For the week of agitation against extractivist capitalism and for freedom, we want to express our respect and solidarity with the different expressions of resistance in defense of land and territory and against state repression taking place throughout the globe.
Extractive capitalism and state repression work hand in hand. Those who refuse to submit to the requirements of capital and the state, who defend their territories, communities, self-determination, and autonomy, are constantly targeted with threats, harassment, imprisonment, disappearance, and assassination. Capitalism’s ceaseless hunger for “natural resources,” along with the infrastructure required to extract, transport, process, and sell these natural resources, means a constant war brought by capital against the earth. Projects of extractive capitalism are backed by state violence, with the police, military, courts, and prisons continually employed to intimidate and quash community organization and land defense.
Our compañero, Fidencio Aldama Pérez, is serving a fifteen-year sentence in Ciudad Obregón, Sonora, Mexico, for joining his community of Loma de Bácum in resistance to US-based Sempra Energy, and their attempt to construct the Sonora Pipeline through Yaqui territory. Rather than bowing to clientalism or cooptation, Fidencio Aldama and the town of Loma de Bácum have stood firm in their rejection of the natural gas pipeline. Fidencio’s imprisonment has been one of many consequences for the community.
Fidencio Aldama is also serving a fifteen-year sentence for being Indigenous, for practicing and teaching his culture and his customs, for defending his territory as an essential part of his being. Within a state and an entire civilization which grows in strength from the elimination of Indigenous people, the disarticulation of their community organization, and the theft and plunder of their territories, being Indigenous is a threat. The prison system is just one way the state deals with that threat.
The climate of terror that has engulfed Loma de Bácum since the introduction of the pipeline project has not ended with Fidencio’s arrest. On July 9 of this year, the military invaded Loma de Bácum under the pretext of a supposed drug raid, threatening the autonomy of the Yaqui people and disobeying their traditional authorities. On July 14, fifteen people were disappeared from Yaqui territory, ten of which remaining missing, seven of whom are Indigenous Yaquis from Bácum. These acts of violence and intimidation take place within an ongoing dispute over the route of the Sonora pipeline, and expanding mining interests in the Yaqui region.
The struggle of Loma de Bácum is part of a much longer historical struggle of the Yaqui people, in defense of their territorial and political autonomy. This struggle has been maintained through the Spanish invasion and the foundation of the Mexican nation-state, the Porfiriato and the post-revolutionary governments. It continues against the contemporary forces of neoliberal capitalism and the dirty tricks of President López Obrador’s so-called fourth transformation. The struggle of Loma de Bácum, and the struggle for Fidencio’s freedom, are also part of the plurality of resistances throughout the globe, which are resisting capitalist annihilation, as well as state domination, subordination, and repression.
This week we celebrate and show our solidarity with land defenders and victims of state repression across the globe. For a world without capitalism, states, or prisons.
Free Fidencio Aldama!
Free all prisoners!
Fidencio Aldama Support Group