This last September marked two years since the suspension of dialogue and negotiations between the Zapatista Army of National Liberation (EZLN) and the Federal Government. The EZLN set 5 conditions for their return to the dialogue: 1) the carrying out of the San Andrés Accords as regards Table 1, Indigenous Rights and Culture, signed in February 1996; 2) demilitarization of the indigenous regions; 3) release of the Zapatista prisoners; 4) a solution to the problems in the Northern Zone, and 5) a positive attitude towards dialogue and negotiation on the part of the Government Delegation.

Globalization is extending the capitalist economy to all countries of the world, dominated by 300 multinational companies which possess 26% of the world Gross National Product (GNP). These companies, together with the International Monetary Fund (IMF), the World Bank, the World Commerce Organization and the governments of the great powers, such as Japan, Great Britain, the United States, Germany, Canada, France and Italy, are imposing strategies of trade, economic and financial 'openings' on the rest of the world, as the driving force for economic growth. Thus, Mexico's role, as well as that of other governments in the world, is reduced to readjusting its economic, social, cultural and political systems in order to serve the interests of big capital.

With the 'eruption' of the Zapatista uprising in 1994, the indigenous claimed their rights, whose absence had given rise to the conflict: land, shelter, food, health, education, independence, liberty, democracy, justice and peace. In the world of globalization, the indigenous were the first to believe in dignity, in resistance, in armed uprising and, finally, in dialogue and negotiation as the means for solving the conflict. However, this means remained in doubt in the face of the failure to carry out the Accords signed in San Andrés Larráinzar, Chiapas, on Indigenous Rights and Culture, which have no place in the globalized world, because they threaten the ferocity of the multinational companies. The indigenous present themselves to the world as a "firebreak nation," which can impede its own elimination and the voracity of capital for its lands. In response to this, President Ernesto Zedillo saw himself obligated to readjust the economic, social, cultural and political system of the indigenous world: refusing to carry out what was signed at the negotiating table, reducing their rights to the use and enjoyment of natural resources, breaking their cultural identity and the social fabric, making the reconciliation process ever more urgent, displacing thousands of indigenous from their immensely rich lands, blocking their access to appropriation of communications media, awarding ownership titles so that the land could be rented or sold to the businessmen and preventing the election of their own authorities through their own uses and customs, characterized as "primitive practices" by the current interim Governor of Chiapas, Roberto Albores Guillén.

Chiapas provides 46% of the country's electrical energy, 21% of the oil and 16% of the natural gas. Up until last year, it supplied 40% of the coffee, and it was one of the top producers of maize, bananas and cacao, among other products; it is the only place where the African palm is grown. Two important mining districts have been discovered in Chiapas, in the municipalities of Solosuchiapa and Chicomuselo, close to the Guatemala border, where there is gold, silver, copper, lead and zinc; 4 mineral zones in the municipalities of Ostuacán, Tenejapa and Arriaga; and in the Soconusco region, where aluminum, quartz, silicon, iron and a belt of copper more than 100 kilometers in length have been detected, according to the Secretary of Economic Development. The aluminum and uranium deposits have been being explored by the federal government's Council of Mineral Resources in Tenejapa, as have others located in parts of San Juan Chamula and Ostuacán. It is worth recalling the statement by Comandante Julián of the EZLN concerning the Taniperla zone, where he asserted that the militarization was a response for protecting the uranium in that Cañada. But it is not only the natural resources of the subsoil, but also those of the water; at the point where this band begins, the Usumacinta River meets Ferrocarril [the railway system], which passes through Palenque and Tenosique in the state of Tabasco, and also joins the southeastern project known as the Tri-national Project of Usumacinta and the Mayan World route, both projects with heavy direct foreign investment interest.

The large United States, Canadian, European and Asian companies see the great potential of the rivers and waterways, such as the Usumacinta, Tzaconejá, Tulijá, Chancalá, Agua Azul, Itzantún, the Grijalva and the Rio la Venta, where they can move their products to the north, south, and from one side to the other of both oceans, in the logic of the free trade agreements and the inter-ocean project. There are also the large oil reserves in Ocosingo, part of Chilón, and in other municipalities in the northern zone, where there also exist large natural gas reserves, such as those in Simojovel. There are also the cloud forests which Pronatura has been exploring and trying to protect in the zone of Tila, Tapalapa, Tenejapa, Simojovel, Chilón, Ocosingo, Pueblo Nuevo Solistahuacán and Chalchihuitán, among other corridors for bio-diversity and genetic exploration; forests which are located within the great interests of future projects, such as the construction of hydroelectric dams in the cañadas which will alter the ecosystems, the seeding of large plantations, transportation waterways and subsoil resources. In the case of the experimental camp, Rosario Izapa, of the National Institute of Forestry, Agricultural and Fisheries Research (INIFAP), for biotechnology research and development, the government is carrying out genetic research in order to develop improved strains of the previously mentioned crops: coffee, African palm, rubber, bananas, cacao, mango, rambután and maize. These cross-bred cultivars have not yet been evaluated as to their impact on human consumption and in the repercussions they could have for the soil. Nonetheless, some businesses are also now carrying out these experiments on agricultural products in Chiapas.

Thus, the rich deposits of gold, silver and uranium could be explored through private initiative, not just in Chiapas, but also in the states of Guerrero and Oaxaca. But globalization has one great enemy: the Indian "firebreak" nations and the struggle for their autonomy.

The indigenous, like David against Goliath, confront the giant of globalization with their blood. The negotiations of the Uruguay Round for the General Accords of Customs Tariffs and Duties (GATT), the signing of the North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA), the World Trade Organization (WTO), the European Union (EU) and the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD), have all driven the policies of globalization. In this way, all controls over direct foreign investment and services are eliminated, such as is the case with the Multilateral Agreement on Investments (MAI), where Mexico is one of the driving forces in facilitating the free flow of investments and markets.

The policies of structural readjustment in Mexico led to the collapse of the economy in 1994 and 1995, with the most serious crisis in its history. The government of the United States considers Mexico an issue of national security, since they must guarantee profits for the United States investment funds, the importing of its products and services by Mexico and the sale of energy sources, primarily oil, which runs through the chiapaneco and indigenous subsoil. The IMF has had three primary objectives for Mexico: accelerated structural change, liberalizing the economy and maintaining the federal debt service, an obstacle for the country's development. In Chiapas, every indigenous person born in 1996 owed $1648 in foreign debt.

The most impoverished sectors must bear the greatest consequences of the payment of the foreign debt: austerity, more privatization, elimination of subsidies such as the one for tortillas, among other basic products and services, an increase in taxes and the complete and absolute elimination of all restrictions on investment. And so, paradoxically, Mexico signed the North American Free Trade Act on January 1, 1994, at the same time the indigenous were unveiling the true impoverishing face of globalization; three months later, in the middle of fruitless negotiations with the armed indigenous group, the Mexican government celebrates the triumph of the negotiations allowing them access to the exclusive club of the 25 industrialized nations of the OECD.

This process of globalization and economic opening has greatly widened the gap between a handful of wealthy and the more than 40 million poor, over just a few years. The effects are increasingly impacting on various sectors in the country. The consensus of the Mexican people in support of government policies is rapidly diminishing. The official party is losing ever larger political spaces. However, in response to social protest and disagreement with government policy, the Mexican government falls into the temptation of imposing itself by force, by coercion, with authoritarianism, anti-democratic methods and through the violation of the most elemental human rights. Millions of dollars which have purportedly been earmarked for fighting drug-trafficking are used for militarizing the "nonconforming" regions, to fight the social fallout from hunger and poverty. More than 50,000 soldiers in Chiapas (many of them trained at the School of the Americas) are needed to control, according to the Mexican government, a handful of armed indigenous. These indigenous, armed and hungry, reflect the failure of the harsh policies of re-adjustment: the trade deficit, privileges for the great speculative capital, injustices, poverty, loss of purchasing power, wage declines, etcetera.

Chiapas, along with the country's economy, continues to be oriented to foreign demand through two arenas: an economic policy geared towards direct foreign investment, which has a large negative impact on the rural areas; and a policy of "combating poverty," which muffles the consequences of globalization with help from the World Bank, the Inter-American Development Bank (IDB) and other multilateral organizations (UNESCO, FAO, UN Population Fund--UNPF), through subsidies for education, health, ecology, and other areas, in response to the lack of national budgetary resources, due to the globalizing process itself and the neo-liberal policies, which do not permit the government to have autonomy in either defining or conducting its "social spending policy." Some of the issues on the agenda at the meeting between the federal government and the Secretary General of the UN were: financing development and perspectives of the international economy, cooperation between the working programs of specialized agencies in Mexico and cooperation on the environment (130,000 hectares in Chiapas were affected by forest fires, which will require a reforestation effort of 129 million trees and take 200 years to reach fruition, according to the Department of Ecology, Natural Resources and Fisheries). The UNPF supports the 42 poorest municipalities in Chiapas - with a population index of 5.1 children per woman (rising to 7 in some cases) - with $1,939,000 for programs in reproductive health and the promotion of strategies (to decrease the number of poor). In addition, in the middle of 1997, UNICEF announced that it would grant more than one million dollars for Chiapas, with a financial ceiling of US$150,000, for water, sanitation and the environment in the Ocosingo region. In July, the Mexican government signed a line of credit with the World Bank for 300 million dollars, in order to extend the Sustainable Growth Program in Marginalized Rural Zones to 10 more indigenous regions, including the Northern, Selva, Los Altos, Central-Frailesca and Sierra Zones of Chiapas.

THE IMMORAL AND IMMORTAL FOREIGN DEBT

Mexico's total foreign debt (public and private) doubled between 1981 and 1997, reaching a total of 165 billion dollars, equaling 51% of the GNP. To this amount another 50 million dollars in bond debt in foreign hands must be added. During this time period, around 140 billion dollars was paid in interest, the equivalent of twice the foreign debt which existed in 1981. It is calculated that it will take 2 billion dollars to rebuild from the devastation brought by the floods in Chiapas during September, or 1.4% of the payment of that interest.

Between 1993 and 1996, one year prior to the indigenous uprising, through the year of the suspension of dialogue and negotiation, Mexico paid 49.4 billion dollars to cover interest on foreign debt, of which, 55% was paid during the first two years of President Ernesto Zedillo's administration and of the EZLN outbreak demanding shelter, food, housing, education and health for the indigenous who had been forgotten by government policies for decades. The foreign debt is eternal, it is a vicious circle and it is increasingly impoverishing. Debt service is paid at the same time it continues and increases; the economy is not growing and creating a capacity to make higher payments, and so it must constantly incur more loans in order to pay just the interest alone. The crisis which caused the Mexican government to cut its budget led to the cancellation of the construction of 29,000 homes.

For 1998, the Mexican government had earmarked more than 552 billion pesos, the equivalent of more than 55 billion dollars, for bank capitalization, through the Bank Fund for Savings Protection (FOBAPROA). This equals 15% of the GNP, 12 years' Federal District budget, 50 of the state of Jalisco's, 346 of Colima's, 75 of Puebla's, 136 of Baja California's; it is 10 times more than what the Federation spent on Chiapas between 1994 and 1997; and, the budget earmarked for "combating poverty" in the country through the "Program of Education, Health and Food" (PROGRESA) represents 0.2% of that amount.

A large part of that now nonexistent fund, which ended up in the hands of bankers, large businessmen and even official party campaign coffers, the government is now trying to turn into public debt, without yet even having punished those who committed the frauds. In order to investigate the FOBAPROA frauds and corruption, the government contracted with the Canadian office of Michel Mackey, which will charge $400 per hour ($3200 per day) to determine what happened to those funds. At the same time, the government announced, prior to the country's third budget cut, when the American dollar was worth nine pesos, now more than 10, for Chiapas: 0.43 centavos per day per indigenous in Chiapas for the "Social Accord for the Welfare and Development of the Sierra Region of Chiapas," which was devastated weeks later by the floods; 0.79 centavos per day per indigenous for the "Education, Health and Food Program"; 0.02 centavos per day for the "Program for the Northern Zone Zoque Region"; 0.02 centavos daily for the "18 Regional Funds "; 0.12 for the "Co-investment Program for Social Development"; 0.08 for the "Alliance Program for the Countryside," and other small budgets. The comparison is even more dramatic when one considers that a Chiapaneco worker earns two dollars per day.

After these programs were announced, the value of the peso dropped 12.10% (four times greater than the devaluation for all of 1997) in the month of August alone. The depreciation of the peso, thus far this year, amounts to almost 25%. President Zedillo took power at a time when the average exchange rate was 3.30 pesos to the dollar; four years later, 10 pesos and 20 centavos are needed to purchase a dollar.

After the country's first budget cut, the program for "combating poverty" was slashed by 39%. With the second federal government budget cut, social spending resources suffered more losses, leading to 2 million persons in extreme poverty being left without any social assistance or support programs. Then a third cut occurred and the elimination of some subsidies. As if this were not enough, due to the foreign debt, Mexicans, for the year 2000, will pay, for amortization, interest and capital repayment, approximately 60 billion dollars, which would be the equivalent of more than 6 billion dóllars for each indigenous Mexican. In order to achieve this, the government is eliminating subsidies, increasing the cost of basic services, cutting the budget and increasing taxes, among other measures.

In the intrinsically exclusive process of economic globalization, in order to guarantee the free flow of investments without restrictions, in the World Bank and the IMF's policies of structural readjustment, we can find the fundamental roots of those causes which led to the armed indigenous uprising, along with injustice, oppression and exploitation. Direct foreign investment is thus favored, as well as the sale of all the country's wealth and services (energy, mines, infrastructure, hydrocarbons, telecommunications, etcetera). The various free trade agreements cause the medium and small producers, who primarily cultivate basic grains, to be left to their own luck, like the majority of campesinos and indigenous who grow for their own consumption and subsistence in Chiapas. Currently, 83% of Mexican exports go to the United States, and 74% of Mexican imports originate there.

In Mexico, 60% of the annual income generated in the country goes to 10% of the Mexicans. At the other end, 60% of the population shares in 10% of the annual receipts. The wealth of just one man is greater than the combined annual incomes of 17 million Mexicans living in extreme poverty. From two super-millionaires in Mexico in 1991, there were 24 super-millionaire businessmen in 1994, the year of the indigenous uprising, who are considered to be among the 385 richest men in the world. Mexico, during the last four years of the government of the then-President Carlos Salinas de Gortari, produced the greatest number of immensely wealthy citizens in Latin America, occupying fourth place among the countries with the most multimillionaires, after the United States, Germany and Japan. Latin America and Canada have 47 millionaires of this genre, and, of them, 24 are Mexicans.

In 1991, the then-President, Carlos Salinas de Gortari, in carrying out the neo-liberal policies agreed to with the IMF, the demands of the NAFTA, and safeguarding the interests of the great landholders and Mexican and foreign politicians, sent to the Congress of the Union the proposal which would modify Article 27 of the Constitution, which would legalize the simulated large landholdings, legitimize the declaration that there was no longer any land to hand out and facilitate the privatization of ejidal and communal lands to investors. In order to accomplish this, the Certification Program for Ejidal Rights was created, for the purpose of delivering ownership titles, and which, in Chiapas, has advanced 25%. In this manner, conditions were put in place for securing land ownership for investors, the excessive militarization and police bodies were other elements for security, and the highway infrastructure was the jumping off point for economic growth. However, with the September floods, the communications infrastructure collapsed, which some say will take 25 years to replace. If the pattern of investment continues, it would take 100 years to reach the employment goals in Chiapas. After the catastrophe, the impact will be unimaginable. According to one campesino in the affected areas, "the President is more concerned about the highways than about us."

THE DEBT WHICH IS NOT PAID, BUT DOES INDEED PUNISH

José López, an indigenous campesino in Chiapas, was jailed for owing a little more than a thousand pesos (US$100). In order to support his family, he had to sell his few belongings, animals, and even his land. When he is released from prison, as is so often the case, it will take him some time to find employment, and years to be able to recover the little he had possessed. When he finds work, he will be paid 20 pesos a day (US$2), if he is lucky. Other indigenous in a distant and abandoned community in the municipality of Tila, in the Northern zone of Chiapas, sent a letter to the authorities and to "international solidarity," denouncing the fact that the government wanted them to pay a land tax for thousands of pesos which had over several years. "Why should we pay for a budget for our lands when we have never received any benefit from the government?" they asked indignantly. The threat from the hacienda authorities was jail. In July, the public minister set bail at 5000 pesos (US$500) for each one of the Lacandona and ancient indigenous for carrying a 22-caliber rifle. When in the Selva Lacandona, they are paid 25 pesos per day (US$2.50) if they are lucky.

There are 1001 histories like this to relate.

THE FUTURE

The current economic model is intrinsically exclusive and impoverishing. Despite their acknowledgment that poverty is worsening, the World Bank analysis states that economic growth itself will eradicate or lessen poverty. However, the problem also lies in the distribution of wealth. The 10 million indigenous in Mexico live in 97% of the municipalities with high and very high levels of marginalization, with Chiapas heading the list, even more so now after this year, which has seen the deforestation of their countryside and their economy by the fires, and then devastated by the worst crisis caused by the floods of the last few weeks.

The strategies of globalization and the neo-liberal policies are worldwide, and the solution is worldwide now that its effects are felt in ever greater areas. Hundreds of organizations all over the world have demonstrated against its consequences. The indigenous of Chiapas have joined in this concern, and they have called meetings for humanity and against neo-liberalism. The indigenous resistance continues fighting the natural catastrophes and the political catastrophes. World bank and IMF policies must be evaluated using new criteria, with a comprehensive focus which includes the economic, social, political and cultural. We should understand that we are all in this world, and we should all fit, that this world is for everyone, and that the joint participation of all levels and sectors is necessary in order to design a global alternative. We cannot speak of development without justice, without democracy, without peace. We cannot speak of democracy with malnourished voters, we cannot speak of development with high rates of ever more extreme marginalization. We cannot speak of justice without the redistribution of wealth.

Bibliography: "Structural Readjustment in Mexico," Rocío Mejía and Mario Monroy, June, 1998.

"THE UNBEARABLE LIGHTNESS OF THE LAW: IMPUNITY"
(Excerpt, Part XXII)

Article 9: Protection of health and religious personnel.

1. Health and religious personnel shall be respected and protected. All available help will be afforded them for the discharge of their functions, and they will not be obligated to carry out tasks which are not compatible with their humanitarian mission.

(...) some members of civil organizations who work in delivering medical care to the displaced have received repeated telephone threats. ((Arana, M. El correo ilustrado. La Jornada, 1/22/98, p. 2).

Michel Chanteau, who left France (his country of origin) 33 years ago in order to carry out pastoral work in Los Altos, was added to the list of attacks, such as incarcerations, expulsions, death threats and damage to churches, which the Catholic Church has suffered since 1990.

Since 1994, there has been in existence a blacklist which the Department of Government maintains, which includes the majority of the foreign priests in the Diocese of San Cristóbal de Las Casas.

(...) Chanteau brings to eight the number of foreign priests who have been expelled from Mexico (...) The Belgian priest, Marcelo Rostaert, parish priest in the municipality of Soyatitán, was the first religious person detained by police forces, on July 22, 1990, and later obligated to leave the country. Joel Padrón González, parish priest of Simojovel, was detained without an arrest warrant on September 18, 1991.

(...) On January 10, 1995, Father Miguel Alba Cruz was the victim of a homicide attempt in the village of Chicomuselo. Similarly, seminarians from San Cristóbal were harassed and threatened with death 20 days later. On February 10 of the same year, Jorge Santiago Santiago, CONAI advisor, was detained. During that time, Víctor Anguiano, parish priest of La Trinitaria, was attacked, as was the archive building and the diocesan curia. (...) One month later, members of the PRI harassed and threatened monks and nuns from the parish of San Jacinto, in Ocosingo.

Three other foreign priests from the diocese of San Cristóbal (Rodolfo Izal, Spanish; Jorge Alberto Barón, Argentine and Loren Riebe, US citizen), were detained and expelled from the country. In March of 1997, the Jesuit priests Jerónimo Hernández and Gonzalo Rosas were violently detained by members of the state Judicial Police and Public Security police (...) In the latter half of the same year, the National Migration Institute denied immigration permission to two other foreign priests in the municipality of Salto de Agua: Joaquín Munich, of Germany, and Eduardo Machado, of India. (Balboa, J. La Jornada, 4/7/98, p. 6).

2. Health personnel cannot be required, in the carrying out of their mission, to give priority treatment to any person except for reasons of medical necessity.

Article 10: General protection of the medical mission.

1. No one shall be punished for having carried out a medical activity in accordance with the deontologia, whatever might have been the circumstances or the beneficiaries of said activity.

2. Persons who carry out a medical activity cannot be obligated to discharge acts or do work which is contrary to the deontologia or other medical rules designed to protect the wounded and the sick, or contrary to the regulations of the present protocol, nor to refrain from carrying out those acts demanded by such rules or regulations.

The situation of violence and repression is manifested in different ways regarding health. The medicines, the clinics and the vaccination programs, and others, are turned into a battleground and into instruments of the political parties, the military, paramilitaries, religious sects, government health institutions such as IMSS, SSA, COPLAMAR, DIF, CAS, INI, SEDESOL and other agents which intervene, dividing the communities, offering grants and wages and trying to destroy the work of the health personnel.

(...) In response to the collective construction of what we understand by health, in the current forum, the participants find that in the state of war which exists in the communities, the government has turned health into a weapon (there are interrogations in the consulting rooms, for the purpose of assuring that those ill are not organized), it is one more tool for destroying the organizing efforts of the people. (Declaration of Moisés Gandhi. First Forum of Health Promoters and Agents. Moisés Gandhi, 2/24/97, p. 2).

3. Except for that which is provided for in national legislation, the professional obligations of persons carrying out a medical activity shall be respected, as to information which may be acquired concerning the wounded and ill cared for by them.

4. Except for that which is provided for by national legislation, the person who carries out a medical activity cannot be punished in any way for not providing, or for refusing to provide, information concerning the wounded and ill who he is assisting or has assisted.

Article 4: Protection of health units and means of transportation.

1. Health units and means of transportation shall be respected and protected at all times and shall not be the object of attacks.

When the Red Cross reached the place where the December 22 massacre had occurred (in Acteal), the corpses were all together; someone had gathered them all up in one place. The Red Cross relay radio had been stolen, and they couldn't communicate with their base that night. The relay was located in the jail at Tzontehuitz, many kilometers from the massacre, and it was stolen by making a large hole in the wall. During four years of war, it had never been touched. Curiously, in the same place were found the relays of the Federal Highway Police and SEDENA, who protect the place; and those were never touched. (A Very Short Tale of the Destruction of Chiapas. Romo Cedano, P. La Jornada del Campo. La Jornada, 1/28/98, p. 6).

2. The protection owing to the health units and means of transportation can only cease when they are used for the carrying out of hostile acts outside their humanitarian work. However, the protection will cease only after a summons, which, a reasonable time period will have been fixed, will assure there shall be no effects.

Article 12: Distinctive Signs.

Under the direction of the proper authorities to which it refers, the distinctive sign of the red cross, of the red half moon or of the red lion and sun on a white background, will be displayed by health and religious personnel, as well as by the health units and means of transportation. This sign shall be respected under all circumstances. It shall not be improperly used.

*Excerpt from the document "The Unbearable Lightness of the Law: Impunity; Three Months from Acteal," by "Alternative Popular Communication, Working Group," from 4/11/98

Gustavo Castro Soto
Center for Economic and Political Investigations of Community Action, A.C.
CIEPAC

RATE OF EXCHANGE: Divide peso figures in the Bulletin by 10 to get an approximate US$ equivalent.

Note: If you wish to be placed on a list to receive this English version of the Bulletin, or the Spanish, or both, please direct a request to: ciepac@laneta.apc.org and indicate whether you wish to receive the bulletin in plain text or as a Word 7 for Windows 95 attachment.

Note: If you use this information, cite the source and our email address. We are grateful to the persons and institutions who have given us their comments on these Bulletins. CIEPAC, A.C. is a non-government and non-profit organization, and your support is necessary for us to be able to continue offering you this news and analysis service. If you would like to contribute, in any amount, we would infinitely appreciate your remittance to the bank account in the name of:

CIEPAC, A.C.
Bank: Banamex
Account number: 7049672 Sucursal 386
San Cristóbal de las Casas, Chiapas, México.
You will also need to use an ABA number:
BNMXMXMM

Thank you! CIEPAC

Telephone:
in México: 01 967 674 5168
from outside Mexico:: +52 967 674 5168