In the presence of the public opinion, we expose:

1) As a departmental assembly of the peoples, we express our political support for the Mam people of the Chimb’al territory organized to defend natural resources and the territory.

2) We are aware of the danger that our Mother Water suffers due to the voracity of the extractive neoliberal model that hoards, pollutes, diverts, and imprisons water, putting at risk the life of humanity and all beings that inhabit the Earth. We have verified that dams, mining, monoculture production, and large-scale electrical energy do not leave any benefit for the communities since they only focus on producing profit for a few hands (companies).

3) We applaud the people of Santiago Chimaltenango and the municipal government, who together have prioritized the protection of Mother Water, through a municipal agreement, based on Convention 169, the Political Constitution of the Republic, and the Municipal Code. The ancestral authority will know how to keep the agreement safe and monitor its compliance.

4) We call on community, municipal, national and international authorities to protect water, prioritizing human consumption and the local production of healthy food. We are facing a transcendental moment since the global warming produced by this extractive model has only brought us droughts and storms. As indigenous peoples, we recognize that the balance has been lost, which is why we cannot allow water, a vital element of our existence, to continue to be contaminated. We must organize ourselves to protect natural resources and territories. This is the only way to sustain life in our communities.

Board of Directors of the -ADH-

June 2022.

Translation by Isaac Garza

Logo of the ADH