EZLN announces march in Mexico City against mega projects by López Obrador

The Zapatista Army of National Liberation (EZLN) on Tuesday convened a demonstration in Mexico City against the megaprojects announced by the Government of President Andrés Manuel López Obrador for the coming years.

The march in Mexico City, which he did not make clear if he will attend, will take place on February 21 with a starting point at the offices of the Federal Electricity Commission (CFE), the EZLN announced in a statement released Tuesday.

A day earlier, on February 20, there will be "dislocated actions in Mexico and the world in defense of the territory and mother earth, for justice for our dead, our missing, our prisoners and against the megaprojects of death," he said.

The days in defense of the territory and mother earth "Samir we are all and all" will culminate on February 22 with an assembly in the community of Amilcingo, municipality of Temoac, in the central state of Morelos, he said.

Amilcingo is in the geographic center of the megaproject project of the Huexca thermoelectric project, with an aqueduct and gas pipeline that crosses the states of Morelos, Puebla and Tlaxcala and that according to specialists would affect 26 villages.

Samir Flores, broadcaster of a community radio, social leader, environmental defender and opponent of the project, was killed in February 2019 outside his home and is considered a symbol of opposition to the operation of the thermoelectric plant.

The EZLN also opposes the megaprojects of the López Obrador Government such as the construction of the Mayan Train, which is intended to be built through the states of Quintana Roo, Campeche, Yucatán, Tabasco and Chiapas.

It also rejects the so-called Transistmic Corridor, a project that will link the Pacific (Salina Cruz) and Atlantic (Coatzacoalocos) oceans.

These projects "intend to reorder the territories, populations and borders of North and Central America in a logic of dispossession and capitalist exploitation," the EZLN said in its call for protest days.

The EZLN made a public presence on January 1, 1994 by taking several towns in the southeastern state of Chiapas by arms in a conflict that lasted 10 days until the Mexican government declared a unilateral ceasefire.

The Government and the EZLN held a dialogue in the Cathedral of San Cristóbal de las Casas (Chiapas) and launched a peace process that concluded with the San Andres agreements in 1996, whose breach led to the breakdown of the dialogue.

The EZLN has maintained its presence in several areas of the state of Chiapas and has rejected dialogue contacts with the Governments of the presidents Vicente Fox (2000-2006), Felipe Calderón (2006-2012) and Enrique Peña Nieto (2012-2018) and Now with López Obrador.