CIPO-RFM

CIPO-RFM
Consejo Indígena Popular de Oaxaqua «Ricardo Flores Magon»

june 7th, 2004, Santa Lucia del Camino, Oaxaca
written by Johanne Pelletier and Francis Murchison

When we arrived in Oaxaca, many-colored banners covered the front of the government palace (palacio del gobierno). For some weeks now, representatives of all the communities of the Popular Indigenous Council of Oaxaca (CIPO) take turns coming to occupy this part of downtown. They demand that the repression be stopped and that justice be done concerning the crimes that have been perpetrated against their indigenous communities. We came into contact with the CIPO-«Ricardo Flores Magon» while speaking with the participants in the occupation who belong to this libertarian organization of indigenous communities in the State of Oaxaca. We were invited to the organization’s house to spend a few convivial days with the Council members. Here are a few words on what we learned through many conversations with the many members of different communities about their history, ideology, and how they function. This vast organization opened their doors to us in all simplicity holding nothing back.

The CIPO-RFM house is found a few minutes from Oaxaca, in Santa Lucia del Camino, a central point where representatives of different indigenous communities can be found. Here people come to eat and sleep, and above all to organize one of many projects that are underway before returning to their communities again. The Council includes more than 3,000 members of whom the majority are women, who organize from their villages. These members are representatives of many peoples: Mixteco, Zapoteco, Mixe, Chatino, Chinanteco, Cuicateco, Triqui, Negro, and Mestizo. Over a hot coffee, in an improvised kitchen with a tin roof, the people exchange among themselves and with us information about what’s going on in their communities.

The house was not always there

It all began in 1994, when several organizations attempted to form an alliance of indigenous people in Oaxaca in solidarity with the Zapatista action. In 1997, the Consejo Indigena Popular de Oaxaca-«Ricardo Flores Magon» was formed from the association of six different organizations. However, starting the next year ideological tensions began to be felt when two organizations left the CIPO to participate in the elections. The same year a full-scale operation by the police and the army lead to the disappearance and detention of 106 members including the general coordinator of the CIPO, Raul Gatica. After a report on human rights violations and a constant struggle of the CIPO people, the government offered compensation to the organizations for the victims of imprisonment and torture, primarily for Mr. Gatica. In spite of a general refusal to receive the money, one of the organizations in the CIPO accepted the government funds and then left the CIPO without compensating the victims. After another organization left for the elections and another attempted to nullify the Council, a collective of seven communities gave itself body and soul to the formation of a real council of indigenous communities this time. Since 2001, the CIPO has gone from seven to thirty communities, taking care not to fall into slander or defamation and resisting government repression.

The house built by the communities

After a troubled past, the CIPO has derived its strength from traditions of solidarity and the collective work of those who participate. Robbed, excluded, marginalized, repressed, and denigrated for hundreds of years in Mexico, the native population now sees that the Council is a force to obtain what successive governments have been promising to offer for so long. A road, a school, a potable water network, and electricity are some examples of what they demand from the government.

Inspired by Ricardo Flores Magon, an indigenous man from Oaxaca and a grand libertarian thinker of the Mexican revolution (1910-1914), the CIPO is an organization that breaks away from the traditional vertical model. There is no place for a chief or a president. In the Council, people help one another and complete one another according to their personal knowledge and skills.
What’s more, according to the CIPO-RFM, any changes must be the result of the community itself. They do not go to a community unless invited, and especially not to meet with the leaders. Amongst the community, they organize five steps in the form of workshops before the community can become part of the CIPO. After each workshop they leave the choice in the hands of the community to phone them and continue the process or not to continue. With the workshops, filled with games and drawings, they offer a realistic vision of the struggle, the benefits and the risks, the necessity to organize, and why there’s a need to create a Magonist and libertarian organization. The people who participate then do a diagnostic assessment of their community, and last they put together a work plan and form the grassroots Council of the CIPO.

In fact, each village that is involved in the CIPO organizes from a grassroots council that meets to apply the action plan and to implement projects. On a larger scale, the Indigenous Council brings together all its members in a general assembly during which the Junta Organizadora is chosen. This includes thirty people from the different communities who fulfill a social responsibility voluntarily and without pay for one year. The Junta is divided into twelve commissions who have the mandate to put into action all that has been decided in assembly. For example, the commission in charge of communications runs a community radio station, Radio Guetza, makes posters, videos, pamphlets, and runs the Website.

The house is still under construction.

Every morning, the noises of construction brought us out of the world of dreams. And yes, the CIPO house is being changed and reflects the projects that are being organized everywhere. In the villages, artisan cooperatives, coffee toasters, nurseries for reforestation, community eco-tourism, chicken selling co-ops, and many others are being developed. According to the priorities of each community, the people organize to break the chain of exploitation or of intermediaries called coyotes who profit from the village’s isolation to buy production at derisory prices. For coffee, chocolate, and craftwork, the people with CIPO attempt to find a way to get a fair price.

Likewise the CIPO tries to strengthen the world view of each indigenous people, which is the way they explain the world to themselves. Included in this is an attempt to revive lost elements and reinforce the indigenous identity for each people in regenerating their language, their culture, their beliefs, their legends, their medicine, their food, their art, and their way of life.

Those who do not like this house

Probably because their libertarian way of organizing questions the model of governmental control, the CIPO suffers repression at the hands of the Mexican government. Supporting the fight for justice, the Council has helped a group of citizens, Union Hidalgo and the union Tres Poderes who are also very repressed. The occupation which is currently taking place demands among other things the imprisonment of the paramilitaries who killed companions of the CIPO in Yaviche (see article: A visit to Santa Maria de Yaviche) and Yosonotu. As well as the retraction of the fifty fabricated arrest warrants against members of the CIPO, and a guarantee on the life of Raul Gatica who has undergone multiple assassination attempts.

Brick by brick, the Popular Indigenous Council of Oaxaca «Ricardo Flores Magon» grows through the collective work and solidarity of indigenous communities who organize without hierarchy. Together, they try to break the isolation and marginalization, to eliminate exploitation and poverty, and to regenerate cultural identity. In their course of action and demands for justice for the crimes that have been perpetrated against them, they face an intense repression by the government Because their libertarian, Magonist, and pacifist way of organizing leaves little room for corruption, this force of the indigenous communities seems to cause nightmares for the Oaxacan State government. Millions of tourists visit the ruins of ancient indigenous civilizations in Mexican territory. Meanwhile, these same peoples are still alive and far from being in ruins; they have much to teach us if we lend an ear to listen.

*The CIPO-RFM needs people to keep an eye on the actions of the State. If you wish to lend them your support, they need many people on an international level who have been made aware of the increasing repression towards their members. They are also happy to have people come and do different projects in the communities. You can find more information on their website (in Spanish).

Consejo Indígena Popular de Oaxaca «Ricardo Flores Magon»
CIPO-RFM
Calle : Emilio Carranza #210, Santa Lucio del Camino,
Oaxaca, México C.P. 71228
Tel/Fax : + (00 52) 951-51 781 83
Tel : + (00 52) 952-52 781 90
email : cipo@nodo50.org, ciporfm@yahoo.com.mx
website: www.nodo50.org/cipo