A re-(un)occupation of the public square is underway. The local population has reclaimed its space, forbidden drug and alcohol use and taken over the property of a Canadian mining company. Zuccotti? No, Chiapas, Mexico.

The Movement for Justice in El Barrio has circulated a report filed by Hermann Bellinghausen from Chiapas in La Jornada (1/14/12):

Organized residents of Siltepec Municipality, in the Sierra Madre of Chiapas, closed off access to the municipality to beer companies and distributers of alcohol and drugs, as well as Canadian mining and logging companies that exploit their territory. They also closed 18 cantinas (bars) and seriously questioned the police, the mayor and the state’s agent from the Public Ministry, who protect the criminals. Starting this Thursday [1/12/12] they decided to organize “as a municipal headquarters [country seat], in coordination with the ejidos, rancherías, barrios and colonias, to exercise control of our territory without the intervention of the political parties and the government.”

The action has been taken by Luz y Fuerza del Pueblo [People’s Light and Power] in the Sierra region. They have closed bars, banned drug sales and excluded polleros (migrant traffickers) from the area. However: “the Black Fire [sic] mining company has been coming in at night and has already covertly taken eight trucks of a mineral from the Campo Aéreo barrio (neighborhood) of the Honduras ejido [collective farm]. We warn that we are no longer going to permit this anywhere in the Sierra.”

They note that last year “their compañero Salomón Ventura Morales was shot dead,
in his home in the barrio of Las Cruces, ‘by clearly identifiable people’. Enough already (ya basta), they conclude, “of corruption, injustices and secret deals between criminals and authorities.”

The Canadian mining company in question is not part of Brookfield Asset Management, owner of Zuccotti Park but Blackfire Exploration, who even claim to be “benefiting the local indigenous people of Chiapas.” It looks harmless enough on the company website:

Blackfire open barite mine, Chiapas. View of the open mine

Let’s see what happens if we turn the camera around:

Alternative view of the open mine

Not so good. In addition to this devastation, Blackfire have been accused of colluding with the murder of activist Mariano Abarca Robeldo in December 2009.

What is barite anyway? According to Wikipedia, three-quarters of mined barite is “a weighting agent for drilling fluids in oil and gas exploration to suppress high formation pressures and prevent blowouts.” The mined barite is, then, simply a component of further drilling for oil and gas, especially in the process known as “fracking” or hydraulic fracturing. New York State is about to decide on whether to permit fracking and Pennsylvania has already allowed it across the state. It pumps water under high pressure into rock with a secret combination of toxic chemicals in order to “fracture” the rock and release natural gas for human use. It’s a combination of environmental disaster in its own right and continued obsession with fossil fuel-powered growth.

So the occupation by Luz y Fuerza of their own territory is a defense against such devastation and the multinational corporate greed that motivates OWS. The focus on primary extraction should remind us that global capital is not all about finance–some of it is old fashioned “primitive accumulation,” as Marx would have had it. What is striking is how that extraction now leads immediately into new fossil fuel extraction to power, amongst other things, computers like the one I’m using now.