opinion

84 years of the Dule Revolution and 37 years of the Kuna Youth Movement
by Diwirgui A. Martinez J. --- Kuna Youth Movement

On March 2 the Kuna Youth Movement (Movimiento de la Juventud Kuna or MJK) commemorated its 37th birthday, and we want to honor our founding sisters and brothers and in some manner that the MJK can do, given our diverse locations --- national and international --- and in keeping with the objective of strengthening the struggle of indigenous peoples for autonomy, self-determination and sovereignty over our ways of feeding ourselves.

These have been 37 years of constant struggle for our territorial rights, and to press the cultural, social, economic and political demands that make us feel and live like a people, struggles to which every generation of the MJK has been committed, but against ever greater and more dangerous challenges for the lives of indigenous peoples.

We reaffirm the struggle against neo-liberal policies, which lead to poverty and destitution among indigenous peoples around the world, and to the extermination of humanity, of the social struggles, of life on the planet. We are ever vigilant, as we have been taught that our identity, our values, our existence as a people, require us to fight every foreign interference in Kuna territory.

We are vigilant in the face of the intrusions of national and international corporations, multinational businesses and governmental entities that want to get the natural resources, lands and territories of indigenous peoples for tourist developments, mining, logging and electric power lines.

We reaffirm our position against the World Bank's external policies of using the forests of our peoples as a justification for polluters continuing to emit greenhouse gases.

We call upon the indigenous youth of this country to truly strengthen the fundamental principles of self-determination, which implies the defense of our cultural, territorial, natural environmental, economic and political rights.

Our commitment is with the present and future generations of indigenous girls, boys and youth of Panama and of the world. We wrap ourselves with the thinking of the youth of the 1925 Kuna Revolution, and with the examples of the indigenous heroes and martyrs of Abya Yala over these 515 years of constant struggle for self-determination.

Long live the Dule Revolution!

Free Leonard Peltier!

For defense of life, the youth and the land!