Declaration in Defense of Life and Territory

(understood as soil, subsoil, atmosphere, water, plants, animals, and cultures)

June 1, 2024

Jalpa, Municipality of General Cepeda, Coahuila, Mexico

From May 24 to 26, around 150 people from various ejidos¹⁾, communities, collectives, and groups gathered in the ejido of Jalpa, Coahuila, to denounce the plundering of water and to stand in defense of territory and life. This gathering took place as part of the “Meeting in Defense of Life: Weaving Territories from the North, Center, and South,” convened by the collectives “Saberes y Sabores,” “Centro de Salud Alternativa (CESANA),” “Colectivo Sí a la Vida,” “Custodios del Arroyo San Miguel,” Chihuahuan Desert peasants, and Crianza Mutua Mexico. The goal was to share daily life, organizational experiences in popular education, and resistance to defend the land, water, soil, landscape, animals, plants, and cultures. During this meeting, we created a space for an intercultural dialogue of knowledges and livings to connect various autonomous struggles, weave and strengthen networks of solidarity, support, and resistance.

The ejidos of San José Patagalana, Sombreretillo, Seguín, Presa de San Antonio, Porvenir de Jalpa, Jalpa, Santa Inés, San Juan del Cohetero, and Pilar de Richardson are located in the San Miguel Stream Basin, 120 kilometers west of Saltillo. Since the late 1990s, the ejido communities of this region have filed legal actions to stop the looting of underground water reservoirs, particularly around this basin, which has sustained the region and its communities for centuries. These communities have cared for the land and water, producing foods for self-consumption and selling the harvest for subsistence.

Under the Salinas Law, extractivist agribusinesses, wine growers, exporters of pecans, berries, vegetables, and fodder producers for the Laguna Dairy Basin have taken 94% of the underground water. This looting has been worsened by the water demand from the Automotive Cluster of the Derramadero Valley.

This dispossession has been facilitated by the complicity, opacity, and misinformation from National Water Commission (CONAGUA), who did not timely inform the ejidos and peasants about changes in the law, leaving them defenseless. Conversely, companies and industries took advantage of the legal changes, declaring the water allocations of the ejidos vacant, and appropriated them, causing the displacement of peasants, trampling on their dignity, life, work, and historical relationship with their territory.

A fundamental part of the encounter was the “Water Our Sister” cavalcade, a symbolic and festive proclamation to make the ejidos visible and affirm their possession and belonging to the territory, against the invisibility imposed by the neoliberal model of extraction, dispossession, deforestation, and gentrification. It denounces the omissions, complicities, abuses, and slow violence aiming to depopulate the countryside, expelling peasants from their lands to integrate them into a development model based on manufacturing, assembly plants, nearshoring, shopping centers, and urban development at the expense of agriculture. This “modernity” depends on the dispossession of land, water, and the eradication of customs that do not fit into it.

The cavalcade is a form of resistance to the concessions law that legalizes the dispossession of water from peasants. It is also a celebration, an act of solidarity and coexistence that seeks to unite the communities and collectives resisting the extraction of water from the San Miguel Stream, and other struggles and movements in Mexico and Latin America.

For the first time, the meeting brought together various struggles from southern Mexico, including Campeche, Chiapas, and Oaxaca, with those from the center, including Mexico City, and the north, including Zacatecas, San Luis Potosí, Chihuahua, Nuevo León, and Coahuila. We also had the presence of comrades from Colombia who shared their struggle against mining companies in Cauca, along the Ovejas River, in the Cali Farallones, and the Yurumangui River, aiming to defend the eastern Cali wetlands. The meeting clearly demonstrated that, although the contexts and processes of each struggle are different, they all reject capitalist, corporate, and governmental dispossession, regardless of affiliations or political parties. Sharing the struggles of other comrades, collectives, and organizations during our meeting made it clear that the peasant organizations of the Chihuahuan Desert are not alone in their struggles, and it is possible to organize and build networks of solidarity and support to strengthen resistance against extractivist capitalism throughout Mexico.

Given the current electoral context in Mexico, where campaigns and candidates continue to show disinterest in what happens in the territories, such as the violence, looting, and dispossession persisting across the country, to focus on development and economic growth, we, the undersigning groups, stand for life and against dispossession. We assert that water and land cannot become commodities but must be considered common goods. The custodians of these, who have historically been indigenous peoples and peasants, must retain the right to autonomy and good living according to their customs and traditions, ensuring the protection of land, water, and air in their territories. The meeting and the cavalcade show that other worlds are not only possible but that the defense of life, territory, and water arises from the possibility of reclaiming the art of learning, living, eating, and healing, based on autonomy beyond the state and the market. The confluence of multiple alternatives during this meeting demonstrates that these other worlds are already here and that it is possible to unite their struggles to imagine, inhabit, and share fairer worlds.

In this sense, we demand an end to dispossession, because it is not just droughts caused by climate change but dispossessions that continue to exacerbate water stress in much of the country. We demand an end to the criminalization and violence against defenders of the territory and recognition of the essential role of individuals and entire communities who today represent the only real defense between our livelihoods and care in the face of the voracity of private and public companies that persist in their extractivist drive for fossil fuels, minerals, water, and forests. We demand an end to the warlike and genocidal mentality that today manifests itself more and more harshly in various territories worldwide. We reject the capitalist mentality and model that continues to present nature as a resource and not as an interrelation that places care, life, and the future of the next generations at its center.

The past few months have been a busy time for Vikalp Sangam, as we have hosted one gathering on Indigenous Governance, a new webinar in the series ‘From Yesterday, Towards Tomorrow’, and also screened the film ‘Churning the Earth’ followed by an insightful discussion.

The Traditional Governance - Indigenous and Community worldviews and systems Vikalp Sangam was held on 3-5th August, at Tribal Health Initiative, Tamil Nadu, India. Members of over a dozen Adivasi (Indigenous), pastoral, farmer groups, along with a few civil society groups working with communities, were present at the Sangam. The three days were spent listening and finding commonalities to the process of self governance by communities in Ladakh, Sikkim, Uttarakhand, Tamil Nadu, Assam, Gujarat, Maharashtra, Nagaland, and Madhya Pradesh. The intention of the sangam was to begin to understand these systems, their evolving nature to suit contemporary societies, their interface with modern governance institutions, and how overall governance can be strengthened for the objectives of justice and sustainability. The sangam also aimed at understanding the key principles of such governance, including reciprocity and cooperation, egalitarianism, non-accumulative orientation, decision by consensus, living in harmony with nature; as also inequalities and discriminations within such governance. The days were filled with lots of discussions and also dancing, singing, sharing good food, films, laughter and celebrating the collective. Participants also visited Sittilingi Organic Farmers Association and Tribal Health Initiative Hospital to learn about on ground efforts of THI.

We also held a screening of the film ‘Churning the Earth’, on 25th August, at a much-beloved bookstore in Pune, India. The film explores powerful countercurrents in the face of widespread ecological destruction, social injustice, and economic deprivations. It tells the narratives of 'ordinary' people in several parts of India who are resisting the disruption of their lives, as are also constructing alternatives in the form of sustainable farming, community-led ecotourism and conservation, revival of crafts, activity-based learning, decentralised water harvesting, local governance and direct democracy. They illustrate various petals in a 'Flower of Transformation', with a core of ethical values like solidarity, diversity, freedom, self-reliance, and respect of the commons. The film is available on Youtube here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=d8ajoGL8jII&t=305s.

Finally, we recently held the fifth episode of ‘Kal Se Kal Ki Taraf’: From Yesterday Towards Tomorrow; this webinar series explores the relevance of ideas, ideals and principles of Indian thought leaders of the yesteryears, and sees live examples of their applications manifesting around us. These are valuable conversations, especially given the multiple crises India (and the world) are going through right now and attempt to co-create a vision of a collective future. The fifth episode is a conversation between Grijesh Dinker (Advocate and Dalit Human Rights activist, National Campaign on Dalit Human Rights) and Priyanka Samy (Dalit feminist activist, National Federation of Dalit Women) on Reclaiming Justice: Dr. Ambedkar's Vision in Contemporary India.