Last April 10 marked 105 years since the death imposed treacherously by Emiliano Zapata “the Caudillo of the South”, in Chinameca, Morelos, in a military ambush. Zapata He was a revolutionary, peasant and Mexican soldier who fought and gave his life for the land, social justice and the ejido. Zapata, fought for a true transformation of the conditions of abandonment and helplessness in the country's rural territories, a fight that led to his death. The leader of the south remained faithful to his demands for justice, democracy, freedom and defended the sovereignty of Mexico. The land belongs to those who work it!
The Mexican Revolution engendered in 1917 article 27 of the Constitution that restored land to dispossessed towns and created ejidos, providing them with land to benefit the poor. This was the result of the revolutionary struggle, led by Zapata, in which, through the phrase “Come and sign those who are not afraid,” he called on revolutionary social fighters.
However, the greed and corruption of neoliberal governments in December 1991, at the initiative of President Salinas, began a legislative process that he called “The Great Peasant Reform“, in which using the emblem “Let those who are not afraid come to sign”, in Los Pinos, before a painting of the head of the Liberation Army, the leaders of the national centers went one by one to sign the “Peasant Manifesto” which endorsed the end of the agrarian distribution and the privatization of the ejido, the date was recorded: December 1, 1991.
The leaders' commitment to overcome the agrarian distribution by calling for a great conciliation effort among the men of the countryside acquired that day was seen as a great betrayal by hundreds of thousands of peasants throughout the country who had been fighting for the land for decades.
This counter-reform to article 27 of the Constitution, which came into force on January 6, 1992, clouded the horizon in the countryside and produced multiple transformations in the rural world. The spearhead of neoliberal policies in our country was the counter-reform to article 27 of the Federal Constitution – and the fundamental purpose of said counter-reform was the privatization and extinction of the ejido.
They were the principles of revolutionary ideals that fought for a profound transformation of the conditions of abandonment and helplessness in our rural territories, Zapata He even offered his life for justice, democracy, freedom and the defense of our sovereignty.
The symbol of peasant resistance, defender of human dignity: that the land continues to belong to those who work it, that it be restored to those who, due to neoliberalism, were dispossessed of it. The land belongs to those who work it. The plot is not for sale!
Every day, in the countryside, in the towns, in the ejidos of Sinaloa, stories are written that fight and resist the extinction of the ejido.
Income is a form of resistance to the attacks of the market. The call to fight is towards a new model of rural development that guarantees the preservation of ejido – an agriculture with well-being for the producers of Sinaloa and Mexico.
Today, 32 years after Salinas' reform of article 27 of the Constitution that puts the ejido in the market and, therefore, towards its privatization, the call is to fight for the restitution of peasants to the productive process through a new model of rural development that guarantees the preservation of the ejido, – agriculture with well-being for producers. Food sovereignty and self-sufficiency; the federal government in charge; the economic and political organization of the peasants, the path.
“Let those who are not afraid come and sign,” Zapata calls.
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