Daniela González López
Local and international struggles against the Walls of Infamy for a World Without Walls
The US Wall in Sonora/Nogales, 2018. “No wall will destroy our dreams of justice…” (Credits: Stop the Wall archive.)
The policies of militarism and war of the United States and one of its main allies, Israel, testify to the establishment of an interventionist model that represents a great danger to the peoples of the world.
The illegal occupation of entire territories from Latin America to Palestine result in dispossession, pillage and destruction. Segregationist and racist regimes are killing and excluding us as native peoples who own ancestral territories.
This is what is lived on the border between Mexico and the United States, a dangerous place where technological separation walls are guarded by the US military.
The Walls of Infamy destroy people’s lives and separate them from their lands, denying them basic freedoms of movement. They impose a state of violence and control, strengthening paramilitary groups and militarizing territories, using technologies of death produced and sold by Israeli companies to kill the people.
For example, Elbit Systems announced that its subsidiary obtained the contract of the US Department of Homeland Security to produce and install surveillance systems, including observation towers, on the border of Arizona with Mexico. The Israeli corporation is one of the main suppliers of military technology to the Israeli army. Its drones are frequently used against the besieged Gaza Strip in lethal attacks against Palestinians and it is infamous for the provision of “intrusion detection systems” to the construction of Israel’s wall.
In Mexico, during the so-called war on drugs waged over the last decade by the governments of Felipe Calderón and Enrique Peña Nieto, ties with Israel have been deepened, among others through cooperation in police training. Fifty Meican federal, state and municipal police officers – including commanders and senior officers – train each year in Israel. This has a direct consequence on the forms and methods used by the federal, state and municipal governments: a high level of violence without any respect for human rights protocols.
The understanding of the similarities and interconnectedness of our realities have allowed us to connect our local struggles internationally and strengthen resistance for the defense of territories and life, so that as an Observatory of Human Rights of the Peoples we have participated in various activities such as:
- The delegation to Palestine for a World without Walls (October 9 to 15 2019), which has been followed by the “International Caravan for the Unity of the People: against the Walls of Infamy, Paramilitarism, Educational Reform, for the Defense of the Territory, Sovereignty and Human Rights”. We left Oaxaca, Mexico, on October 31 and stopped in Puebla, Mexico City, Querétaro, Michoacán, Jalisco, Nayarit, Sinaloa, to finally arrive in Nogales, Sonora, at the border wall with the US on November 10. There we marked the first Global Day of Action for a World without Walls – November 9 2017 – and as a closing event participated in the “Border Encounter” in Nogales/ Sonora on November 10-12 2017.
- We continued the connection with talks across the globe, including in Switzerland, where BDS Switzerland, the Latin America Network of Zurich and the Observatory of Human Rights of the Peoples organized a conference about the role of Palestinian women in the fight against the occupation, segregation and racism and strengthened the global demand for the immediate release of Ahed Tamimi.
- We co-organized the II Popular Tribunal on the Role of Israel in the militarization of Latin America. Chapter: Mexico” on April 9 2019 in Mexico City.
Walking hand in hand against the Walls of Infamy for a World without Walls, as native peoples until we will be able to live in a world of justice, freedom, equality and peace.