And what we did was,
well, propose a path to cross the storm and reach the other side safely. And
not to take that path alone as Zapatistas, but together as the indigenous
peoples that we are. Of course, more will come out about this proposal: about
health, about education, about justice, about government, about life. Let’s say
that we see this as necessary to be able to face the storm.(…) Because those at the
top preach death because that gives them profits. Those at the top want things
to change, but for their benefit, although it is getting worse and worse. That
is why it is those below who are going to fight and are already fighting for
life. If the system is one of death, then the fight for life is the fight
against the system.
EZLN Twentieth and
Last Part: The Common and Non-Property
Join us
for Ten Days of Struggle for Freedom
in the
Skouries Forest, July 16–26, 2026
They come with
chainsaws, bulldozers, excavators, drills, and monstrous machines. They annihilate
primeval forests and gut the earth, leaving behind a legacy of enormous, barren
craters. They scar the earth with kilometers of oil and gas pipelines, and networks
of paved industrial roads. They erect colossal ‘renewable energy’ industrial
parks and electricity storage and transmission networks on mountains, in areas
of pristine natural beauty and rich biodiversity, on fertile, arable land that
could nourish and meet the real needs of our communities. All of this is done against
the needs of society, either for direct profit or to meet the increased energy
demands of data centers and artificial intelligence, which are predominantly
used for the military-industrial complex and social repression everywhere.
They divert or drain
the rivers; they steal land and water. With their industrial fish farms, oil
drilling platforms, desalination plants, and LNG facilities, they fill the sea
with all kinds of trash and chemical waste. They pollute everywhere, burn trash
and fill the air with dioxins and carcinogens, promote the so-called “best”
metallurgical methods using banned chemicals, continue to spray glyphosate
(Roundup) on the fields, introduce new genetic engineering technologies and new
genetically modified organisms, all the while claiming that their concern is to
eradicate world hunger—even as they throw away one-third of the world’s food
production every single day. And, even though they are building massive
facilities to generate 32 Gigawatt of electricity from renewable energy sources
by 2035—enough to cover the country’s maximum energy needs three times —they
are imposing energy poverty on the people and promoting the construction of
nuclear power plants.
Whatever remains
after the destruction of industrial-chemical agriculture and the onslaught of
“green growth” is cleared away to make way for the monoculture of mass tourism.
And whatever cannot be cleared away right now is abandoned and exposed to
summer wildfires so it can cleared away and built upon in the future. And then
they want even more…
They want new
minerals and rare earth elements, land to build war industry factories on and
military bases, landfills; they want to do away with our water resources, our
health, our education, our common goods, our housing, our transportation—our
very lives.
Every place, every
aspect of life is an Eldorado of opportunity for them… they come as domineering
colonizers to seize it all and to mark the territory on their fiefdoms with pillaging
and plunder. They attack anyone who resists their plans. They isolate and expel
anyone they cannot buy off, anyone who refuses to get paid as “company workers”
for turning a blind eye. They have at their disposal the army, the police,
judges, “experts” in suits, state and local officials, the media, and the
passive consent of society.
Entire regions,
stripped of every trace of freedom, democracy, self-sufficiency, public space,
and social interaction, are being transformed into sacrificial zones of unaccountability
and lawlessness for every “investor.” This model has been tried and tested for
centuries by colonialism, in places “far away from us”, the so-called third-world.
Their vision is for us to live under constant repression in ghettos where we
will barely survive, to provide cheap labor without rights, without basic
safety measures — where we will simply exist thanks to the “charity” of the
bosses, as long as we don’t cause trouble, living a degraded life subsidized by
the destruction of our homeland. And that is the optimistic version. The
worst-case scenario foresees war, genocide, persecution, environmental
displacement, cannibalism, and fascism. This is not a prospect. These are not
evils yet to come. They are already present, and they are being experienced
everywhere.
In defiance of the
times, we believe that, through communities of struggle and through solidarity,
we can find ways out and we can develop alternative proposals to the political
and social dead ends imposed upon us. The hardships, the problems created by a
system of domination and exploitation cannot be combated or resolved using the
tools and methods of that very system that creates the problems.
We are united by the
shared experiences of their continuous attacks against these lands, by our common
struggles to defend nature, life, and our communities; by our collective action
and way of life; and our solidarity with one another—these are our only weapons
against the normalization of plunder, of fear and repression, both physical and
institutional.
We are united by our
common understanding that our struggles are not local, confined solely to “our
own isolated problem.” Through the communities we have created and continue to
create, we now recognize clearly the need for communication and connection
among us based on equality, mutual respect, and active solidarity. We know that
it is important to live within an open process of continuously connecting the
many, diverse struggles and initiatives, so that we may find common ground and
coordinate our efforts, as we all experience a shared reality of exploitation,
oppression, and the plundering of our lives.
This is both the
framework and goal we hope to achieve during the Ten Days of Struggle and
Freedom, which will take place in the Skouries Forest in northeastern
Chalkidiki from July 16th to July 26th, 2026. We invite you to this
free, self-organized camp to share our experiences of struggle and our
concerns, to discuss today’s reality, the prospects for resistance, and to
collectively craft our own responses through networking and coordinating our
actions.
Defeat is certain
only for those who do not fight.
We do not need people to explain exploitation to us, because we have
experienced it for centuries. Nor for them to come and tell us that we have to
die to achieve freedom. We know that and have practiced it every day for
hundreds of years. What is welcome is knowledge and practice for life.
Look, the delegation that went to Europe learned many things, but the
most important thing we learned is that there are many people, groups,
collectives, organizations that are looking for a way to fight for life. They
have another color, another language, another custom, another culture, another
way. But they have the same thing as us, which is the heart of struggle.
They are not looking for who is better, or to be given a place in bad
governments. They are seeking to heal the world. And yes, they are very
different from each other. But they are equal, or rather we are equal. Because
we really want to build something else, and that thing is freedom. That is,
life.
EZLN Twentieth and Last Part: The Common and Non-Property
For building and
connecting our communities
through the common
struggle for freedom
Against the
plundering of the earth, of life, and of society
Communities of
Struggle for Freedom Network
