggle, intimately united with the people. They had more things in common than differences, even if they chose paths of struggle that appear opposed. The moral force of each of them, the trust the people placed in them, and their relentless persistence in the pursuit of truth and justice were unbreakable.
I just came from a meeting at the university with a couple who are my age, old friends, Gerardo and Norma Gomez. They had to flee Morelos three years ago, because at that time, Norma and three of her girls were kidnapped by an organized crime gang, which operated in apparent collusion with the police. Gerardo works in natural medicine, they have scant resources, and the whole family had to go to live in the state of Mexico, 3 hours from Cuernavaca, in a very small and poor town. Their life has been very hard, and all as a result of their work with the Movement for Peace with Justice and Dignity. We have tried to help them during these years. Several organizations, including ours, are trying to build a security strategy that will enable the family to return to Cuernavaca next July. The risks are very real, but they have asked us to confront them together.
A couple of months ago, a long-time member of our SERPAJ group who works in indigenous communities in Tabasco was kidnapped. He was released after a day, but he had to pay a large ransom. He has not returned to his town. Instead he is living clandestinely.
Kidnapping, and displacement from one’s home (something which I experienced at the end of 2011 and the first part of 2012 because of the attack we suffered when we were traveling to visit the indigenous community of Ostula) is commonplace in Mexico, whether the victims are movement activists or just normal citizens. And always we see in these situations the complicity of the government, whether national, state or local, with organized crime. The government that is supposed to protect us instead is colluding with the very criminals who are victimizing us. It makes us feel vulnerable and hesitant to travel about.
The principle national drama these days is that of the victims of forced disappearance. Their family members continue to discover clandestine graves all over the country, oftentimes as a result of anonymous tips from gangsters or from local people. Sometimes the graves are the work of organized crime and sometimes they are the work of the government. (In the latter case, typically government officials have buried unidentified crime victims, without even preserving DNA samples for later identification.) It is incredible how, seemingly every week, mass graves are discovered, with dozens of bodies. Just a couple of weeks ago, here in the state of Morelos, a grave was discovered with 46 bodies, including one of a high school girl wearing her school uniform. Recently the National Human Rights Commission (CNDH) published a report noting the discovery of 855 clandestine graves between 2007 and 2016. The report also noted that the official government figure for the number of disappeared is 32,236. If that is the official figure, we can only imagine what the real figure is.
And the government and the political class act as if everything is normal!
The search of the family members for their disappeared loved ones is something we have to support, however we can, and very carefully so as not to expose ourselves, especially the youth, to unnecessary risk.
I have had a lot of contact with the organizations of family members of the disappeared. In fact, some of the funds you sent us during the first quarter of 2017 were used to support the caravans of family members in their search for mass graves. In an exemplary manner, they have decided that it is up to them to take on this task that the government will never do, because the government itself shares the responsibility for those disappearances. This is what Gandhi called non-cooperation, and what the Zapatistas call autonomy.
To add to the drama, in the last couple of months, with total impunity and even in front of their family members, four journalists have been murdered, including Miroslava Breach, a very well-known reporter for the national newspaper La Jornada. [Ed. Note: A fifth journalist, Filiberto Alvarez, was killed on April 29.] It is a global scandal. Last year, Mexico was the third most deadly country in the world to practice journalism.
In the midst of this situation, our peace and nonviolence work has focused on two areas: 1. Support for social movements in the form of workshops, study materials, public talks and panel discussions, mediation between the government and different social movements (teachers, family members of the disappeared, peasant and indigenous communities who are defending their territory and natural resources); 2. Leadership development in particular with young activists and teachers on themes related to their struggles, with an eye toward creating a national network of youth who are building peace in the midst of terrible violence. (In May we will probably have a second planning retreat focused on building such a network.)
The work of formation in nonviolence and peace is very complex, and slow, especially in the context of the violence and instability here in Mexico today. We believe it is something that should be done well and carefully rooted in historical issues; in values and spirituality; in a strong moral foundation capable of confronting adversaries and society; in nonviolent tactics, actions and strategies; and in the ability to do clear analysis of what is happening where the activists are engaged in struggle, because if the analysis is wrong, their very lives could be at risk. My experience, and the reality that my energy is not as great as it was when I was younger, have taught me that this approach is very important in order to ensure that this culture of peace may grow and spread and not be dependent on any one person.
For example, during Holy Week some members of our Peace and Nonviolence Collective at the UNAM (National Autonomous University in Mexico City) worked with the migrant movement of Fr. Solalinde in Ixtepec (Oaxaca) and with the Zapatista movement in their conference in Chiapas entitled “The Walls of Capital, The Cracks of the Left”. Others lead workshops that they themselves designed in two poor and violent neighborhoods of Mexico City, Santa Fe and Tepito. The workshops, which are for women, youth or children, cover peace and nonviolence in human relations, in gender relations, in sexist language, in the body, and in direct action for peace. In addition, some of the women from our Grial-Serpaj group went to Chiapas to work with women there on health issues.
Another of our groups, “We Miss Them” (Nos Hacen Falta), which works to find UNAM students who have disappeared and to pressure the university to support the families in their search, is organizing a national conference in the near future, with accompanying actions.
I am happy that the youth from our peace and nonviolence collectives are preparing a video on their work to share with you. They have been thinking about and discussing it and working with a lot of enthusiasm on it. I’m happy they will have this direct contact with you.
We are all very clear that all of this is what we call “ant” work; small steps, lots of ants. The results are modest but real: the organizing work, including direct actions; the leadership development of the youth and women; the concrete actions for peace and nonviolence that they undertake in their distinct situations in Mexico.
I send you my best wishes for strength and inspiration in the Spirit to sustain you in your work and in your lives. We carry on closely united, thanks to your generous sharing.
In friendship,
Pietro
Mexico:
Mediating the Teachers’ Strike, Nurturing the
Next Generation of Nonviolence Activists
Update from Pietro Ameglio
October 2, 2016 Gandhi’s Birthday and International Day of Nonviolence
Dear friends of IF,
I am very glad to be able to share with you once again something about this path we are on together that unites us and also challenges us. It has been about six months since I last wrote and I wanted to tell you about a couple of things that the good spirit of life has placed in our path.
But before I do that, I must take note of a huge global challenge that is now in your hands. Your presidential election at the beginning of November will have enormous and serious consequences, perhaps more than ever before, for you, your country and the entire world. So I suppose that you must be very attentive and involved, in whatever ways are appropriate, in that very polarized process.
1. The first experience that I want to tell you about is our involvement in the conflict between the government and the teachers’ union here in Mexico. Our small but real work for peace and nonviolence in Mexico has been energized by a very large challenge that we did not expect but to which we had to say ‘yes’. Teachers across Mexico who are organized in the Coordinadora Nacional de Trabajadores de la Educación (CNTE, National Educational Workers Union) are strongly opposed to the educational reform passed during the administration of President Peña Nieto. (Editor’s note: The educational reform was passed early in Peña Nieto’s term, with little public discussion. Among the objections of the teachers union are provisions that they see as a move to begin to privatize public education and a teacher evaluation system that they feel will harm the quality of public education, especially in rural areas.) The CNTE asked eight people whom they trust, including myself, to form a mediation body between the government and the union in order to find a peaceful and legal resolution of the conflict. This is the largest social conflict in Mexico during Peña Nieto’s term. There have been millions of children left without classes because the national teachers strike that began on May 15 and was suspended in the middle of September. Major highways in different parts of the country have been blocked for weeks by rural communities who support the teachers.
The government brutally repressed one of those blockades in Nochixtlán, Oaxaca on June 19, killing 8 people and wounding over 100. Thousands of teachers across the country were fired by the government. In summary, a real war, in some moments characterized by nonviolent direct actions, in others by legal sanctions imposed by the government, in others by armed actions.
Dear friends of IF,
I am very glad to be able to share with you once again something about this path we are on together that unites us and also challenges us. It has been about six months since I last wrote and I wanted to tell you about a couple of things that the good spirit of life has placed in our path.
But before I do that, I must take note of a huge global challenge that is now in your hands. Your presidential election at the beginning of November will have enormous and serious consequences, perhaps more than ever before, for you, your country and the entire world. So I suppose that you must be very attentive and involved, in whatever ways are appropriate, in that very polarized process.
1. The first experience that I want to tell you about is our involvement in the conflict between the government and the teachers’ union here in Mexico. Our small but real work for peace and nonviolence in Mexico has been energized by a very large challenge that we did not expect but to which we had to say ‘yes’. Teachers across Mexico who are organized in the Coordinadora Nacional de Trabajadores de la Educación (CNTE, National Educational Workers Union) are strongly opposed to the educational reform passed during the administration of President Peña Nieto. (Editor’s note: The educational reform was passed early in Peña Nieto’s term, with little public discussion. Among the objections of the teachers union are provisions that they see as a move to begin to privatize public education and a teacher evaluation system that they feel will harm the quality of public education, especially in rural areas.) The CNTE asked eight people whom they trust, including myself, to form a mediation body between the government and the union in order to find a peaceful and legal resolution of the conflict. This is the largest social conflict in Mexico during Peña Nieto’s term. There have been millions of children left without classes because the national teachers strike that began on May 15 and was suspended in the middle of September. Major highways in different parts of the country have been blocked for weeks by rural communities who support the teachers.
The government brutally repressed one of those blockades in Nochixtlán, Oaxaca on June 19, killing 8 people and wounding over 100. Thousands of teachers across the country were fired by the government. In summary, a real war, in some moments characterized by nonviolent direct actions, in others by legal sanctions imposed by the government, in others by armed actions.
In the absence of the possibility of direct talks between the parties, after so much aggression and mutual distrust, it was necessary to create the National Mediation Commission, of which I am a member. The work has been very hard, essentially full time, and low profile in order to avoid the risk of making public statements that might contribute to the polarization. Crucially the teachers have taken the perspective of the mediation commission into account and listened to our reflections regarding the different moments of the unfolding struggle, reflections that have always been aimed at prioritizing nonviolence and dialogue and overcoming the hatreds between the parties. We have talked with them a lot about nonviolent civil resistance actions. The government has also listened to us.
Our role has not been decisive, but I do humbly believe that we have offered important elements that have contributed to reducing the violence of the conflict and setting a path rooted more in active nonviolence.
After three months an initial agreement was reached for the schools to re-open and for the fired teachers to be reinstated while talks proceed on the substantive issues. The schools have now re-opened, and we are now in the stage of assuring the implementation of the initial agreement by the government. It is not easy, but there is real hope, and the government now knows that a significant part of the society is backing the teachers and is ready to undertake civil disobedience actions if the agreements are not fulfilled.
From the point of view of nonviolence, one lesson from this experience is the importance of securing and maintaining the trust of the parties in conflict, something that is very difficult in Mexico, with its history of so many betrayals and state-sponsored violence. Another reflection is the importance of not “over-stretching the cord” of civil resistance in order to avoid a rupture and the further polarization of the conflict. That is, to know when it is time to conclude one phase of struggle (highway blockades and closing of businesses, government offices, schools), despite the fear that the adversary will not fulfill his/her commitments, but in recognition of the risk of putting the adversary in a deadend street in which he/she feels obliged by public opinion to repress those actions. Both sides need a dignified public way out of the conflict, in which no one appears to have been defeated.
2. I am very happy to tell you that the work of developing new nonviolence educators and expanding nonviolence education and organizing through them is going well, in particular with the Peace and Nonviolence Team of the School of Philosophy and Literature of the UNAM (National Autonomous University, the largest university in Mexico). As I have noted before, I have prioritized this work in recent years because I am convinced that it is key to develop youth educators, with strong roots in theoretical reflection and in practice, who will carry on and surpass our work in peace and nonviolence. As our mentor Fr. Donald Hessler used to say, ‘the children must be better than their parents, the students better than their teachers.’ They are my teachers in many respects, and without their pushing, their energy and the challenges they present, my work would be even more poor. New students are becoming part of this work, many of whom come from the workshops and seminars at the university, which for me is central. I have also received invitations to give workshops in many different places, from small communities to massive public events. During this month of October, there will be two weeks of daily workshops on nonviolence offered as part of the International Book Fair in the Zócalo in Mexico City. This is a major national event, and it will be quite a challenge to involve large numbers of visitors in these themes. The youth collective has created a workshop series that covers issues of nonviolence and peace in relation to managing fear, machista language, discrimination, the environment, social stigmas, health, meditation, nonviolent direct action, etc. (Note: See Integrities, Vol. 29, No. 2, 2016 for an article by the Peace and Nonviolence Team on their work)
Well, I hope I have not tired you with all of this, but it seemed like a good moment, before the end of the year activities leave us no time to breathe, to share a bit of the riches and challenges that we are facing, while also being mindful of the challenges of your upcoming elections.
Best wishes, Pietro Ameglio
Our role has not been decisive, but I do humbly believe that we have offered important elements that have contributed to reducing the violence of the conflict and setting a path rooted more in active nonviolence.
After three months an initial agreement was reached for the schools to re-open and for the fired teachers to be reinstated while talks proceed on the substantive issues. The schools have now re-opened, and we are now in the stage of assuring the implementation of the initial agreement by the government. It is not easy, but there is real hope, and the government now knows that a significant part of the society is backing the teachers and is ready to undertake civil disobedience actions if the agreements are not fulfilled.
From the point of view of nonviolence, one lesson from this experience is the importance of securing and maintaining the trust of the parties in conflict, something that is very difficult in Mexico, with its history of so many betrayals and state-sponsored violence. Another reflection is the importance of not “over-stretching the cord” of civil resistance in order to avoid a rupture and the further polarization of the conflict. That is, to know when it is time to conclude one phase of struggle (highway blockades and closing of businesses, government offices, schools), despite the fear that the adversary will not fulfill his/her commitments, but in recognition of the risk of putting the adversary in a deadend street in which he/she feels obliged by public opinion to repress those actions. Both sides need a dignified public way out of the conflict, in which no one appears to have been defeated.
2. I am very happy to tell you that the work of developing new nonviolence educators and expanding nonviolence education and organizing through them is going well, in particular with the Peace and Nonviolence Team of the School of Philosophy and Literature of the UNAM (National Autonomous University, the largest university in Mexico). As I have noted before, I have prioritized this work in recent years because I am convinced that it is key to develop youth educators, with strong roots in theoretical reflection and in practice, who will carry on and surpass our work in peace and nonviolence. As our mentor Fr. Donald Hessler used to say, ‘the children must be better than their parents, the students better than their teachers.’ They are my teachers in many respects, and without their pushing, their energy and the challenges they present, my work would be even more poor. New students are becoming part of this work, many of whom come from the workshops and seminars at the university, which for me is central. I have also received invitations to give workshops in many different places, from small communities to massive public events. During this month of October, there will be two weeks of daily workshops on nonviolence offered as part of the International Book Fair in the Zócalo in Mexico City. This is a major national event, and it will be quite a challenge to involve large numbers of visitors in these themes. The youth collective has created a workshop series that covers issues of nonviolence and peace in relation to managing fear, machista language, discrimination, the environment, social stigmas, health, meditation, nonviolent direct action, etc. (Note: See Integrities, Vol. 29, No. 2, 2016 for an article by the Peace and Nonviolence Team on their work)
Well, I hope I have not tired you with all of this, but it seemed like a good moment, before the end of the year activities leave us no time to breathe, to share a bit of the riches and challenges that we are facing, while also being mindful of the challenges of your upcoming elections.
Best wishes, Pietro Ameglio
Mexico:
Building Peace and Strengthening Faith through Non-cooperation
Update from Pietro Ameglio
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April 5, 2016
Dear Friends of IF, It was a real pleasure to meet many of you again several months ago, sharing bread and the small miracles that the good spirit has made in our lives. There is no doubt that, in some way, our paths, and those of many who struggle and suffer for the building of peace, have converged in this life. The situation of violence in Mexico has not improved. Now we are entering an important period because, with elections on the distant horizon, the political class must deliver now on the business they have with the transnational corporations who put them in Congress for that purpose. At the top of the list is the plundering of territories and natural resources taking place in the country. A year from now, the entire political class, and a good part of the rest of the country, will begin to concentrate on the upcoming presidential and state elections. During that period, they are going to be more careful about their public image. So now is when they are going to exert the most repression. Recently two very harsh and repressive laws were approved. One is the Atenco Law in the State of Mexico (where president Peña Nieto is from). It authorizes the police to use lethal force in the repression of protests. In addition, the Chamber of Deputies (lower house of Congress) approved presidential powers to declare a suspension of constitutional rights and a state of exception if the president believes that “social peace” is threatened. The federal government also announced that it will not renew permission to operate in Mexico of the Grupo Interdisciplinario de Expertos Independientes (GIEI- Interdisciplinary Group of Independent Experts; the GIEI was created by the Inter-American Human Rights Commission to carry out an independent investigation of the September 2014 disappearance of 43 students from Ayotzinapa; the GIEI’s reports to date have presented extensive evidence disproving the government’s version of events). In other words, the truth about that genocidal action will never be known; total impunity. this has happened without any consultation with the citizenship. This is how our politicians are. Therefore we must promote non-cooperation. In March we celebrated the 5th anniversary of the founding of the Movement for Peace with Justice and Dignity (MPJD), which is led by Javier Sicilia. That great mobilization and the hope it generated then have been transformed today primarily into more than 50 organizations of victims throughout the country that search for their missing loved ones who are among the approximately 32,000 disappeared and 103,000 killed. Something very important has taken place, something that we promoted from the beginning of the MPJD. Today the family members themselves are doing the searching in clandestine graves. While this is very risky, it is producing more results. The families became tired of waiting for the government to help them search for and dig up their loved ones. Now some of them are doing it on their own, and this is an important step in their autonomous organization. We are supporting them in their process. In Morelos, last year, thanks to the work of a mother who was looking for her son, a clandestine grave of the state government was discovered with 150 bodies buried without identification. Incredible! The government, just like the criminals, also has clandestine graves! And even now the struggle continues to identify the other 149 bodies (one of them was the missing son the mother was searching for.) Another key element of the struggle of the family members of the disappeared is for their views to be taken into account in the writing of a national law regarding the disappeared. Human rights organizations and civil society groups say that, in addition to the many murders of activists that continue to take place, there are currently 350 activists in prison, most of them for opposing large-scale projects of transnational corporations that threaten local communities. The January 2016 Amnesty International report on Mexico is titled: “Indolence of the Mexican government regarding the disappeared.” An April 2016 report from the Childhood Protection Network is titled: “Epidemic of Disappearances.” In our work, we have prioritized the formation of youth who are committed to peace and nonviolence and the network of like-minded community groups working with women (The Grail), with conflicted neighborhoods (PEACE-Tepito), and with spiritual themes. One important fruit of the work of recent years is the creation by one of our groups of students and professors at the UNAM (National Autonomous University) of a collective called Nos hacen falta (They are missed), which focuses on UNAM students who have been disappeared or killed in recent years as part of the so-called War on Drugs. In a press conference recently, they presented a list of twelve cases, four of which were documented in short videos (https://es-es.facebook.com/people/Nos-Hacen-Falta/100009316091031). They are calling upon the university leadership, which is a fundamental part of that moral reserve that has not been adequately activated in Mexico, to remember that the missing students are part of the university community and to collaborate with persistence and clear support in the search for those disappeared and for justice for the murdered. They are also calling upon members of other universities in the country to make their own lists of victims and to demand that their institutions join the families in the search for the disappeared. This is an important action in the field of non-cooperation with the “normalization of institutional silence” regarding those disappeared or killed as a result of the violence. |
In a similar vein, it seems to me very important when the youth educate us adults. This includes, we hope, the Pope, who came to a country of 32,000 disappeared, 103,000 killed, and hundreds of thousands of displaced by the violence and did not meet publicly with any of the family members of the victims as a sign of support and a means of giving a voice to those families. The Pope’s visit did not seem to provide any support for building peace in a country at war. “Disappearing” the victims from his public speeches served more to legitimize the perpetrators. We were hopeful about the Pope’s visit to the tomb of Bishop Samuel Ruiz in Chiapas who offered his life to give “voice to the voiceless”, but in the end it seemed more like another missed opportunity.
However, “God has a strong sense of humor”, as Fr. Donald Hessler, indefatigable Maryknoll priest and promoter of nonviolence in Mexico, used to say. He always associated what the Virgin of Guadalupe asks of Juan Diego with the essence of nonviolence: humility and audaciousness. In April, I was invited to the Vatican by the Pontifical Council for Justice and Peace and Pax Christi International for a conference on “Contributing to a Renewal of Catholic Understanding of and Commitment to Nonviolence.” Along with 1976 Irish Nobel Peace Laureate Mairead Maguire, a great woman, I was asked to lead a discussion on “Experiences of Nonviolence: Inductive exploration of the experience of nonviolence as a spiritual commitment of faith and practical strategy in violent situations and different cultural contexts. What might we learn from such experience to provide soil for theological reflection and action planning?” It was a memorable experience to meet bishops, priests, nuns and lay people from all over the world who are deeply committed to walking with their people in war and war-like situations. And I think it was good that I was there to share our experience with the so-called “War on Drugs” and the many resistance struggle of communities defending their territory from extractive industries which, viewed from other parts of the world, may be difficult to understand. There were 80 invited participants, and the focus of the conference was to move the Catholic Church to renounce its Just War teaching and instead promote Just Peace. We hope that in some way, our work will be reflected in future statements and writings of Pope Francis. My observations were well received, especially when I spoke about the crucial role that the churches can play in restraining the forces of war if they leverage their moral power through public nonviolent actions rooted in strong determination to defend the victims and to champion justice. Upon returning from Rome, I jumped right back into the work here. First I led a workshop on strategies of nonviolent resistance for a group of indigenous campesinos in Oaxaca who are mounting a fierce resistance against the violence of companies seeking to exploit the mineral, forestry and water resources of their territories. Two days after that workshop, I began a workshop series for a group of 40 lawyers and conflict mediators from the Instituto Politécnico Nacional, the second largest public university in the country, as well as municipal ombudsmen from various parts of Mexico City who are responsible for defending citizen rights. It is challenging to work with campesinos one moment and then lawyers and municipal authorities the next, but these are doors that have opened quite a bit and opportunities we must take advantage of. I feel that we are in a somewhat providential moment, which is also very intense and demanding, and which could close quickly if the violence continues to grow. Finally I would like to say a bit about the work of the Peace and Nonviolence Team, another group at the UNAM made up of former students of mine, whose work is expanding considerably along with the number of youth involved, a growing seed of nonviolence activism. Just yesterday we had a meeting with the Minister of Culture of Mexico City. The Minister offered us the opportunity to develop a Peace Culture Program in the neighborhoods of the capital and in a detention center for juveniles. That will be very challenging. Last year the Peace and Nonviolence Team presented a number of workshops on peace and violence prevention in a public school on the outskirts of Mexico City, a neighborhood where there is a high level of violence, including some lynchings in recent years. The teachers there were very enthusiastic about the results of the program. Of course these are small, humble steps, but real nonetheless and, as Gandhi would call them, “experiments with truth.” Our plans for this year include publishing a booklet with the seven workshops on peace and nonviolence that we have been working with in order to share and discuss our experience with other groups. In closing I send you a strong and affectionate hug, hoping that your faith may strengthen mine, that they may join together and multiply, so that with this experience in the Vatican, and with the victims in Mexico, we may be capable of transmitting at least a bit of the spirit. Fraternally, Pietro |
Pietro Ameglio, Latin American Educator and Activist,
Awarded 2014 El-Hibri Peace Education Prize
Interview Pietro Ameglio from Bud Heckman on Vimeo.
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photo credit: Paloma Ayala
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It is with great pleasure that we share the news that the El-Hibri Foundation has selected Pietro for its 2014 Peace Education Prize. The award cites Pedro "for his courageous and relentless dedication to the spirit and principles of nonviolence, non-militarism and social justice and for his empowerment of countless victims and survivors of violence.
"Fuad El-Hibri, President of the El-Hibri Foundation, with Mubarak Award, President of Nonviolence International and renowned Palestinian proponent of nonviolence, present the 2014 El-Hibri Peace Education Prize to Pietro Ameglio. See the accompanying press release. |
 Pietro Ameglio
IF's support has been integral to Pietro being able to devote himself full-time to nonviolence education and organizing, his true vocation, when he left his long-time job as a department chair at a university in Cuernavaca several years ago.
Pietro is clearly one of the most important nonviolent activists in Latin America today in the specific sense of promoting both the study and the practice of active nonviolence. He has a sophisticated knowledge of nonviolence theory and history, and he combines that with a deep commitment to social justice and decades of front-line experience in nonviolent action. He is an inspiring and popular peace educator who walks his talk, who educates in formal settings as well as on picket lines and at mass actions. The leadership, commitment, vision, knowledge, diverse competencies, courage, and love that he brings to each task and to each challenge are the consistent and outstanding characteristics that make him worthy of this award. |
"We will never give up! We are missing 30,000, plus 43" (a reference to all the disappeared in Mexico, including the 43 students from Ayotzinapa) Pietro is a bit uncomfortable with the personal recognition, insisting that it is actually a recognition of collective efforts. In that regard, he has been able to arrange with the El-Hibri Foundation to be accompanied in Washington by a representative of the relatives of the murdered and disappeared, Carlos Moreno, so that they would be seen and have their own voice. He has also announced that the prize money will be divided among several social movement groups that he works with closely.
Please see the accompanying press release and join us in celebrating this great news and sharing it with others. click here to donate and support Pietro and read updates on his nonviolence activities |
Report from Pietro Ameglio and the Movement for Peace with Justice and Dignity (May 2014)
(Pietro Ameglio sent us the following update on his work in Mexico. The backdrop he describes is one of harrowing violence from which no one is immune. The story of the horrendous murder of the university professor and his wife in Cuernavaca strikes very close to home. Pietro’s profile makes him a similar target and potentially for similar reasons. Yet the heart of his letter is the tale of resistance that springs forth in diverse forms throughout the length and breath of the country. Requests for education and training in active nonviolence continue to multiply, and the requests for Pietro’s services come not just from Mexico but also from abroad. The current series of public education events on peace and nonviolence at the national Museum of Memory and Tolerance is a positive indicator of the mainstreaming of nonviolence. Although he doesn’t mention it, Pietro is one of the main presenters during this series. A particularly hopeful sign is the emergence of a new generation of nonviolence activists, nurtured by Pietro and others but now organizing their own initiatives. The support of IF is an integral element of the funding that allows Pietro to dedicate himself to this life-affirming work. Thank you!)
May 5, 2014
Dear friends of IF and companions on the way,
I send a fraternal embrace and I thank you once again for the opportunity to share with you the struggle for peace and nonviolence! May our collaboration be a sign of hope for other communities and people in Mexico who are part of the same struggle.
I had another beginning in mind for this letter, but just a few hours ago we received heart-breaking news. The bodies of Alejandro Chao and his wife, stoned to death, were found here in Cuernavaca. Alejandro was responsible for the most important social service work done by the public university of Morelos [ed: the state in which Cuernavaca is located]. He was a professor for thousands of students, very well known, deeply committed. Just like many of us. It may have been retribution on the part of certain interests that felt threatened by his work, or a robbery and assault. In any case, it is an atrocity. Tomorrow and the day after there will be mass marches in the city. Morelos is the state with the highest number of kidnappings, proportional to its population. The people are terrified.
Last weekend, I participated in a fast in front of the federal Attorney General’s office in Mexico City along with the husband and children of Beti Cariño. Beti was murdered on April 27, 2010, along with Jiri Jaakola, a Finnish solidarity volunteer, by Triqui [ed: an indigenous people based largely in Oaxaca] paramilitary group in the middle of the day when they were leading a humanitarian caravan bringing food for Triqui families who were under siege by the same paramilitary group. Even the international solidarity of a peace brigade was not respected. To this day, no one has been arrested, even though the names of more than 10 of the assailants, one of whom works for the government, are perfectly well known.
 Nestora Salgado receives
2014 National Human Rights Award.
The accompanying photo (below, click on photo for larger image) shows the award ceremony for the 2014 “Don Sergio Méndez Arceo” National Human Rights Award (the most important human rights prize in Mexico). The winner of the individual prize was Nestora Salgado, an indigenous Nahua from Guerrero, commander of the local community police, who has been imprisoned for months simply because she confronted the corruption and the violence of the local mayor. The collective or community award went to the Purépecha indigenous of Cherán in the state of Michoacán for their community patrols to defend their forests from illegal logging.
The price of their defense has been high: 22 killed and three disappeared over the last four years. And not one arrest, in spite of the fact that in some cases, the identity of those responsible is known. So these are three snapshots of the degree of violence and impunity in Mexico today. And now we have a government that is handing over the natural resources of the country to transnational corporations in a scandalous manner. Last December the government pushed through legislation to privatize the oil and energy industry. It is also trying to privatize education. In the face of so much violence, resistance is a means of survival, especially for the peasant and indigenous communities who are defending their lands, forests, water and minerals. At the same time, the entire country resists organized crime and its murder, kidnapping, |
disappearances, extortion and rape. In an increasing number of communities, this resistance combines nonviolence with armed self-defense when that is the only way that the communities find to deter the pillaging of their resources by big capital, organized crime, and their collaborators in government. In the face of this, what is to be done? We are doing as much as we can to support nonviolent strategy and tactics in local struggles in Mexico and also elsewhere in Latin America.
Recently I traveled to Ecuador to lead a workshop on active nonviolence for Yasunidos, the organization leading the resistance to the exploitation of the Yasuni oil reserve, the biggest current threat to the Ecuadorian Amazon. We are also personally involved in a struggle here in Morelos against a gold mine proposed by a Canadian mining company in Xochicalco, an archeological site recognized by UNESCO as a world heritage site. Our actions are small and carefully planned and calibrated, given the constant threat of violent repression. But they are also radically nonviolent. One hopeful sign this year is that a good group of students at the UNAM [ed:National Autonomous University of Mexico, the largest public university in the country] that we have been training in nonviolence through my teaching there decided to form a group called the “Peace and Nonviolence Team of the UNAM School of Philosophy and Literature”. To my knowledge, it is the only such group anywhere in the country. They have already taken on a major commitment of organizing workshops, film presentations, and lectures on peace and nonviolence in an unprecedented three-month (May-July) series hosted by the Museum of Memory and Tolerance. The prominence of the museum as an important cultural and political institution in the country insures that the events will be well attended … This year we also revived our program of syouth to peace camps in conflict zones in Chiapas. One group just returned and the powerful experience they had there reaffirmed their commitment to peace and nonviolence. We will continue to organize actions and training programs like these in the coming months. Once again, I join with you in a strong embrace of gratitude for your concern and for your solidarity. Pietro Back to Top |
Mother's Day March in Mexico City
demanding justice for the families of the disappeared,
May 10, 2014
Interview with Pietro Ameglio and the Movement for Peace with Justice and Dignity (April 2014)
IF members have had the opportunity to follow the creation and evolution of the Movement for Peace with Justice and Dignity (MPJD) in Mexico through the eyes of Pietro Ameglio, one of its founding members and leaders. The following interview with Pietro was done in March 2014 on the third anniversary of the founding of the MPJD. This is what active nonviolence looks like from within one of the most violent societies in the world. There are multiple dimensions in which we in the U.S. are linked to that violence: the demand for the drugs that fuels the organized crime cartels; the weapons and ammunition used to do the killing that is supplied to all the armed actors from the U.S.; the imposition of trade policy such as NAFTA that has driven literally millions of campesinos from their land, stealing their hope for the future. So as we marvel at the courage and commitment of nonviolent movement activists in Mexico, we might also consider what we can do to stop fueling the violence.
Note: This interview was originally published in Spanish in Desinformémonos.org, an “autonomous, global communications project.” The English translation was published by the Americas Program, an excellent source of information and analysis on Latin America.
Interview: Mexican Peace Activist Says Focus Must Be More on Justice than Peace Escrito por Adazahira Chavez | 2 / April / 2014
According to Pietro Ameglio, activist and nonviolent resistance promoter, the Movement for Peace with Justice and Dignity (MPJD) can be credited with supporting important processes in Mexico, such as transforming victims of the drug war into historical actors, highlighting their dignity, and mobilizing society. However, he believes it still has unfinished tasks three years after its inception, including the need for civil disobedience in order to achieve progress on the re-appearance of the missing, justice for the dead, and change in the militarized security model of a State that is increasingly criminal and beyond the reach of the law.
Ameglio complains that in Mexico, despite MPJD protests and dialogue with the authorities, violence has increased as the government merely pretends to present solutions. He acknowledges that the movement has lacked an effective way to make common cause with indigenous peoples. He recognizes that there are other important actors in civil society and that it is not up to the MPJD to lead them. Instead, the MPJD should join up with these movements.
The execution of seven youths in Temixco, Morelos, on March 28, 2011, triggered the emergence of the MPJD, headed by poet Javier Sicilia, the father of one of the victims. Sicilia, the intellectual with his ever-present hat and khaki vest, led a march on foot from Cuernavaca, Morelos, to Mexico City, under the slogan “We’ve had it up to here!” (“¡Estamos hasta la madre!”) Later he led three huge caravans–one to northern Mexico, one to southern Mexico and another across the United States. On the caravans, relatives of victims gave voice to the horrors of the “drug war” being waged by then-President Felipe Calderon. The caravans also met with politicians, engaged in dialogues with public officials and carried out dozens of other activities.
The party in power has changed since then. After being in the opposition for 12 years, the Institutional Revolutionary Party (PRI) returned to the presidency and holds the most seats in Congress. Despite the change in administrations, the MPJD continues on the same course. In March it symbolically renamed streets from known tyrants to names of victims of the war. It also opened an exhibit at the Museum of Memory and Tolerance in downtown Mexico City, and it will present a series of workshops and conferences there in May and June.
In an interview with Desinformémonos, Ameglio takes stock of the three years of the movement, highlighting its contributions and discussing its “Achilles heels.”
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Mexico in 2011 and 2014
Ameglio, a respected MPJD activist, says Mexico has seen three moments of moral outrage since 2011, all “connected with the [Zapatista] cry of Ya Basta! (enough already!) of 1994, which is really the beginning of this new phase of civil resistance.”
The first cry was Javier Sicilia’s “We have had it up to here!” on March 28, 2011. His cry was echoed by thousands of victims throughout Mexico. Ameglio says the outcry managed to “make visible the horror of war we are living, dignify the victims in their distinct histories and social identities, and break the normalization of this inhuman model of armed peace.”
In 2012, the second cry – also massive but more related to politics, and the media and democracy – was from the #YoSoy132 (#I am number 132) student movement that “apart from being a great burst of desire for democracy, participation of young people and the denunciation of the manipulation of the electoral process, was also a way of standing up.” Ameglio invokes the story by Subcomandante Marcos about the lion that kills with its gaze. “They confront authority, able to look it directly in the eye and say, ‘we have had it up to here with your manipulation and we’ve had enough of the imposition of presidents and ways of doing politics.’ ”
Since early 2013 a third cry has been heard – the surge of self-defense organizations in Michoacan, Ameglio says. “Dr. Mireles [a leader of the self-defense movement] said in an interview with José Gil of Proceso magazine, ‘no more’ (“Ya no”).” The academic considers that this affirmation of “no more,” comes in part from a sector of society – primarily the middle class, but also the poor – that has learned that simply pressuring the authorities and hoping that they will act does not tend to produce any solutions, “and with the level of violent attacks and the inhumanity they face, they declared ‘no more’ and have armed themselves. They realize that to live humanely in their territory, it is not sufficient to ask the authorities to act. Rather they install a parallel power in their territory without permission [from the authorities].”
To Ameglio, the local self-defense groups understand from their experience that Mexico is not a failed state, but rather a criminal state that is deeply active in the gang war for control of illegal merchandise, territories and bodies. “The state authorities are involved at all levels and on both sides,” he said. “There are businessmen, organized crime, police, armed forces and civil society directly or indirectly involved.”
The activist notes that without undervaluing the victims’ [MPJD campaign for recognition of their rights], the reality of the country has not changed because impunity and lack of political will to prevent and solve the crimes has not ended, and crime (homicide, disappearance, extortion, kidnapping) has increased impressively. “It isn’t that the [self-defense] groups want to exercise forms of violence, but it isn’t easy to find another path to say “enough!” and then organize to rebuild the social fabric. In a way, we went from “We’ve had it up to here!” to “No more!”
Value of the Peace Movement
Pietro Ameglio argues that the MPJD process is very important, as it prompted a clearer national understanding that we are at war. “The social facts are brutal,” he said. “This war is about mass extermination (officially 85,000 dead in five years and 27,000 disappeared through 2012) and about selective extermination of social activists, defenders of land and territory and grassroots leaders. By way of example, he notes that in Guerrero, about 20 social activists were killed just in the last part of 2013.
In Mexico, organized crime generates more than 600,000 direct jobs, according to a report by José Luis Calva from the Institute of Economic Research of the National Autonomous University of Mexico.
“Criminal activities touch all social classes and are now a way of life,” Ameglio says. “The MPJD, especially at the beginning – in the caravans and marches – made visible this process of civil war, afforded dignity to the victims and showed that they had no connection with organized crime, but were rather victims of impunity and organized crime that is associated with the State.”
“The MPJD exposed State complicity and that the public security model of armed peace is a total trap that increases the sense of violence and insecurity among the people...” Questioning the model of armed public security was an important contribution of the MPJD, Ameglio said. He pointed out that another contribution of the mass mobilizations of the first year of the Movement was that it activated part of the moral reserve of the people[1] in the social struggle.
Achilles’ Heels
But Ameglio also has some self-criticism. “Many mass mobilizations were organized, we achieved direct dialogue with the powers that be – that produced more lip service and impunity than anything else – but it never moved to a stage that nonviolent civil resistance requires: non-cooperation and civil disobedience.”
The activist says that when there is such a large degree of impunity and complicity by the State, the pressure of mass mobilization and dialogue is not enough, because the S has the political space to simulate responses and to create pseudo-institutions, such as the Victims Law and the Provictima organization, which in practice do not function.
“In the nonviolent civil resistance, the progression of dialogue –negotiation – mass mobilization proved insufficient to pressure the State.”
Another criticism is that the movement was unable to network and link with indigenous peoples and the Zapatista Army of National Liberation (EZLN). “During the southern caravan (September 2011), two types of victims, equally dramatic, were made visible: individuals (killed, disappeared, displaced and extorted) and collective victims, campesinos and indigenous peoples, who are at war over territory, natural resources and protecting their culture.”
Ameglio makes clear that the indigenous and the EZLN were very generous in their offer to join with the victims, “but there were difficulties in understanding, particularly internally. The movement needs to accept that there were cultural difficulties in understanding the dynamics of indigenous peoples, and a great opportunity was missed to really create an organized national movement of the masses, with awareness as social actors, with the indigenous peoples, who by far are the ones in the country with the clearest and most advanced struggles of civil resistance.”
Movement for Mexico and New Actors
Ameglio, who was a founding member of the MPJD, thinks the Movement for Peace with Justice and Dignity has a public role as a moral force, with a lot of it based on the leadership of the victims and Javier Sicilia. “It has a lot of weight in the media based on dignity, courage and confronting the authorities. For relatives of the victims, that moral force, which was built mainly in the first year, though it has been different the two years since, accompanies them as they confront the state, and at the national and international level.”
Another positive effect of this movement is that other organizations of victims’ families multiplied and became empowered, inspired by the MPJD and other organizations such as FUNDEM (Fuerzas Unidas por Nuestros Desaparecidos en México). He says that there was stagnation in the struggle, because “if you do not adopt forms of civil disobedience, mass mobilization and dialogue with authorities will not be enough to pressure the authorities to find the missing, fulfill justice for the dead and change the public security model of militarization and war.” However, he realizes that this is not an exclusive task of MPJD, nor is it wholly responsible for leading any movement, but rather should join forces to make the struggle more effective.
Given the existence of a “criminal state,” Ameglio suggests that the most advanced social actors since 1994 are indigenous peoples and campesinos organized in the Zapatista movement, the National Indigenous Congress, and the Community Police in Guerrero, among others.
“They are the ones with a model that moves toward the defense of territory, of a solidarity economy, being self sufficient, regionally integrated, autonomous, with education and health in the hands of the people,” he said. “Hopefully they will be able to fully coordinate among themselves as well as with us, especially where we have the most problems, which is in urban areas. The MPJD is largely an urban struggle and it was impossible for us to integrate this struggle with the rural campesino-indigenous struggles.”
Another important player will be the victims’ families, who went from experiencing a great deal of pain, isolation and terror to being public social actors with great courage and dignity. “They are lions fighting as they are able to in the search for truth and justice.”
“The subject of political parties is scandalous,” he went on. Ameglio derides the main parties for simulating a protest against oil industry reform, claiming that by organizing three marches to the Zocalo [central plaza in Mexico City], they had resisted a global campaign of transnational corporations. “I would repeat the popular Argentine saying: ‘Out with all of them.’” For civil society, the lack of results should lead to the realization that negotiations with the political class “are not going to lead anywhere.”
Memory and Justice, Justice and Memory
Ameglio emphasizes the need to remember the MPJD’s own victims, “a task that must always be pushed, calling for truth and justice.” He cites them from memory: Pedro Leyva, Nahua community member from Ostula, Michoacán, killed on Oct. 6, 2011, just before a meeting with President Calderón scheduled for Oct 14; Trinidad de la Cruz, also of Ostula, kidnapped and executed on Dec. 6, 2011, during a human rights mission with the MPJD; that same day, Eva Alarcón and Marcial Bautista of the Organization of Campesino Ecologists of the Sierra del Sur went missing in Petatlán, Guerrero; in the autonomous Purépecha municipality of Cheran, Michoacan, which has worked closely with the MPJD since the beginning, several villagers were have been killed in the past three years. “The last two victims were Urbano Macias and Guadalupe Jerome,” recalls the activist.
“On Oct. 22, 2012, two founders of the Barzón movement in Chihuahua, Ismael Solorio and Manuela Solís, both of whom participated in our first march from Cuernavaca to Mexico City, were viciously murdered.” Ameglio closes the list with the beloved Nepomuceno Moreno, who was killed at noon on Nov. 26, 2011, in downtown Hermosillo. “He was a truly exemplary man who should go down in history for giving his all to the movement, constantly spreading the message that we must all march forward for justice, not only for his own son, but for all the children and all families.”
“There has yet to be truth and justice in any of these cases. These were direct victims, all deeply active in the movement,” he laments. “If justice is not done for these victims, then no one can talk about dignity in the Movement.”
“Right now in our Movement, there is much talk of the memory process. But before that you need to speak about truth and justice.” It is necessary that all Mexicans know the reality of the war, how people disappeared, and how the extortion rackets worked. “That process begins with memory. But if you do not start talking about truth and seeking justice, memory – partly due to official manipulation – remains at the level of symbolism and monuments, and not of actions for justice and truth.”
This has been a difficulty of the movement, he admits. “The authorities have carried out massive simulation and exerted pressure on activists. And because of that I would say that in the country there is a need to talk less of peace and more of justice. It is one of the lessons of the movement right now.”
Adazahira Chávez is an editor with Desinformémonos.org, an “autonomous, global communications project” and sister organization to the Americas Program Originally published at Desinformémonos
Translation: Clayton Conn
[1] “Moral reserve” refers to the deeply held moral values at the core of a society.
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IF members have had the opportunity to follow the creation and evolution of the Movement for Peace with Justice and Dignity (MPJD) in Mexico through the eyes of Pietro Ameglio, one of its founding members and leaders. The following interview with Pietro was done in March 2014 on the third anniversary of the founding of the MPJD. This is what active nonviolence looks like from within one of the most violent societies in the world. There are multiple dimensions in which we in the U.S. are linked to that violence: the demand for the drugs that fuels the organized crime cartels; the weapons and ammunition used to do the killing that is supplied to all the armed actors from the U.S.; the imposition of trade policy such as NAFTA that has driven literally millions of campesinos from their land, stealing their hope for the future. So as we marvel at the courage and commitment of nonviolent movement activists in Mexico, we might also consider what we can do to stop fueling the violence.
Note: This interview was originally published in Spanish in Desinformémonos.org, an “autonomous, global communications project.” The English translation was published by the Americas Program, an excellent source of information and analysis on Latin America.
Interview: Mexican Peace Activist Says Focus Must Be More on Justice than Peace Escrito por Adazahira Chavez | 2 / April / 2014
According to Pietro Ameglio, activist and nonviolent resistance promoter, the Movement for Peace with Justice and Dignity (MPJD) can be credited with supporting important processes in Mexico, such as transforming victims of the drug war into historical actors, highlighting their dignity, and mobilizing society. However, he believes it still has unfinished tasks three years after its inception, including the need for civil disobedience in order to achieve progress on the re-appearance of the missing, justice for the dead, and change in the militarized security model of a State that is increasingly criminal and beyond the reach of the law.
Ameglio complains that in Mexico, despite MPJD protests and dialogue with the authorities, violence has increased as the government merely pretends to present solutions. He acknowledges that the movement has lacked an effective way to make common cause with indigenous peoples. He recognizes that there are other important actors in civil society and that it is not up to the MPJD to lead them. Instead, the MPJD should join up with these movements.
The execution of seven youths in Temixco, Morelos, on March 28, 2011, triggered the emergence of the MPJD, headed by poet Javier Sicilia, the father of one of the victims. Sicilia, the intellectual with his ever-present hat and khaki vest, led a march on foot from Cuernavaca, Morelos, to Mexico City, under the slogan “We’ve had it up to here!” (“¡Estamos hasta la madre!”) Later he led three huge caravans–one to northern Mexico, one to southern Mexico and another across the United States. On the caravans, relatives of victims gave voice to the horrors of the “drug war” being waged by then-President Felipe Calderon. The caravans also met with politicians, engaged in dialogues with public officials and carried out dozens of other activities.
The party in power has changed since then. After being in the opposition for 12 years, the Institutional Revolutionary Party (PRI) returned to the presidency and holds the most seats in Congress. Despite the change in administrations, the MPJD continues on the same course. In March it symbolically renamed streets from known tyrants to names of victims of the war. It also opened an exhibit at the Museum of Memory and Tolerance in downtown Mexico City, and it will present a series of workshops and conferences there in May and June.
In an interview with Desinformémonos, Ameglio takes stock of the three years of the movement, highlighting its contributions and discussing its “Achilles heels.”
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Mexico in 2011 and 2014
Ameglio, a respected MPJD activist, says Mexico has seen three moments of moral outrage since 2011, all “connected with the [Zapatista] cry of Ya Basta! (enough already!) of 1994, which is really the beginning of this new phase of civil resistance.”
The first cry was Javier Sicilia’s “We have had it up to here!” on March 28, 2011. His cry was echoed by thousands of victims throughout Mexico. Ameglio says the outcry managed to “make visible the horror of war we are living, dignify the victims in their distinct histories and social identities, and break the normalization of this inhuman model of armed peace.”
In 2012, the second cry – also massive but more related to politics, and the media and democracy – was from the #YoSoy132 (#I am number 132) student movement that “apart from being a great burst of desire for democracy, participation of young people and the denunciation of the manipulation of the electoral process, was also a way of standing up.” Ameglio invokes the story by Subcomandante Marcos about the lion that kills with its gaze. “They confront authority, able to look it directly in the eye and say, ‘we have had it up to here with your manipulation and we’ve had enough of the imposition of presidents and ways of doing politics.’ ”
Since early 2013 a third cry has been heard – the surge of self-defense organizations in Michoacan, Ameglio says. “Dr. Mireles [a leader of the self-defense movement] said in an interview with José Gil of Proceso magazine, ‘no more’ (“Ya no”).” The academic considers that this affirmation of “no more,” comes in part from a sector of society – primarily the middle class, but also the poor – that has learned that simply pressuring the authorities and hoping that they will act does not tend to produce any solutions, “and with the level of violent attacks and the inhumanity they face, they declared ‘no more’ and have armed themselves. They realize that to live humanely in their territory, it is not sufficient to ask the authorities to act. Rather they install a parallel power in their territory without permission [from the authorities].”
To Ameglio, the local self-defense groups understand from their experience that Mexico is not a failed state, but rather a criminal state that is deeply active in the gang war for control of illegal merchandise, territories and bodies. “The state authorities are involved at all levels and on both sides,” he said. “There are businessmen, organized crime, police, armed forces and civil society directly or indirectly involved.”
The activist notes that without undervaluing the victims’ [MPJD campaign for recognition of their rights], the reality of the country has not changed because impunity and lack of political will to prevent and solve the crimes has not ended, and crime (homicide, disappearance, extortion, kidnapping) has increased impressively. “It isn’t that the [self-defense] groups want to exercise forms of violence, but it isn’t easy to find another path to say “enough!” and then organize to rebuild the social fabric. In a way, we went from “We’ve had it up to here!” to “No more!”
Value of the Peace Movement
Pietro Ameglio argues that the MPJD process is very important, as it prompted a clearer national understanding that we are at war. “The social facts are brutal,” he said. “This war is about mass extermination (officially 85,000 dead in five years and 27,000 disappeared through 2012) and about selective extermination of social activists, defenders of land and territory and grassroots leaders. By way of example, he notes that in Guerrero, about 20 social activists were killed just in the last part of 2013.
In Mexico, organized crime generates more than 600,000 direct jobs, according to a report by José Luis Calva from the Institute of Economic Research of the National Autonomous University of Mexico.
“Criminal activities touch all social classes and are now a way of life,” Ameglio says. “The MPJD, especially at the beginning – in the caravans and marches – made visible this process of civil war, afforded dignity to the victims and showed that they had no connection with organized crime, but were rather victims of impunity and organized crime that is associated with the State.”
“The MPJD exposed State complicity and that the public security model of armed peace is a total trap that increases the sense of violence and insecurity among the people...” Questioning the model of armed public security was an important contribution of the MPJD, Ameglio said. He pointed out that another contribution of the mass mobilizations of the first year of the Movement was that it activated part of the moral reserve of the people[1] in the social struggle.
Achilles’ Heels
But Ameglio also has some self-criticism. “Many mass mobilizations were organized, we achieved direct dialogue with the powers that be – that produced more lip service and impunity than anything else – but it never moved to a stage that nonviolent civil resistance requires: non-cooperation and civil disobedience.”
The activist says that when there is such a large degree of impunity and complicity by the State, the pressure of mass mobilization and dialogue is not enough, because the S has the political space to simulate responses and to create pseudo-institutions, such as the Victims Law and the Provictima organization, which in practice do not function.
“In the nonviolent civil resistance, the progression of dialogue –negotiation – mass mobilization proved insufficient to pressure the State.”
Another criticism is that the movement was unable to network and link with indigenous peoples and the Zapatista Army of National Liberation (EZLN). “During the southern caravan (September 2011), two types of victims, equally dramatic, were made visible: individuals (killed, disappeared, displaced and extorted) and collective victims, campesinos and indigenous peoples, who are at war over territory, natural resources and protecting their culture.”
Ameglio makes clear that the indigenous and the EZLN were very generous in their offer to join with the victims, “but there were difficulties in understanding, particularly internally. The movement needs to accept that there were cultural difficulties in understanding the dynamics of indigenous peoples, and a great opportunity was missed to really create an organized national movement of the masses, with awareness as social actors, with the indigenous peoples, who by far are the ones in the country with the clearest and most advanced struggles of civil resistance.”
Movement for Mexico and New Actors
Ameglio, who was a founding member of the MPJD, thinks the Movement for Peace with Justice and Dignity has a public role as a moral force, with a lot of it based on the leadership of the victims and Javier Sicilia. “It has a lot of weight in the media based on dignity, courage and confronting the authorities. For relatives of the victims, that moral force, which was built mainly in the first year, though it has been different the two years since, accompanies them as they confront the state, and at the national and international level.”
Another positive effect of this movement is that other organizations of victims’ families multiplied and became empowered, inspired by the MPJD and other organizations such as FUNDEM (Fuerzas Unidas por Nuestros Desaparecidos en México). He says that there was stagnation in the struggle, because “if you do not adopt forms of civil disobedience, mass mobilization and dialogue with authorities will not be enough to pressure the authorities to find the missing, fulfill justice for the dead and change the public security model of militarization and war.” However, he realizes that this is not an exclusive task of MPJD, nor is it wholly responsible for leading any movement, but rather should join forces to make the struggle more effective.
Given the existence of a “criminal state,” Ameglio suggests that the most advanced social actors since 1994 are indigenous peoples and campesinos organized in the Zapatista movement, the National Indigenous Congress, and the Community Police in Guerrero, among others.
“They are the ones with a model that moves toward the defense of territory, of a solidarity economy, being self sufficient, regionally integrated, autonomous, with education and health in the hands of the people,” he said. “Hopefully they will be able to fully coordinate among themselves as well as with us, especially where we have the most problems, which is in urban areas. The MPJD is largely an urban struggle and it was impossible for us to integrate this struggle with the rural campesino-indigenous struggles.”
Another important player will be the victims’ families, who went from experiencing a great deal of pain, isolation and terror to being public social actors with great courage and dignity. “They are lions fighting as they are able to in the search for truth and justice.”
“The subject of political parties is scandalous,” he went on. Ameglio derides the main parties for simulating a protest against oil industry reform, claiming that by organizing three marches to the Zocalo [central plaza in Mexico City], they had resisted a global campaign of transnational corporations. “I would repeat the popular Argentine saying: ‘Out with all of them.’” For civil society, the lack of results should lead to the realization that negotiations with the political class “are not going to lead anywhere.”
Memory and Justice, Justice and Memory
Ameglio emphasizes the need to remember the MPJD’s own victims, “a task that must always be pushed, calling for truth and justice.” He cites them from memory: Pedro Leyva, Nahua community member from Ostula, Michoacán, killed on Oct. 6, 2011, just before a meeting with President Calderón scheduled for Oct 14; Trinidad de la Cruz, also of Ostula, kidnapped and executed on Dec. 6, 2011, during a human rights mission with the MPJD; that same day, Eva Alarcón and Marcial Bautista of the Organization of Campesino Ecologists of the Sierra del Sur went missing in Petatlán, Guerrero; in the autonomous Purépecha municipality of Cheran, Michoacan, which has worked closely with the MPJD since the beginning, several villagers were have been killed in the past three years. “The last two victims were Urbano Macias and Guadalupe Jerome,” recalls the activist.
“On Oct. 22, 2012, two founders of the Barzón movement in Chihuahua, Ismael Solorio and Manuela Solís, both of whom participated in our first march from Cuernavaca to Mexico City, were viciously murdered.” Ameglio closes the list with the beloved Nepomuceno Moreno, who was killed at noon on Nov. 26, 2011, in downtown Hermosillo. “He was a truly exemplary man who should go down in history for giving his all to the movement, constantly spreading the message that we must all march forward for justice, not only for his own son, but for all the children and all families.”
“There has yet to be truth and justice in any of these cases. These were direct victims, all deeply active in the movement,” he laments. “If justice is not done for these victims, then no one can talk about dignity in the Movement.”
“Right now in our Movement, there is much talk of the memory process. But before that you need to speak about truth and justice.” It is necessary that all Mexicans know the reality of the war, how people disappeared, and how the extortion rackets worked. “That process begins with memory. But if you do not start talking about truth and seeking justice, memory – partly due to official manipulation – remains at the level of symbolism and monuments, and not of actions for justice and truth.”
This has been a difficulty of the movement, he admits. “The authorities have carried out massive simulation and exerted pressure on activists. And because of that I would say that in the country there is a need to talk less of peace and more of justice. It is one of the lessons of the movement right now.”
Adazahira Chávez is an editor with Desinformémonos.org, an “autonomous, global communications project” and sister organization to the Americas Program Originally published at Desinformémonos
Translation: Clayton Conn
[1] “Moral reserve” refers to the deeply held moral values at the core of a society.
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Report from Pietro Ameglio and the Movement for Peace with Justice and Dignity (November 29, 2013)
Pietro Ameglio continues to keep a very busy schedule as a nonviolence
educator and organizer in Mexico. In the following year-end report, he
describes a number of the projects he has worked on this year, and some
significant victories. But the bulk of the report is a sober analysis of
the deteriorating situation in Mexico amid stunning levels of violence
and the hard choices it poses for those who embrace active nonviolence
as the surest way of building peace on a foundation of justice. If
reading this stirs some reflections in you, we would be pleased if you
would share them with us, at: if.integrities@gmail.com
Dear Friends,
For any report or analysis, we need to remember that Mexico is a territory marked throughout by acts of war, albeit not with the same form and intensity in each region. Nowhere can anyone go out on the street or to work without worrying. Nor is any campesino community secure from the threat of being stripped of its natural resources for the benefit of transnational corporations. This war has at least three central characteristics: it is a civil war; it is of massive extermination; and it is of selective extermination. Please let me explain ...
I. The State of Power in Mexico is War
Someone who lives in Michoacán, Guerrero or Chiapas will not have any doubt about using the term “civil war” in the classic sense of the term. In fact, there are self-defense armies of the people confronting, at a high human and material cost, other armies of the people – those of organized crime – with the Mexican Army and state and federal police involved on all sides. Another form in which this “civil war” finds expression is in an economic model that, in order to expand, requires periodic wars, exterminations, and massive population displacement through the implementation of a process of “social terrorization” all over the country. This makes possible, among other things, the appropriation of the natural resources and the wealth of the people. So it is not surprising that the volume of informal employment (e.g., street vendors) has surpassed that of formal employment since the 1990s; that unemployment is up; and that, according to the Instituto de Investigaciones Económicas de la UNAM (National Autonomous University), organized crime is the single largest source of employment in the country (600,000 direct jobs). [Ed: By comparison, PEMEX, the national oil company, had 138,000 employees in 2011.] This employment situation places the most vulnerable of the population, especially youth and the poor, in conditions favorable for their recruitment by various purveyors of social violence who use a variety of forms of physical and economic pressure.
Moreover there is no one in Mexico today who doesn’t know someone, all too often someone close to them, who has been the victim of murder, kidnapping, disappearance, or economic extortion. All social classes have been touched by this monstrous social violence.
According to official and media figures, in the last five years, the “massive extermination” consists of 85,000 killed, 27,000 disappeared, and hundreds of thousands of displaced.[i] The scale of these figures has been compared by others, including Amnesty International, with the wars in Bosnia and Iraq and with the military dictatorships in South America during the 1970s. Practically none of the cases of disappearance or murder that have been publicized by the Movement for Peace with Justice and Dignity or other civil society groups have been resolved. Instead they continue to proliferate.
The “selective extermination,” always present in the Mexico reality, has increased dramatically recently, and with total impunity. The process…of constructing peace with truth, justice and historical memory has been met with the multiplication of the number of murdered and disappeared victims: individuals, social activists, human rights defenders, journalists. Then there are the community or collective victims: indigenous-campesino communities and neighborhoods organized in (self) defense of their territories. (See appendix for a list of social activists and human rights defenders killed during the past year.) Just in the state of Guerrero, between August 5 and November 11 of this year, eight have been murdered. All of them were community leaders; all of them had alerted the authorities to the danger their lives were in; many were murdered in broad daylight, before witnesses, and in some cases, despite police protection. No justice has been achieved in any of their cases.
Noé Salomón Vázquez Ortíz is a classic case of this kind of extermination of political activists. He was an environmental activist with the group “Green Defense: Nature Always” in Veracruz who was brutally stoned to death on August 2 because of his struggle against the construction of a hydroelectric dam in Zongolica (Veracruz). He was attacked while he picked flowers and seeds to be used as an offering at the opening of the Tenth National Conference of the Mexican Movement against Dams and in Defense of Rivers (MAPDER), which was about to begin in Amatlán de los Reyes, Veracruz. The conference included participants from 17 states. Not even in the face of that much national representation have the authorities done anything to achieve justice in this case.
Another example that is very close to us: Last weekend a hearing of the Permanent Peoples’ Tribunal (www.tppmexico.org), respected globally for its moral authority, was held in Mexico City. We presented testimony about the murders in Ostula (Michoacán) of Pedro Leyva (October 2011) and Trinidad de la Cruz, whom we all called don Trino (December 6, 2011). I was at don Trino’s side when our van was stopped that day by paramilitaries. It was very painful to relive that terrible experience, and more still to see the complete impunity of those responsible for that and so many other killings.
In the case of don Trino, we were stopped by four heavily-armed paramilitary hired guns. They forced us to lie on the ground for a long time, saying they were going to kill us. Eventually they let us go, but they kept don Trino. His tortured body was found the next day. The experience poses tough questions about our practice of nonviolence: “How far can one go with nonviolent actions in the middle of a cross-fire? How effective can nonviolence be in the midst of a war among criminals, with the authorities colluding with the criminals and showing no commitment to ending the war? I recall the response of Gandhi when he was asked what would have happened with his struggle if the imperial government had been led by Hitler. He said that the issue was what could have been done to prevent Hitler from ever achieving power. That is, nonviolence is very important as a means of preventing violence. But in the midst of a full-blown violent conflict it is not so easy to undertake nonviolent action. Not easy. There is an urgent need for massive, radical nonviolence, and at the same time, it must be very humble. The first need of the people is to halt the violence being visited upon them with impunity.
To fill in more of the picture, current government policy is driven by an increasingly aggressive PRI (Institutional Revolutionary Party), which has successfully bought off the other two main parties, PRD and PAN (Revolutionary Democratic Party and National Action Party). Examples of this violence include new laws facilitating the plundering of natural resources, the continuing impunity enjoyed by criminals, and the repression of political activists and human rights defenders…
In December (2013), we expect the approval of energy reform legislation. It includes the privatization of the oil industry, Mexico’s principal natural resource. In a country in which, according to official statistics, a third of the population lives in poverty or extreme poverty, this will be a very grave development. While it will be a major bonanza for transnational capital, inevitably it will reduce the funding available for social welfare programs and infrastructure development. Undoubtedly we will see outbreaks of resistance, both nonviolent and armed. People are simply fed up with being mocked by politicians who are untouchable.
The mechanisms of violence that we have described above are based on the idea of “armed peace,” a model employed around the world that was de facto recognized with a Nobel Peace Prize when the prize was awarded to the European Union. It consists of superimposing the concept of security on top of that of peace, constantly sowing insecurity in people and militarizing society as a response. It is a lethal trap, deployed through a paradox: talk of peace in order to continue the war. There is no better example than the policy of our current president, Peña Nieto, whose first principle is “Mexico in peace.”
II. Civil Resistance: From “We’ve Had It Up to Here!” to “No More!”
In the terrain of popular resistance, this past year has been marked by growth in two distinct areas: peaceful, civil, nonviolent resistance and armed struggle. Both have been aimed at the same objectives: defense of territory and natural resources and basic physical security. Are these two paths opposed or complementary? It is not easy to answer that question. The response must come out of Mexican and Latin American culture, in the context of the enormous crisis created by the social violence of the government and the violence of organized crime, and not out of absolute abstract principles. In our work with people in the cities and rural communities, we never simply dismiss other forms of struggle, but neither have we ever failed to encourage reflection on the risks and false illusions of any kind of struggle. We have tried to show that sometimes what seems like the shortest and most effective path of struggle turns out to be the most costly and ineffective.
It is a truism in Mexico today that “everyone is armed.” This is an important part of contemporary Mexican reality, given the failure of the State to defend the people, and even its direct association with organized crime in attacks on civilians. Mexico is characterized by: 1. Armed confrontation between criminal organizations who are tied to both big capital and to government authorities and who often target the unarmed civilian population; and 2. Efforts to defend the communities and the civilian population. People are always looking for ways to organize and to undertake peaceful actions, but the authorities and organized crime are always trying to shut off such options in order to protect their interests. This is the great challenge to nonviolence: to show that nonviolent means of struggle are still viable and more humane than armed struggle. It is not easy. One cannot condemn the legitimate and necessary right of self-defense. As Gandhi said: “Between cowardice and violence, I would choose violence a thousand times…but there is another, better path, which is nonviolence.”
It is precisely such nonviolent tactics that have shaped the great national resistance struggles in Mexico and throughout Latin America and that continue to shape the struggle of communities to protect their security, their identity, their culture, their history, their beliefs, their natural resources, and their sustainability. Mexico and Latin America offer many clear examples of such nonviolent resistance that combine many forms of social struggle, from negotiations and mass mobilizations to non-cooperation and civil disobedience, bringing together a broad spectrum of civil society…tied together by historical experience and shared values.
Citizen self-defense groups or community police have proliferated recently. In parts of Guerrero and Michoacán they have effectively replaced the local police. The government and transnational corporations, in collusion with organized crime, have responded by attacking them. The county of Aquila (Michoacán) is known nationally as an example of this sort of armed confrontation. When community members organized a self-defense force to protect themselves from organized crime, the authorities responded, not by going after the criminals, but by going after the self-defense force. The result was more lives lost, 40 arrests, and the community left more vulnerable than ever. Hundreds of families have since fled to Mexico City for refuge.
At the bottom of the conflict in Aquila is a mining company. The same story is repeated in many other places across Mexico, mostly with Canadian mining companies. It is startling to see the level of corruption and violence that they unleash in order to impose their projects that destroy everything: the environment, the people, the culture.
Currently the region with the highest number of armed confrontations between community self-defense groups and organized crime is the Tierra Caliente region of Michoacán. The leader of thousands of citizens organized in self-defense groups is Dr. José Mireles of Tepalcatepec. He emphasizes that it was only after twelve years of enduring the violence that they got to the point of saying “No More!” We may be seeing a moment when the civil resistance process in the country is transitioning from “We are fed up!” (¡Estamos hasta la madre!) to “No More!” (¡Ya no!), which is closer to the Zapatista cry of “Enough!” (¡Ya basta!); from nonviolence to armed self-defense combined with the nonviolent organization of the people; from the leadership of Javier Sicilia and the family members of victims of the Movement for Peace with Justice and Dignity (MPJD) to that of Dr. Mireles. The fundamental analysis of social struggle in Mexico is being called into question. It is not that people want armed struggle. However, under the present circumstances, they see no other way to halt the criminal and unpunished violence, even at the risk of increasing the spiral of war. The MPJD gave birth to major nonviolent actions, including massive marches and caravans around the country. These actions gave unprecedented visibility to the war, the victims and the impunity of the criminals. The MPJD also achieved dialogue with the highest levels of government and tentative legislative action aimed at supporting the victims and changing the model of “armed peace.” Now other direct victims of this war have decided to pursue another path: building justice in their territories through armed self-defense, given the fact that the State offers no effective presence to defend them. The bishop of Apatzingán has characterized the government presence as a “failed State,” and the Bourbaki Report talks about a “criminal State.”
III. Empowering Knowledge and the Deactivation of the Spiral of War through Nonviolent Resistance
The focus of our work this past year has been on developing groups, especially of youth, and supporting existing groups who are interested in taking up the challenge of more nonviolent, effective and radical action. I have worked with groups serving migrants (both church and non-governmental organizations), with environmental groups struggling against Canadian mining projects, with national human rights organizations, with the MPJD and victims of the war, with teachers, and with the student movement “Yo Soy 132” (I Am Number 132). A starting point for this work has been a reflection-action process aimed at countering the discouragement that has become so widespread in Mexico today. Many activists ask what good so much mobilization and nonviolent struggle has done if nothing has changed, the PRI is in power, and they are going to privatize the oil and the education system. We try to help people take a more complex view of the process of social change and to develop a longer-term nonviolent strategy rather than evaluating their actions and commitment solely on the basis of immediate results related to one objective. In this regard, it has been very helpful to study other experiences of nonviolent struggle around the world. The public reappearance of the Zapatista movement (a true example of mid and long-term vision of struggle) has also been encouraging. Their “Little School” (Escuelita) that was offered this past August brought many Mexicans to Chiapas for two weeks of learning about how the Zapatistas have been able to resist for so long, maintaining hope and achieving real fruits of struggle. It was an authentic school of peaceful, civil struggle, presented in the context of a Constructive Program (i.e., building autonomy) that is very similar to Gandhi’s conception.
In the second half of the year, in addition to the workshops on nonviolent strategy in defense of territory, we worked together with a team of youth studying nonviolence at the UNAM (National Autonomous University) to create two experiences of non-cooperation that were very original in the Mexican context. One was a one-day strike of the entire university (Oct. 2) and the other was a Day of Reflection and Nonviolent Action called “24 Hours: More Study, More Action.” The latter was an opportunity to work with the UNAM School of Philosophy and Literature (Facultad de Filosofía y Letras) to reflect together and raise awareness about the violence, the proposed education and energy legislation, and social resistance. The UNAM and its School of Philosophy and Literature have a lot of influence at the national level, especially among youth, and represent a valuable example to follow.
We have continued workshops on nonviolence and peace education as well as a certificate program at the UNAM on “The Duty of Disobedience (to Inhuman Orders)” and a diploma course sponsored by the MPJD on “Memory, Peace and Human Rights.” We have also been working on an “Anthology on Peace Education in Mexico Today” which will be published soon by the Universidad del Claustro de Sor Juana (University of the Cloister of Sister Juana). There is currently nothing similar to this important book. It includes key authors from around Mexico and around the world. It will be a valuable resource for education and training, for local actions, and for national movements. We also worked on the research and writing of the report “The State of War in Mexico Today”, by the Latin American collective Angela Esperanza, which has been used by a number of civil resistance groups.
In Morelos, where I live, we have been struggling against the Canadian mining company Esperanza Silver. It wants to develop an open-air gold mine in the Nahuatl archeological site of Xochicalco, recognized by UNESCO as a World Heritage Site. Imagine if you can what we have come to: An open-air mine using cyanide processing on a UNESCO World Heritage Site! The mining company sowed division among the people of the nearby town of Tetlama. It offered money, gave away TVs, painted the school and provided it with computers while at the same time hiring thugs to threaten and beat up mine opponent activists. One family, a couple with four daughters, is currently “exiled” to an unnamed town in central Mexico because the mother and her four daughters were kidnapped for an entire day, after which the family began receiving serious death threats related to their activism. We have worked closely with them for decades, and they have been active with the Movement for Peace with Justice and Dignity and visible opponents of the mine. Although they had no savings, they were forced to quit their jobs, uproot the children, and flee. Peace Brigades International did a threat analysis and concluded that they should plan on staying away for at least a year in order to safeguard the children.
A few weeks before they fled, we offered a workshop on nonviolent strategy that was very helpful in focusing and taking seriously the issue of security in the struggle against the mine. As a result, it was decided to shift the struggle to Mexico City, focusing nonviolent actions on ministries with key decision-making responsibility over the project. Six weeks later, after a totally nonviolent struggle that had lasted six months, the federal government issued a highly unusual decision denying permission for the mine. This has been one of the rare cases of a small victory against a mining company. However the mining company was bought by another larger and more violent Canadian mining company. That company is now using hired thugs to stoke violence in the community while pursuing development permits through the state government of a neighboring state with the idea of creating a different access route to the ore.
The long-sought liberation of the political prisoner Alberto Patishtán, who was freed on October 31, is another partial victory for civil society. He is a Tzotzil schoolteacher from Chiapas falsely accused of killing a police officer and imprisoned for the last 13 years. While in prison he has been a moral authority and nonviolent leader for the country. He was freed after a massive and lengthy nonviolent campaign to raise awareness and support nationally and internationally. We were very involved in the campaign, which included all kinds of actions, including public fasts, film showings, and legal maneuvers.
In synthesis, in Mexico today there is a huge amount of armed violence as well as legalistic traps set on all sides by a political class that continues to be secure in the impunity that the government guarantees. On the other hand, there is an almost desperate search by rural communities and civil society for alternative forms of struggle to defend life and territory without falling into the spiral of violence promoted by the authorities, the transnational companies and organized crime. In the midst of these tensions, we continue to work with as many people as possible to do peace education and to develop the capacity for nonviolent action; to promote the slow process of networking among all these diverse groups; and to offer workshops on the strategy of nonviolent struggle to organized groups that seek ways to resist, even if the fate of the country is a great unknown.
i See for example:
“El Presidente de las 83 mil ejecuciones”, Zeta; Nov. 26, 2012
“Mexico’s crime wave has left about 25,000 missing, government documents show” Washington Post; Nov. 9, 2012
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Update letter from Pietro Ameglio, August 15, 2013 Pietro's letter thanks IF and its donors for all the assistance we have provided for his group's nonviolence education and organizing work. In his letter he highlights some of the current issues MPJD is addressing, and the sometimes small, but significant, successes the MPJD is achieving.
“Between cowardice and violence I choose violence a thousand times…but there is another and better path, which is nonviolence.” M. Gandhi
Dear Friends of IF,
I send a warm and grateful greeting, together with my best wishes for yourselves, for your families, personal and family paths, and for the work for peace with justice and dignity that the spirit has enabled us to undertake together. It is a privilege to share this commitment, you in your land and we in ours. I speak of “we” because we always work collectively as much as possible, a lesson we have learned from our experiences of faith communities, of the practice of active nonviolence, and of peace education.
To be sure, in the last few years Mexico has not been a country that has produced a lot of good news in the field of peace building, although the force of hope and peaceful resistance is always present in every corner of the country, especially in the indigenous and peasant communities, which struggle to defend their territories in the face of unchecked destructive threats to their way of life and the future of their children from mines, deforestation, contamination of water, etc.
In response to the new initiative of the government to privatize the oil industry, we can expect to see the beginning of strong nonviolent resistence across the country. We also wait to see what comes from the new initiatives of the Zapatistas and from efforts to reactivate the National Indigenous Congress . This PRI government, just like the two PAN governments that preceded it, has unleashed an enormous, aggressive effort, backed by police, army, paramilitaries, and hired killers, to strip the people of their natural resources for the benefit of transnational corporations.
As an example of what I am describing, in the last couple of weeks, two enviromental movement activists were brutally murdered. Noé Vázquez was killed in Veracruz on the east coast and Raymundo Velázquez was killed in Guerrero on the west coast. Also, as I write, we are in the midst of a crisis in Aquila on the Michoacán coast where the army arrested 40 indigenous who had formed a self-defense corps to protect their communities from the threat of organized crime. Now those communities are left totally alone to face the criminals, whose violence may now be fed even more by their desire for revenge. And the origin of this conflict, just like many others, is with the mining companies, primarily Canadian companies. It is startling to see the level of corruption and violence that they undertake in order to impose their projects that destroy everything: the environment, people, cultures. This mining company, Ternium, ceased to make the legally required payments to the community for its work, claiming that the international market price of steel had fallen and they didn’t have the money. So with false accusations, they prevailed on the government to arrest 40 people, including a key community leader who was also the head of the self-defense corps. That action was totally biased toward the mining company and the criminals of the area, since it was the efforts of the self-defense force to protect the community that was impeding their freedom of action.
In the state of Morelos, where I live, something similar happened recently. There was a struggle to oppose the plans of the Canadian mining company Esperanza Silver, which wants to develop an open-pit gold mine in Xochicalco, a Nahuatl archeological site that is recognized as a world heritage site by UNESCO. Can you believe what we have come to? A mountain-top removal mine using a cyanide-extraction process in Xochicalco! The mining company has divided the people of Tetlama, the town near the site, handing out money, giving away TV sets, painting the school and donating computers…and hiring armed thugs to beat and threaten the opponents. One family is now “exiled” in another part of Mexico after the mother and her four daughters were kidnapped and held for a day while being threatened with death. We have been very close with this family for decades, and they were very involved in the Movement for Peace with Justice and Dignity over the last two years. They have been advised by Peace Brigades International that, for the protection of their young children, they should expect to stay away for at least a year. Meanwhile they have no economic resources, and the death threats have continued.
A few weeks before the exile of this family, we offered a workshop on nonviolence strategies for the mine opponents. It brought into focus the issue of security and lead to the decision to target key decision-making points in Mexico City with regard to the mining permits. Actions in Mexico City are less dangerous than actions in the mining zone, where the goons threaten and the police fail to protect. A month and a half later, after a strong and consistent show of opposition, the government, in an almost unheard of move, denied the mining permits. This is one of the few cases of small triumphs against a mining company, and it was achieved through a totally nonviolent struggle over six months. Sadly, the mining company continues to provoke violence in the communities, and it is reportedly seeking permits for a separate operation nearby.
Today the war in Mexico is most visible in Guerrero and Michocán, where one can plainly see the collaboration of transnational capital, all levels of government, and the criminals against the civilian population. In recent weeks literally thousands of people have been forced to flee their rural communities because nobody is there to protect them from criminal activity.
Across the country we see violent armed confrontations between the forces of big business in collusion with the Mexican government on the one hand and the defenders of the rural communities. The people seek to organize themselves and to pursue every kind of nonviolent action. But the authorities and the criminals (who are sometimes indistinguishable) continually seek to close off all such options. This is the great challenge of nonviolence, to show that more human means of struggle, without arms, are still feasible. It is not easy, and neither is it right to condemn recourse to the legitimate and necessary right of self-defense. As Gandhi said, “Between cowardice and violence I choose violence a thousand times…but there is another and better path, which is nonviolence.”
During the last two months, we have had the opportunity to offer nonviolence workshops for leading national human rights organizations. This is the first time that these organizations have asked us for the workshops. They too are seeking new paths of struggle when the legal process fails them.
In another hopeful sign, our regular class at the UNAM (National Autonomous University, the largest university in Mexico), just began again. The title is “The Disobedience Required by the Inhuman” (“Desobediencia debida a lo inhumano”). It covers, among other themes, the theory of nonviolence, conscientious objection, and strategies and forms of resistance. I am happy to say that we have a large group of youth and social activists enrolled.
In synthesis, we see in Mexico today a very high level of violence and legalistic traps of the political class on every side, supported by the terrible plague of impunity that is an all-too-integral element of governance here. The bad guys literally can, and do, get away with murder. On the other hand, we see an almost desperate search by the communities and civil society to find alternative means of struggle for life and territory so that they can avoid falling into the spiral of violence that the authorities, the transnational companies and organized crime promote. It is very challenging. On one hand is the urgent need for radical, mass nonviolence. On the other is the need to be humble because the immediate priority is to curtail the ongoing violence directed toward the people with complete impunity. Pietro Ameglio
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Dear Friends,
For any report or analysis, we need to remember that Mexico is a territory marked throughout by acts of war, albeit not with the same form and intensity in each region. Nowhere can anyone go out on the street or to work without worrying. Nor is any campesino community secure from the threat of being stripped of its natural resources for the benefit of transnational corporations. This war has at least three central characteristics: it is a civil war; it is of massive extermination; and it is of selective extermination. Please let me explain ...
I. The State of Power in Mexico is War
Someone who lives in Michoacán, Guerrero or Chiapas will not have any doubt about using the term “civil war” in the classic sense of the term. In fact, there are self-defense armies of the people confronting, at a high human and material cost, other armies of the people – those of organized crime – with the Mexican Army and state and federal police involved on all sides. Another form in which this “civil war” finds expression is in an economic model that, in order to expand, requires periodic wars, exterminations, and massive population displacement through the implementation of a process of “social terrorization” all over the country. This makes possible, among other things, the appropriation of the natural resources and the wealth of the people. So it is not surprising that the volume of informal employment (e.g., street vendors) has surpassed that of formal employment since the 1990s; that unemployment is up; and that, according to the Instituto de Investigaciones Económicas de la UNAM (National Autonomous University), organized crime is the single largest source of employment in the country (600,000 direct jobs). [Ed: By comparison, PEMEX, the national oil company, had 138,000 employees in 2011.] This employment situation places the most vulnerable of the population, especially youth and the poor, in conditions favorable for their recruitment by various purveyors of social violence who use a variety of forms of physical and economic pressure.
Moreover there is no one in Mexico today who doesn’t know someone, all too often someone close to them, who has been the victim of murder, kidnapping, disappearance, or economic extortion. All social classes have been touched by this monstrous social violence.
According to official and media figures, in the last five years, the “massive extermination” consists of 85,000 killed, 27,000 disappeared, and hundreds of thousands of displaced.[i] The scale of these figures has been compared by others, including Amnesty International, with the wars in Bosnia and Iraq and with the military dictatorships in South America during the 1970s. Practically none of the cases of disappearance or murder that have been publicized by the Movement for Peace with Justice and Dignity or other civil society groups have been resolved. Instead they continue to proliferate.
The “selective extermination,” always present in the Mexico reality, has increased dramatically recently, and with total impunity. The process…of constructing peace with truth, justice and historical memory has been met with the multiplication of the number of murdered and disappeared victims: individuals, social activists, human rights defenders, journalists. Then there are the community or collective victims: indigenous-campesino communities and neighborhoods organized in (self) defense of their territories. (See appendix for a list of social activists and human rights defenders killed during the past year.) Just in the state of Guerrero, between August 5 and November 11 of this year, eight have been murdered. All of them were community leaders; all of them had alerted the authorities to the danger their lives were in; many were murdered in broad daylight, before witnesses, and in some cases, despite police protection. No justice has been achieved in any of their cases.
Noé Salomón Vázquez Ortíz is a classic case of this kind of extermination of political activists. He was an environmental activist with the group “Green Defense: Nature Always” in Veracruz who was brutally stoned to death on August 2 because of his struggle against the construction of a hydroelectric dam in Zongolica (Veracruz). He was attacked while he picked flowers and seeds to be used as an offering at the opening of the Tenth National Conference of the Mexican Movement against Dams and in Defense of Rivers (MAPDER), which was about to begin in Amatlán de los Reyes, Veracruz. The conference included participants from 17 states. Not even in the face of that much national representation have the authorities done anything to achieve justice in this case.
Another example that is very close to us: Last weekend a hearing of the Permanent Peoples’ Tribunal (www.tppmexico.org), respected globally for its moral authority, was held in Mexico City. We presented testimony about the murders in Ostula (Michoacán) of Pedro Leyva (October 2011) and Trinidad de la Cruz, whom we all called don Trino (December 6, 2011). I was at don Trino’s side when our van was stopped that day by paramilitaries. It was very painful to relive that terrible experience, and more still to see the complete impunity of those responsible for that and so many other killings.
In the case of don Trino, we were stopped by four heavily-armed paramilitary hired guns. They forced us to lie on the ground for a long time, saying they were going to kill us. Eventually they let us go, but they kept don Trino. His tortured body was found the next day. The experience poses tough questions about our practice of nonviolence: “How far can one go with nonviolent actions in the middle of a cross-fire? How effective can nonviolence be in the midst of a war among criminals, with the authorities colluding with the criminals and showing no commitment to ending the war? I recall the response of Gandhi when he was asked what would have happened with his struggle if the imperial government had been led by Hitler. He said that the issue was what could have been done to prevent Hitler from ever achieving power. That is, nonviolence is very important as a means of preventing violence. But in the midst of a full-blown violent conflict it is not so easy to undertake nonviolent action. Not easy. There is an urgent need for massive, radical nonviolence, and at the same time, it must be very humble. The first need of the people is to halt the violence being visited upon them with impunity.
To fill in more of the picture, current government policy is driven by an increasingly aggressive PRI (Institutional Revolutionary Party), which has successfully bought off the other two main parties, PRD and PAN (Revolutionary Democratic Party and National Action Party). Examples of this violence include new laws facilitating the plundering of natural resources, the continuing impunity enjoyed by criminals, and the repression of political activists and human rights defenders…
In December (2013), we expect the approval of energy reform legislation. It includes the privatization of the oil industry, Mexico’s principal natural resource. In a country in which, according to official statistics, a third of the population lives in poverty or extreme poverty, this will be a very grave development. While it will be a major bonanza for transnational capital, inevitably it will reduce the funding available for social welfare programs and infrastructure development. Undoubtedly we will see outbreaks of resistance, both nonviolent and armed. People are simply fed up with being mocked by politicians who are untouchable.
The mechanisms of violence that we have described above are based on the idea of “armed peace,” a model employed around the world that was de facto recognized with a Nobel Peace Prize when the prize was awarded to the European Union. It consists of superimposing the concept of security on top of that of peace, constantly sowing insecurity in people and militarizing society as a response. It is a lethal trap, deployed through a paradox: talk of peace in order to continue the war. There is no better example than the policy of our current president, Peña Nieto, whose first principle is “Mexico in peace.”
II. Civil Resistance: From “We’ve Had It Up to Here!” to “No More!”
In the terrain of popular resistance, this past year has been marked by growth in two distinct areas: peaceful, civil, nonviolent resistance and armed struggle. Both have been aimed at the same objectives: defense of territory and natural resources and basic physical security. Are these two paths opposed or complementary? It is not easy to answer that question. The response must come out of Mexican and Latin American culture, in the context of the enormous crisis created by the social violence of the government and the violence of organized crime, and not out of absolute abstract principles. In our work with people in the cities and rural communities, we never simply dismiss other forms of struggle, but neither have we ever failed to encourage reflection on the risks and false illusions of any kind of struggle. We have tried to show that sometimes what seems like the shortest and most effective path of struggle turns out to be the most costly and ineffective.
It is a truism in Mexico today that “everyone is armed.” This is an important part of contemporary Mexican reality, given the failure of the State to defend the people, and even its direct association with organized crime in attacks on civilians. Mexico is characterized by: 1. Armed confrontation between criminal organizations who are tied to both big capital and to government authorities and who often target the unarmed civilian population; and 2. Efforts to defend the communities and the civilian population. People are always looking for ways to organize and to undertake peaceful actions, but the authorities and organized crime are always trying to shut off such options in order to protect their interests. This is the great challenge to nonviolence: to show that nonviolent means of struggle are still viable and more humane than armed struggle. It is not easy. One cannot condemn the legitimate and necessary right of self-defense. As Gandhi said: “Between cowardice and violence, I would choose violence a thousand times…but there is another, better path, which is nonviolence.”
It is precisely such nonviolent tactics that have shaped the great national resistance struggles in Mexico and throughout Latin America and that continue to shape the struggle of communities to protect their security, their identity, their culture, their history, their beliefs, their natural resources, and their sustainability. Mexico and Latin America offer many clear examples of such nonviolent resistance that combine many forms of social struggle, from negotiations and mass mobilizations to non-cooperation and civil disobedience, bringing together a broad spectrum of civil society…tied together by historical experience and shared values.
Citizen self-defense groups or community police have proliferated recently. In parts of Guerrero and Michoacán they have effectively replaced the local police. The government and transnational corporations, in collusion with organized crime, have responded by attacking them. The county of Aquila (Michoacán) is known nationally as an example of this sort of armed confrontation. When community members organized a self-defense force to protect themselves from organized crime, the authorities responded, not by going after the criminals, but by going after the self-defense force. The result was more lives lost, 40 arrests, and the community left more vulnerable than ever. Hundreds of families have since fled to Mexico City for refuge.
At the bottom of the conflict in Aquila is a mining company. The same story is repeated in many other places across Mexico, mostly with Canadian mining companies. It is startling to see the level of corruption and violence that they unleash in order to impose their projects that destroy everything: the environment, the people, the culture.
Currently the region with the highest number of armed confrontations between community self-defense groups and organized crime is the Tierra Caliente region of Michoacán. The leader of thousands of citizens organized in self-defense groups is Dr. José Mireles of Tepalcatepec. He emphasizes that it was only after twelve years of enduring the violence that they got to the point of saying “No More!” We may be seeing a moment when the civil resistance process in the country is transitioning from “We are fed up!” (¡Estamos hasta la madre!) to “No More!” (¡Ya no!), which is closer to the Zapatista cry of “Enough!” (¡Ya basta!); from nonviolence to armed self-defense combined with the nonviolent organization of the people; from the leadership of Javier Sicilia and the family members of victims of the Movement for Peace with Justice and Dignity (MPJD) to that of Dr. Mireles. The fundamental analysis of social struggle in Mexico is being called into question. It is not that people want armed struggle. However, under the present circumstances, they see no other way to halt the criminal and unpunished violence, even at the risk of increasing the spiral of war. The MPJD gave birth to major nonviolent actions, including massive marches and caravans around the country. These actions gave unprecedented visibility to the war, the victims and the impunity of the criminals. The MPJD also achieved dialogue with the highest levels of government and tentative legislative action aimed at supporting the victims and changing the model of “armed peace.” Now other direct victims of this war have decided to pursue another path: building justice in their territories through armed self-defense, given the fact that the State offers no effective presence to defend them. The bishop of Apatzingán has characterized the government presence as a “failed State,” and the Bourbaki Report talks about a “criminal State.”
III. Empowering Knowledge and the Deactivation of the Spiral of War through Nonviolent Resistance
The focus of our work this past year has been on developing groups, especially of youth, and supporting existing groups who are interested in taking up the challenge of more nonviolent, effective and radical action. I have worked with groups serving migrants (both church and non-governmental organizations), with environmental groups struggling against Canadian mining projects, with national human rights organizations, with the MPJD and victims of the war, with teachers, and with the student movement “Yo Soy 132” (I Am Number 132). A starting point for this work has been a reflection-action process aimed at countering the discouragement that has become so widespread in Mexico today. Many activists ask what good so much mobilization and nonviolent struggle has done if nothing has changed, the PRI is in power, and they are going to privatize the oil and the education system. We try to help people take a more complex view of the process of social change and to develop a longer-term nonviolent strategy rather than evaluating their actions and commitment solely on the basis of immediate results related to one objective. In this regard, it has been very helpful to study other experiences of nonviolent struggle around the world. The public reappearance of the Zapatista movement (a true example of mid and long-term vision of struggle) has also been encouraging. Their “Little School” (Escuelita) that was offered this past August brought many Mexicans to Chiapas for two weeks of learning about how the Zapatistas have been able to resist for so long, maintaining hope and achieving real fruits of struggle. It was an authentic school of peaceful, civil struggle, presented in the context of a Constructive Program (i.e., building autonomy) that is very similar to Gandhi’s conception.
In the second half of the year, in addition to the workshops on nonviolent strategy in defense of territory, we worked together with a team of youth studying nonviolence at the UNAM (National Autonomous University) to create two experiences of non-cooperation that were very original in the Mexican context. One was a one-day strike of the entire university (Oct. 2) and the other was a Day of Reflection and Nonviolent Action called “24 Hours: More Study, More Action.” The latter was an opportunity to work with the UNAM School of Philosophy and Literature (Facultad de Filosofía y Letras) to reflect together and raise awareness about the violence, the proposed education and energy legislation, and social resistance. The UNAM and its School of Philosophy and Literature have a lot of influence at the national level, especially among youth, and represent a valuable example to follow.
We have continued workshops on nonviolence and peace education as well as a certificate program at the UNAM on “The Duty of Disobedience (to Inhuman Orders)” and a diploma course sponsored by the MPJD on “Memory, Peace and Human Rights.” We have also been working on an “Anthology on Peace Education in Mexico Today” which will be published soon by the Universidad del Claustro de Sor Juana (University of the Cloister of Sister Juana). There is currently nothing similar to this important book. It includes key authors from around Mexico and around the world. It will be a valuable resource for education and training, for local actions, and for national movements. We also worked on the research and writing of the report “The State of War in Mexico Today”, by the Latin American collective Angela Esperanza, which has been used by a number of civil resistance groups.
In Morelos, where I live, we have been struggling against the Canadian mining company Esperanza Silver. It wants to develop an open-air gold mine in the Nahuatl archeological site of Xochicalco, recognized by UNESCO as a World Heritage Site. Imagine if you can what we have come to: An open-air mine using cyanide processing on a UNESCO World Heritage Site! The mining company sowed division among the people of the nearby town of Tetlama. It offered money, gave away TVs, painted the school and provided it with computers while at the same time hiring thugs to threaten and beat up mine opponent activists. One family, a couple with four daughters, is currently “exiled” to an unnamed town in central Mexico because the mother and her four daughters were kidnapped for an entire day, after which the family began receiving serious death threats related to their activism. We have worked closely with them for decades, and they have been active with the Movement for Peace with Justice and Dignity and visible opponents of the mine. Although they had no savings, they were forced to quit their jobs, uproot the children, and flee. Peace Brigades International did a threat analysis and concluded that they should plan on staying away for at least a year in order to safeguard the children.
A few weeks before they fled, we offered a workshop on nonviolent strategy that was very helpful in focusing and taking seriously the issue of security in the struggle against the mine. As a result, it was decided to shift the struggle to Mexico City, focusing nonviolent actions on ministries with key decision-making responsibility over the project. Six weeks later, after a totally nonviolent struggle that had lasted six months, the federal government issued a highly unusual decision denying permission for the mine. This has been one of the rare cases of a small victory against a mining company. However the mining company was bought by another larger and more violent Canadian mining company. That company is now using hired thugs to stoke violence in the community while pursuing development permits through the state government of a neighboring state with the idea of creating a different access route to the ore.
The long-sought liberation of the political prisoner Alberto Patishtán, who was freed on October 31, is another partial victory for civil society. He is a Tzotzil schoolteacher from Chiapas falsely accused of killing a police officer and imprisoned for the last 13 years. While in prison he has been a moral authority and nonviolent leader for the country. He was freed after a massive and lengthy nonviolent campaign to raise awareness and support nationally and internationally. We were very involved in the campaign, which included all kinds of actions, including public fasts, film showings, and legal maneuvers.
In synthesis, in Mexico today there is a huge amount of armed violence as well as legalistic traps set on all sides by a political class that continues to be secure in the impunity that the government guarantees. On the other hand, there is an almost desperate search by rural communities and civil society for alternative forms of struggle to defend life and territory without falling into the spiral of violence promoted by the authorities, the transnational companies and organized crime. In the midst of these tensions, we continue to work with as many people as possible to do peace education and to develop the capacity for nonviolent action; to promote the slow process of networking among all these diverse groups; and to offer workshops on the strategy of nonviolent struggle to organized groups that seek ways to resist, even if the fate of the country is a great unknown.
i See for example:
“El Presidente de las 83 mil ejecuciones”, Zeta; Nov. 26, 2012
“Mexico’s crime wave has left about 25,000 missing, government documents show” Washington Post; Nov. 9, 2012
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Update letter from Pietro Ameglio, August 15, 2013 Pietro's letter thanks IF and its donors for all the assistance we have provided for his group's nonviolence education and organizing work. In his letter he highlights some of the current issues MPJD is addressing, and the sometimes small, but significant, successes the MPJD is achieving.
“Between cowardice and violence I choose violence a thousand times…but there is another and better path, which is nonviolence.” M. Gandhi
Dear Friends of IF,
I send a warm and grateful greeting, together with my best wishes for yourselves, for your families, personal and family paths, and for the work for peace with justice and dignity that the spirit has enabled us to undertake together. It is a privilege to share this commitment, you in your land and we in ours. I speak of “we” because we always work collectively as much as possible, a lesson we have learned from our experiences of faith communities, of the practice of active nonviolence, and of peace education.
To be sure, in the last few years Mexico has not been a country that has produced a lot of good news in the field of peace building, although the force of hope and peaceful resistance is always present in every corner of the country, especially in the indigenous and peasant communities, which struggle to defend their territories in the face of unchecked destructive threats to their way of life and the future of their children from mines, deforestation, contamination of water, etc.
In response to the new initiative of the government to privatize the oil industry, we can expect to see the beginning of strong nonviolent resistence across the country. We also wait to see what comes from the new initiatives of the Zapatistas and from efforts to reactivate the National Indigenous Congress . This PRI government, just like the two PAN governments that preceded it, has unleashed an enormous, aggressive effort, backed by police, army, paramilitaries, and hired killers, to strip the people of their natural resources for the benefit of transnational corporations.
As an example of what I am describing, in the last couple of weeks, two enviromental movement activists were brutally murdered. Noé Vázquez was killed in Veracruz on the east coast and Raymundo Velázquez was killed in Guerrero on the west coast. Also, as I write, we are in the midst of a crisis in Aquila on the Michoacán coast where the army arrested 40 indigenous who had formed a self-defense corps to protect their communities from the threat of organized crime. Now those communities are left totally alone to face the criminals, whose violence may now be fed even more by their desire for revenge. And the origin of this conflict, just like many others, is with the mining companies, primarily Canadian companies. It is startling to see the level of corruption and violence that they undertake in order to impose their projects that destroy everything: the environment, people, cultures. This mining company, Ternium, ceased to make the legally required payments to the community for its work, claiming that the international market price of steel had fallen and they didn’t have the money. So with false accusations, they prevailed on the government to arrest 40 people, including a key community leader who was also the head of the self-defense corps. That action was totally biased toward the mining company and the criminals of the area, since it was the efforts of the self-defense force to protect the community that was impeding their freedom of action.
In the state of Morelos, where I live, something similar happened recently. There was a struggle to oppose the plans of the Canadian mining company Esperanza Silver, which wants to develop an open-pit gold mine in Xochicalco, a Nahuatl archeological site that is recognized as a world heritage site by UNESCO. Can you believe what we have come to? A mountain-top removal mine using a cyanide-extraction process in Xochicalco! The mining company has divided the people of Tetlama, the town near the site, handing out money, giving away TV sets, painting the school and donating computers…and hiring armed thugs to beat and threaten the opponents. One family is now “exiled” in another part of Mexico after the mother and her four daughters were kidnapped and held for a day while being threatened with death. We have been very close with this family for decades, and they were very involved in the Movement for Peace with Justice and Dignity over the last two years. They have been advised by Peace Brigades International that, for the protection of their young children, they should expect to stay away for at least a year. Meanwhile they have no economic resources, and the death threats have continued.
A few weeks before the exile of this family, we offered a workshop on nonviolence strategies for the mine opponents. It brought into focus the issue of security and lead to the decision to target key decision-making points in Mexico City with regard to the mining permits. Actions in Mexico City are less dangerous than actions in the mining zone, where the goons threaten and the police fail to protect. A month and a half later, after a strong and consistent show of opposition, the government, in an almost unheard of move, denied the mining permits. This is one of the few cases of small triumphs against a mining company, and it was achieved through a totally nonviolent struggle over six months. Sadly, the mining company continues to provoke violence in the communities, and it is reportedly seeking permits for a separate operation nearby.
Today the war in Mexico is most visible in Guerrero and Michocán, where one can plainly see the collaboration of transnational capital, all levels of government, and the criminals against the civilian population. In recent weeks literally thousands of people have been forced to flee their rural communities because nobody is there to protect them from criminal activity.
Across the country we see violent armed confrontations between the forces of big business in collusion with the Mexican government on the one hand and the defenders of the rural communities. The people seek to organize themselves and to pursue every kind of nonviolent action. But the authorities and the criminals (who are sometimes indistinguishable) continually seek to close off all such options. This is the great challenge of nonviolence, to show that more human means of struggle, without arms, are still feasible. It is not easy, and neither is it right to condemn recourse to the legitimate and necessary right of self-defense. As Gandhi said, “Between cowardice and violence I choose violence a thousand times…but there is another and better path, which is nonviolence.”
During the last two months, we have had the opportunity to offer nonviolence workshops for leading national human rights organizations. This is the first time that these organizations have asked us for the workshops. They too are seeking new paths of struggle when the legal process fails them.
In another hopeful sign, our regular class at the UNAM (National Autonomous University, the largest university in Mexico), just began again. The title is “The Disobedience Required by the Inhuman” (“Desobediencia debida a lo inhumano”). It covers, among other themes, the theory of nonviolence, conscientious objection, and strategies and forms of resistance. I am happy to say that we have a large group of youth and social activists enrolled.
In synthesis, we see in Mexico today a very high level of violence and legalistic traps of the political class on every side, supported by the terrible plague of impunity that is an all-too-integral element of governance here. The bad guys literally can, and do, get away with murder. On the other hand, we see an almost desperate search by the communities and civil society to find alternative means of struggle for life and territory so that they can avoid falling into the spiral of violence that the authorities, the transnational companies and organized crime promote. It is very challenging. On one hand is the urgent need for radical, mass nonviolence. On the other is the need to be humble because the immediate priority is to curtail the ongoing violence directed toward the people with complete impunity. Pietro Ameglio
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Letter from Pietro Ameglio and Movement for Peace with Justice and Dignity (March 2013) Pietro Ameglio sent us a letter recently, thanking us for all the help we have been giving for his nonviolence education and organizing work.
The MPJD emerged to challenge the militarized approach to drugs and its astonishing toll in human lives: upward of 60,000 killed and 20,000 disappeared in the last six years. The MPJD celebrated its second anniversary at the end of March. In that short time, it has staged demonstrations of tens of thousands of people, caravans to the north and south of Mexico, and a public audience with then-President Calderón and his cabinet at which victims of drug war violence were able to tell their stories and demand redress. An MPJD caravan across the U.S. last summer helped to build a bi-national movement among groups with shared objectives. It generated thousands of news reports and served to raise awareness in the U.S. of our role as the market for the drug cartels and the source of the weapons being used by all sides in the war in Mexico. Pietro points out two major achievements of the MPJD. One, whose importance can hardly be over- emphasized, is the emergence from the shadows of the innocent victims of the drug war. An unforgettable memory of the 2011 caravans to northern and southern Mexico was the victims, previously intimidated into silence, speaking out in public when the caravan visited their town, telling the stories of their lost loved ones, proclaiming their grief, and demanding justice. That experience lead them to join the MPJD, where they found solace with others who had suffered similar loss and solidarity to struggle together. Their united efforts eventually lead to the passage of the national “Law of Victims”. Among other things, it obliges the Mexican government to compensate victims of serious human rights violations and their family members. Pietro notes, “It is almost the only law of its kind in the world.” He also sounds a note of caution: “But, we still await the approval of the implementing regulations in order to put the law into practice” In his letter, Pietro informs us that the violence continues in Mexico, but that the new PRI government does not report the number of victims, government corruption, or the plundering of natural resources by transnational corporations. Instead, they produce a “smokescreen” discourse of “peaceful change and economic development” that attempts to hide the ongoing war. In this regard, President Peña Nieto’s choice of General Oscar Naranjo as his advisor/strategist regarding internal security is a troubling sign. Naranjo has a dark past as former head of the national police in Colombia, where he was accused of serious human rights violations and ties with the ultra-violent paramilitaries. On the surface, the government talks about a country where everything is rosy and full of progress. But behind the smokescreen, there is plundering of the natural resources of rural communities, repression of dissent, and impunity. Organized crime continues to flourish, with a hefty measure of acquiescence, or even collaboration, from government authorities and security forces. With the rule of law so shaky, Pietro reports that civil resistance is growing rapidly. Much of this resistance is nonviolent, and interest in learning about active nonviolence is increasing. In this regard, Pietro is busier than ever. At the same time, some of the resistance takes the form of communities arming to defend themselves and their rights. In the south and in Guerrero, many communities are building community police or self-defense patrols to protect themselves from organized crime. So the country is becoming more armed – out of a sense of vulnerability and desperation. In an important recent development, the Zapatistas have reappeared in public and re-entered the national dialogue about Mexico’s future. For nearly 20 years they have been developing their autonomy project as a political and social alternative. It is what Gandhi called a “constructive program”. It is building the new society in the shell of the old. They have invited some civil society groups to come to Chiapas in August in order to discuss their experience and its relevance for Mexican society. Their autonomous communities have been largely successful in resisting organized crime and violence and enabling people to hold onto their territories. And their form of “good government” does a better job of delivering healthcare, education, and food sovereignty than anything the indigenous communities of Mexico have known since the Conquest. Pietro reports that he and his group have nurtured interest in active nonviolence among diverse groups – activists, indigenous peoples, artists, academics – who are working to defend their territories, to protect the environment, to educate, and to repair the social fabric. The demand for workshops and courses is unrelenting. And he notes: “The exchanges, conferences, and workshops we offer have been used by the different groups that have invited us to manage the context of growing fear and terror, to break down the walls of isolation, to work together, and to strengthen civil resistance through the incorporation of active nonviolence strategy and tactics.” Meanwhile, the terrible violence continues. The Tijuana newspaper Zeta reported 4549 murders in the first 100 days of the Pena Nieto presidency. It can seem that nothing has changed. As a result, feelings of discouragement are widespread. People do not know where to go from here. And that is reflected in Pietro’s recent work: “I have directed many workshops and trainings in nonviolence and peace toward the construction of alternative ways of thinking and acting to counteract this feeling of powerlessness and discouragement. We have spent time reflecting on what we have actually accomplished, getting to know other historic experiences of nonviolent resistance in Latin America and elsehwere, and studying the lengthy periods of historic processes of social change. We need to remember not to measure things simply by immediate results. We need to do more to build nonviolent action at the level of culture, artistic expression and direct action.” Personally, Pietro concludes, he has a lot of hope. But he has no illusion of profound change in the short term. He concludes by wishing us all “A strong hug, and strong spirits!” |
MPJD and the Trail of Peace
 Embroidered panels (that) "are like footprints of truth and injustice that can't be erased . . "
click on photo for larger image
The MPJD has launched a national campaign to change its name to Estela de la Paz (Trail of Peace) and make it a memorial to all the victims of the drug war. To press their case, they cemented small display cases, containing embroidered panels that tell the story of individual victims, to the ground around the monument. Pietro says, "They are like footprints of truth and injustice that can't be erased, that all the world can see, that unmask the truth and confront the impunity of the authorities." He calls them "plaques of nonviolence."  Panels tell the story of individual victims of the drug war.
click on photo for larger image In the struggle for recognition of and justice for the victims of the drug war, the Movement for Peace with Justice and Dignity (MPJD) has sought different ways to make the victims visible. Pietro sent us these photos from an action he helped organize at the end of March to commemorate the second anniversary of the founding of the MPJD. The "Estela de Luz" (Trail of Light) is a monument in Mexico City that opened in 2011 to commemorate two hundred years of Mexican independence. Back to Top Perspectives on Movement for Peace with Dignity US Caravan 2012
Movement for Peace with Justice and Dignity (Mexico)Pietro Ameglio described the background and purpose of the Caravan for Peace with Dignity and Justice, a multi-city tour of the southern United States that occurred from August-September 2012
Responding to the invitation of sister groups in the United States, the Movement for Peace with Justice and Dignity (MPJD) is planning a caravan in the U.S. for the period between the Mexican presidential elections (July1) and the U.S. presidential elections (November). This caravan follows in the path of previous nonviolent actions that the MPJD has undertaken in Mexico beginning in June 2011 with the caravans to the north of Mexico, to the south of Mexico, and to the besieged indigenous community of Cherán. In each case the family members of victims of the violence who accompanied the caravans gave their testimony at public events, along with victims and organizations from each place that was visited. At each stop there were also meetings of caravan participants and local community members to reflect together and to plan future collaboration in the work for justice and peace. In the case of the United States caravan, one objective is to generate political pressure in the country that plays such a big role in the violence in Mexico because of its relationship to arms trafficking, money laundering, military aid to Mexico, migration, violence against youth, women, children…With respect to Mexico, the objective of the caravan is to exercise international pressure on our authorities, which sometimes can be more effective coming from abroad than what we can do from within. It will be important to have a nonviolent action campaign prepared that people in the U.S., acting in solidarity, can get involved in to pressure Mexican and U.S. authorities for justice and peace. This might include massive letter writing campaigns to Mexican authorities and U.S. members of Congress, fundraising for family members of the victims of the violence, etc. A central part of the strategy of this important action of public education, pressure and bi-national solidarity will be to ensure that the Mexican participants in the caravan are the most diverse and representative possible of the national reality in Mexico with regard to the kind of victims that this war has created. In the north of the country it is primarily families and individuals. In the south it is urban and indigenous-peasant rural communities. So it will be important that the people of the United States hear the voices of the indigenous of Cherán; Wirikuta; the mountains of Guerrero, Chiapas, Oaxaca; FUDEM (United Forces for the Disappeared in Mexico); as well as the many families from other parts of the country whose loved ones have been killed or disappeared. Back to Top |
Caravan for Peace with Justice and Dignity
Letter from Pietro Ameglio August 20, 2012
Editor’s note: Our partner, Pietro Ameglio, participated in the first days of the Peace Caravan. Below he shares his reflections. For more on the Caravan, see: www.caravanforpeace.org/caravan/
The Peace Caravan of the Movement for Peace with Justice and Dignity (MPJD) is traveling across the United States from August 12 to September 12. Led by the poet Javier Sicilia (whose son was one of the thousands of innocent victims of the violence in Mexico), the caravan is the fruit of a large and complex process of bi-lateral dialogue, agreements, and action that included more than 100 U.S. organizations and numerous Mexican organizations. It is traveling from west to east and from south to north across the U.S., stopping in 25 cities along the way before it concludes in Washington, D.C.
It includes every kind of event - in plazas, community centers, municipal offices, universities, etc. - with the central actors being family members of the victims, both Mexican and U.S., of the so-called “war on drugs,” better described as a “war to build a drug-trafficking monopoly in Mexico,” as documented in the report of the Bourbaki Group[1]. The more than 50 Mexican family members of the victims that are traveling with the caravan represent the double character of this war in which civilians represent the immense majority of the 60,000 dead and the 10,000 disappeared: the victims are individuals and also communities (indigenous and peasant communities and urban neighborhoods). They are sharing personal testimonies, denunciations of crimes, and demands for justice. And their testimonies are complemented by those of family members of U.S. victims, such as the mother whose 18-year-old daughter died of an overdose and the mother whose son is serving 74 years for drug possession.
The caravan has a dual objective. On the one hand it seeks to promote dialogue, alliances and collaborative action among concerned citizens in both countries, to raise public awareness in the U.S. of the devastating effects of the violence and the sorrow and impunity left in its wake, to pressure authorities in the U.S. to speak out and to take measures to restrict the illegal flow of arms from the U.S. to Mexico and the money laundering in the U.S. of Mexican cartel profits, and to open up the debate in the U.S. about the failure of the current drug prohibition strategy and immigration policy. On the other hand, the caravan seeks to exert the maximum political pressure possible on Mexican authorities who are responsible for the war (the Calderón administration, the Congress, state governors, state and national justice departments), through strong public advocacy during the caravan, demanding that Mexican authorities return the disappeared (“alive they were taken; alive we want them back!”), deliver truth and justice for those who have been killed, change the existing model of militarized security that functions in complicity with organized crime, and approve and implement the Victims’ Rights Law (which was passed this year by the Congress but which President Calderón has refused to sign).
The representatives of the indigenous peoples who are accompanying the caravan Include representatives from People of Faith in Chiapas; communities of the Sierra Zapoteca in Oaxaca; the People’s Front in Defense of Land and Water in Morelos, Tlaxcala y Puebla; the Wixárrika Regional Council for the Defense of Wirikuta; and the Organization of Peasant Ecologists of the Sierra de Petatlán y Coyuca de Catalán in Guerrero. The presence and testimony of the indigenous are very important because they are an often-hidden face of exploitation, expropriation and repression by the government in complicity with transnational corporations (in particular, those based in the U.S., Canada and Spain). At the same time, they show the fortitude and courage of these communities in resistance.
Among the nonviolent and artistic actions of the first couple of days, two stood out. There is an interest in leaving in as many cities as possible some type of memory of the caravan which may also serve as a symbol of the commitment that we share. On the first day in Los Angeles, there was a memorial for members of the Movement for Peace with Justice and Dignity who have been killed since the movement began last year: Pedro Leyva, a Nahuatl indigenous from Ostula (Michoacán) who was killed on October 6, 2011; Nepomuceno Moreno, killed in Hermosillo (Sonora) on November 28, 2011; and Trinidad de la Cruz, another community leader from Ostula, killed by paramilitaries on December 6, 2011[2]. Trino and Pedro were two community leaders who were deeply committed to the development of autonomy in Xayakalan, on lands that were recovered by the community of Ostula a couple of years before. Nepo was an exemplary father who denounced the murder of his son, whom he searched for indefatigably. There has been no meaningful investigation of these murders, and like thousands of others, they remain in total impunity.
Just before he died, don Trino gave the members of the MPJD who were traveling with him some seeds from a hibiscus plant, which grows in abundance in Michoacán. After an afternoon of testimonies and music in the Placita Olvera in the heart of Los Angeles, we stood at the foot of a huge ceiba tree and held a ceremony that victims and organizations from both countries found deeply moving. We recalled and we brought back to life the memory and struggle of our fallen companions. Santos de la Cruz, our Wirrárika (Huichol) companion, wove a large God’s Eye in the style of his people. It was set at the foot of the large pot in which the seeds were to be sown. From it were hung dozens of long, colorful ribbons on which people had written the names of their lost family members and brief phrases about them. The names and phrases were read aloud. Representatives of the local Casa Zacatecana community publicly committed to water the seeds and care for the plants that would grow from them and to preserve the memory of the struggle they represent. Later the seeds were transplanted at the Casa Zacatecana. Another memorial was held there and photos with information about the victims were presented, along with the God’s Eye.
The next day, also in Los Angeles, we did an action to remember and demand justice for the disappeared in Mexico, and in particular for the two members of the MPJD who were disappeared in Guerrero on December 6, 2011: Eva Ortega and Marcial Bautista, who were members of Peasant Ecologists of the Sierra de Petatlán y Coyuca de Catalán. While a resolution in support of the caravan was being presented to the Los Angeles City Council, we marched outside of City Hall and presented a performance art piece to make the disappeared visible, to pressure Mexican authorities for the return of the disappeared, and to touch the conscience of U.S. citizens about the unspeakable suffering that the disappearance of a loved one means. A thick black cord was used in an amount that corresponded to the volume of the disappeared person, calculated by his/her height and weight. Then this cord was slowly wrapped around each of three persons (two from Mexico and one from the U.S.), who represented the victims in both countries. Each was progressively “disappeared’ as s/he was covered by the cord. At the same time, the meaning of the action was explained and the stories of the life and disappearance of the victims were read aloud.
This caravan is a humble and original initiative, what we might call “citizen diplomacy and struggle,” to strengthen the unity of our peoples and our organizations so that we might better put the brakes on this war that is running over all of us. It is crucial that the caravan actions achieve reflections in the action of both the Mexican and U.S. governments and civil societies, so that we may:
[1] See “The Human Cost of the War to Build a Drug-Trafficking Monopoly in Mexico (2008-2009)”, The Bourbaki Group, webiigg.sociales.uba.ar/.../nro1/InformeBourbaki-ingles.pdf
[2] Editor’s note: Although he does not mention it, Pietro was one of a dozen people accompanying don Trino back to his community last December when they were stopped by armed paramilitaries. They were ordered out of their van, roughed up, and threatened. Don Trino was taken away and the others were told to leave or they would be killed. Don Trino’s body was found the next day, showing signs of torture.
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Letter from Pietro Ameglio August 20, 2012
Editor’s note: Our partner, Pietro Ameglio, participated in the first days of the Peace Caravan. Below he shares his reflections. For more on the Caravan, see: www.caravanforpeace.org/caravan/
The Peace Caravan of the Movement for Peace with Justice and Dignity (MPJD) is traveling across the United States from August 12 to September 12. Led by the poet Javier Sicilia (whose son was one of the thousands of innocent victims of the violence in Mexico), the caravan is the fruit of a large and complex process of bi-lateral dialogue, agreements, and action that included more than 100 U.S. organizations and numerous Mexican organizations. It is traveling from west to east and from south to north across the U.S., stopping in 25 cities along the way before it concludes in Washington, D.C.
It includes every kind of event - in plazas, community centers, municipal offices, universities, etc. - with the central actors being family members of the victims, both Mexican and U.S., of the so-called “war on drugs,” better described as a “war to build a drug-trafficking monopoly in Mexico,” as documented in the report of the Bourbaki Group[1]. The more than 50 Mexican family members of the victims that are traveling with the caravan represent the double character of this war in which civilians represent the immense majority of the 60,000 dead and the 10,000 disappeared: the victims are individuals and also communities (indigenous and peasant communities and urban neighborhoods). They are sharing personal testimonies, denunciations of crimes, and demands for justice. And their testimonies are complemented by those of family members of U.S. victims, such as the mother whose 18-year-old daughter died of an overdose and the mother whose son is serving 74 years for drug possession.
The caravan has a dual objective. On the one hand it seeks to promote dialogue, alliances and collaborative action among concerned citizens in both countries, to raise public awareness in the U.S. of the devastating effects of the violence and the sorrow and impunity left in its wake, to pressure authorities in the U.S. to speak out and to take measures to restrict the illegal flow of arms from the U.S. to Mexico and the money laundering in the U.S. of Mexican cartel profits, and to open up the debate in the U.S. about the failure of the current drug prohibition strategy and immigration policy. On the other hand, the caravan seeks to exert the maximum political pressure possible on Mexican authorities who are responsible for the war (the Calderón administration, the Congress, state governors, state and national justice departments), through strong public advocacy during the caravan, demanding that Mexican authorities return the disappeared (“alive they were taken; alive we want them back!”), deliver truth and justice for those who have been killed, change the existing model of militarized security that functions in complicity with organized crime, and approve and implement the Victims’ Rights Law (which was passed this year by the Congress but which President Calderón has refused to sign).
The representatives of the indigenous peoples who are accompanying the caravan Include representatives from People of Faith in Chiapas; communities of the Sierra Zapoteca in Oaxaca; the People’s Front in Defense of Land and Water in Morelos, Tlaxcala y Puebla; the Wixárrika Regional Council for the Defense of Wirikuta; and the Organization of Peasant Ecologists of the Sierra de Petatlán y Coyuca de Catalán in Guerrero. The presence and testimony of the indigenous are very important because they are an often-hidden face of exploitation, expropriation and repression by the government in complicity with transnational corporations (in particular, those based in the U.S., Canada and Spain). At the same time, they show the fortitude and courage of these communities in resistance.
Among the nonviolent and artistic actions of the first couple of days, two stood out. There is an interest in leaving in as many cities as possible some type of memory of the caravan which may also serve as a symbol of the commitment that we share. On the first day in Los Angeles, there was a memorial for members of the Movement for Peace with Justice and Dignity who have been killed since the movement began last year: Pedro Leyva, a Nahuatl indigenous from Ostula (Michoacán) who was killed on October 6, 2011; Nepomuceno Moreno, killed in Hermosillo (Sonora) on November 28, 2011; and Trinidad de la Cruz, another community leader from Ostula, killed by paramilitaries on December 6, 2011[2]. Trino and Pedro were two community leaders who were deeply committed to the development of autonomy in Xayakalan, on lands that were recovered by the community of Ostula a couple of years before. Nepo was an exemplary father who denounced the murder of his son, whom he searched for indefatigably. There has been no meaningful investigation of these murders, and like thousands of others, they remain in total impunity.
Just before he died, don Trino gave the members of the MPJD who were traveling with him some seeds from a hibiscus plant, which grows in abundance in Michoacán. After an afternoon of testimonies and music in the Placita Olvera in the heart of Los Angeles, we stood at the foot of a huge ceiba tree and held a ceremony that victims and organizations from both countries found deeply moving. We recalled and we brought back to life the memory and struggle of our fallen companions. Santos de la Cruz, our Wirrárika (Huichol) companion, wove a large God’s Eye in the style of his people. It was set at the foot of the large pot in which the seeds were to be sown. From it were hung dozens of long, colorful ribbons on which people had written the names of their lost family members and brief phrases about them. The names and phrases were read aloud. Representatives of the local Casa Zacatecana community publicly committed to water the seeds and care for the plants that would grow from them and to preserve the memory of the struggle they represent. Later the seeds were transplanted at the Casa Zacatecana. Another memorial was held there and photos with information about the victims were presented, along with the God’s Eye.
The next day, also in Los Angeles, we did an action to remember and demand justice for the disappeared in Mexico, and in particular for the two members of the MPJD who were disappeared in Guerrero on December 6, 2011: Eva Ortega and Marcial Bautista, who were members of Peasant Ecologists of the Sierra de Petatlán y Coyuca de Catalán. While a resolution in support of the caravan was being presented to the Los Angeles City Council, we marched outside of City Hall and presented a performance art piece to make the disappeared visible, to pressure Mexican authorities for the return of the disappeared, and to touch the conscience of U.S. citizens about the unspeakable suffering that the disappearance of a loved one means. A thick black cord was used in an amount that corresponded to the volume of the disappeared person, calculated by his/her height and weight. Then this cord was slowly wrapped around each of three persons (two from Mexico and one from the U.S.), who represented the victims in both countries. Each was progressively “disappeared’ as s/he was covered by the cord. At the same time, the meaning of the action was explained and the stories of the life and disappearance of the victims were read aloud.
This caravan is a humble and original initiative, what we might call “citizen diplomacy and struggle,” to strengthen the unity of our peoples and our organizations so that we might better put the brakes on this war that is running over all of us. It is crucial that the caravan actions achieve reflections in the action of both the Mexican and U.S. governments and civil societies, so that we may:
- resolve on the basis of justice and truth the cases of the disappeared and dead;
- approve and implement the Victims’ Rights Law;
- change the model of militarized security to one based on social policy that attacks the root problems of the free market model;
- remove the paramilitary siege of the autonomous indigenous communities of Chiapas, Ostula and Cherán;
- respect the will of the indigenous, peasant and urban communities with regard to the expropriation and exploitation of their territories by corporate interests;
- end the impunity that knits together organized crime, government authorities, and corporate leaders in Mexico;
- end the illegal arms traffic and money laundering;
- change inhuman immigration policies in the U.S.
[1] See “The Human Cost of the War to Build a Drug-Trafficking Monopoly in Mexico (2008-2009)”, The Bourbaki Group, webiigg.sociales.uba.ar/.../nro1/InformeBourbaki-ingles.pdf
[2] Editor’s note: Although he does not mention it, Pietro was one of a dozen people accompanying don Trino back to his community last December when they were stopped by armed paramilitaries. They were ordered out of their van, roughed up, and threatened. Don Trino was taken away and the others were told to leave or they would be killed. Don Trino’s body was found the next day, showing signs of torture.
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Interview with Pietro Ameglio on
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Videos:Many thanks to Veremos Productions for filming Pietro's May 18, 2011, presentation to the Watsonville Berets and for creating these superb short films (in Spanish with English subtitles). Please take a few moments to watch these enlightening pieces, and be sure to share them with others.
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