Rio Blanco, Honduras: A Frontline of Indigenous Resistance

This piece was originally published on The White Rose Reader

Photos and Essay by: ANDREW STEFAN

“No communities of people on this Earth have been more negatively impacted by the current global economic system than the world’s remaining 350 million indigenous peoples. And no people are so strenuously and, lately, successfully resisting these invasions and inroads.”
—Jerry Mander, Paradigm Wars

I traveled to the indigenous Lenca community of Rio Blanco, Honduras, after I read that one of its residents was assassinated for opposing a corporate dam project.

The victim was Tomas Garcia. He was leading a delegation of some 200-300 people across his own community when he was murdered on July 15, 2013—shot dead at close-range while attempting to deliver a message to companies building a hydroelectric dam on the Lenca territory. The shots were fired by the Honduran military in the service of the dam companies. Garcia was unarmed, and two others were injured as a result of the shooting, including Garcia’s 17 year-old son.

It’s a familiar story at this point. Corporation colludes with the state to seize or otherwise exploit indigenous lands and resources; indigenous peoples resist, facing off against some of the most powerful forces in human history; in the name of modernity, capitalism, or simply profit, the colluding states and corporations employ extreme violence to crush the resistance.

Sometimes, against all odds, the indigenous resistance succeeds, protecting livelihoods and resources. More often, however, those involved in the effort are displaced, maimed, dispossessed, or killed. The survivors, at best, are often forced to take sweatshop jobs within the grinding capitalist marketplace after being robbed of their previous lifeways and lands.

Variations of this same story can be found in locations from Acapulco to the Niger Delta to Palestine. It’s worldwide, and its roots are deep. Don’t be fooled. This is not a narrative of the glorious triumphs of modernity and capitalism—it is a narrative of genocide and ecocide, written by global capitalism against indigenous peoples and planet Earth. It is a grim story, full of violence, exploitation, and human suffering but, like all campaigns of genocide, it is also a story of resistance.

Rio Blanco constitutes an important frontline of that resistance. For generations, the people of the community have lived as subsistence farmers on ancestral territory, growing crops such as beans, yucca, and coffee. Their land is well cared for, as it is needed for survival. The Gualcarque River, which runs along the edge of Rio Blanco, is an obvious necessity for the people of the community as well. Its pristine water is used for purposes ranging from drinking and cooking to crop irrigation—it is considered sacred. However, the relationship between community and river is being called into question by DESA, the company seeking to privatize the water and construct a hydroelectric dam on the Gualcarque. If the dam is built, the people of Rio Blanco will lose access to the river and perhaps even the very ground on which they live. Because so much is at stake, the Lenca residents of the area are willing to fight tooth-and-nail for their land. In the words of one young woman from the community, “If they take our river and our land, we will die. We are poor, and they are all we have. Here, we are struggling for our very lives and dignity. It is a fight against death.”

For the last seven months, the community has been obstructing the only main road into Rio Blanco, halting the dam’s construction for the time being. The blockade was implemented after years of attempts at "resistance by the books"—formal complaint filing, government town-hall meetings and community assemblies, peaceful protests—all to no avail. The system in Honduras, as it is everywhere, is rigged in favor of those with power and money. The people of Rio Blanco are relatively deficient of both. Accordingly, DESA’s preparations for the dam megaproject are still underway, with full backing from the Honduran state. The community blockade was installed as a last line of defense against dispossession of land and livelihood.

Serious repercussions have accompanied the effort. Since the blockade was established in early April, the corporate-state in Honduras has killed and maimed people involved with the action, such as Tomas Garcia. More recently, activists from the National Council of Popular and Indigenous Organizations of Honduras (COPINH) have been targeted for arrest and imprisonment, on bogus charges, for their collaboration with the people of Rio Blanco. The situation is bleak, but the resistance is finding more and more allies across the world as word of the struggle spreads.

When I arrived in Rio Blanco, I was greeted warmly by some forty people from the community—women, men, children, and elders—on the sloping side of a wooded mountain. They took turns shaking my hand as we exchanged names and greetings. 

The community convened a meeting, a sort of log and machete press conference, to share their stories with those of us who came to listen. What followed was an outpouring of emotion, conviction, and hard-hitting analysis. The discussions revolved around resisting the dam project, but also touched on the topics of the death of Tomas Garcia, and other struggles for social justice in Honduras and around the world. Lenca activist and COPINH coordinator Berta Cáceres spoke passionately, emphasizing the importance of international solidarity for the struggle in Rio Blanco. She is now wanted by the Honduran government, and in hiding.

After the conference, some of the community members offered to drive me to the Gualcarque River. In the bed of a moving pickup truck, I stood, taking in the sights of a pristine mountain landscape covered with lush, green foliage. After a few minutes on the road, DESA's buildings came into view and were pointed out by our guides. The truck rolled slowly down a steep, dusty mountain path. Hundreds of yards down the mountain, I could see the river and the beginnings of the hydroelectric dam. Massive concrete tubes littered the riverbank. Looming above it all, on the opposite mountainside, a clear-cut section of forest was covered with construction machinery and scarred by some kind of crude barracks or compound.

We climbed out of the truck and edged down a mountain path covered with chalky boulders. Corporate debris littered the Gualcarque’s edge. Looking at certain sections of the river, one could infer how pristine the whole area had been prior to DESA's invasion.

One of our guides approached me, pointed atop a hill on the other side of the river, and whispered, “You can see the armed guards that patrol the compound up there—they carry shotguns.”

I looked up, squinting to see the silhouette of a man holding a long firearm. He was staring at us. As my eyes adjusted. It looked, for a moment, as though he were aiming the weapon at our group. My stomach sank, and I immediately began to sweat. To my right, youths from the community jumped into the river, laughing. I thought back to the assassination of Tomas. My imagination was getting the best of me, but perhaps for good reason. I tried to fathom the anxiety that must come with using the river each day, armed guards glaring from above, ready to shoot and kill. However, if the people around me were anxious they sure weren’t showing it. They went about their business, collecting water, picking fruit, and playing in the river as though nothing were wrong—existing and resisting.

As noted by Jeff Conant in a recent article about Rio Blanco, “international solidarity is essential to protect the human rights of Hondurans.” To learn how you might be able to stand in solidarity with the people of Rio Blanco and other indigenous struggles around the world, visit the School of the Americas Watch web site. Also, be sure to sign an Avaaz petition demanding that President Porfirio Lobo drop the charges against Berta Cáceres and COPINH.

My favorite CD cover artwork

This is probably my favorite CD cover-art of all time. It is for the album We Fenced Other Gardens With the Bones of Our Own by the band Liars. I recall that I didn't like the music very much.

Xelajú

Photos from Quetzaltenango, Guatemala by Andrew Stefan

Un lugar llamado Chiapas

Photos from Chiapas, Mexico by Andrew Stefan

Social Movements in Mexico: La Policía Comunitaria

As drug-related violence, state repression, poverty, and inequality intensify in many regions of Mexico, affected indigenous communities are increasingly utilizing collective action as a tool for self-defense and human development. Indigenous mobilization from below has become a major force throughout Latin America over recent decades, and many communities in Mexico’s Guerrero state are now using such strategies to redefine the conventions of political participation.

Notably, the Mixtec and Tlapeneco people of the Costa Chica and Montaña regions of Guerrero have constructed an organization by the name of the Policía Comunitaria (or Community Police) for self-defense through Black Panther-style, grassroots armed-patrols. The efforts of this project have given rise to a number of additional sophisticated social and political programs for security and human development. 

The Policía Comunitaria came into being on October 15, 1995, in the community of Santa Cruz del Rincón of Guerrero's Montaña region. Developed by way of village assemblies, the initial incarnation of the PC was a small, community-run, volunteer police force that ran patrols in and around its villages of origin. The project was designed to combat rampant crime and violence that was typically either ignored or committed by the state in the Montaña and Costa Chica regions.

In 1997, the growing number of communities affiliated with the PC decided to expand the project to include governance and the administration of justice form below. The “Community System of Security, Justice, and Reeducation” (SSJRC) was created for this purpose and was eventually re-established under new structure called the Regional Coordinator of Communal Authorities (CRAC). Its headquarters is located in the city of San Luis Acatlán.

 

Today, this project is operating in roughly 60 Mixtec, Tlapaneco, Nahuas, and Mestiza 

communities within the six municipalities of the Costa Chica and Montaña regions, and represents about 100,000 people. 

From the Archive: EZLN resists construction of a “new Cancún” in Chiapas

EZLN resists construction of a “new Cancún” in Chiapas

From the nearest main road, the path to the Zapatista Army of National Liberation (EZLN) autonomous community of Bolon Ajaw is narrow and long, winding through dense jungle along the edge of a steep mountainside. As the setting sun gave way to pitch darkness during my first trek to the community, one of the fifteen or so machete-wielding Zapatista security escorts walking at my side suggested we be especially cautious because we were passing by “OPDDIC territory.” OPDDIC (Organization for the Defense of Indigenous and Peasant Peoples) is an Institutional Revolutionary Party (PRI)-affiliated anti-Zapatista paramilitary group that staged an armed attack against Bolon Ajaw only months before.

The attack occurred on February 6, when Bolon Ajaw residents confronted a group of some 80-90 PRI supporters—known members of OPDDIC, according to residents of Bolon Ajaw—from the nearby Agua Azul ejido and tourist site who had invaded the Zapatista community with the intent to seize valuable land adjacent to a river and a series of large waterfalls. Reports suggest that some of the PRI supporters had been occupying parts of the community since January 20th. [1] When Bolon Ajaw members, with the help of Zapatistas from other communities in the region, eventually gathered to peacefully remove their uninvited guests, a violent conflict erupted. 

Contrary to the Chiapas Attorney General’s statements [2] suggesting that the Zapatistas had been armed, David, a Bolon Ajaw resident present at the conflict stated, “The OPDDIC members arrived with the guns. There were more than 300 of us Zapatistas defending the land but only with sticks and machetes. At first, people were only exchanging blows but then it got worse.”

David went on to explain how the dispute made its way to the other side of the community where the PRI supporters eventually opened fire. According to the Fray Bartolomé de las Casas Human Rights Center (Frayba) of San Cristóbal de las Casas, Chiapas, the PRIistas began shooting houses and then ransacked the community church—after which, they turned their weapons on the people.  By the end of the shooting, one PRI member was left dead as a result of friendly-fire wound while 11 others were injured—including three Zapatistas. [3] Even though Bolon Ajaw has been relatively calm since the February attack, the community is still reeling and ultimately anticipating future incursions. 

Threats and attacks have been plaguing the community for years. [4] While paramilitary violence and intimidation have been staple components of state counterinsurgency strategy against the Zapatistas since the mid-1990s, [5] the situation in Bolon Ajaw has been particularly contentious. 

The autonomous community land—recuperated from large landowners during the Zapatista armed uprising of 1994, and eventually converted into a community in 2003—is now inhabited by some 25 families but fiercely sought after by a number of external parties. The reason: Bolon Ajaw sits along the banks of a pristine emerald-blue river that flows into a series of towering “cascadas," or waterfalls. While the residents of Bolon Ajaw see the river and cascadas as a source of livelihood in the middle of the sweltering Chiapan jungle, the other interested parties have something else in mind—profit. The campaign to seize and privatize the Zapatista land, for sale to resort developers, is part of a much larger plan to convert the entire region surrounding the river into a tourist destination.

Operating under the project name Centro Integralmente Planeado Palenque (CIPP), the Mexican government endeavors to expropriate roughly 21,000 hectares of land around the river for the construction of hotels, a golf course, and a natural theme park. [6] In the words of former Chiapas Governor, Roberto Armando Albores Guillén, the objective of this neoliberal development scheme is to essentially construct “a new Cancún in the north of Chiapas”. [7]  

To the residents of Bolon Ajaw, this plan is largely regarded as a looming death sentence that would, at best, result in their displacement if realized.

“Right now we’re working to defend our community from the construction of these megaprojects,” said Gloria, a resident of Bolon Ajaw, “We use the river for everything: to bathe, to drink, to cook. We need this land to survive.” 

For the people of Bolon Ajaw, the mere act of existing constitutes a form of resistance to CIPP and its capitalist motivations.

The Zapatistas Today—Making the State Obsolete

Despite these ongoing struggles, interest in the Zapatistas has been ever-dwindling since their armed uprising on January 1, 1994. While the present-day realities of organizing for indigenous autonomy and resistance to the ravages of modern capitalism in Chiapas may not always be sensational or gripping, they are certainly still relevant to the contemporary international movement for social justice. As sociologist Immanuel Wallerstein notes, “The Zapatistas were saying from the outset that their five-century-long protest against injustice and humiliation and demand for autonomy was linked today organically to the worldwide struggle against neoliberalism and imperialism...” In Wallerstein’s assessment, “There is no question that the Zapatista insurrection of 1994 became a major inspiration for antisystemic movements throughout the world.” However, Wallerstein is also quick to rally attention to the movement’s current work on the construction of autonomy as a source of lessons for the rest of the world. [8] Such processes are today largely characterized by the development of Zapatista support-base communities like Bolon Ajaw.

According to Richard Stahler-Sholk, a professor of political science at Eastern Michigan University who studies the Zapatistas, the establishment and consolidation of support-base communities—which are designed to function independently from the Mexican state—allow local preferences to take priority over the dictates of global capital.  The autonomous communities are a major part of the movement’s resistance to what he refers to as “neoliberal homogenization” – i.e. the marginalization and co-optation of people and cultures by market forces under the brokerage of the state. 

In the book Dancing with Dynamite: Social Movements and States in Latin America journalist Benjamin Dangl describes how the “dance”, or dynamics, between Latin American social movements—like the Zapatistas—and the state constitute a frontline in the modern struggle for global justice. Dangl explains how processes of grassroots social action erode the capacities of illegitimate and oppressive power-structures and institutions, writing, “In this dance, the urgency of survival trumps the law, people acting based on the rights they were born with makes the state irrelevant...” [9]



Stahler-Sholk, who describes the Zapatista project in its current form as a “quiet and persistent rebellion,” specifically emphasizes their various non-market alternatives for life and community development when commenting on the movement’s reshaping of socio-political landscapes. He writes, "Since 1994, [the Zapatistas] have developed a variety of self-sufficient production, exchange, and social service projects: collective garden patches, rabbit raising, beekeeping, candle making, agroecology experimentation, locally controlled schools, networks of health promoters trained in combinations of modern and traditional healing, etc.” [10] 


While community-run schools and primary health care may not be the kinds of rebellion that make newspaper headlines, Stahler-Sholk argues that these aspects of the movement are the essence of modern Zapatista resistance, stating, “What is so impressive and powerful about the Zapatistas is startlingly simple. People are just living their everyday lives as though they are in charge of their own affairs, not waiting for permission.”


The Struggle Continues

During one of my last days in Bolon Ajaw, I was approached by a young community-member with a pamphlet detailing the aforementioned plans for neoliberal development of the region. The text was entirely Mayan Tzeltal but he translated key points for me about resource and territory privatization plans under CIPP, Plan Puebla Panama, Plan Merída and other capitalist megaprojects bent on compromising the well-being of indigenous peoples for the sake of profit. “We’re really struggling for this land,” he told me, “OPDDIC and the government may want this property to make money but it is ours. It’s not for sale.”

As our conversation drew to a close, the young man said to me, “It’s like a war against the poor…it seems that our governments and these companies are just trying to kill campesinos.” I immediately thought back to a 1995 Chase Manhattan Bank internal memo I had once read in which the author, Riordan Roett, argued a “need” for the Mexican government to “eliminate” the Zapatistas in order to ease concerns about the then-fledgling rebel movement among members of the international investment community. A startlingly clear illustration of the “profit over people” mentality at the core of neoliberal capitalism.

“Yes,” I responded, “it does seem that way.”

_______________________________

Oaxaca vive

Photos from Oaxaca, Mexico by Andrew Stefan