From 15 March-30 April the Second Regular Session of the Mexican Congress (Chamber of Deputies and Senate) will be held.  During this period legislators will approve or reject President Zedillo’s bill of law (Zedillo’s Law) regarding the San Andrés Accords reached at Table 1, on Indigenous Rights and Culture.  If no agreement ensues during this period, an extra session could be called for May.

Zedillo’s law has been called “unilateral” by some analysts, because it breaks with the accords signed with the EZLN (Zapatista Army of National Liberation) in three aspects:

1. Procedures for negotiations

a)     The Law for Dialogue, Reconciliation and Dignified Peace in Chiapas of March 1995 states that one of the principles of negotiation is to “promote solutions arrived at by consensus”. Yet Zedillo’s Law sent to Congress unilaterally shifts the actors and the scene from “consensus” with the EZLN at San Andrés to the political parties in Congress.

b)     The Joint Declaration of San Miguel, signed on 9 April 1995, calls for “the continuation of the dialogue and negotiations above any other consideration, event, incident or disagreement”.

c)     The modifications to the Joint Declaration of San Miguel, 11 July 1996, establishes that “none of the parties can unilaterally declare that the other party has broken or suspended the dialogue and negotiations…only when COCOPA (Commission on Concord and Pacification) so rules will there be cause for recognizing the break or suspension, and then only after having exhausted all efforts to continue negotiations.”

In order to declare the dialogue “broken” unilaterally, the government must first justify the suspension of the Law that created the COCOPA, or seek other legal arguments in order to unleash its “legal” offensive against the EZLN.  But the offensive is, in fact, already underway: arrest warrants that had been suspended are being implemented, the Mexican army is applying the Law on Disarmament against the EZLN, even though it was specifically exempt from turning in its weapons; paramilitary groups have been strengthened and unleashed so that they can undermine Zapatista autonomous municipalities.  The offensive was taken a step further through the use of 1,000 military troops and security forces to dismantle the newly-formed autonomous municipality at Taniperlas on 11 April.

2. The EZLN and the federal government agreed that the COCOPA initiative could be sent to Congress without modifications.

To the government’s ire, the CONAI (National Intermediation Commission) pointed out, on 17 March, seven ways Zedillo’s Law strays from its agreement with the EZLN: 1) It reduces the exercise of indigenous people’s rights to their communities; 2) It says that the Constitution “grants” rights to the indigenous people, instead of simply recognizing them, as agreed to at San Andrés; 3) It does not recognize the rights of jurisdiction of the indigenous people; 4) It does not recognize the right of indigenous people to their territory; 5) It ignores the mechanism established at San Andrés and the ILO’s Convention 169 on how to define as “indigenous” a municipality, community, and similar bodies; 6) It does not recognize, as the COCOPA text and the San Andrés accords do, that indigenous communities are “entities of public law” and 7) It does not recognize the right of indigenous people to define “the procedures for the election of their authorities”.

For this reason the government accused the CONAI of being part of the conflict and in sitting in judgment of one of the parties.  But in so doing, the government deflects further analysis of precisely the points the CONAI has raised.

3. Zedillo’s initiative also ignores the social, political and military conditions for resuming talks.

Even supposing that the two previous points were resolved and that procedures and content of the San Andrés talks were respected, this does not mean that talks would automatically resume.  The joint COCOPA/CONAI document released 22 January, placing conditions on the talks, and the other five demands by the EZLN for resumption of negotiations, have been ignored by the government.

            Let us now look at the federal government’s strategy for each one of the players with an important role in the Chiapas conflict.

·        The EZLN

The idea is to corner the EZLN into illegality, deny it as an interlocutor, and deny it historical justification for its 1994 uprising, in order to justify repression against it.  Through a mass media propaganda campaign, the federal government has been relentless in calling the EZLN “intransigent”, of not wanting to dialogue, etc.  The government is undertaking a media blitzkrieg to win the hearts and minds of public opinion, a flank it had disregarded since 1994.

·        The COCOPA

Similarly, the government wants to corner the COCOPA into internal division, ineptitude and illegality.  This is what is behind the government’s claim that now, with the appearance of Zedillo’s Law, COCOPA’s role has ended.  What the government forgets, obviously, is that three Tables still need to be negotiated at San Andrés (Democracy and Justice, Welfare and Development, Rights of the Indigenous Woman in Chiapas).  Two other points would also be pending after those negotiations: the political incorporation of the EZLN into the political mainstream and disarmament. 

The government could be looking for any one of the following results, or combinations thereof: a) do away with the COCOPA altogether; b) modify it, so that a consensus among member parties is not need to act; and c) choose it as the only body for mediation and support functions, in order to displace the CONAI.

·        The CONAI

            The government wants to discredit the CONAI by accusing it of partiality, in order to weaken it, disavow it, and/or force it into silence.  It is obvious that the government sees the CONAI as a roadblock to its strategy, since CONAI refuses to be bent into submitting to the government’s viewpoint.  An example of the CONAI’s forthrightness came in a 17 March communiqué regarding the state of negotiations: a) the rules, agreements and participants are facing a strategy of being worn down and dismantled; b) Zedillo’s initiative is incongruous, violates the spirit of dialogue and peace, breaks a political accord, and thus opens the door to (further) police and military actions; and c) it weakens the credibility of negotiations and takes the peace process into an even greater crisis.

            The government’s response has to attack the CONAI relentlessly through the media.

·        The Chamber of Deputies

The government’s plan: corner it into ineptitude, contradictions and internal divisions, and change the venue to the Senate, where the PRI holds a majority.

·        The Senate

The government hopes to bring the Chiapas conflict here.  Yet it may not be able to overcome possible breaks in the ranks of the PRI.  The Galileo group, a dissident body of 17 PRI senators, could make other PRI senators waiver in their support of Zedillo’s Law.  They might throw their lot in with outspoken PRI senator Pablo Salazar Mendiguchía, who sat on the commission which drew up the COCOPA proposal.  Obviously there has been intense pressure from the PRI hierarchy on Salazar to bring him back into the fold, giving him an ultimatum: either show unconditional support for Zedillo’s Law, or leave the PRI.  Although the odds are stacked in favor of Zedillo within the Senate, there may be surprises for his initiative.

·        Civil Society

The government hopes to confuse and divide civil society by arguing over reasons for the origin of the conflict, and by maintaining that the government is in fully compliance with San Andrés, giving wide publicity to the State Accord on Reconciliation in Chiapas, headed up by interim governor Albores.

·        The PRI

President Zedillo is trying to revert his party’s image as the source violence in Chiapas, placing special attention on international opinion.  In Venezuela recently he stated that the EZLN was Mexico’s biggest paramilitary group, forgetting the language agreed to at the initial peace talks, which recognized the EZLN as a group of most Mexican indigenous who had risen up “in disagreement”.

·        The PAN

The most probable scenario is that it will join in an alliance with the PRI within Congress in order to approve Zedillo’s Law.  Yet, in the face of charges that the PAN once again has become the PRI’s natural ally, it hopes to justify its position by claiming that it was, in fact, the PAN that first presented a bill on Indigenous Rights and Culture, and it is President Zedillo who coincides with the PAN and not the reverse.  A special commission to reconcile the two initiatives (Zedillo’s Law and the PAN’s Law) is certain to be named, but the two are essentially the same.  The PAN’s initiative helps, however, to dispel notions that Zedillo has acted unilaterally and thus gives his initiative more legitimacy.

·        The PRD

The government’s plan is to corner the PRD into social and political discredit in order to weaken it.  Working through the PRI and PAN, and official spokespersons, the government accuses the PRD of being violent, of being the EZLN’s political wing, of showing unwavering support for the EZLN by defending the COCOPA’s bill of law.  Yet all the verbal barrage flies in the fact of facts: a) the more than 50 allegedly guilty parties of the Acteal massacre are PRI members, as are the intellectual authors of the massacre;  b) PRI members also make up other paramilitary groups that are responsible for dozens of murders and thousands of displaced in Chiapas; c) it is the PRD, in fact, that has lost 500 of its members to politically-motivated murders since the Party’s founding in 1989.

·        The Diocese of San Cristóbal de las Casas

The government continues its constant attacks and threats of new expulsions of religious personnel, following the deportation of French priest Miguel Chanteau.  Recently, the Subsecretary for Religious Affairs of the Interior Ministry (Gobernación) remarked that it might begin an investigation of religious groups that receive funding from abroad.

·        International observers

The government’s plan is to rid the conflict zone of Chiapas of people who could, through eye-witness accounts, bring a different version of what is going on in Chiapas to important audiences abroad (principally Europe, Canada, United States).  Thus the heavy-handed offensive to deport foreigners.  The campaign in not just directed against foreign individuals, but also local NGOs, and even foreign organizations such as the International Committee of the Red Cross, whose presence in Chiapas would be a blow to the government’s strategy of ridding the area of entities that could possibly contradict its version of events.

·        The Mexican army

In spite of official contradictions and untruths, the army continues to apply indiscriminately the Law on Firearms and Explosives, ignoring the EZLN’s exemption from the law that holds “as long as dialogue continues”.  The army is free to act as it sees fit, within a wartime logic, preparing itself for an offensive whenever Zedillo gives the order.  Concurrently, indigenous communities continue to be attacked with new low-intensity warfare tactics: recent reports from the municipality of Ocosingo state that that campesinos fled in terror from their cornfields when snakes were thrown from an aircraft (16/III/98), and that more than 50 women have been raped by the army since 1994, according to a charge brought by the PRD (Expreso, 18/III/98).  Another intimidatory measure is the random firing of guns by soldiers in the vicinity of Acteal (16/III/98), where residents are still shell-shocked from the 22 December 1997 massacre.

·        Private Enterprise

The government doing what it can to encourage investment.  Tax incentives have been granted and the Secretariat of Social Development (SEDESOL) announced the distribution of 1.6 billion pesos (US$188,235,200) during 1998, earmarked, supposedly, for 41 of the state’s most poverty-stricken municipalities.

            Support is also being given to cattle ranchers in the conflict zone. With the state-supported Program of Sharecropping in the Cañadas, the government has transferred payments of 4,000 pesos (US$471) per hectare to 400 cattle ranchers.

We thus can conclude the following:

1.      The government has pretended to dialogue when it has never really wanted to do so.  It is not remotely interested in negotiating with the EZLN any of the pending Tables at the dialogue, and now sees the political opportunity of get rid of the process.  It is ill disposed to negotiate “Justice and Democracy”, the topic at Table II, with an armed group.  It also especially anxious to avoid the impression that an armed group is responsible for pushing forward democratic change in Mexico.

2.      The government is now at a moment of total discredit both at home and abroad, but has recaptured momentum through manipulation of the mass media.  The propaganda offensive is reminiscent to some observers of those generally existing in military dictatorships.  It has succeeded, at least in part, in confusing public opinion.  The EZLN’s uncharacteristic silence over the past few months has played into the strategy.

3.      Politically the government is using a policy of “detainment and rollback” reminiscent of the US’s strategy against the Soviet Union, endeavoring to avoid the spread of Zapatista autonomy to other parts of the state.  Economically, Chiapas needs to generate tens of thousands of new jobs, in order to take the bite out of the Zapatistas’ demands, and much federal money is being pumped into the state in an effort to make investing here especially attractive.

4.      The government wishes to push through Zedillo’s Law before it loses any more governorships, state congresses, and even the presidency itself in the elections scheduled for 2000.  If the opposition wins, it might well trash Zedillo’s initiative.  For this reason, the state governments in Chiapas and Oaxaca, among others, are already pushing through constitutional changes in matters of Indigenous Rights and Culture, pending approval of Zedillo’s Law.  In addition, Zedillo’s Law stipulates that no further redistricting reforms will go through before the upcoming elections in Chiapas in October of this year, which will bring in a new state Congress and renew the mayors of 111 municipalities in the state.

5.      The administration faces a serious economic crisis with the decrease in revenue from plummeting oil prices.  Millions of pesos have been slashed from the federal budget, a move sure to slow growth of the economy. The government’s campaign to win favor among the population will sputter as economic growth slows, and jobs are not created.  Thus it must act fairly quickly.  The need to “resolve” the Chiapas crisis rapidly points to the real possibility of a violent outcome.

6.      The government wants to provoke a conflict between the EZLN and the paramilitary groups to justify the presence of the military.  The government knows that military force would discredit it, and thus considers it a last resource.  It is thus using well-armed and well-trained paramilitary groups to do the dirty work that it cannot yet (politically) afford to have the military do.

We can thus foresee the following scenarios:

1)      Preparation for a military offensive and solution: the government may be preparing for a violent resolution and seeking the right political moment to act. 

2)      Wearing out of the negotiation process and its participants: This would imply applying political tension to the breaking point.  The government threatens to disavow the CONAI, but in the end won’t, but continues working to discredit it.  It threatens to disband the COCOPA, but in the end won’t, but it will take advantage of its weakness.  It threatens to carry out all arrest warrants, but in the end only detains some people, etc.  In other words, the government is playing with the peace process, wearing down participants, and using time in its favor.  In any event, the government seems to have the upper hand since it enjoys a relative abundance of economic, technical, military and human resources.  Society as a whole may be tiring of mobilizations, demonstrations, etc.

3)      Get the EZLN to the table in a weakened position: This scenario posits that the government, in search of legitimacy, credibility, consensus, really wants the dialogue to resume, but only under circumstances totally in its favor and as long as two conditions hold: that the country’s political changes occur within Congress, and that “peace” be guaranteed to the IMF, World Bank, and the other powerful international economic interests waiting to swoop in on the country’s resources.

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