AMILCINGO: THE CARAVAN’S FIRST STOP IN MEXICO
Photo: Presentation of the work realized in the community mapping workshop, and in the background, the first street of Amilcingo mapped in Open Street Maps.
Amilcingo Morelos, Mexico
June 2015
From May 29 through June 3 of 2015, Collectives in Action initiated the first phase of the Caravana Mesoamericana para el Buen Vivir de los Pueblos en Resistencia, together with the community of Amilcingo, Morelos in central Mexico. Participants in the Caravan engaged in a week of exchange focused on practical tools for the defense of autonomous territories.
Amilcingo is a community with an extensive history of struggle. Today a large portion of the population is in resistance to the Morelos Integral Project (PIM), which the government and multinational corporations have been trying to impose since 2010. The project, which affects 82 communities in the states of Morelos, Puebla, and Tlaxcala, includes a gas pipeline which would pass directly through Amilcingo, along with an aqueduct, an electric line, and two thermoelectric plants in Huexca. The objective of PIM is to transform the whole eastern zone of Morelos into an industrial corridor, exploiting the region’s natural wealth to fuel the production of transnational corporations.
Faced with these capitalist strategies of dispossession, Amilcingo is building its autonomy daily. The assembly meets nearly every night to organize the collective needs of a community in resistance. Community Radio Amiltzinko broadcasts diverse news, music, and culture programs produced by community members, including youth who participate in an apprenticeship program. This content combats the misinformation of commercial media and addresses the real interests and needs of Amilcingo’s residents.
Amilcingo also features an autonomous Health Bridge formed by six women who provide physical and mental healthcare to activists and low-income people from Amilcingo and other communities. The Brigade focuses on ancient and natural techniques, including massage, acupuncture, and herbal medicinal therapy.
Over the course of the week, residents of Amilcingo invited participation in these autonomous spaces and imparted workshops on traditional regional knowledge. Mothers of the community demonstrated how to make tlacoyos, a corn-based food filled with cheese or beans, while local artisans displayed the production process for Amilcingo’s famous sweets, made from local products such as tamarind, amaranth, and peanuts. Members of Collectives in Action also learned how to produce ixtle, an extraction of the fibers of the agave plant which serve to make the slingshots employed in the pre-Hispanic era.
In this first stop of the Caravan, Collectives in Action imparted practical workshops chosen by the assembly with the aim of collectively strengthening practices of autonomy. Workshops on socially appropriate technologies included the construction of composting toilets, which convert human waste into fertilizer rather than using drainage. This technology is especially pertinent in a region affected by the privatization and contamination of water and land. Participants also constructed pedal-powered machines, including a corn-grinder, a de-kerneler, and a blender.The relationship between Collectives in Action and Amilcingo began during the World Festival of Resistances and Rebellions, organized by the Zapatista Army of National Liberation and the National Indigenous Congress in December of 2014. The collective and the community collaborated to build composting toilets for the the festival’s visit to Amilcingo. In May of 2015, Collectives in Action provided media coverage for the arrival of the Yaqui Tribe’s National Caravan for the Defense of Water, Territory, Work, and Life to communities affected by PIM.
Workshops on community mapping and independent media focused on tools that facilitate the representation of struggles from below. In the mapping workshop, participants created a map that reflects collective knowledge and experience of their own territory. Using street maps, images, text, and symbols, they rendered visible the customs, plants, and sacred sites that residents of Amilcingo value, and which are put at risk by the imposition of megaprojects. Participants also reflected on the strategies of dispossession and land defense at play in their community.
In the photo-journalism workshop, community members learned the basics of taking photographs and writing a press release, with the aim of documenting and publicizing their movement from their own perspectives. When news broke of pre-electoral repression in Ayotzinapa, Guerrero on June 2, workshop participants collectively wrote a communiqué denouncing the government’s actions.
The Caravan also featured the popular arts, including a stencil workshop, the elaboration of a collective mural, and a presentation of theater and storytelling.
Collectives in Action and Amilcingo’s resistance movement plan to continue building together in the future. Amilcingo’s community radio will broadcast the audios which members of the Caravan produce during their journey through Mexico and Central America. In addition, community members have begun to cultivate the dream of creating an autonomous center for learning right there in Amilcingo, putting into practice some of the tools they appropriated during the Caravan.
To view the image gallery and radio program about Amilcingo, please visit:
- http://caravanaparaelbuenvivir.com/blog/2015/06/16/galeria-amilcingo
- http://caravanaparaelbuenvivir.com/blog/2015/06/16/programa-de-radio-sobre-amilcingo
Saludos fraternales
Colectivos en Acción
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CELEBRATING THE CARAVAN’S KICK-OFF
We’re only a few weeks away from kicking off this collective project, which will bring us to communities in resistance throughout Central America. The goal is to document and exchange tools that strengthen processes of resistance and land defense.
At the end of July 2015, we’ll head southward to the coast of Oaxaca and the highlands of Chiapas in Mexico, then onward to communities in Guatemala, El Salvador, Honduras, Nicaragua, Costa Rica, and Panama. Stay tuned as we fill our media library with the voices of the land defenders we visit.
While we’ve acquired a mode of transport as well as materials to remodel and equip our mobile laboratory, we’re continually in need of material and financial support to cover the costs of the trip!
In the coming weeks, members of Collectives in Action and our allies will be hosting kick-off events to raise funds, in Oaxaca on July 17th and in Mexico City on July 18th.
At present we’re accepting donations at the Paypal account of aarontzin@me.com. If you don’t have access to Paypal, please write to us at caravanaparaelbuenvivir@riseup.net to discuss the best way to accept your donation.
If you are interested in hosting an event to support the Caravan, or in collaborating on translations and graphics, please get in touch!
In solidarity,
Collectives in Action