Communique from the Communal Autonomous Council of San Juan Copala, Oaxaca, Mexico

Our history is not only like the mature fruit which falls from a tree when we became aware that is was time to walk together as a people, nor like the spring of our grandparents when times were good, or the times to plant and to see our lands full of life and our people walking without being afraid, our history is more than the branches which create shade in a patriarchal and dominating system, it is more than the trunk which is the unity of our peoples and their thousand-year old forms of organization which have always allowed us to sustain ourselves, it is the deep ancestral roots which teach us that we have to defend our culture in the face of invasions; we are the Triqui people, the inheritors of lightning, we come from the earth, we are one of the guardians of the history which we have lived, at many times facing colonization, the nation-state and wars of extermination.