The
Zapatistas
The Zapatistas response to Mexican terrorism from above
On Jan. 1, 1994, some 3,000
men and women of the Zapatista Army of National Liberation (EZLN), the
Zapatistas’ guerilla army, emerged from the Lancandón jungle
in the southeast of the Mexican state of Chiapas and seized control of
hundreds of ranches and four large cities including the capital, San Cristóbal
de las Casas. The EZLN believed the Mexican government was oppressive
and adamantly opposed to their struggle for social justice and basic human
rights. After many legal attempts to make their voices heard and their
demands met, the EZLN resorted to armed resistance and sanctioned the
use of terrorism.
In an interview, discussing the Zapatistas, Noam Chomsky discussed why
movements such as theirs eventually find it necessary to use violence.
“Whether popular movements lead to guerrilla struggle, I think,
depends on the violence of the powerful. If they reject the demands for
social justice, freedom and human rights and if state repression mounts,
people may defend themselves.” (qtd. in Dieterich 102) With this
belief in mind, the Zapatistas fueled a renewed concern within the international
community for the rights of indigenous peoples.
The Zapatistas are among the many indigenous peoples of Mexico who have
long struggled for work, land, housing, food, health care, education,
independence, freedom, democracy, justice, and peace. The Zapatistas draw
inspiration for their name from Emiliano Zapata, the revolutionary leader
who led a peasant uprising from the south during the Mexican Revolution.
In 1914, Zapata and his rebels marched into Mexico City and took control
of the presidency. Zapata actively participated in the creation of the
Mexican Constitution of 1917 in which indigenous lands were declared autonomous.
In so doing, he also established guidelines for agrarian reform in Mexico.
In April of 1919, after battling with the military for nearly 10 years
in the state of Morelos, Zapata was elevated to martyrdom after being
lured into a trap with a promised cargo of ammunition and guns. When Zapata
arrived to receive the weapons, a federal officer along with his troops
opened fire on the leader and killed him. To Mexicans today, the mention
of Chinameca (the place where Zapata was murdered) still implies a government
ambush (Ross 39).
With this long history of a betrayed struggle still fresh in their minds,
the Zapatistas organized their movement into “two sister but separate
organizations:” the EZLN and FZLN (Zapatista National Liberation
Front). The FZLN, the civilian and peaceful political organization, was
created to unify widespread support from the general population and struggle
for “a new relationship between those who govern and those who are
governed” (San Andres Accords). The Zapatistas saw this as a way
for civilians to cross the line from sympathy into direct action. The
EZLN, the guerilla army of the Zapatistas, was created to fight for the
goals of their struggle by using violence and terrorism. Currently, the
EZLN are under the general command of the Clandestine Revolutionary Indigenous
Committee (CCRI). The CCRI represents more than a thousand Zapatista communities
comprised of indigenous Mayans from the highlands and jungles.
By January 1, 1994, the Zapatistas demands had long been rejected and
they decided to defend themselves from the powerful by initiating an unsuspected
armed uprising into the streets of Chiapas. From the radio station, which
the EZLN captured in the incursion, it broadcast the First Declaration
of the Lancandón Jungle. In scope, this was a declaration of war
against the Mexican government and its military:
“Mexican brothers and sisters: We are the product of five hundred
years of struggle … We—men and women, whole and free—are
conscious that the war that we have declared is a last—but just—resort.
For many years, the dictators have been waging an undeclared genocidal
war against our people. Therefore, we ask for your decided participation
to support this plan by the Mexican people who struggle for work, land,
housing, food, health care, education, independence, freedom, democracy,
justice, and peace. We declare that we will not stop fighting until the
basic demands of our people have been met, by forming a government for
our country that is free and democratic (Marcos 13).”
To rationalize their declaration of war,
the EZLN called upon Article 39 of the Mexican Constitution that states,
“The people have, at all times, the inalienable right to alter or
modify their form of government.”
Immediately following the uprising, a sub-commander for the EZLN, mysteriously
known only as Subcomandante Marcos, emerged as the
spokesperson for the collective voice of the Zapatistas under orders from
the CCRI. Marcos explained that the EZLN’s revolt intentionally
coincided with the implementation of the North American
Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA) because it believed cheap grains from
the United States would soon pour into Mexico and obliterate the chances
for Indian farmers to compete (Ross 21). “To us, the free-trade
treaty is the death certificate for the ethnic people of Mexico,”
Marcos said (qtd. in Ross 21).
In preparation for NAFTA, the Mexican government had made a significant
shift in agrarian reform. President Carlos Salinas (1988-1994) revised
Article 27 of the Constitution to allow transnational businesses to purchase,
lease or enter into association with the ejidos—the
Indian communal land holdings that were originally protected. The revision
now subjected anyone living on these private lands to a maximum of 40
years in prison. This shift in reform was a direct threat to the indigenous
way of life. In the introduction to the movie, “A Place Called Chiapas,”
Marcos explains the despair of the indigenous peoples—93 percent
of whom are living in poverty, according to federal government figures—and
their hopes for a better future. “We were born of the night. We
live in it. We will die in it. But tomorrow there will be light for those
now crying in the night, for those to whom day is denied, to whom death
is a gift, to whom life is forbidden.”
These were the hopes for those led the uprising. These hopes were momentarily
dashed when the EZLN’s incursion into Chiapas on January 1, 1994
resulted in heavy casualties. According to a 1993-1994 government commission
report, 207 died, including 16 soldiers, 38 civilian security agents,
67 non-police civilians, 48 Zapatistas, and 38 unidentified (Ross 33).
The Mexican military was swift in its response to the guerilla uprising.
From January 1 to 12, 1994, 15,000 Mexican troops moved into Chiapas.
Within 24 hours of the uprising, the Mexican military bombed numerous
indigenous communities in Chiapas, killing civilians who were considered
“collateral damage.” The fighting was most intense in the
town of Ocosingo. Five of the seven men whose bodies were found in the
Ocosingo market had their hands tied behind their back. Years later, ex-captain
Jesús Valles testified that soldiers were advised to consider everyone
a rebel and instructed to take no prisoners. More evidence of military
wrongdoing was unearthed in the town of Altamirano. A pile of bones belonging
to three men taken prisoner by the military was discovered weeks later
in a pit a few hundred meters off the main road.
Intense criticism about growing reports of the military’s misconduct
carried the headlines of the international press. Mexican civil society
responded with widespread demonstrations calling for an end to military
repression. Consequently, on January 12, Salinas accepted Marcos pledge
for a cease-fire contingent on the recognition of the EZLN as a “belligerent
force” and applied the rules of war in accordance to the Geneva
Convention.
By January 14, a mediator between the EZLN and the government was agreed
upon and peace talks began. A stalemate arose when the Mexican government
would not agree to the EZLN’s demands for the resignation of Salinas,
a renegotiation of NAFTA, a return to the original form of Article 27,
and the Zapatista’s fundamental goal: autonomy of the indigenous
regions.
In the year following the first round of failed peace talks, the Mexican
military built up its armies, prompting the EZLN to do the same. The military
buildup climaxed on December 19, 1994 when the EZLN entered one-third
of Chiapas municipalities and declared them autonomous.
These events became mere shadows in the growing economic crisis within
Mexico. With the peso dropping to half its value and
the ineffective United States and International Monetary Fund bailout
of $50 billion, it became clear that NAFTA and privatization were
seriously affecting the majority of Mexicans. Soon after the bailout,
Chase Manhattan Bank issued a report calling for the Mexican government
to eliminate the Zapatistas because of their impact on economic relations
(Hansen 12). One month later, Mexican troops initiated a massive offensive
forcing a further retreat of the EZLN into the highlands of Chiapas. The
Mexican military presence in Chiapas eventually
grew to 60,000 troops stationed at army encampments established on the
outskirts of the indigenous communities.
In February 1996, the San Andrés accords were signed and provided
guidelines for continued negotiations and a proposed framework for autonomy.
After six months, the EZLN suspended the peace talks, alleging that the
government refused to discuss Zapatista proposals and had proposed nothing
substantial. The San Andrés accords were essentially abandoned
(Hansen 13).
In the summer of 1996, the Zapatistas organized and hosted the First Intercontinental
Encounter for Humanity and Against Neoliberalism. The growing international
interest in the Zapatistas and their struggle became apparent in the attendance
of several thousand people with delegates from Mexico and dozens of nations
to debate strategies for combating what the Zapatistas called the criminal
concentration of privileges and wealth—re-named as neoliberalism
(Marcos 11-19).
In the winter of 1996, soon after the Encounter for Humanity and Against
Neoliberalism had achieved its goal of making a collective network of
all their particular struggles and resistances, the Zapatistas’
guerrilla war against the government had reached new heights in its suffered
casualties. The international media severely criticized emerging evidence
of a death-squad style massacre in Acteal just days
before Christmas. In all, 45 people were killed, including seven men,
19 women and 19 children. An autopsy on one of the four pregnant victims
of the massacre revealed that her abdomen was cut and her unborn baby
had been removed (Ross 239-261). The growing knowledge of the atrocity
was the basis for the Mexican government’s decision to expel foreign
human rights observers for the next two years.
The growing media coverage of the worsening situation in Chiapas sent
a shockwave throughout the globe. Human rights organizations and indigenous
peoples from around the world paid close attention to the developments
in the Zapatistas’ struggle while closely scrutinizing the Mexican
government’s response.
In the spring of 1999, the Zapatistas began a nationwide education program
for their struggle. The results of a referendum showed that 3 million
Mexicans voted for the implementation of the San Andrés accords.
Within a week after Vicente Fox assumed the presidency in December 2000,
he presented a Congressional peace commission (Cocopa) that called for
constitutional reforms to implement the San Andrés accords.
Alleging that Fox advised Congress to make significant changes to the
Cocopa law, 24 Zapatista commanders led by Subcomandante Marcos traveled
from Chiapas to Mexico City in March 2001 as a gesture of civil disobedience.
A demonstration of 250,000 met the Zapatistas arrival in Mexico City to
offer their support and encouragement. Fox slowly met Marcos’ demands
for continued negotiations by dismantling seven of the 250 military encampments
in Chiapas and releasing most of the political prisoners. Despite significant
public support for the San Andres accords as originally written, Congress
modified the Cocopa law on the issue of autonomy for indigenous lands—the
chief tenet of the Zapatista struggle. The changes to the San Andres Accords
and recent moves by Fox have made clear his desire to increase the presence
of transnational corporations in the region.
During these years of what was considered “low intensity warfare,”
Marcos strengthened his and the Zapatista image by giving in-depth interviews
and photo shoots with numerous media sources from around the world. Marcos
even began meeting with high-profile celebrities as well as distinguished
poets, artists, and authors. Today, Marcos’ communiqués and
writings frequently are posted on hundreds of Web sites in dozens of languages—evidence
of a growing and continuing international concern for their struggle.
The emerging global interest in indigenous peoples’ struggles has
gained momentum alongside the Zapatista movement. The livelihood of indigenous
people was of no concern to the Mexican government when the promised fruits
of NAFTA came to its table. Its reluctance to address the Zapatistas 500-year-long
struggle only further enraged the EZLN and its supporters. With an innovative
use of the Internet, the Zapatistas have focused their strategy on presenting
to the outside world their ideas, culture and refusal to give in to the
powers of neoliberalism.
However, the struggle is still in its early stages. By the time NAFTA
was established, the Zapatistas had realized the futility of voicing their
opposition through conventional means such as voting and lobbying politicians.
So after a decade of stockpiling weapons for their uprising, the EZLN
sanctioned the use of terrorism to make their voices heard and their demands
to be at least recognized. While some of the Zapatistas goals have not
been realized, its impact on the political climate in Mexico and its NAFTA
partners have made clear that any attempts to ignore their demands will
not go unanswered.
Endnotes:
Endnote (1)
Marcos remains mysterious to this day. He, along with the majority of
the EZLN, opts to wear a ski mask and has not revealed his face or identity
to the public. It is common in his appearances for him to be puffing on
a pipe through the hole in his ski mask and talking endlessly with journalists.
Marcos is not native to Chiapas; he is a mestizo, a person of mixed European
and American Indian ancestry. In 1995, the Mexican government alleged
that the identity of Marcos was Rafael Sebastian Guillen, and that he
is a philosophy graduate and a former university professor.
Endnote (2)
NAFTA, which went into effect on January 1, 1994, is a free trade agreement
between Canada, the United States and Mexico. One of the objectives of
NAFTA is to “eliminate barriers to trade in, and facilitate the
cross border movement of, goods and services between the territories of
the parties.” A movement in opposition to NAFTA is growing. They
claim that the effects of NAFTA are devastating to poor peoples and only
serve to make the rich richer.
Endnote (3)
The lands originally promised by Article 27 of the Mexican Constitution
of 1917 to be autonomous to the indigenous peoples were slowly being taken
away. In the Zapatistas uprising they took land back from the ranchers,
who they claim worked alongside the Mexican government to oppress the
indigenous peoples and exploit their labor.
Endnote (4)
On December 20, 1994, Finance Minister Jaime Serra Puche, held a televised
news conference and said that “in order to confront uncertainties
that have been generated by the conflict in Chiapas,” the peso would
be devalued. (qtd. in Ross 97). The first year of NAFTA had left Mexico
with a huge commercial deficit and its foreign debt payments resulted
in a $28 USD billion shortfall. The rescue package from the United States
forced Mexico to deposit its oil export revenues in the U.S. Federal Reserve
Bank as collateral on the bailout (Ross 102).
Endnote (5)
The International Monetary Fund (IMF) is a collection of 183 countries
that offers loans to debt-ridden countries, with the United States in
control of the voting power. The IMF forces countries that receive their
loans to forfeit their economic sovereignty and abide to whatever guidelines
they impose to protect its own interests. Both the United States and IMF
bailout were ineffective to the more than 10 million Mexicans who found
themselves in poverty within a month after the economic collapse.
Endnote
(6)
At the time of this writing, half of Mexico’s military is stationed
in Chiapas.
Endnote (7)
With allegations of massacres arising from time to time, the Mexican press
has been quick to point out that the military’s failed Chiapas policy
was largely being carried out by School of the Americas (SOA) graduates.
Since its creation in 1946, the SOA, which is stationed in Fort Benning,
Georgia, has trained nearly 60,000 Latin American soldiers and officers
from 23 Latin American and Caribbean countries, averaging 2,000 per year.
The attendees of the school are trained in combat skills, counter-insurgency
techniques, commando tactics, and psychological operations. The history
of the military school is plagued with constant implications of its graduate’s
violations of human rights. With so many of the schools graduates actively
working in Latin American militaries as well as paramilitaries, it has
become quite common for names of SOA graduates to emerge when acts of
terrorism, oppression, or genocide are carried out by those forces.
Works Consulted
A Place Called Chiapas. Dir. Nettie Wild.
1998. Videocassette. New Yorker Films, 2000.
Chomsky, Noam. "Mexico: Between NAFTA
and the Zapatistas." By Heinz Dieterich. Latin America: From Colonization
to Globalization: 97-105.
Guillermoprieto, Alma. Looking for History:
Dispatches from Latin America. New York: Random House, 2001.
Hayden, Tom, Ed. The Zapatista Reader.
New York: Thunder's Mouth Press/Nation Books, 2002.
Katzenberger, Elaine, ed. First World,
Ha Ha Ha!: The Zapatista Challenge. San Francisco: City Lights Books,
1995.
Marcos, Subcomandante. Our Word is Our
Weapon: Selected Writings of Subcomandante Insurgente Marcos. New York:
Seven Stories Press, 2001.
Marcos, Subcomandante. Shadows of Tender
Fury: The Letters and Communiqués of Subcomandante Marcos and the
Zapatista Army of National Liberation. New York: Monthly Review Press,
1995.
Ross, John. The War Against Oblivion:
The Zapatista Chronicles, 1994-2000. Monroe, ME: Common Courage Press,
2000.
Ruggiero, Greg and Sahulka, Stuart, ed.
Zapatista Encuentro: Documents from the 1996 Encounter for Humanity and
Against Neoliberalism. New York: Seven Stories Press, 1998.
Womack, John Jr. Rebellion in Chiapas.
New York: The New Press, 1999.
Womack, John Jr. Zapata and
the Mexican Revolution. 1968 New York: Random House, 1970.
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