Monday, April 16

Today I attended the human rights workshop at the Fray Bartolomé de las Casas Human Rights Centre, also known as Frayba. The workshop leader was a Tzeltal man named Marcelino Hernandez Gomez. He spoke about some of the major concerns of Frayba, including appropriation of lands and displacement of communities, conservation of natural resources, and human rights. He talked about indigenous resistance, citing the government's electricity scam as an example, and explaining how communities resisted the vast rate hikes. As another example of resistance, he talked about communities allied with the Zapatista movement and their refusal of government aid as a means of maintaining autonomy. He also went into detail on the attempts to privatize land holdings, whih not only opens them up to transnational exploitation but undermines the consultative process that sustains communities.

Sr. Hernandez also spoke a great deal about Maya views of the world and his own experiences. He discussed a world view that is integral, with human life in its appropriate place within the cycles and structure of the natural world. He explained the three levels of the cosmos and their different attributes, all interrelated and interdependent. He emphasized the necessity to show respect both to nature but also to one's elders. But he moved on to more overtly political terms to explain that land and territory (tierra y territorio) must always be considred together. He then went on to explain his own experience, first prompted by school teachers to forego his heritage and make his way as a ladino, and then his period of recovering the value of his heritage and working within its governmental-religious system. He talked about a project of interviewing elders and collecting knowledge about plants, especially medicinal plants.

Other specific topics were also covered, including the peace camp at Huitepec ecological reserve, an area consted by the Chiapas government and the Zapatista-allied community of Ocotal; the other campaign and its second journey now underway; low intensity warfare in the Selva Lacandona and the decision of the EZLN to resist expropriation of the lands for which they have fought.