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The episode and its consequences immediate reports were widely reported.
On February 15, federal and state public forces evicted those who guarded the Casa de los Pueblos Altepelmecalli, installed by Nahua communities from the Cholulteca region in the bottling plant of the Bonafont company in Puebla, which they occupied on March 22, 2021. According to the Governor, they obeyed an order of the Judicial Power of the Federation. On the same day, the 20 Nahua communities involved denounced that the uniformed officers entered the facilities by force, dismantled the canton and even erased the murals that artists painted to support the Casa de los Pueblos.
The events provoked reactions and demonstrations in much of the country. On February 16, a statement circulated by the National Indigenous Congress and the EZLN denouncing the repressive offensive of the Mexican neoliberal bad government against our compañeras and compañeros who, from their geographies, raise the flag of the organization below to summon us to fight for life
. They warned that the offensive corresponded to the government’s decision to use its armed forces against those peoples who oppose the dispossession and unprecedented destruction of Mexican territory
. On February 17, the National Indigenous Congress and many organizations called for a dislocated action in solidarity with the Casa de los Pueblos Altepelmecalli, which took place yesterday.
It is not one more incident in the long series of aggressions against native peoples that has been intensifying. Nor is it an accident that it happened in the week in which the signing of the San Andrés accords is commemorated 25 years ago, when the Zapatista insurrection and immense national and international public pressure forced the Mexican government to recognize the existence and self-determination of indigenous peoples. originating. This seemed to break a tradition that was born with the Mexican state, which affiliated it with the ways that came from the north and sought the extinction of those peoples. It has been that way for 200 years. In addition to betraying the agreements, recent governments are trying to carry the intention of de-Indianizing the country further every day. The director of the Maya Plan said it with an equivocal use of the word genocide, pointing out that this was what was sought. They do not seek to kill them physically, although that has also been done, but to take from the indians
it Indian
in the name of progress and modernization conceived in the image and likeness of the northern models.
The conflict with Bonafont/Danone is a good illustration of the meaning of the current struggle. The control of water defines an increasingly intense global confrontation. Battles for it are unleashed daily in all parts of the world. In Mexico, a small group of companies, mostly transnational, controls a growing proportion of water sources, while half of the people cannot count on a safe supply of drinking water and suffer from its increasing scarcity. These companies are part of the criminal mafia that sickens and kills millions of people through toxic products that they sell as foods
and they generally lack nutritional value, although the propaganda has made many people fall for their daily consumption.
Bonafont, from the French company Danone, illustrates the point well. The plant occupied by the Nahua communities illegally extracted the water that belongs to them for decades. Having exhausted all management instances and given the passivity of the government, they decided to stop the dispossession by physically occupying the plant. For its part, Danone illustrates well the action of the food mafia. He is proud of having substantially increased the consumption of yogurt in Mexico. Every time someone consumes one from Danone, they ingest almost all the sugar that is the recommended daily maximum. In this way, the company vigorously contributes to the abuse of sugar consumption, which has long been a pandemic in the country and causes all kinds of ills, such as diabetes, which in Mexico constitutes a serious public health problem.
One of the weapons of struggle that is beginning to be deployed is that of the boycott, which will surely be felt in Mexico and in the European countries that the Zapatistas visited and are offering solidarity. Beyond its immediate impact on Danone’s sales, it is a good illustration of the strength that peoples possess. They can control the operation of these great transnational forces if instead of putting themselves in their hands they depend on themselves to drink and eat.
That is, by the way, what the Nahua peoples who founded the Casa de los Pueblos Altepelmecalli are looking for. Nothing can stop them on that path.
Capitalist society is based on the protection of private property, but it does not protect what people have –like the water of the towns–, but rather what belongs to the owners of the means of production. Private ownership of the plant never gave Bonafont rights to the towns’ water. Instead of protecting these, as is its obligation, the current government, which continually declares itself on the side of the poor, unhesitatingly took the side of capital when the peoples decided to defend what belongs to them. The episode helps to dissolve the illusion of those who thought that this government was on their side, that it did justice to the poor.
