projet IPACS

In Chiapas, southern state of Mexico, in the forest, the jungle, and the mountains, the animals and the birds speak, rebellious rivers stir things up, and the leaves concoct secrets with the wind. A story began on the 1st of January 1994, when the Zapatista Army for National Liberation (EZNL-Ejercito Zapatista de Liberacion Nacional) declared war on the Mexican government to put an end to five hundred years of injustice, exclusion, exploitation, and poverty for the indigenous peoples of Chiapas. Their primary demands are “work, land, shelter, food, health, education, independence, liberty, justice, and peace.”

Underneath the ski mask, the uprising of faceless ones and voiceless ones took place on the date when the North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA) came into force. After twelve days of armed conflict, the government and the Zapatista Army declared a cease-fire, primarily under the pressure of national and international civil society. During the same year, dialogues with the government were begun.

In 1995, a commission that brings together legislators of all the parties represented in Congress, the COCOPA (Comisión de Concordia y Pacificación), was formed to move forward the negotiations. These negotiations brought about the signing of the first part of the San Andres Agreements that affect indigenous Rights and Culture . The government boycotted the process of dialogue and presented its own project for changes in the Constitution that did not respect the COCOPA initiative, which was a fruit of the negotiations with the Zapatistas. At the same time, the Ernesto Zedillo government increased its low intensity war in Chiapas.

In 1997, more than 4,000 people were displaced in the northern zone of Chiapas, with dozens of deaths and disappearances. In the south, forty-five people were killed on December 22nd in Acteal** and more than 10,000 were displaced in the region. In 1998, large scale military and police operations multiplied continuing the repression and violence against the Zapatista autonomous municipalities.
In 1999, the EZLN carried out the national Consultation for the recognition of the indigenous peoples and the end of the extermination war, organized with the participation of the civil society.

2000 marked the end of the Mexican one-party State and the Institutional revolutionary party (PRI) after seventy-one years in power. It was replaced by the right-wing doctrines of Vicente Fox. The year after the elections, the EZLN carried out the Color of the Earth March (Marcha del Color de la Tierra) into downtown Mexico city, following the same itinerary as Emiliano Zapata in 1914 during the Mexican Revolution. Starting this same year, Fox affirmed that peace and tranquility in Chiapas and with the Zapatistas has been achieved; he also unveiled his plans for development with the Plan Puebla Panama (PPP).

In January 2004, the Zapatistas celebrated their tenth year of resistance and construction of a new world. In spite of the militarization and the illegal war lead by the Mexican government, the Zapatista communities survive on work and hope. The time for fear is over. “Voila the awakening of rebel dignity,” they proclaimed!

A Zapatista movement in movement

Here are a few lines in a humble attempt to bring out the distinctive traits of Zapatism. These words are inspired from readings and meetings that we have been engaged in and that brought us to note the movement within the Zapatista movement.

First of all, there are over a million indigenous people in Chiapas who belong to nine different peoples. The majority are from the Mexican Maya family: the Tzotzils, the Tzetzales, the Choles, the Tojolabales, the Lacandones, the Mames, the Mochos, and the Kakchikeles. The Zoques are parented by the Popolucas and Mixes. These peoples live primarily in the Altos (mountains) and the selva (jungle). Of this number, more than 200,000 natives support the EZLN in one way or another.

Since the beginning of the uprising, the Zapatistas have woven a tight connection with national and international civil societies. They have learned to listen and to talk through their dialogue with the civil society in order to know the many-stranded web of roads that can be taken to move forward. For example, they knew, after twelve days of armed fighting, to listen to the pressure of the civil society and have become partisans of non-violence ever since.

Although it is rooted in tradition, the movement has an opening on the world that goes much farther than tolerance and well into an inviting openness. The creation of five Caracoles, places for meeting and exchange with the civil society since August 2003, is an example of the Zapatista’s openness to the world. The Caracol, or snail shell, is the symbol of the shell into which one blows and from which the sound travels to call people together, as we were told in an assembly at San Antonio Brillante.

While the Mexican government promotes the idea of a half-breed (and uniform) country, the Zapatistas demand that the Mexican Constitution admit that the country is made up of different peoples, who possess a profound relationship with their history, their roots, the earth, and their community. Each group within this multiplicity of peoples must have its own form of social, political, and economic organization, and it must be insured that these are valid and must be respected. They demand the birth of “a new world in which many worlds can fit - un mundo Nuevo donde muchos mundos quepan”.

In the end, Zapatism furnishes a radical political force in the world. This consists of a new kind of revolution. The Zapatistas do not want to take power. Through action and speech, they show the world that the emperor wears no clothes, which is to say, the mystifications of the dominant capitalist system, of formal democracy and its institutions. They have seen to the birth of an alternative path that dismantles the dominant discourse. In their own organization, which is to say in each village, each autonomous municipality, and each cooperative society, decisions are made in assembly, and those who command obey the decisions.

The economic alternative

In response to the Mexican government’s refusal to include all the Indian communities in the nation, the Zapatistas continue to resist. In this sense, they refuse the government’s aide and progress with the civil society for the construction of their autonomy. This autonomy develops through an economic alternative that permits survival in the day-to-day, a life of dignity, and, in the end, the development of independence through community projects.

Realizing the importance of the creation and good development of the economic alternative to allow for resistance, we wanted to see what the Zapatistas had organized. We went to spend several days in the Autonomous Rebel Municipality of San Juan Libertad, 45 minutes by colectivo from the Caracol of Oventik, to the north of San Cristobal. Two articles that came out of that exploration are, first, one on the coffee and honey Cooperative society Mut-Vitz and, second, one about the craftswomen’s Cooperative society of Xulum Chon.

* Thanks to Gustavo Esteva for his texts, his list of Internet links, and his help in better understanding Zapatism.

¡Ya Basta! Oficial website of the Ejército Zapatista de Liberación Nacional (EZLN). http://www.ezln.org

FZLN Official site of the Zapatista Front for National Liberation (FZLN). http://www.fzln.org.mx

Rebeldía Rebeldia magazine, published on-line by the FZLN.
http://www.revistarebeldia.org/main.html

Acción Zapatista
http://studentorgs.utexas.edu/nave

Zapatista Net of Autonomy and Liberation
www.actlab.utexas.edu/~zapatistas

Indymedia Chiapas
http://chiapas.mediosindependientes.org

Zapatista Index
http://flag.blackened.net/revolt/zapatista.html

Introduction to México and the Zapatistas
http://flag.blackened.net/revolt/mexico/begindx

EZLN Chiapas Battalion
www.geocities.com/ResearchTriangle/Lab/5225/bzalx/plalxbz.html

Enlace civil
http://www.enlacecivil.org.mx/index.htm

Chiapas Media Project
http://www.chiapasmediaproject.org