The
Zapatistas need your solidarity after targeted attacks by
government-linked paramilitaries destroyed much of this year’s coffee
harvest.
On
August 22, 2020, the ORCAO paramilitary organization looted and burned
two Zapatista coffee warehouses in Cuxuljá, Chiapas. This is the latest
in an accelerating series of attacks on the Zapatista project since the
current administration of Andrés Manuel López Obrador (AMLO) took
office.
Many of you will remember that in 2017 as Trump took
office, the Zapatistas sent four tons of their coffee harvest to migrant
and other communities in struggle in the United States as an organizing
resource. Now we need to organize our own coffee solidarity effort —
not only to help recover the cost of the lost harvest, but to show there
is widespread solidarity with the Zapatista project.
The Zapatistas have been one of few voices to denounce
AMLO’s purportedly “progressive” government for doubling down on
previous administrations’ socially and environmentally destructive
capitalist megaprojects.
These policies have dispossessed hundreds of thousands of their land
and resources and made Indigenous and other communities resisting such
projects the target of state and paramilitary repression. It is
important to note that one of the principal investors in these
megaprojects is the world’s largest financial firm, BlackRock.
Support
the Zapatista project, a project that has not only created a horizon of
dignified self-organization that has inspired all of us, but also shown
profound and far-reaching solidarity with our own struggles. Solidarity
means acting from the knowledge that in the face of destruction and
dispossession, our best resource is each other!
Oh!!!! I got to see the first one in person, actually! She’s Mmamoriri from Mombo in Botswana! She was beautiful! And her pride is the group of lions often featured in nature documentaries since their main prey is cape buffalo, a huge and incredibly dangerous animal, resulting in some truly incredible battles between the species.
According to my guide, it was likely she had internal testes along with her external female genitalia, resulting in an increased testosterone level! It’s especially interesting just how dark her mane is, as black manes tend to only present in males with high testosterone. Fascinatingly, it presents not just as a mix of male and female physical traits, but also behaviors!
Here’s a picture I took of Mmamoriri (left) with a male from her pride. As you can see, she’s got the full striking mane, but her face and body are much smaller than the male’s.
Apparently this mix of traits has made her EXTREMELY popular within the pride. She hunts and cares for the young with the lionesses, which helps greatly since her larger stature is a major asset in taking down the formidable buffalo they feed on, but also roars and has a mane, and is therefore able to chase off hyenas (which tend to be stronger than female lions and harass them/steal food/kill cubs) with the males. Mmamoriri has fully diversified her portfolio!
So she’s a kickass intersex lion who says fuck no to gender roles and in doing so has become a major asset to her pride!
It is, unfortunately, probably the result of inbreeding in her pride, which is cut off from wider populations by virtue of living on an island in the Okavango. She is infertile, like the previous maned lioness in the pride, Martina.
This blog is mostly so I can vent my feelings and share my interests. Other than that, I am nothing special.
If you don't like Left Wing political thought and philosophy, all things related to horror, the supernatural, the grotesque, guns or the strange, then get the fuck out. I just warned you.
