Indigenous leaders and international delegates meet “to resolve and organise against capitalism and all pyramids”

~ Mateo Sgambati ~

The gathering is being hosted in Chiapas by the Zapatista Army of National Liberation (EZLN), aiming “to reach an agreement on what, how, where, and why” of demolishing capitalism and all hierarchical systems. The gathering opened over the weekend with a marching display where all carried Palestinian flags.

“We are all Palestinian children,” said Subcomandante Insurgente Moisés at the opening of the meeting. “Today, in one of the small parts of this land, the capitalist system is committing genocide against the Palestinian people. We cannot forget, we cannot set aside”.

In the statement ahead of the gathering, Zapatista speaker El Capitan (aka Marcos) had referred to “what it means to be born, grow up, live, and struggle as indigenous people in a geography where being ‘other’ is a cause of contempt, exploitation, repression, and dispossession. ‘To be’ where ‘not to be’ is the norm and and the stigma for those who are different”.

Video of the opening ceremony and updates from each day of meetings are available on Radio Zapatista.

Elsewhere in Chiapas, more than 250 delegates from 60 communities and organisations met on 25-27 July for an “International Meeting in Defence of Life: Maize, Water, Territory and Mother Earth”. The three‑day gathering brought together grassroots groups from across Mexico, including Oaxaca, Veracruz, Coahuila, Guerrero and Chiapas, as well as participants from Colombia, Germany and the País Valenciano.

The event focused on sharing experiences of community resistance and building common strategies against “projects of death”: megaprojects, militarisation, and organised crime threatening land and water.

Testimonies highlighted ongoing struggles. MODEVITE (Movement in Defence of Life and Territory) shared its decade‑long fight against the San Cristóbal–Palenque highway. Oaxacan collectives spoke of resisting the Interoceanic Corridor, dams and mining, while Coahuila activists reported defending the San Miguel stream from industrial pollution and toxic dumping. From Veracruz came denunciations of government‑distributed agrochemicals harming soil and health.

“Our territories hold a great biocultural diversity inherited from our ancestors, now in grave danger because of an extractivist development model rooted in individualist, capitalist and patriarchal logic”, the final declaration states. Communities described facing similar pressures: imposed projects without consent, manipulated consultations, the advance of organised crime, and systematic efforts to divide local assemblies in favour of corporate interests.

International delegates linked these experiences to wider struggles. Colombian networks described defending rivers in the Cauca Valley and the Taganga fishing communities’ resistance to coastal exploitation. The meeting also expressed solidarity with Kurdish women’s movements, the Rojava Jineolojî academies, and with civilians under siege in Gaza.

“We know that neither governments nor states will solve our problems,” the declaration affirms. “We must keep walking together, weaving our knowledge and spiritualities, for respect of life—beginning with our own bodies and territories”.