With the EZLN (Zapatista National Liberation Army) uprising of Jan. 1, 1994, the indigenous peoples, by raising new and  historic demands, and breathing new life into the democratic traditions of  indigenous communities --one of the most important elements that the neoliberal project would have disappear--  went from being part of profound Mexico to becoming one of its key players in the country´s democratic transition.  [Fernando Benítez, one of Mexico’s leading anthropologists, coined the term “profound Mexico” to describe its indigenous peoples, those who make up the substrata, the backbone, the essence and the soul of the Mexicans, in spite of being forgotten, discriminated against and maligned by the mestizos and the whites].

At present, given the democratic transition that Mexico needs  and the limitations which the political parties have in their ability to act within the governing structures, it is civil society that is opening new spaces and  discovering new ways to act politically.  The EZLN’s demands, and other long-standing demands (¨command by obeying ¨,  ¨everything for everyone, for us nothing ¨, ¨indigenous autonomy¨, ¨dignity¨, ¨peace¨, ¨justice¨) have gained a great deal of support. Civil society is availing itself of these concepts.  A new democratic culture is rising in Mexico, one which fundamentally seeks to include all sectors in the decision-making process, one which is fulfilling its promise to ¨command by obeying¨, and one in which daily struggle includes the respect for difference and minorities.

This new way of doing politics is included in the agreements on Human Rights and Indigenous Culture signed between the EZLN and the federal government on February 16, 1996 in San Andres. Nevertheless, the government is now failing to keep its word. At the same time, while proclaiming its  commitment to carry out  the  San Andres Accords, the government has drawn up its own agreement, thus invalidating the original one. While the government asserts its position, the indigenous groups of Chiapas, also basing their actions on the San Andres Accords, have begun to exercise their  autonomy by installing Rebel Municipalities and Autonomous Zones without seeking  governmental permission. This is a drawn out process, which slowing but surely disarticulates the already worn out state political system and its party, as well as the political party system on which this facade of Mexican democracy  has relied.

President Zedillo in his State of the Union address on September 1, 1997 did not mention the indigenous topic and the armed conflict in Chiapas. He tried to ignore the EZLN due to its role as one of the principal players in Mexico’s transition towards democracy.  In light of official attempts to ignore the indigenous movement, the Zapatistas responded with a peaceful march in Mexico City in September 1997, which was known as the Parade of 1,111 Zapatistas, and placed  the indigenous people on the front pages of the national and international press. Once again, the conscience of Mexico´s people was shaken and the government was warned that if a just solution to Zapatista demands was not forthcoming, the only way to resist and govern would be to implement “municipalities in rebellion”. The government response was to make use of paramilitary groups.  The indigenous groups returned from Mexico City on September 16. On the 17th, the paramilitary groups savagely attacked the town of Majomut in Chenalho municipality, where the Zapatistas were informing their supporters about the march. The result was the death of Zapatistas and two members of a paramilitary group in Los Chorros. This was followed by aggressive acts which continued until the massacre in Acteal on  December 22, 1997. 

Autonomy and the Construction of Grassroots Power

We can identify two options in the struggle for autonomy: one which originates in the community,  spreads to the Rebel Municipalities in coordination with  regional efforts, and  in doing so, disregards the official ¨Constitutional¨ municipal authorities.  The other option consists of groups of organized individuals who seek to establish themselves as Regional Pluriethnic Autonomies (RAP).         

The first option came to light on December 19, 1994, when the EZLN ¨broke¨ through the military encirclement of the Lacandon Forest set up by the federal government.  This military operation showed  the government that the EZLN was not just an ¨armed group¨ present in only 4 municipalities, but rather a force to be reckoned with in some 30 municipalities, all of which declared themselves in rebellion. These acts demonstrated that the indigenous in rebellion would not recognize the municipal authorities imposed by the government through fraudulent elections and the ¨appointment¨ (dedazo) of candidates. It named its new representatives by taking into account the wishes of the communities and delivered the mantel of authority to the new authorities.  All of this meant a new way of living and of relating to the different indigenous communities.

The indigenous people spoke loudly and clearly during the inauguration of the ¨Ernesto Che Guevara¨ Rebel Municipality, located in the Rebel Region of ¨Tzotz Choj¨ in the municipality of Ocosingo: ¨We are and want to be a part of Mexico and not strangers in the land in which we were born. We are and want to be part of the great Mayan nation which many moons and suns ago flourished in these valleys.  We are and want to be part of the development of the nation that we love, where there can be democracy, liberty and justice. We only want to be equal to all, not more nor less. We want to have the same rights for our government leaders  and for the governed without regard to language, custom, or religion. We want to be respected as indigenous people.¨ (from the Zapatista proclamation made in the ¨Ernesto Che Guevara¨ municipality, on Sept. 27, 1997.)  At this event, an indigenous religious leader, named by the people themselves, officiated at a celebration to install the new Indigenous Parliament.

This marked the beginning of another stage in the  indigenous community struggle, now under the jurisdiction of these new municipalities. In other words, community autonomy has begun to be exercised along with a refusal to receive governmental help while peace, justice and dignity do not exist, and while the San Andres Accords are not carried out. Property taxes will not be paid, electrical energy fees will not be paid (in those few places where this service exists), official institutions will not be permitted to enter.  Everything will be done to resist all that can divide, co-opt, corrupt, etc.  The indigenous people also have named their own authorities and commissions: Education, Health, Honor and Justice, Human Rights, Women, Ecotourism, Language, etc., with representatives chosen from the local indigenous communities which have worked out their own laws in their own language. It is rightly the beginning of an alternative, which while facing a series of challenges and obstacles, has challenged the local political bosses by constructing a power base from below. Their motto is ¨power is not taken, it is constructed.¨

Furthermore, the indigenous groups have begun to control territory, where the strategy is the establishment of new criteria for the exploitation of natural resources, the appointment of authorities, and respect for indigenous customs and ways of life.  (The government’s biggest fear is exactly this new type of relationship being demanded by the indigenous people).  For this reason,  political parties and traditional political leaders are no longer the determining factors in this situation. And the has created  a crisis.  Many of the municipal leaders chosen by the PRI have been left governing only in the principal municipalities and, in some cases, trying to govern from rented houses, because the Zapatistas have taken  control of the municipal president´s offices, as in the municipalities of El Bosque and San Andrés.  On April 10, 1998,   the municipality of ¨Ricardo Flores Magon¨ declared itself to be a Rebel Municipality,  in the community of Taniperlas, in the constitutional municipality of Ocosingo.  The community was overrun by the military and vacated on April 11, and several persons were arrested, 7 from the community and 2 from national solidarity groups.  Twelve members from international solidarity groups were expelled from the country.  (Expulsion carries with it a lifelong ban on legally entering Mexico again).

On May 1 the municipality known as Earth and Freedom (Tierra y Libertad), headquartered in Amparo Agua Tinta, in the Constitutional Municipality of Las Margaritas, was vacated in a joint police-military takeover. The result was 61 peasant arrested (53 Mexicans and 8 Guatemalan refugees), three with gunshot wounds with several who were beaten up, and the destruction and theft of personal possessions. All of this took place under the watchful eye of PRI members.

On May 4, Governor Albores arrived in Amparo Agua Tinta with gifts and other handouts to reinstall the PRI authorities in the community. Meanwhile, the public security police installed itself in the ex-offices of the Autonomous Municipality. President Zedillo´s visits to Chiapas have been interpreted by different groups in Chiapas as a  way of provoking the Zapatistas and show unwavering support for the State Government. Zedillo signed the State Reconciliation Agreement, ¨as an honorable witness¨, part of the arsenal used to justify the offensive against the Autonomous Municipalities. 

Of the 111 constitutional municipalities in Chiapas, the EZLN is  present in 40, in which 38 Autonomous Municipalities have been formed.  Judging from the latest incidents of violence, it will come as no surprise that, along with Army´s harassment of Simojovel,  the next municipalities to be destroyed soon will be Juan de la Libertad, Consejo Antonomo de Polho, San Andres Sacam Chen de los Pobres and Ernesto Che Guevara.

We can conclude that Governor Albores is the ¨puppet¨ of a federal strategy, since it is he who claims to have ordered the incursions by the police and army into the autonomous municipalities. If the strategy fails, he would be the easiest to  sacrifice, thus salvaging the policies implemented by the Interior Secretary. 

In order to guarantee its policies, the State Government has announced the hiring of 4,500 police and the creation of an anti-riot unit made up of 500 women in order to confront the Zapatista women who have held back the federal Army from entering the communities, literally with their bare hands.  This is why the government-sponsored TV Channel 10 in Chiapas has sought the hiring of women between the ages of 17 and 25 to become part of this anti-riot unit. These special units will be trained  by the Presidential Chief of Staff  and the Army in counterinsurgency tactics, the securing of buildings, the blocking of highways, the securing of offices, etc. (Diario Expreso, March 13, 1998)

The strategy is to convince PRI members and the communities that they should request the vacating and destruction of the Autonomous Municipalities. Afterwards, the public security police, the National Attorney General (PGR), and Immigration can step in.

If, by chance, there were to be an armed response from the Zapatistas, the Army would enter into action, thus violating the Law of Dialogue for Conciliation and a Dignified Peace in Chiapas.  Consequently at least  6 objectives would be achieved:

(1) the destruction of the Rebel Municipality and the forceful installation of the PRI;

(2) the installation of yet more military and police encampments which, under the guise of legality, will be able to expand their control over the Zapatista area;  (3) the taking of Zapatistas as prisoners under fabricated criminal charges and, thus, creating political hostages for possible negotiations; (4) the deporting of foreigners and the elimination of international witnesses from the region; (5) the dispersal of the population in order to disarticulate the EZLN’s support base (by laying siege to the area in order to create hunger, a feeling of harassment and fatigue, particularly in women and children, in order to hold them as hostages; the same can be said for the adults who flee to the mountains); (6) the attempt to corrupt and bribe Zapatista leaders. These are the objectives which authorities are trying to carry out prior to the October 4  municipal and state elections in Chiapas.

Even though the initiative sent by Zedillo to the Congress on Indigenous Rights and Culture has received the support of the PAN, PRI, and PVEM, it will continue to be opposed in Zapatista territory. While the State governor has stated that the future of Chiapas is in jeopardy, what is really in danger is the PRI’s continued presence in power,  and Zedillo´s neoliberal (structural adjustment) policies. 

The second option in  the struggle for autonomy arises from the efforts of the Pluriethnic Autonomous Regions (RAP), which depend on the efforts of individuals to coordinate the municipal and regional organizations, including the various indigenous towns that make up the established Pluriethnic Autonomous Regions.  Outpouring of support for the RAPs began in 1994 within the CEOIC (Council of Indigenous and Campesino Organizations) which was made up of both indigenous and non-indigenous organizations.  However, each one of the sectors worked differently.  It was decided that the indigenous organizations should coordinate their efforts, thus forming the Plural Indigenous National Assembly for Autonomy, which is part of the National Indigenous Congress, and which assists in articulating national goals along with the RAPs. This initiative  began on October 12, 1995 with a peaceful demonstration at the Cathedral Plaza in San Cristobal.

This option (RAPs) decided to associate itself with the PRD.  As a result, the combined indigenous campesino force in the Autonomous Region of the North has succeeded in winning the official municipal presidencies of Ixtapa, Bochil, Jitotol, and Huitiupan,  under the PRD banner.  As opposed to the first option, the RAPs solicit government funding to carry out production projects. It includes traditional political leaders from the different political parties. It does not repudiate the municipal presidents installed by the government. Nor has it created  autonomous municipalities.  Everything is centralized through the RAP. Direction is provided by a General Council of Pluriethnic Autonomous Regions with headquarters in San Cristobal.  For this reason,  the RAPs have not been repressed like the Autonomous Municipalities. But they have been obliged to hand over the lands taken in 1994-1995 and to pay the electric and property taxes since 1994.

The two forms of struggle are valid and respectable. Both are designed to disarticulate the   regime of government imposed on the Mexican people. But the challenges and difficulties are great because the State has opted to respond to both initiatives with a ¨dirty  war¨, a Low Intensity War which cuts across all economic, political, and social  levels  and all state organizations in Chiapas. The autonomies are taking control of the land within its control, but given the  incapacity of the State to find solutions to the demands of the indigenous people, due to its own internal crises, the government’s response has been to paramilitarizing the political system. Thus the PRI is temporarily able to regain its power through pressure tactics and violence.

The Challenges and Difficulties in the Struggle for Autonomy

The dirty war, presumably  authorized at the highest levels of the government, has divided the communities. Where before the “community” was the basis of decision making, now it is the “organization”. The challenge for the autonomies is to get organizations to agree to implement “plans of resistance” to confront a common enemy. The different organizations, independent of any political affiliation,  live together in the same territory where they share highways, water supplies, sports installations, infrastructure, land conflicts, leaders and government. Yet, they have disputes over control. These disputes  carry risks of constant confrontations. Nevertheless, in areas where positions are more unified and where there are agreements, including with some PRI members, the autonomies function.

On the other hand, some social organizations that do not belong to the EZLN and which share the same territory, also attempt to exercise control using their own rationale.  As a consequence, conflicts arise between ways of doing at things. The exercise of power  between  authorities, civilians, military and traditional politicians also comes into play. 

The challenge comes in facing the Low Intensity Warfare orchestrated by the government, which attempts to disarticulate all of the organized sectors. This war has as its principal objective ¨the winning of the minds and hearts of individuals¨ within a particular area. It is a war which is ripping apart internal social, organizational and even family structures.

The EZLN military force is faced with a federal military encirclement in the shape of a half moon  ringing the periphery between Palenque in the North, los Altos, with greater concentration in Chenalho, and from the Guatemalan border to Ciudad Cuauhtemoc. There is another smaller military encirclement which tries to neutralize and cover the General Command area of the EZLN between Guadalupe Tepeyac and the Euseba River.  At the same time, it tries to undermine and exterminate the indigenous resistance and the EZLN base support structures, through the use of paramilitary groups such as Peace and Justice (Paz y Justicia), the Chinchulines, the Antizapatista Revolutionary Indigenous Movement (MIRA),  the Puñales, the San Bartolome de los Llanos Alliance, etc., along with armed PRI members (still unnamed) in some 7 municipalities, but whose activities are well known. Finally, there is coordination among PRI members, Public Security, the PGR, Immigration and the Army. 

Adding to all of this the federal Army has introduced alcoholism, prostitution, drug addiction, the destruction of crops, etc., which breaks up social cohesion and polarizes intra- and inter-community relationships. 

¨The Untenable Trivialization of the Law: Impunity¨

(extract, Part I)

The crimes condemned by the civilized world and International Law:

      ¨today we know that  state, federal, civilian, and military authorities do not have clean hands in the Acteal affair. ...In accordance with the ¨Convention to Prevent and Condemn the Crime of Genocide¨ adopted by the U.N. on December 9, 1948 and which entered into effect on January 12, 1951, genocide is defined by the following acts which have the  objective of destroying in totality or in part a national ethnic, racial or religious group:

(1) the killing of members of any such group; (2) the infliction of serious physical or psychological harm to group members; (3) the imposition of living conditions calculated to bring about its partial or total destruction; (4) the imposition of  birth control methods within  these groups; (5) the forcible transporting of  minors from one group to another.¨ 

Mexico ratified this provision on July 22, 1952, in which genocide is referred to as a ¨crime condemned by the civilized world and International Law¨, which ought to be severely punished not only in the commission of any act but also in the conspiracy to do so.  Any  public incitement to carry out such acts or any other type of involvement to execute such action should also be subject to punishment, whether it be committed in times of war or peace.¨(Concha, M., La Jornada, Dec. 27, 1997, pg.5.)  This crime has been incorporated in the Federal Penal Code in article 149.  While the international law to Prevent and Condemn the Crime of Genocide has been incorporated into the Mexican penal code, it has been repeatedly violated. Yet the Mexican government has signed and ratified other international conventions which have also been trampled, such as:

(1) The International Pact on civil and political rights.

(2) The International Pact on economic, social and cultural rights

(3) The International Convention on the rights of minors.

(4) The International Convention on the elimination of any type of discrimination against women.

*Extract from a document called ¨The Untenable Trivialization of Law: Impunity; Three Months after Acteal¨, from ¨The Task Force on Alternative Popular Communication¨, April 11, 1998.  (Published only in Spanish).

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