Indigenous peoples of Mexico and the National Indigenous Congress (CNI) 30th anniversary European tour, Digi Mart USA News: Two delegations from the National Indigenous Congress of Mexico (CNI) and the Fray Bartolomé de las Casas Human Rights Center (Frayba), based in San Cristóbal de las Casas, Chiapas, traveled again through Europe as part of the CNI’s 30th anniversary. The purpose was to convey the words of the peoples directly.
From September 1 to October 31, the delegations visited several cities in the Spanish State, the Basque Country, France, Switzerland, Belgium, Germany, Denmark and Italy. Representing the CNI were Abel Sánchez of the Chontal people of Santa María Zapotitlán and Estela Francisco Francisco of the Otomí people of Querétaro.
Representing Frayba were Victorino Gálvez of the Mam people and Sandra Luz López of the Tseltal people of Chanal, Chiapas. Estela is a director in pedagogy, and the others are lawyers.
Solidarity organizations, including the Zapatista Europe Network and collectives supporting struggles from below and on the left in Mexico, organized a wide range of activities. Some were internal, such as meetings, project visits and exchanges with collectives.
Others were public, including talks, press conferences, shared meals, popular football matches, roundtables and interviews for radio and independent media.
The visit coincided with a significant year for the CNI: on October 12, the 30th anniversary of its founding assembly was marked. The 1996 assembly was attended by Comandanta Ramona on behalf of the EZLN and was the culmination of decades of meetings and resistance by Indigenous peoples and organizations from different regions of Mexico, united in defense of land, autonomy and their own ways of life.
According to the speakers, the tour offered a rare opportunity to learn firsthand about a reality that seldom reaches Europe, and a timely moment to engage with their experiences of defending themselves against the storm the speakers described. It also highlighted struggles to defend territories and built ties of solidarity and mutual support.
During the tour, the Mexican speakers described the situation facing Mexico’s Indigenous peoples, including land and territorial conflicts and megaprojects. They spoke of what they called a capitalist war of conquest, which they said has so far resulted in more than 135,000 disappeared people, about 41 homicides per day, thousands of femicides, displaced peoples, militarized territories, and organized crime embedded in communities and government structures, including the current administration of the so-called Fourth Transformation.
They said these structures respond with dispossession, repression, contempt and racism, and that resistance is the only answer.
A key issue raised was the Indigenous and Afro-Mexican Peoples’ Rights Law initiative, which the peoples reject. The initiative was promoted by the National Institute for Indigenous Peoples (INPI), the Ministry of the Interior and the Presidential Legal Counsel’s Office.
Mexican lawyers described it as a 2024 constitutional reform that is “regressive and designed for dispossession,” as are water laws, electricity reform laws and megaprojects such as the so-called Maya Train and the Interoceanic Corridor of the Isthmus of Tehuantepec.
The Mexican government argues the law was consulted with the peoples, as required by ILO Convention 169. However, CNI members described the consultation as neither free nor genuine, calling it “simulated and dishonest,” and said it took place amid harassment, killings, disappearances and displacement in their regions.
They noted that their colleagues Jesús Plácido Galindo, Sixto Mendoza Limpia and Francisco Moreno Hernández are imprisoned for defending their peoples. The consultation and the law have been rejected and challenged across the country, both by communities within the CNI and by others outside it.
In Chiapas, the speakers cited a superhighway known as the “Route of the Mayan Cultures,” which would connect Palenque and San Cristóbal de las Casas. The project was first announced in 2009 by then-governor Juan Sabines Guerrero and was suspended after resistance from local peoples, who said its construction would destroy forests, jungles and farmland that form the basis of the region’s food system.
According to the speakers, the megaproject resumed with construction beginning on June 8, 2025, without listening to the voices of the peoples who protect the environment of the territories they inhabit.
The speakers also said violence continues to cause serious human rights violations, including arbitrary detentions, torture and attacks on territorial defenders. They reported more than 24,000 people displaced by cartel violence with no possibility of safe return, and 416 people disappeared in Chiapas alone from 2024 through December 2025.
They said government security policies have not affected criminal groups but have brought threats and intimidation to communities.
The speakers warned that “the war exists even without gunfire. It is prolonged and bloody, even if it is not an open war, but it is clearly a war of attrition against organized Indigenous peoples.” The CNI counts 214 members killed, 45 disappeared and 107 political prisoners.
They highlighted the arbitrary detention of Jesús Plácido Galindo, who took part in the 2024 Frayba-CNI European tour and denounced organized crime attacks on communities in Guerrero with total impunity. He has been held in a maximum-security prison since July 17, accused without evidence of a 2021 homicide.
A campaign in Mexico and Europe is calling for his release, and the 2026 European tour joined that effort.
The speakers said the total war against the peoples is spreading across many parts of the world, with dispossession, greed, murder, repression, criminalization, extermination and genocide named in many languages. In each case, they said, the powerful have used governments to manage fear and persecute conscience.
“The Indigenous peoples who are the CNI live through violent times not seen since other great wars in the history of this country called Mexico, which is governed by a regime that calls itself the Fourth Transformation and which, hand in hand with organized crime cartels, sows terror in communities.”
