Arson at National Institute of Forestry, Agricultural, and Livestock Research in Mexico

6 March 2011
anony­mous report (trans­la­tion by This Is Our Job):

“We, the Earth Lib­er­a­tion Front, take respon­si­bil­i­ty for the arson at the Mex­i­can Val­ley Exper­i­men­tal Field in Tex­co­co, Mex­i­co State. The field belongs to the Nation­al Insti­tute of Forestry, Agri­cul­tur­al, and Live­stock Research (INIFAP), which is ded­i­cat­ed to the research and devel­op­ment of “improved tech­nol­o­gy” in the areas of agri­cul­ture, ani­mal hus­bandry, and for­est exploita­tion. For exam­ple, INIFAP has been respon­si­ble for the pro­duc­tion of over 100 new genet­ic vari­eties of plants since 2005, great­ly increas­ing the country’s crop pro­duc­tion and there­fore its demand for land to be defor­est­ed and pol­lut­ed with pes­ti­cides and her­bi­cides.

This year, INIFAP opened the Nation­al Cen­ter for Genet­ic Resources (CNRG), which is respon­si­ble for stor­ing genet­ic sam­ples of every species endem­ic to Mex­i­co and Latin Amer­i­ca.

The Sci­en­tists in this field argue that their project is ben­e­fi­cial to ecosys­tems, but if we ana­lyze it, these peo­ple are real­ly ded­i­cat­ing their lives to the cre­ation of new types of organ­isms in the name of progress. If we leave such a great vari­ety in their hands, will any­thing ever be out of their reach? INIFAP also car­ries out forestry research, which it uses to pro­mote the increased defor­esta­tion of wild habi­tats. For exam­ple, two weeks ago INIFAP pub­lished an arti­cle about the tim­ber indus­try, an insti­tu­tion that had devel­oped “eco­log­i­cal” (note the quotes) fur­naces for dry­ing logs in the moun­tains north of Puebla. In its arti­cle, INIFAP made its hopes clear that these fur­naces would lead to growth in the region’s forestry indus­try, thus threat­en­ing an envi­ron­ment in which all kinds of species coex­ist.

There­fore, we claim the fol­low­ing eco­tages inside and out­side this fed­er­al insti­tu­tion:

1. Leav­ing an incen­di­ary device—made from three litres of gaso­line, fus­es for det­o­na­tion, and air fresh­en­ing pel­lets as delays—among hun­dreds of sacks of her­bi­cide in a ware­house inside their facil­i­ty.

2. Leav­ing anoth­er incen­di­ary device—fueled by four liters of gasoline—at the entrance to the main build­ing near the exper­i­men­tal field.

3. Leav­ing two incen­di­ary devices inside two green­hous­es out­side and behind the facil­i­ty.

4. Also leav­ing behind declar­a­tive and threat­en­ing graffiti—like “THIS TIME IT WAS FIRE, NEXT TIME IT WILL BE BOMBS,” “ELF,” “INIFAP = DESTRUCTION OF WILD NATURE,” “FLT,” “MORE GMOS, MORE FIRE,” among others—on the win­dows, floor, and walls of the main build­ing; the walls of the oth­er build­ings; an INIFAP van; and the pow­er gen­er­a­tor.

We’ve struck again. We made use of months of thor­ough inves­ti­ga­tion to study the tar­get, tak­ing into account the shifts of the guards, who must have cer­tain­ly been sur­prised to find out we were there that morn­ing of Feb­ru­ary 27—leaping over their secu­ri­ty fence, run­ning through their park­ing lot, and turn­ing our exis­tence into a threat­en­ing aggra­va­tion to the projects of those who dream of total domes­ti­ca­tion. We infil­trat­ed the insti­tu­tion itself as well as its fields, where the green­hous­es were locat­ed. We shift­ed into action once again, our fire reignit­ing to dam­age and destroy the prop­er­ty of those who believe they own the plan­et on which we sur­vive as the degen­er­ate species of the tech­no­log­i­cal-indus­tri­al sys­tem.

Keep­ing our impris­oned anti­civ­i­liza­tion com­rades Adrián and Braulio in mind, we’re absolute­ly ready to make this type of attack a clear mes­sage to indus­tries and insti­tu­tions that imple­ment tech­no­log­i­cal devel­op­ment.

In anoth­er sense, the attack was a sym­bol­ic act direct­ed at sci­ence and tech­nol­o­gy. To us, the action may have been of very lit­tle or no impor­tance, but it was still nec­es­sary, since from our per­spec­tive it’s deplorable to sit around like mere pas­sive spec­ta­tors wait­ing for things to change. We don’t believe that this action is going to change real­i­ty right away, as that would make us either naive or over­ly prag­mat­ic. But it does func­tion as a des­per­ate act of expres­sion through which we sig­ni­fy that the real­i­ty we live in must be negat­ed in its total­i­ty, and that the best nega­tion is the destruc­tion of what­ev­er gives mean­ing to the estab­lish­ment: “social peace,” nor­mal­i­ty, insti­tu­tions, respect for prop­er­ty, etc. In this case, the destruc­tion was direct­ed at one of the major parts of modernity’s sys­tem of dom­i­na­tion: tech­no-sci­ence. This time, the attack was on a fed­er­al gov­ern­ment insti­tu­tion respon­si­ble for forestry research and biotech­nol­o­gy, among oth­er things. As a pre­text for its exis­tence, we’re told that it is seek­ing a bet­ter life for the human beings who live in this coun­try, cre­at­ing accep­tance of this kind of research among the pop­u­lace. But, as we all know, there are also neg­a­tive aspects, which to us have greater impact and are more unac­cept­able and than the ben­e­fits: the arti­fi­cial­iza­tion and dom­i­na­tion of wild nature, espe­cial­ly of poten­tial­ly free beings includ­ing human beings, plus the denial of the nec­es­sary auton­o­my for free human self-deter­mi­na­tion. On the one hand, the state grants itself the right and the oblig­a­tion to pro­vide its inhab­i­tants with the means for their sur­vival. On the oth­er hand, the state isn’t even nec­es­sary, since it caus­es alien­ation when­ev­er its sub­jects doesn’t find them­selves direct­ly immersed in activ­i­ties that serve to sat­is­fy their sur­vival needs. This leads to numer­ous psy­choso­cial prob­lems, and of course gen­er­ates the mar­ket as an inter­me­di­ary, which in turn func­tions through the stan­dard­iza­tion of the mas­sive present-day con­sump­tion that is dete­ri­o­rat­ing the envi­ron­ment. This is very much relat­ed to the insti­tu­tion we attacked, which attempts to make excus­es for con­tin­u­ing its sci­en­tif­ic bar­barism by cre­at­ing new technologies—in this case, biotech­nolo­gies that claim to solve the prob­lems that sci­ence itself caus­es, fos­ter­ing the idea that such ecosys­tem dete­ri­o­ra­tion doesn’t mat­ter as long as we have the sci­ence to fix it. Thus, a vicious cir­cle is cre­at­ed that attempts to solve prob­lems with more prob­lems, under the pre­tence of a “bet­ter life.”

Our pro­pos­al is to negate the arti­fi­cial real­i­ty that civ­i­liza­tion has con­struct­ed, not indi­rect­ly, but by seek­ing a way of life that doesn’t involve domination—the most autonomous way of life pos­si­ble with­in wild ecosys­tems and with­out inter­me­di­aries, espe­cial­ly those that are mere decep­tions like sci­ence and mod­ern dom­i­nat­ing tech­nol­o­gy. Of course, this pro­pos­al won’t be accept­ed by most peo­ple, which is fine and even desir­able, since among the prob­lems posed by forms of social orga­ni­za­tion are the dom­i­nat­ing struc­tures con­ceived by mass soci­eties. There­fore, we trust that peo­ple who have a tru­ly crit­i­cal and rad­i­cal con­science will reflect on the real prob­lems con­fronting us and act accord­ing­ly.

We con­tin­ue to be the burn­ing rage of a dying plan­et.

—Earth Lib­er­a­tion Front, Mex­i­co”