A bullet silenced Samir, but the struggle he waged lives on
Reportage. Two years ago, a Mexican activist in the lands and tradition of Zapata was gunned down in an ambush days before a referendum he opposed. His execution has become a symbol of the contradictions in Obrador’s policies and a sign of continuity with previous governments.
written by Gianpaolo Contestabile, Alessandro Peregalli
Published on
February 27, 2021
Last weekend, the small Mexican state of Morelos, a few kilometers south of Mexico City, was the scene of popular and indigenous initiatives and mobilizations. On Friday, February 19, a demonstration was held in the Morelos capital of Cuernavaca, on Saturday a mass and ceremony took place in the community of Amilcingo, and on Sunday the “National and International Encounter for Life, Water Defense, Against the Coronavirus and Against Mega-Projects” was held in the municipality of Huexa. Similar initiatives took place at the same time farther south, in reclaimed lands and Zapatista autonomous municipalities in Chiapas. The reason for the mobilizations was the second anniversary of the murder of the young activist Samir Flores Soberanes by paramilitaries.
February 20, 2021, marks exactly two years since the death of Samir Flores, the face and voice of the Amilcingo radio station, a pueblo struggling to defend its political autonomy according to the customs and traditions of the Nahuatl, and promoting community projects such as a healthcare brigade and an autonomous elementary school.
Samir was fighting in a land where the memory of General Emiliano Zapata is still alive. He was born in Ciudad Ayala, a few kilometers from Amilcingo, and was active in those lands during the glorious and tragic times of the Mexican Revolution, when the communities of the area gave life to a social experiment in land distribution and self-government that the historian Adolfo Gilly called the “Commune of Morelos.”
Samir Flores was also a militant revolutionary, a social leader of the Peoples’ Front in Defense of Land and Water of the states of Morelos, Puebla and Tlaxcala (FPDTA), itself part of the National Indigenous Congress, where Samir was a delegate, working side by side with the EZLN.
Before dawn on February 20, 2019, Samir Flores was killed in an ambush, just as General Zapata had been killed 100 years earlier. He left behind a widow and four young children. The FPDTA was set up to stop a major project, the Morelos Integral Project (PIM). The latter consists of two thermoelectric power plants and a gas pipeline, which extends along the states of Morelos, Puebla and Tlaxcala and crosses the ejidos, or collective lands, of 60 peasant and indigenous communities, and threatens to dry up the water sources on which local communities depend.
More:
https://global.ilmanifesto.it/a-bullet-silenced-samir-but-the-struggle-he-waged-lives-on/?goal=0_9da7bc042e-e21f38d682-184857156&mc_cid=e21f38d682&mc_eid=baae2c9242
