Helping Indigenous Communities Protect their Lands

Dear Friend:

The land is not a commodity it is root, history, and life. On September 13 and 14, 2025, in San Cristóbal de Las Casas, Chiapas.

we gathered with peoples, communities, and organizations from the states of Chiapas, Guerrero, Oaxaca, and Puebla for the Land and Territory Gathering, to share our struggles, pain, and resistance in the face of a context marked by dispossession, violence, and the imposition of megaprojects that destroy communal life and entire communities in southern Mexico.

In this gathering, we reaffirm that our strength lies in the territory and in collective organization, which, rooted in our traditions, has sustained the life and resistance of our communities and families.

We also recognize the impacts of the advance of megaprojects: dispossession, violence, displacement, and the destruction of our peoples. We denounce the coordinated strategies through which governments, corporations, and organized crime work together to impose a model of development that benefits only a few, but for us means division within our communities, loss of identity, and death.

From within our resistance, we will continue to foster dialogue and gatherings to build organized networks in defense of land and territory. In this spirit, we demand that the authorities take responsibility in the face of climate and social crises to stop the dispossession, respect the rights of Indigenous and rural peoples, and hold accountable those responsible for the violence caused by this imposed model, which continues to uphold colonialism and patriarchy.

Now more than ever, it is time to walk together, to weave networks of solidarity, and to build autonomous processes that center life, justice, and the land. From our resistance, we invite you to organize and join the strength of our communities to sustain life and say yes to life, and yes to collective organization.

Links:

• Pronunciamiento conjunto