A conversation with Guadalupe Vázquez Luna, who will share experiences from Tsoblej Chanulpom yu'un Acteal (Las Abejas de Acteal). Las Abejas is an Indigenous, autonomous, and peaceful resistance organization that fights for justice, autonomy, and the defense of land and territory in the Highlands of Chiapas, Mexico.
✳ During the event, we will explore the following questions:
The event will be held in Spanish and English, with consecutive translation.
Organized in collaboration with Colectivo Armadillo Suomi, CDH Fray Bartolomé de Las Casas – Human Rights Center (Frayba), Las Abejas de Acteal, and Museum of Impossible Forms.
Organise, resist, rebel!
🗓 Program
16:30 — Doors open
17:00–17:20
Welcome and agenda of the day
With David Muñoz Alcántara and Erwin Alejandro (Ozomatli) from Colectivo Armadillo Suomi
→ Mapping internationalist peacebuilding efforts from the grassroots and connecting human rights work on Indigenous land.
17:20–18:20
Presentation and conversation with Guadalupe Vázquez Luna
→ Indigenous women’s leadership, resilience, and self-determination in the face of war and violence. Testimonies and reflections on peacebuilding at the community level. The role of the International Observation Brigades (BriCOs) in Acteal, Chiapas.
18:20–18:35 — Snack break
18:35–19:00
Remote participation from CDH Frayba – Human Rights Center
→ Introduction and invitation by Fray Bartolome de las Casas–Human Rights Center to join the International Observation Brigades program in Mexico, Chiapas. International solidarity as a site for learning and developing new skills for peacebuilding within Indigenous territories.
19:00–20:00
Open Conversation
→ Collective visions for peacebuilding and rethinking anticolonial, antipatriarchal, and anticapitalist collaborations between ourselves and Indigenous peoples in struggle.
✺ Accessibility
Museum of Impossible Forms is located 900m from Kalasatama Metro Station (towards Sompasaari). Tram line 13 (direction: Nihti) leaves you directly at the entrance. The space is at ground level with no accessibility barriers and includes an accessible toilet.
🗺 Google Maps
✹ Abstract
As millions of lives and ecosystems are destroyed by war and extractive industries, backed by oppressive governments, multinational corporations, and criminal networks, the world continues to grapple with impunity. Despite commitments made by many States to prosecute and punish genocide, ecocide, and violations of fundamental human rights, the failure to fullfil their obligations and guarantee fundamental rights and safe environment has become a hallmark of the authoritarian and neo-colonial global order.
What mechanisms can society rely on to combat this impunity? How can researchers, civil society, and activists intersect to respond to the global entanglements of a multi-reality warfare? What are the present challenges of internationalist solidarity for building peace?
International solidarity and mutual aid aimed at supporting Indigenous rights and environmental justice in conflict zones is a challenging long-term process. Yet, engaging with and supporting autonomous movements and transformative justice efforts is a powerful form of direct action. By building shared knowledge, strengthening communal ties, learning new skills, experiencing and understanding different social contexts, and working alongside local and international grassroots movements, we cultivate tools and context for long-term structural political change.
✺ Agenda in depth
This gathering will open a short introduction to possibilities and strategies for international involvement among civil society groups, social movements, and researchers. We will share ongoing initiatives that seek to transform the status quo and contribute to construct alternatives.
Our focus will then shift to the work of international observation brigades in Chiapas. Guadalupe Vázquez Luna will share testimonies and insights from over three decades of such brigades in her community, Tsoblej Chanulpom yu'un Acteal(Las Abejas de Acteal). She will reflect on peacebuilding and autonomy in her community, and how can we build peace while resisting and opposing the ongoing war against life?
Later, CDH Fray Bartolomé de las Casas–Human Rights Center will join remotely to introduce their International Observation Brigades–BriCOs program, outlining paths for collaboration between local and international human rights actors. They will share how the presence of observers can act as a deterrent to violence by the military, paramilitaries, and other state actors: "That is why we send BriCOs (International Observation Brigades) to communities and organizations in resistance—to document potential human rights violations." (CDH–Frayba)
The event will close with an open conversation and space for informal exchange and connection-building across struggles.
✺ About the Speakers
Guadalupe Vázquez Luna
Mother, artisan, fearless activist, orator, councilwoman, social leader and organizer.
Guadalupe shares lessons of tenacity and determination. She continues to fight for justice after surviving the Acteal massacre in 22.12.1997, which claimed the lives of her parents and five siblings. Despite the structural racism and patriarchal violence in her community, she completed her education and became a powerful voice for Indigenous rights and resistance to extractive "death projects” and brought attention to the region's problems.
On International Women’s Day in 2018, she led a group of women from Las Abejas to protest against military occupation in their communities, confronting the soldiers at the military barracks in Majomut, Chenalho, with a powerful message of unity and respect. Her story is featured in the 2019 documentary Lupita: Que retiemble la tierra, directed by Mónica Wise and Eduardo Gutiérrez Wise.
CDH Fray Bartolomé de las Casas–Human Rights Center
FRAYBA was founded on March 19, 1989, at the initiative of Don Samuel Ruiz García, then Catholic Bishop of the Diocese of San Cristóbal de Las Casas. He saw the need to create a human rights space that could respond to the demands of communities and organisations defending their rights. From its inception, FRAYBA was conceived as an open space to receive and support any person or collective whose rights were violated, regardless of religion, ethnicity, or gender. Though rooted in the diocesan process, the Center was established as a civil organisation, autonomous in its operation from the diocesan structure, yet connected to and guided by the indigenous communities and their commitment to dignity, justice, and peace.
✺ And for context
Las Abejas de Acteal
Founded in 1992, Las Abejas is an Indigenous autonomous peaceful resistance and civil society organization rooted in the Mayan Tsotsil and Tseltal community of Acteal in Chenalhó, which covers 4 municipalities across the Highlands of Chiapas, Mexico. They fight for land, rights, and autonomy—and have been close allies of the Zapatista movement. As part of the 1990s counter-insurgency efforts to suppress Zapatismo, the Mexican State promoted the creation of paramilitary groups that continuously harassed the members of different political groups aligned with the Zapatista movement. On December 22, 1997, their community was attacked by paramilitaries during a prayer gathering, resulting in the Acteal massacre. Since then, Las Abejas have continued to denounce violence, demand justice, and advocate for peace and freedom. They have campaigned across Mexico and internationally, aiming to contribute with their actions to strengthen people's' organized power and to articulate efforts in common objectives for the construction of the Lekil Kuxlejal("good living").
The Zapatistas
With over 40 years of organizing as an indigenous-led revolutionary movement, the Zapatistas became globally known after the 1994 uprising. Since then, they continue to build and practice a different world. They have transformed their political, social, educational, and cultural structures; recovered and repaired lands and culture; organized in collective autonomy despite enclosures, linguistic differences, and beyond borders. All while resisting war, dispossession, and destruction of their life by different actors such as paramilitaries, narco-paramilitaries, extractivism, neo-colonial powers, and imperial necropolitics. Their indigenous-led processes continue to demonstrate how it is possible to dream, walk, and do a better world where the organized civil society, grassroots movements, internationalists, and people at large can meet in a plurality of knowledge–including art and science, for the construction of another society and values.
The Zapatistas are at a crucial forefront in the defence of life, imagining and practicing collective political differences, sharing plural forms of relating, and organizing self-determination and collective autonomy with interdependency, mutuality, reciprocity, respect, and dignity. Struggling for "a world where many worlds can fit in". Their recent national and international strategy addresses people in resistance to connect, struggle, and dream in everybody’s common: "el común".
