By Brendan S.
Zapotec organizer and Zapatista revolutionary Álvaro Sebastián Ramirez has been martyred after decades of extensive struggle against the Mexican state and its corporate limbs. Álvaro, a Oaxaca native, helped found the Organization of Indigenous Zapotec Communities in 1984, forging a vehicle of self-determination for indigenous peoples of the region. For decades he then faced a wave of anti-indigenous brutality from the Mexican state, abducted, tortured, and falsely charged by state forces in 1997.
While incarcerated, Álvaro joined the EZLN and created the Voice of the Xiche Zapotecs in Prison, paving a new path of liberation for indigenous prisoners. In the words of Red contra la Represión y por la Solidaridad:
“Through his collective, The Voice of the Xiches, Álvaro helped tear down prison bars and walls across Mexico and the world: His voice was heard in the valleys, mountains, and communities of Oaxaca, in the Zócalo plaza in Mexico City, in rebel Chiapas, at the foot of the Xinantécatl volcano in the Nahua community of San Pedro Tlanixco. He was painted in graffiti murals in the Valley of Chalco. He exchanged words and thoughts with Mumia Abu-Jamal in the so-called United States. He was heard on the radio broadcasts of comrades in Guerrero, Querétaro, and North Carolina. Mutual solidarity efforts resounded across collectives and organizing spaces of women in struggle, punks, anarchists, students, teachers, unions, and indigenous peoples and peasants. Crossing prison walls and borders, Álvaro’s struggle felt the combative and fraternal embrace of international solidarity in Latin America, Europe, and the US.”
Álvaro’s family and the revolutionists of Abya Yala carried on and disseminated his light for the two decades he was in prison from 1997 to 2017. Since his assassination by the Mexican state on July 19, it is now time for the international front to adopt his eternity in the collective soul of all being.
Godspeed martyr Álvaro.
Your immortality radiates upon all.
Donations to Álvaro’s family can be made at Paypal: revueltas@proton.me