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News > Latin America

Mexico: Activists Launch Video in Defense of Mother Earth

  • A campaign meeting brought together community people of all ages.

    A campaign meeting brought together community people of all ages.

Published 8 June 2016
Opinion

Activists posted an online video calling for Mexicans to protect the country's natural resources and to defend Indigenous and working-class rights.

Earlier this week the first video message of the National Campaign in Defense of Mother Earth and Territory was released online as part of the campaign’s overall goal to connect different urban and rural grassroots struggles in Mexico that put as their priority the defense of territory, natural resources and the rights of Indigenous peoples.

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“It is our mother because it has given us life, allowed us to grow and gives us what we need to live. It is not just and fair that only a few want to seize and own it,” says Jaime from the organization In Defense of the Green River in Oaxaca, Mexico.

The six minute video, which has had nearly 200,000 views on social media in just 2 days, brings together various prominent artists, activists, academics and Indigenous leaders to denounce environmental degradation at the hands of corporations and political corruption that leads to land evictions of Indigenous peoples.

The message of the video also calls on the public to join grassroots organizations in defending working-class urban neighborhoods from gentrification, while at the same time calling for greater citizen participation in displaying solidarity with rural and Indigenous communities seeking to defend natural resources, their traditions and ways of life.

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“Just like our ancestors have shown and taught us, we cannot abandon our struggle for our territory and our water,” says Yaqui tribe leader, spokesman and former political prisoner, Mario Luna.

The National Campaign in Defense of Mother Earth was formally launched on April 10 in Mexico City with 179 communities from at least 17 states forming the campaign.

The campaign will carry out various awareness projects,will help to network different social actors from different regions of Mexico and it is expected that various regional meetings or congresses will be organized.

It will culminate its end, or at least its first stage, on Nov. 20, 2016 with a national mass mobilization to “defend life, territory and Mother Earth.”

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