Another escalation is reported in the struggle of Maya campesinos in Yucatan state to hold their communial (ejidal) lands that the government seeks to expropriate for a new airport, part of the "Metropolisur" regional development plan. An Aug. 18 communique from La Otra Campaña Yucatán, translation via Chiapas95:

To the compañeros of the Other Campaign in Yucatan:

The compañeros of Oxcum informed us that on Thursday, August 10 around midday, the [state] judicial police invaded the ejidal land of their community, where they intruded with several vehicles of the Office of Attorney General of the State, but were repelled by the compañeros standing watch over the disputed land. This provoked a confrontation between them and the judicial police agents who threatened them with death and told them that "this isn't over yet" (the land problem) and that they would "beat the shit out of them all". Among the attacked was the compañero Idelfonso Dzul, leader of the struggle of his village, and one of those who have been most harassed and repressed in the past.

The lawyer William Santos has already filed a complaint to the CODHEY [Yucatan Human Rights Commission] for this aggression and in the Assembly tomorrow on Friday the public denuncia will be made. The compañeros request support for its diffusion.

One week ago, the PAN governor Patricio Patron announced that the construction of the airport and Metropolisur would not commence during his remaining term of office. This must be seen a triumph of the Mayan resistance against the expropriation of their land, since these neoliberal projects were conceived and promoted by the governor and his partners to be implemented under his "management". Evidently, it doesn't suit the PAN government "to add more fuel to the fire" in these difficult moments when the entire fraudulent electoral circus comes crashing down on them. The last thing they need is to have even more of the civil population against them and less in "PAN territories", as the state of Yucatan has been catalogued.

Nevertheless, the declaration of the governor, does not mean that these neoliberal projects have been cancelled, only that they will not be completed in the short and "delicate" time remaining to the PAN governor. Because they will certainly continue to promote them, in obscurity and below the surface, until they can do them openly, that is to say, when the political conjuncture and the support of the transnational financial power allows them to. And if the affected Maya indigenous will not let themselves be expropriated, they will look for another place, one not so appropriate but "more comfortable", to continue with their plans. As they did for the construction of the new airport in Texcoco and for the enormous privatization of the hydroelectric resources they tried to carry out with the La Parota dam in the state of Guerrero.

Both neoliberal projects met with a great resistance that forced them to curb their expropriation plans in those territories, but this doesn't mean that they have desisted from their macroprojects (because they are looking for more "convenient" places for their construction) nor have they turned their eyes from the territories they planned to invade, because these still promise enormous (future) profits.

The territories of the country which the capital wishes "to appropriate" are mainly indigenous, thus, the fight for the defense of the land and territory is also mainly indigenous. It is spreading throughout the entire country and the Mayan state of Yucatan is no exception. To support this fight, which belongs to all Mexicans who - in one form or another - are affected by the transnational capitalist projects, is a social and moral commitment, to our patria in general and our Maya people in particular.

Movement for Popular Culture A.C.
eva macossay

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