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The Death of SupMarcos, a blow to revolutionary pride
THE DEATH OF SUP MARCOS, A BLOW TO REVOLUTIONARY PRIDE
By: Raúl Zibechi
The illuminating farewell of Subcomandante Marcos
Artwork by Emma Gascó in Diagonal
The farewell communiqué of Subcomandante Insurgente Marcos, read in the early morning of 25 May in the Caracol of La Realidad, in front of thousands of bases of support and people in solidarity from around the world, in which he announced his death and reincarnation (unburying, in the words of EZLN,) is one of the strongest and most powerful texts he has released in the twenty years since his public appearance on January 1, 1994.
The murder of the teacher Galeano in La Realidad on May 2, by members of the Independent Central of Agricultural Workers and Campesinos – Historic (CIOAC-H), an organization that became a paramilitary group thanks to the counterinsurgent social policies that buy people and whole groups, precipitated a process of change that had been underway for some time. The massive silent march of 40,000 Zapatista supporters on December 21, 2012 in the major cities of Chiapas, and the subsequent Escuelita of ‘Freedom according to the Zapatistas’ were some of the axes of these changes that we could appreciate.
The third part of the communiqué of May 25, titled The Change of Guard, recounts very briefly the four internal changes that have been in process during these two decades. The first one mentioned is generational, the most visible change, since half of the Zapatistas are less than 20 years old and “were young or were not born at the beginning of the uprising.”
The second is that of class “from the enlightened middle class to the indigenous campesino.” And the third is that of race: “from mestizo to a purely indigenous leadership.” These two changes have been manifested for some time with the constant and increasing emergence of comandantes and comandantas at various public appearances of the EZLN. But the appearance of Subcomandante Insurgente Moisés, with the same military rank as Marcos, undoubtedly marked a turning point that is now complete, leaving Moisés as the spokesperson of the movement.
Marcos’ farewell communiqué emphasized that the most important of the changes was in thinking: “from revolutionary vanguardism to ‘ruling by obeying;’ from the taking of Power from Above to the creation of power from below; from professional politics to everyday politics; from the leaders, to the peoples.”
Finally, there was the issue of gender, as women moved from marginalization to direct participation, and the whole movement passed “from mocking the other to the celebration of difference.”
As can be seen, the anti-vanguardism goes hand in hand with the set of changes that can be summarized in the fact that the bases of the movement command and the commanders obey. There isno longer any doubt over who are the subjects. Somehow, these changes reduced the visibility from outside of the preponderant role already played by Moisés, whose figure was already standing out in his communiqués linked to the escuelita, but who now takes on his full relevance.
The EZLN completes a long lasting turn towards the common people, of huge strategic depth.
Thus, at a complex juncture in which the national Mexican government and the government of Chiapas launched a major offensive against the Caracoles and Zapatismo as a whole, –as part of the recovery of state power from the autodefensas (self-defense forces) in Michoacán and the Community Police in Guerrero– the EZLN completes a shift to the common people, which is long lasting, and of huge strategic depth, showing what those from below are capable of doing.
The media figure of Marcos disappears, appealing to the middle class and the mass media, the prominent personality capable of dialogue with intellectuals from around the world and of doing so on equal terms, being supplanted by the indigenous and campesinos, common and rebellious people. It is a political and ethical challenge of enormous magnitude, which places the analysts, the old left and the whole of the academic world against the wall. From now on, there will be no illustrious speakers but rather indigenous and campesinos.
“Personally –writes Marcos– I don’t understand why thinking people, who assert that history is made by the people, get so frightened in the face of an existing government of the people where ‘specialists’ are nowhere to be seen.” The answer he gives: “Because there is also racism on the left, above all among that left which claims to be revolutionary.”
Very strong! Very wise and very necessary! Zapatismo does not dialogue with the system’s politicians, or with those on the right or the left. It speaks to those of us who want to change the world, to those of us who aspire to build a new world and, therefore, decide not to walk the path of the institutions but to work below, with those from below. And we find that one of the major difficulties in these spaces is arrogance (pride), individualism, which it defines as perfectly compatible with vanguardism. With this step, the Zapatistas set the bar very high, higher than any political force has ever set it. Finally, individualism and vanguardism are two central expressions of Western culture; ways of doing things related to Colonialism and patriarchy, both of which we need to let go of in everyday life and in politics.
Originally Published in Spanish by Diagonal (Madrid) on June 14, 2014
English Translation: UK Zapatista Solidarity Network
Editing: Chiapas Support Committee
Chiapas: militarization and looting threaten Indigenous
Below is an interview with Victor Hugo López, Director of the Frayba Human Rights Center in Chiapas. It gives a good overview of the current situation the Indigenous Peoples are facing.
CHIAPAS: MILITARIZATION AND LOOTING THREATEN INDIGENOUS
By: Nancy Flores
With the “war” against drug trafficking, Chiapas was once again militarized. Tensions among the EZLN, the bases of support, civil society in general and the government have increased together with the criminalization of peaceful protest. In an interview, Victor Hugo López –director of the Frayba Human Rights Center– points out that the militarization has also increased dispossession of the state’s natural, mineral and energy resources.
During the PAN government of Felipe Calderón Hinojosa, members of the Mexican Army and Navy occupied rural roads and indigenous communities of Chiapas little-by-little but overwhelmingly. Today, still with a pretext of drug trafficking, military personnel have zones under their control that had been liberated during the presidency of Vicente Fox Quesada as an example of the “governmental will” to pacify the region.
Thus, the maximum achievement of the “Calderón War” in that state of Southeast Mexico was not exterminating organized crime, but repositioning military personnel to the point that the current situation is comparable to that which it lived in two decades ago, when the Zapatista National Liberation Army (EZLN) rose up.
In an interview with Contralinea, the director of the Fray Bartolomé de las Casas Human Rights Center (Frayba), Victor Hugo López, explains that, although “spectacular scenes of violence” and confrontations in the streets have not been seen in Chiapas, the strategy of the “war” against drug trafficking did have serious repercussions in the communities. In principle, because it achieved a repositioning of the Mexican Army and Navy in different indigenous territories and at all the border points of the state, characterized by its misery and marginalization.
The young human rights defender remembers that one of the conditions that the Fox administration attended to in order to maintain dialogue with the EZLN was demilitarization: some of the most important military zones were eliminated, he says. Nevertheless, “this situation was lost with the Calderón strategy: while members of the Army patrol and put up checkpoints throughout the territory, members of the Navy take custody of the border points, including that of Guatemala.”
Currently, he exposes, members of the Mexican Army are present in different rural communities and roads in which they had not previously been seen. “They are making rounds again; they are even making operations of disarming. Sudden, they say, discreet [operations], but they are just touching the border or the line of fire here in Chiapas. This is serious, because it seems to me that they are not measuring the possibility of once again registering an [armed] confrontation.”
Victor Hugo López observes that the anti-drug strategy had other grave repercussions in Chiapas. One of these refers to the state security policy, because now the state police are at the command of the soldiers.
He also refers to the criminalization towards society as a whole. He gives as an example the operations of mixed units (military personnel accompanied by state and municipal police). These, he indicates, are the ones that have been committing the greatest number of arbitrary detentions of young people (men and women) in the streets simply for their appearance; they also commit abuses and torture.
In that same sense, the laws were hardened and forms of violence and mechanisms for human rights violations were legalized: “for example, although arraigo was eliminated in Chiapas and it was publicized as an achievement of the previous government, the Attorney General’s [security] houses, where people are disappeared, tortured and illegally detained, have increased.”
And despite the fact that the police-military operations as much as the legal modifications have been justified as a strategy against drug trafficking, the human rights defender observes that the sale and consumption of all kinds of drugs and alcohol are not regulated.
“In contradiction of the discourse of combatting drug trafficking g and organized crime, we have seen the exponential proliferation of cantinas where indiscriminate consumption of drugs and even human trafficking has been authorized and is even being promoted in different communities, because in some cases the owners are the mayors.”
Victor Hugo López warns that the conditions to maintain a state of insecurity are being created. An example of that is the alliance between the governments of Mexico, the United States and Guatemala: “the argument is that the organized crime and drug trafficking groups do not operate between Chiapas and Guatemala; but these policies have hardened the measures not against crime, but against the population.” Particularly, he points out, against the migrants.
To us, the protection of the border, the reinforcement of security and the combat against organized crime have meant greater social control and a greater index of repression against the population as a whole. And that has impacted in a way to appear invisible, but present. It is very present here in the cases that we receive every day of arbitrary detentions.
“In the Frayba we are receiving today an average of between 900 to 1000 cases in general; but 3 years ago we received from 400 to 500 cases. Now, of those 900 to 1,000 cases, some 400, in other words 40 percent, have to do with themes of criminalization, access to justice, arbitrary detention, arbitrary deprivation of life, torture and legalization. In our analysis, we see that they are effects of the strategy of the war against drug trafficking and organized crime: we could say that 40 percent of those cases are derived from that strategy.”
Megaprojects, the other threat
Despite the evidence Frayba gathered with respect to the increase in human rights violations, the federal and state governments assure that those rights are respected in Chiapas. Those discourses not only seek to conceal the situation the communities confront, but also to promote foreign investment in the region.
Victor Hugo López explains that: “the Mexican State has done an impressive lobbying job at the international level of being a guarantor, promoter and of respecting human rights in Mexico, and concretely in Chiapas, in the indigenous populations; for that it has ratified, signed and proposed all kinds of laws, regulations, conventions and protocols that can generate protection of that discourse. Mexico is a promoter of the Universal Declaration of the Rights of Indigenous Peoples and once again began saying that it had to legislate and approve the San Andrés Accords. In Chiapas we have local laws like the indigenous law, a law for the protection of woman, etcetera. Then they have created all the legal-judicial scaffolding to be able to maintain in front of world governments and foreign agencies that they are guarantying conditions of respect, promotion and protection of human rights and that, therefore, the levels of life, social security, tranquility and peace are guarantied in our state.”
He adds that recently 12 members of the European parliament have visited Chiapas wanting to know the human rights situation, but, above all, to ascertain the security conditions the zone offers for investment.
“What they are saying is that the Mexican government is impelling or re-impelling projects for investment, ecotourist projects, for the companies that extract minerals and petroleum resources, saying that in Chiapas it is all the scaffolding of respect and promotion of human rights that guarantee security in their in vestment.”
The director of the Fray Bartolomé de las Casas Human Rights Center says that a map is being identified of social conflict in the state provoked by the megaprojects of private investment. One of those conflicts, he details, is that of the Agua Azul zone,. In the area of the cascades, the campesinos are opposed to the governmental proposals for creating an ecotourist center.
“We see that the insult to the communities that defend their territories is being impelled again because they come in a decided manner to impel the projects that they have promised. And we have been able to corroborate it in this sense, because there is a security-investment-human rights conjoint that it is selling outside the country. They [foreign representatives] are coming to see if what they are selling is true. Then without a doubt it awaits us at this time and from her on once again processes of tension in which the communities will oppose those projects that come in a decided way to impose themselves.”
Within this context, Victor Hugo López warns that there is another actor in the territorial struggle: the National Crusade Against Hunger. This, he assures, has operated as a counterinsurgency mechanism: “the only thing that the Crusade seeks is to divide the communities, generate greater dependency and increase the conditions of extreme poverty in the state.”
Frayba: 125 years of Advocacy
On March 18, the Fray Bartolome de las Casas Human Rights Center turned 25 years old. Founded by the late Samuel Ruiz García – then Bishop of the Diocese of San Cristóbal de las Casas, Chiapas-, today is considered one of the most important Mexican organizations for the defence of the individual and collective rights.
With respect to these 2 and a half decades of work, its current director, Víctor Hugo López, reflects: “It has been 25 years of existence of the Center for human rights, but more than 500 years being influenced by indigenous peoples who have been insistent in generating proposals and alternatives to the crisis of the state and the system”.
The Frayba Center much appreciates that there are five autonomous regions, five good government juntas, which have the lowest rate of human rights violations. “They are people who have managed to cope with this system of structural violence and its consequences. “In this context is that we reach these 25 years: we recognize that the Frayba would not have had this success if it wasn’t thanks to the influence of these political actors and the subject that is the indigenous people”.
He adds that people who have known of the project and have collaborated on it are also fortunate in being in Chiapas territory. “Is a land where meaningful and highly visible contrasts arise: the undeniable wealth of energy, natural resources, but also the cultural wealth of policy proposal that we have been seeing born from the region, and that stems not only from 1994, but also from recognizing more than 500 years of history, with a major player which are the indigenous peoples.”
“We feel fortunate that our origin is essentially indigenous. The indigenous populations in Mexico are part of the population where violence and the violation of human rights come to impressive levels. In other words, if many mexicans are faced with the issues of corruption, discrimination and injustice, for indigenous peoples this type of violence is magnified, by their condition of being poor, indigenous people and peasants.
Víctor Hugo López mentions that violence in Chiapas has many fronts: Although the most visible is the image of the territory occupied by the military, there is territory occupied and cordoned off for “development” projects that are dividing communities.
However, he says, those conditions and those natural strains of the system are generating proposals and alternatives. Therefore, although for 15 years the state has been living what he calls a war against the population, there have been alternatives constructed mand of these autonomous, proposals of alternative justice models, reconstruction of the social fabric which, no doubt, can be guides in addressing the issues facing the current state of Mexico.
In Chiapas, there have been violent situations that subsequently reproduced their strategy or their effects at national level, such as the massacre of Acteal in 1997, which had a global impact: 45 people and four that were not born yet were massacred in a community. Today, the country has seen similar massacres that have occurred in different contexts and in various territories, including Michoacán, Tamaulipas and all states who are facing the strategy against organized crime.
At risk, 20 percent of the biodiversity of Mexico
Chiapas owns 20 percent of the biodiversity of Mexico and is the second nationally in biodiversity, this is accoriding to data from the state government, headed by Manuel Velasco Coello, the Green ecologist party of Mexico.
According to the official information, some of the most important natural resources are: 10 river basins and two of the largest rivers of the country: Grijalva and Usumacinta; 266 kilometers of coastline, two canyons; It has seven of the nine most representative ecosystems in the country and 46 protected areas (among these, Montes Azules biosphere, El Triunfo, La Encrucijada, La Sepultura, El Ocote and Lagunas de Montebello).
Currently, the local administration plans to exploit these resources through the “ecotourism” projects. Announcing that Chiapas will host the 2014 adventure tourism fair, this past May 12th is became known that the state administration is to “prepare a comprehensive plan of development of tourism in the region north and the jungle, having an axis starting at the city of Palenque and its archaeological zone. This plan will provide investment in infrastructure, signage, training and promotion, which will allow to consolidate tourist routes in the forest and other regions of the state.”
Four days later, the federal and state governments designated as “priority need” to carry out a formal territorial designation of the Selva Lacandona, Montes Azules biosphere reserve and protected natural areas:
“The government of the republic and of Chiapas expressed his conviction that territory is top priority to provide the necessary conditions for the full development of the Lacandona community and the adjacent towns to improve the quality of life of their inhabitants in accordance with the legal framework, favouring the consolidation of the protected natural areas and the sustainable development of these areas. Also, in accordance with the provisions of the general law of ecological balance and the protection of the environment, in its article 46, the letter says ‘in protected natural areas the foundation of new centers for populations will not be permitted’, you won’t be able to regularize the existing unauthorized settlements within the Montes Azules biosphere reserve, or any other protected area. Therefore no plan for compensation can be carried out since no resources will be allocated for those purposes.
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Originally Published in Spanish by Contralinea
Translation: Chiapas Support Committee
June 17, 2014
En español:
Securing Mexico’s Border with Central America
SECURING MEXICO’S BORDER WITH CENTRAL AMERICA
Central American migrants on the train known as “The Beast.”
By: Mary Ann Tenuto-Sánchez
As the current wave of immigrant women and children from Central America brings more public attention to the issue of migration, we take a look at what’s happening to Mexico’s southern border with Central America.
In 1994, the Zapatista National Liberation Army drew the world’s attention to Chiapas, Mexico’s southernmost state, with an uprising of indigenous peoples. It also drew tens of thousands of members of the Mexican Army, Navy and federal police to the state. Although the Zapatistas put down their weapons and opted to live autonomously from the official governments (local, state and federal), meaning that the Zapatistas govern themselves in non-violent resistance, a counterinsurgency war continues to this day and the conflict zone remains heavily militarized.
Despite all that militarization, drugs and other illicit goods are smuggled into Mexico from Central America through Chiapas. Central Americans and others also cross into Chiapas on their way through Mexico to the United States to seek employment and a better life, free of the poverty and violence in their countries. These migrants have become the focus of political wars over immigration between a divided and dysfunctional Congress and the White House. Let’s take a look at what the governments of both the US and Mexico are doing about Mexico’s southern border.
A “porous” border in need of “security”
In December 2010 El País, a mainstream Madrid newspaper, published an article about the Chiapas border with Guatemala after receiving a document from Wikileaks revealing great concern by US diplomats (from the US Embassy in Mexico City) with respect to drug trafficking across a border they termed “porous.” [1] They also reported the lack of security forces to deter not only drug trafficking, but also human trafficking and arms smuggling. [2] Four months after this diplomatic “discovery” of the border between Chiapas and Guatemala, Mexico announced two new Army bases in Chiapas.
Apparently the new Army bases did not constitute enough militarization to satisfy the Obama administration. Following the July 23-24, 2013 visit to Mexico of then Homeland Security Secretary Janet Napolitano, La Jornada, Mexico’s progressive daily newspaper, reported that the United States would “act” on Mexico’s southern border. No specifics were given. It seems that La Jornada relied upon a Mexican government website for information that agreements were reached concerning its southern border. All reference to the southern border was removed from the website a few days later, apparently because the Obama administration wanted to keep the agreements secret, at least for a while.
The Los Angeles Times soon reported some of the specifics. According to the Times, the US will, at least in part, finance “high-tech biometric kiosks” that record fingerprints, photos and other identifying information of those applying for temporary visitor and work permits; in other words, those attempting to cross with permission. The same article reported that the Mexican government also plans to set up “internal control stations” and strengthen security near popular migration routes. Another article reported that the Obama administration was considering support (of the economic variety) for a three-tier security ring to protect Mexico’s southern border.
The rationale
While the public rationale for further militarization of the border region talks about protecting the human rights of Central American migrants and deterring drug trafficking, at least part of the motivation for greater security is that the number of Central American migrants who enter the United States without permission has increased, most of them escaping from extreme poverty and an inability to provide food for their families; others escaping recruitment and violence by criminal gangs. The logic of the United States government appears to be that it’s cheaper and easier to stop Central Americans at Mexico’s southern border with Guatemala and Belize than at the US border with Mexico.
Central American migrants are easy prey for corrupt immigration officials, powerful street gangs and drug traffickers who extort money from migrants and/or their families on their travels through Mexico. According to the Times article, 10,000 Central American migrants have disappeared each year in Mexico since 2008. Yet, it is often the immigration authorities that tip off criminal gangs as to the migrants’ whereabouts. Once immigration authorities tip off the criminal gangs, migrants fall victim to rape, torture, extortion and even death. So the question is whether pouring money and equipment into a corrupt system would benefit the migrants or deter drug trafficking.
The emphasis of the Times article is on migrant crossings in the southwest corner of Chiapas, where Central Americans cross the Suchiate River and then make their way north to Arriaga, Chiapas, to hop on the infamous freight train known as The Beast, (La Bestia) or the Train of Death, bound for Mexico City and points north. The difficulties encountered on this journey by the migrants, mostly from Honduras, Guatemala and El Salvador, come alive in Sin Nombre, an excellent film produced by Diego Luna and Gael Garcia Bernal.
Mexico’s border with Central America
As can be seen from the above map, Mexico’s southern border extends from the Pacific Coast of Chiapas to the Caribbean, where the Mexican state of Quintana Roo shares a border with Belize. The Mexican states of Tabasco and Campeche also share some of the border with Central America.
The “integral security project”
Current Mexican president Enrique Peña Nieto has said through his Interior Minister, Miguel Osorio Chong, that Mexico will not build a wall, but rather an integral security project. Details of that integral policy and the three-tier security ring were announced in March 2014 and are now being implemented. First, the new plan contains both land and sea containment belts. There will be three vigilance belts that make use of radar, police and military actions, as well as intelligence (for locating and disarticulating criminal gangs). The vigilance belts are intended to be a barrier to illegal activity. Personnel from the Army and/or Navy; state and municipal police; ministerial, customs, migratory and agricultural agents will participate at the “points of containment.” According to Osorio Chong, these agents from the three levels of government will be mixed together at the points of containment so that they can watch each other and denounce corruption from inside.
The first containment ring will be implemented at key points of Chiapas. The second tier will be in Tabasco and the third on the Isthmus of Tehuantepec. Chiapas NGOs belonging to the Network for Peace state that: “… on May 14, Phase II of the Southern Border Operation was initiated in five municipalities of the state of Chiapas, located in the conflict zone, and in which members of the Secretary of National Defense, the Mexican Navy, the PGR (Attorney General), PF (Federal Police), INM (Immigration officials) and state and municipal police participate.” The statement continues: “We reject the policies and strategies of militarization and criminalization of social protest in the southern border states of Mexico, and especially in conflict zones, which make the indigenous communities vulnerable, principally the women and small children.”
The governments call it “security,” but in reality it’s additional militarization of an already highly militarized state.
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[1] According to the Mexican government, the southern border has 370 informal entry points and 50 equally irregular passes for vehicles.
[2] The El País article in Spanish can be found at:
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Mary Ann Tenuto-Sánchez
Chiapas Support Committee
June 16, 2014
San Salvador Atenco, in struggle again!
ATENCO, IN STRUGGLE AGAIN
By: Blanche Petrich
![FPDT members demonstrated on the principal plaza of Atenco against the soil use change of their lands. Photo: Javier Salinas]](https://chiapas-support.org/wp-content/uploads/2014/06/atenco-1.jpg)
FPDT members demonstrated on the principal plaza of Atenco against the change of soil use on their lands. Photo: Javier Salinas
Three hours was enough for an ejido assembly in San Salvador Atenco, last Sunday, June 1, to open the door to the sale and purchase of the lands that in the last 15 years the local campesinos fiercely defended. A “spurious and totally illegal” assembly, according to how the leaders of the Peoples Front in Defense of Land (FPDT, its initials in Spanish) classify it, which quickly dispatched of an 11-point agenda; particularly point seven, the big apple of discord among the ejido owners, was resolved without debate, in 15 minutes.
This change modifies the ejido’s property regime to “full dominion,” which concludes the system of community lands that was won in 1922, in the heat of the agrarian struggles. It was voted on by a show of hands and without ballots that would clear up doubts about the legitimacy of the decision.
This change removes the legal impediment so that the National Water Commission (Conagua) and the developers that promote the Future City (Ciudad Futura) megaproject may buy the ancient lands that have been in dispute for 14 years.
The FDPT “will not permit it,” Ignacio del Valle, Hermenegildo Márquez and Martha Pérez, representatives of the campesino resistance movement, set forth in an interview. What follows, they report, will be a combined strategy: legal battle in the courts, “to throw out the agreement” and, from below, demonstrations of resistance. “It is the same struggle ever since we confronted Vicente Fox. They didn’t take their finger off the issue. We didn’t either,” Del Valle affirms.
–Are we going to see the machetes in the streets again?
–We never put the machetes away. But they are not a threat of a sign of challenge. They are a warning: we will defend ourselves at all cost.
–Ignacio, could you have entered the assembly, as an ejido owner?
–Yes.
–Why didn’t you do it?
–I wasn’t able to, the commissioner ordered placing walls and filters, with police dressed as civilians wearing white shirts. They provoked our people; there were blows. They did not permit entry to many ejido owners that are in opposition. What we did was to avoid provocation as well as confrontation.
Among the proofs for declaring the official record of the cited assembly null are videos in which one sees the ring that formed with husky men, foreign to the community, with a military haircut, that shout: “Out, out!” when the FPDT column approaches. Some exhibit posters with words charged with a threat: “Nacho (alluding to Ignacio del Valle) you are responsible for any confrontation.” “Nacho, spy of the CCH.” “Nacho, you were guilty of the confrontations on May 3 and 4, 2006.” “América del Valle (his daughter) stop living at the expense of the people.”
–Doesn’t the ejido assembly have mechanisms for controlling the registration and the list of attendees?
–“It did have –responds Márquez, who left the position of commissioner in October of last year–; there is a vigilance committee, but now they control it. If we had been able to enter, we would have demanded a role call. That would have ended that spurious assembly. But we couldn’t.”
Del Valle adds: “Everything, everything was illegal; from the place they selected for holding the assembly, a hall for fiestas, property of their relatives. We suspect that they brought in with anticipation the people that don’t belong to the ejido, maybe since the previous night, in order to reach a quorum in the roll call. They bought the rest of the votes with Soriana cards and cash.”
The men in the ring were wearing a shirt with the legend “Peace and Progress.”
Martha Pérez, who took up residence in Atenco years ago and that made up part of the group of women that assumed command of the FPDT when the men were prisoners, in the offensive of then governor Enrique Peña Nieto, comments that for each one of the conflicting gangs, “peace and progress” means very different things: “To them it means keeping quiet, respecting the government’s line. They receive gifts in exchange, because the government takes advantage of their need.”
–Can you identify them?
–Yes. Some are youths from neighboring towns, who also came as part of the provocation plan when erasing our ejido house mural was ordered in December. We know them. Many are Antorchistas that nestled in neighbor towns around 20 years ago and now, in front of their leader Yolanda Solís, are penetrating Atenco. We identified a lot of municipal police dressed as civilians and employees of the municipal council.
It is alleged that within the ranks of those promoting the sale of lands they had measured well the forces of the FPDT. Since weeks ago, Trinidad Ramírez, Del Valle’s wife, keeps close to the laundry place on her patio a little book where she has record of the helicopter flyovers, of the state and federal police patrols, soldiers and even marines that kept the town under strict vigilance the previous days. Other eyes and ears make a similar list of who enters and leaves the Del Valle’s home, which has been converted into an operations center for the FPDT ever since they lost the house of culture the municipal president, Idelfonso Vega Silva, snatched from them.
They hold the mayor responsible: “He was behind all that. He has passed himself off promoting the idea that we are savages, violent and that we oppose everything. And it’s clear that we oppose the sale of the land. We have not equivocated,” Del Valle says.
Martha Pérez maintains that the change in the legal regimen of the ejido lands “not only affects the ejido owners, but also all the rest. We already saw the mock up of the Future City Project. It looks beautiful on the Internet. But it’s an invasion to us, a life change that we don’t want, with those giant condominiums, those business centers. One must remember that all of that was a lake before that by the way dried up. And our grandparents, our ancestors, knew how to take advantage of that disaster. With a lot of effort they worked and concerted those lands into a fertile zone, very beautiful. Future City now talks about a system of lakes, but not natural ones, but rather with wastewater from the Federal District aguas, treated waters. Isn’t it absurd? And in the face of all that, where do we stay, the people?”
For now, the Atencans opposed to the sale of lands prepare for what they call “the legal battle.” Paradoxically, because there is a deep distrust among them for the legal institutions ever since the state and federal police violently invaded the town, resulting in two dead youths; they arrested hundreds of people, tortured them, raped almost all the women arrested and sentenced their principal leaders to more than 100 years, in a legal decision that was reversed four years later.
“We have many elements to annul what was done in the assembly, to throw all that out. We know that visitors from the Agrarian Prosecutor have been promoting the purchase of lands and even so we will go with them wherever may be necessary. We will go to the tribunals. We have always exhausted the legal part, although the law has deceived us many times,” Del Valle comments.
Neither Del Valle nor Hermenegildo Márquez lives exclusively from the land. But they and their families identify and live as campesinos.
Hermenegildo has one hectare (2.47 acres). Two months ago he planted asparagus on contract with a company for export to the United States. “The plant is already big, in two months it will start to produce and it is a project that I have for 10 years. I am not going to leave.”
Ignacio has been late in planting. The well was closed on his land; he now depends on the rains. In these days he’s going to plant corn, at the end of the month, barley.
“We plant –he concludes– so that the people that are discouraged may see that defending the land, defending our identity as campesinos, indeed makes sense. And it’s worth a lot of pain.”
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Originally Published in Spanish by La Jornada
Translation: Chiapas Support Committee
Sunday, June 8, 2014
En español: http://www.jornada.unam.mx/2014/06/08/politica/002n1pol
SCI Moisés: A Meeting in La Realidad a few days ago
ZAPATISTA NATIONAL LIBERATION ARMY, MEXICO
A meeting in La Realidad a few days ago
June 2014.
For: The Sixth in Mexico and the world
Compañeras and compañeros of the Sixth in Mexico and the world: Brothers and sisters of Mexico and the world:
I want to tell you about a meeting that we had in La Realidad a few days ago.
The Zapatista compañeras and compañeros of La Realidad say that the three levels of capitalist governments who destroyed their autonomous school, autonomous clinic, and the hose that brings water to the compañeras and compañeros wanted to destroy the Zapatista struggle then and there.
It should not be forgotten that when the first Aguascalientes was destroyed, the Zapatistas built five more.
It has not been forgotten that the humble houses of the autonomous authorities of the Autonomous Zapatista Municipality in Rebellion (MAREZ) of Tierra y Libertad in 1998 and the MAREZ autonomous headquarters of Ricardo Flores Magón in the caracol of Garrucha were destroyed by Roberto Albores “Croquetas,” when he was governor of poor Chiapas—poor because of the bad governments.
But the MAREZ continue their path, and are even stronger now.
It should not be forgotten that we Zapatistas said: with or without the government, we will carry out our autonomy, our indigenous rights and culture.
All of the political parties and all of the branches of government -legislative, executive, and judicial- told us to go to hell, thinking that with that the seed would not germinate. On the contrary, it grew, became strong, and is present in the actions and practice of the Zapatista communities themselves, where the people rule and the government obeys.
The compañeros bases of support in La Realidad said they would rebuild their school and clinic with the materials that nature provides.
So I said to the compañeros of La Realidad: let me write to the compas of the Sixth in Mexico and the world.
And so that the compañeros would understand why, I explained: what if we are accused of environmental destruction? Because we would need to cut down trees for wood and use palm for the roof, and the capitalist governments say that they are the ones protecting the environment.
And then I thought: Now why did I say that.
They begin a list of instances of forest destruction by lumber companies who have permission from the bad governments of Chiapas and of Mexico.
Pirate lumber companies, the compas say, though legal in the governments’ eyes, because they themselves are behind them.
The wood is purchased in parts, or pieces, says one guy, Salomón, from Las Margaritas. They buy them as planks, slabs, and joists. People from the ejidos of Momón, San Francisco, Vicente Guerrero, La Victoria, Pachán, and the Ejido Tabasco, all in the municipality of Las Margaritas, sell them. Also from San Miguel and Carmen Pataté, in the municipality of Ocosingo, and all over Chiapas.
In order to calm the discussion that was generated by my comment that, “the capitalist governments will blame us for environmental destruction,” I tell the compañeros and compañeras that we could take care of this problem if I write to the compas of the Sixth in Mexico and the world; maybe they can organize themselves and get ahold of some money to buy materials.
And the bases of support answer me—well, this isn’t going to be the end of the problem—and say: okay compañero, write them and we’ll wait and see what they can get together.
I asked them: “How much money do you need for construction?”
“Jeez! That we don’t know,” they say.
Another says, “Bring the calculator, we’ll figure it out.”
Somebody brings the calculator. They start doing the math, but then the compa says:
“Maaaaan this piece of crap doesn’t have any battery left!”
In the meantime, I am watching an older man, and I hear him say quietly:
“One fourth and a little bit,” and he counts using the fingers on both hands.
Suddenly he looks up at me:
“Done, compa,” he says.
“What?” I reply.
“Yes, I have the number. For a two-story building, 19 meters by 7 meters wide, that is 19×7, we’ll need: 2000 cement blocks, 50 half metal rods, 400 metal rods of three-eights length, 60 sacks of lime, 520 sacks of cement, 100 kilograms of mooring wire, 400 kilos of wire rod, and 84 sheets of galvanized metal 3 meters in length.
Another compa interrupts and says, “Why don’t we just tell them the total cost for these two-story buildings?”
“Agreed,” says another.
And then a chorus of voices, “Agreed!”
The total comes to $200,209 [Mexican pesos]. Two hundred thousand two hundred nine pesos.
The bottom floor should be for the children’s school, and the top for the clinic.
This is in order to use the space well.
This is only for the buildings. That’s not counting the health equipment, the thermometer, Baumanometer (to measure blood pressure), Otoscope, etc., and also the medicine.
The meeting ends.
Well ,compas of the Sixth, that is what I wanted to tell you. You see if you are able to gather any money together.
From the mountains of the Mexican Southeast.
Subcomandante Insurgente Moisés. Mexico, June 2014. In the twentieth year of the war against oblivion.
Farewell ceremony of Sub Marcos
THE FAREWELL CEREMONY OF SUB MARCOS
By: Luis Hernández Navarro
Nothing is lost. All is transformed.
The public reappearance and farewell of Subcomandante Marcos marks the end of an epoch in the Zapatista struggle. For a little more than 20 years the personage has been a central actor on the national public political scene. At once beloved and hated, admired and vilified, his passage through Mexican politics has provoked the most inflamed passions. Now, that participation comes to its end. Through his voice the EZLN will speak no more.
Throughout these two decades the rebel spokesperson has been the most recognized national political figure on the left outside the country. His writings have been translated into the most diverse languages. Some of the world’s most influential progressive intellectuals are adhered to the calls that Zapatismo has made. Every year, thousands of young people coming from the most diverse countries visit the communities in rebellion in Chiapas. Those who want another world that assume being Zapatistas are not just a few.
In the communiqué “Between Light and Shadow,” in which he announces his goodbye, Subcomandante Marcos affirms being a changing hologram and in a similar way, a buffoon, a distractor, a character. He was a creation that now comes to its end. His existence all these years –he tells us– was a big maneuver to give the project of life of the indigenous communities time to flourish.
We’re talking about a creation of the Indian peoples, about a project of autonomy that is neither electoral nor armed. A project which advances “in construction, still unfinished for sure, but already definite about what we are.” A project in which, “instead of dedicating ourselves to training guerrillas, soldiers and squadrons, we prepare promoters of education and health, and went building the basis of the autonomy that the world now marvels.” A project that renounces revolutionary vanguardism and substitutes for it mandar obedeciendo (to govern obeying); that promotes the construction of power from below, the abolition of professional politicians, the full participation of women and the celebration of difference.
Today, on the board of Zapatista politics there is a new game. “Between light and shadow” he remembers, as they announced in the days prior to publication of the Sixth Declaration of the Lacandón Jungle and the Other Campaign (Sexta declaración de la selva Lacandona y la otra campaña), which is still lacking what is missing, in other words, that the soccer game suspended because of an illegitimate goal against the Zapatistas is resumed.
The sports metaphor comes from the EZLN. In a letter directed to Massimo Moratti, president of the FC Internazionale de Milan, a little before the proclaiming of the Sexta, the rebels explained the significance of the “it lacks what’s missing,” in the “Postscript: P.S. in the tone and volume of a sports announcer – The Sup, using the tactics of the Uruguayan Obdulio Varela in the final against Brazil (World Cup, Maracanã Stadium, Rio de Janeiro, 7/16/1950), ball in hand, having traveled as if in slow motion (since May of 2001), from the Zapatista goalpost. After complaining to the referee about the illegitimacy of the goal, he puts the ball in the center of the field. He turns around to look at his compañeros and they exchange glances and silences. With the scorecard, the bets and the entire system against them, NO ONE has any hope for the Zapatistas. It starts to rain. A watch reads almost 6. Everything appears ready for the game to resume…”
That game that now resumes has Subcomandante Moisés –an indigenous commander– and a new generation of combatants at the front. Their route is that of the Sexta declaración (Sixth Declaration), which is considered “the most audacious and most Zapatista of the initiatives that we have launched as of now,” which has permitted meeting their current traveling compañeros. It is, well, a meeting that is going to dispute “below and to the left,” on the court of anti-capitalism and the radical critique of the political parties (and of the commercial communications media, which it disrespectfully defines as “for pay”).
The disappearance of the Marcos character–he tells us– is not the product either of his physical maladies or his death. The news that circulated about his grave afflictions and his death “were rumors encouraged because it was convenient that way.” His terminal illness was the “last big trick of the hologram.” In good time it may be like that, and that the personage behind the personage, he with the blue, green, brown, honey or black eyes, enjoys perfect health.
The trick was successful. It deceived us a lot. At least it generated restlessness; also weighing. Nevertheless, one must not belittle –at the risk of committing a great injustice– that the reaction of many people was one of great and genuine concern for the health of Marcos. Many prayed for his speedy recovery; there was no lack of impartial offerings of assistance. It would be wrong to underestimate that wave of solidarity.
The assassination of Juan Luis Solís, Galeano, cannot be seen at the margin of the aggressions against the social movement. It is a grave warning about what they want to do against the Zapatistas. The government divided the community police of Guerrero, incarcerated several of its leaders and threatens to disarm them. In Michoacán, it domesticated and fragmented the autodefensas, and threatened to incarcerate their dissident leaders. Why is the State going to permit the EZLN to maintain its autonomous project and continue armed?
The massive and energetic mournful mobilization of the rebels this weekend is not only an expression of their rage, pain and longing for justice, but also a preventive response to the temptation de Los Pinos (the presidential palace) of recuperating en Chiapas authority that it considers exclusive. It is a warning of what the State would confront if it continues on the route of confrontation.
The public disappearance of Subcomandante Marcos, his ritual death and his transformation into Subcomandante Galeano, are a moving homage to his compañero, assassinated by paramilitaries of the CIOAC-H as part of the State’s war against Zapatismo and the Indian peoples. Faced with a left that has shamefully condemned its dead and disappeared to oblivion, the rebels scoff at death making the memory of the dead live. Like all true farewell ceremonies, it is also a commitment for life.
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Originally Published in Spanish by La Jornada
Translation: Chiapas Support Committee
Tuesday, May 27, 2014
En español: http://www.jornada.unam.mx/2014/05/27/opinion/018a1pol
Xi’ Nich distances itself from conflict in the Lacandón Community Zone
XI’ NICH DISTANCES ITSELF FROM THE CONFLICT IN THE LACANDÓN COMMUNITY ZONE
Photo from ARIC-ID and Lacandón Community mobilizations in Ocosingo
** It classifies it as a violent organization and differs with its methods
** Its leader Gabriel Montoya, is responsible for the massacre in Viejo Velasco, it points out
By: Hermann Bellinghausen
The Xi’ Nich (The Ants) organization, made up of indigenous communities in the northern Lacandón Jungle of Chiapas, distanced themselves from the protests of the Jungle’s different organizations because of the agrarian conflict in the Lacandón Community Zone (CZL, its initials in Spanish) and the incarceration of the CZL advisor, Gabriel Montoya Oceguera, who Xi’Nich considers the intellectual author of the Viejo Velasco Massacre in 2006, while placing responsibility for the material execution of that violent attack that left eight dead and two disappeared on the Lacandón comuneros and the sub-comuneros of Nueva Palestina.
Before what recently occurred in that region of Chiapas, Xi ‘Nich points out, “a dozen organizations and human rights defenders, including the Diocese de San Cristóbal de las Casas, have issued statements in favor of peace and reconciliation of the parties in the conflict.” In that regard, the Indigenous are in agreement; but not the following part: “they sign and vouch for the movement directed by Montoya Oceguera, a leader that defends the political and economic interests of the Lacandóns and personal interests.”
Eight years ago –Xi’Nich adds to its interlocutors of the Diocese– “you condemned the massacre; it surprises us, it angers us that you ask with cries for the liberation of Montoya Oceguera, principal orchestrator of the Viejo Velasco Massacre, as well as the liberation of the comuneros of Nueva Palestina incarcerated for violent acts” like the 2006 massacre and “kidnappings” like that of Julia Carabias this year.
Xi’Nich defines itself as an organization in resistance and part of the National Indigenous Congress (Congreso Nacional Indígena, CNI), composed of Chols, Tzeltals and Zoques. “We have been very respectful and in solidarity –the Network for Peace expresses, to the independent organizations and the authorities of the diocese– in defense of the rights of the indigenous peoples.” It distinguishes the differences of the different actors in the current conflict. “We know the long history of crimes and outrages against our peoples on the part of the Lacandóns and the sub-comuneros of Nueva Palestina, with the approval of the governments.” And it asks: “What interest is there in reviving an agrarian conflict supposedly resolved?”
Such conflict dates from 38 years ago, and was falsely “resolved” in March de 2006 when Governor Pablo Salazar Mendiguchía and the Secretary of Agrarian Reform (SRA), represented in Chiapas by Martha Cecilia Díaz Gordillo, “drum and cymbal” announced “the end” of the problem, and delivered 10 checks to the CZL for a total of 172 million pesos, for the benefit of 25 communities, including those that are now to be evicted, belonging to the ARIC Union of Unions Democratic. On that occasion Flor de Cacao, Ojo de Agua Tzotzil, San Jacinto Lacanjá and Viejo Velasco were “strangely” left out. On November 13 of that year, the latter (Viejo Velasco) “was massacred.”
The comuneros and sub-comuneros of the CZL “did not act alone” in the “criminal and savage acts,” because “the State has protected them, and it has responsibility, as the state’s Attorney testified at the time.” Besides, Xi’Nich points to the residents of the Tzeltal community of Nueva Palestina as “the region’s most violent group,” which “has burned dozens of people alive,” among other cases in Flor de Cacao in 1976, and they have participated in the eviction and relocation of more than 20 communities before 2005. That, “with the intervention of Montoya Oceguera, then the Government delegate (2000-2006) in Benemérito de las Américas (Marqués de Comillas). “Now he has as a reward being an advisor of the Lacandóns,” “for having massacred the Viejo Velasco community.”
Xi’Nich sets itself apart from the CZL. “We do not share nor do we support their struggle, nor are we part of their movement. They have used our name in their struggle; they have used blackmail, violence, force and roadblocks. We roundly condemn these violent methods.”
The organization expresses support for the three communities threatened with relocation and is in solidarity with the Zapatistas, condemning the death of professor Galeano in La Realidad one month ago.
Click here for more background on this issue.
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Originally Published in Spanish by La Jornada
Translation: Chiapas Support Committee
Saturday, June 7, 2014
En español: http://www.jornada.unam.mx/2014/06/07/politica/015n1pol
ARIC-ID and the Lacandóns paralyze Ocosingo
ARIC-ID AND THE LACANDÓNS “PARALYZE” OCOSINGO
Mobilization in Ocosingo
During the month of May, much attention was focused on Chiapas because of the La Realidad paramilitary attack in which Compañero Galeano was brutally murdered, as well as the subsequent homage to Galeano, the disappearance of Marcos as the EZLN’s spokesperson and his reappearance as Subcomandante Insurgente Galeano. There was, however, another big story in Chiapas that took place in May. Thousands of indigenous and campesinos blocked key highways, usually filled with double decker tourist buses and giant Coca Cola trucks, shut down all government offices and hung “CLOSED” signs on the doors of big national chain stores… and, no, they weren’t Zapatistas. They were members of ARIC-ID [1] and the Lacandón Community Zone (LCZ).
In April, a report appeared about an agreement between the Lacandón Community and the ARIC-ID to legalize 3 of ARIC-ID’s communities situated inside the Montes Azules: San Gregorio, Ranchería Corozal and San Salvador Allende. Two other related events took place at the end of April: a Tzeltal was elected president of the Communal Wealth of the LCZ; and, a biologist, Julia Carabias, working in the Lacandón Jungle and inside the Montes Azules reported her own 2-day kidnapping by masked men she could not identify.
Apparently, all of this transpired in late April and early May. On May 15, state government authorities detained and arrested Gabriel Montoya Oseguera, an advisor to the Lacandón Community Zone. Just a couple of days before, the state government had announced that it intended to evict and “relocate” the 3 ARIC-ID communities, despite the historic agreement between ARIC-ID and the Lacandóns. Four days after Montoya Oseguera’s arrest, on May 19, roadblocks appeared on all the major highways leading to and from the municipal capital (county seat) of Ocosingo; only intermittent passage was permitted. ARIC-ID members and Lacandón Community members also shut down all municipal, state and federal government offices, as well as large national chain stores and the Telcel office in the city of Ocosingo, leading the city’s mayor to declare that Ocosingo was “paralyzed.”
In a statement issued following a May 19 meeting in Ocosingo, the majority opinion of the Lacandón Community Zone made the following demands (among several others):
1. Regularization (legalization or titling) of San Salvador Allende, Ranchería Corozal and San Gregorio;
2. Vacating the Tzendales and Chajul Biological Stations, currently occupied by Julia Carabias Lillo and “environmentalist” NGOs; and,
3. The release of Gabriel Montoya Oseguera.
The roadblocks and closures lasted about a week before state officials invited the 2 organizations to appear in Tuxtla Gutiérrez, the state capital, for dialogue. When representatives of ARIC-ID and the LCZ arrived at the Government Palace for “dialogue,” 22 were arrested and placed in the El Amate State Prison. To no one’s surprise, they were released the next evening after the organizations agreed to “suspend” the roadblocks and mobilizations that were paralyzing Ocosingo. A table for dialogue will also take place in Mexico City with Montoya Oseguera’s defense team, as well as a discussion table where organizations from the LCZ will have the opportunity to fully express their frustrations with what’s taking place inside the zone.
That should be an interesting discussion. According to statements issued to local Chiapas media from both ARIC-ID and the LCZ, they believe that the alleged kidnapping of Julia Carabias is a simulation; in other words, they don’t think it actually happened. They believe that it is connected to the opposition of the group of “environmentalists” around Carabias to the election of a Tzeltal president, rather than a more docile Lacandón, to the LCZ’s governing body, which is called the Communal Wealth (Bienes Comunales). They assert that there was a disturbance during the election, when an outside group erupted into their assembly, and they blame the environmental interests.
[Click here to read the history of the Lacandón Community Zone]
When it created the Lacandón Community Zone, the government offered the Chols and Tzeltals settled within the Zone a choice of relocating to certain towns within what it called the “Lacandón Community.” The Tzeltals were offered land in Nueva Palestina and the Choles in Frontera Corozal. Some accepted and some didn’t. However, the Chols and Tzeltals that relocated to those two communities did not have the same rights as the Lacandóns. The government granted them the right to the land as members of the Communal Wealth of the Lacandón Community (the legal governing body), but in order to maintain control in only one group -the most docile, the Lacandóns- it was established in the communal statutes that the president of Communal Wealth would ALWAYS be a representative of the 66 Lacandón families.
As time passed, population growth resulted in the following imbalance: a 2010 census indicates that 40% of the comuneros are Chols, another 40% are Tzeltals, and only 20% belong to the 66 Lacandón families and their descendants. [2] Consequently, for approximately the last 10 years, in the assemblies of the Lacandón Community Zone, these two groups have been demanding more land and want to make decisions inside the assembly.
The Lacandón Community apparently changed its statutes regarding leadership of the Communal Wealth (Bienes Comunales) and, in May, elected a Tzeltal man. They also reached agreement on accepting the legalization of the three ARIC-ID communities within the Montes Azules. And, according to reports from Chiapas, the majority view of the Lacandón Community assembly is that they want Julia Carabias and the environmentalists working with her to leave the Tzendales and Chajul biological stations inside the LCZ. [3]
The “environmentalists”
The Chiapas government has not accepted the result of the recent election of a Tzeltal president to guide the LCZ, its interests apparently linked to various groupings and interests lumped into the term “environmentalists.” According to documents published in the Chiapas press, the environmentalists include: the Natura Mexicana, the NGO founded by Julia Carabias, the Ford Foundation, the Mesoamerican Biological Corridor and the state and federal governments, which, as ARIC-ID points out, receive some of their funding from US-AID. [4] The majority report from the LCZ is in agreement. There is dissent from some members of the traditional Lacandón families that live in Nahá, Metzabok and Lacanjá Chansayab. According to the report from Angeles Mariscal in Chiapas Paralelo, it is only members of those 66 Lacandón families that have benefitted from the money paid to them from funds controlled by the environmentalists.
The blockage of Ocosingo highways and shut down of government offices for days became a huge story in Chiapas. The highways that were intermittently blocked brought all travel in eastern Chiapas to a frustrating crawl. Some of the actors in this drama (both the Lacandóns and the residents of Nueva Palestina) have played the role of villains vis a vis the Zapatista and other indigenous communities in the Jungle. Nonetheless, it would appear that they are entering a new stage, and assuming it is sincere, the position of wanting the “environmentalist” NGOs to vacate the bioprospecting stations would probably be welcomed by the Zapatista communities. And, finally, among the roads blocked were those giving access to La Garrucha and San Manuel. Therefore, we’ll follow the story and see how it unfolds.
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By: Mary Ann Tenuto-Sánchez. Chiapas Support Committee
[1] Rural Association of Collective Interest-Independent and Democratic (Asociación Rural de Interés Colectivo Independiente y Democrático), a campesino (peasant) organization in the Lacandón Jungle of Chiapas
[3] Attachment in Voces Mesoamericanos:
http://vocesmesoamericanas.org/2014/05/23/zona-lacandona-la-movilisazion-sigue/
[4] Attachment in Voces Mesoamericanos: http://vocesmesoamericanas.org/2014/05/23/zona-lacandona-la-movilisazion-sigue/
Zapatista News Summary for May 2014
COMPAÑERO GALEANO MURDERED IN LA REALIDAD ATTACK; MARCOS DISAPPEARS AND BECOMES SCI “GALEANO”
Marcos wearing eye patch with skull.
The assassination of José Luis Solís López (Compañero Galeano), the EZLN’s response, the national and international protests that followed, the day of homage and the disappearance of the personage called Marcos have dominated the news this month. We’ll attempt to summarize events about which hundreds of thousands, possibly millions of words have been written in many languages…
On May 2, 2014, members of the Independent Central of Agricultural Workers and Campesinos Historic (CIOAC-H, its initials in Spanish), as well as members of the Green Ecologist Party of Mexico (PVEM) and the National Action Party (PAN) attacked civilian Zapatista support bases in the Zapatista Caracol of La Realidad. They first attacked some Zapatista bases that were arriving in the Caracol with stones and clubs. Next, they destroyed an autonomous school and clinic, most likely to draw the Zapatistas out of the offices in which they were meeting. They were meeting to resolve a dispute between the Good Government Junta and the CIOAC-H over a truck owned by the Junta that had been retained by the CIOAC-H. Two members of the Frayba Human Rights Center were present at the meeting and were eyewitnesses to the events.
Upon hearing the attack, the Zapatistas came out of the meeting. Compañero Galeano, a Zapatista support base and teacher at the Zapatista Escuelita, was attacked with clubs, machetes and firearms. According to the EZLN communiqué, Pain and Rage, he was brutally and intentionally murdered in a planned and premeditated military-style attack. Another 15 Zapatistas were injured, some seriously. Subcomandate Moisés cancelled all scheduled public events, including the meeting with indigenous peoples and organizations of the National Indigenous Congress and the homage that they had prepared for compañero Don Luis Villoro Toranzo, as well as participation in the Seminar “Ethics in the face of Dispossession,” that was being organized by artists and intellectuals in Mexico and the world. The Escuelitas were also suspended.
The Good Government Junta turned the matter of the murder and attack over to the EZLN’s commanders, the CCRI-CG.
The commanders went to La Realidad and on May 13 released the first results of their investigation in the Fragments of La Realidad I communiqué. They also announced a day of homage to Galeano on May 24.
In Mexico and throughout the world, students from the Escuelitas and adherents to the Sixth organized letters of support denouncing the attack and murder. In the United States a national sign-on letter circulated that also called for protest actions. In the Bay, we held a successful Rally at the Mexican Consulate in San Francisco.
Marcos made an appearance in La Realidad at the May 24 homage. He left and returned a few hours later in the wee hours of May 25 and announced the disappearance of the personage known as Marcos in Between Light and Shadow. He will be known as Subcomandante Insurgente Galeano from now on so that Galeano lives! The significance of this change means that Subcomandante Moisés will be signing those communiqués and will be the EZLN’s spokesperson. Thus, the EZLN will have an Indigenous man as the public face of the collective that is the EZLN.
Also on May 24, Subcomandante Moisés issued a communiqué with more information about the investigation into the crimes in La Realidad. The English translation can be read on Enlace Zapatista.
On May 28, Sup Moisés issued a communiqué with an update on the Little Schools, the need for Peace Campers (campamentistas or international observers) in La Realidad and the need for materials (money to buy them) to replace the autonomous school and clinic in La Realidad.
On May 30, Sup Moisés announced August 2 and 3 as the dates for the “Sharing with Indigenous comapñer@s of the National Indigenous Congress. He also announced that dates for the first and second levels of Escuelitas Zapatistas would be made public very soon.
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Zibechi: Social policies, ethics and the Zapatistas
SOCIAL POLICIES, ETHICS AND THE EZLN
By: Raúl Zibechi
Banner at May 22 Rally at Mexican Consulate in San Francisco
Behind the cowardly murder of the teacher Galeano in La Realidad are the so-called “social policies” inspired in the “fight against poverty” sketched by the World Bank four decades ago, after the United States military defeat in Vietnam. Those policies are one of the axes of the counterinsurgency and of the asymmetric wars designed by the Pentagon for destroying anti-systemic movements.
The key character in the social policies was Robert McNamara. President of Ford first, Secretary of Defense between 1961 and 1968 and later president of the World Bank between 1968 and 1981, he understood that wars are not won with weapons or with sophisticated technologies. In that sense he was against the grain of the dominant thinking among the military and he dedicated all his efforts to implementing new counterinsurgency methods.
With McNamara, the World Bank (WB) was converted into the principal center of the world’s thinking and analysis about poverty and acquired theoretical and political stature, displacing the problem of the distribution of wealth, considered until then –at least on the left– as the hard core of all social, economic and political problems.
As Michael T. Klare pointed out in La guerra sin fin (Barcelona, Noguer, 1974), [1] “the principal purpose of counterinsurgency work should be limited to influencing people’s behavior and conduct.” The social policies were changing through time. From the initial concerns, centered on demographic growth and family planning, they moved towards urbanization of the peripheral barrios and later towards cooptation of the popular organizations.
After the experiences of Pronasol in Mexico and of Prodepine (Proyecto de Desarrollo de los Pueblos Indios y Negros del Ecuador), [2] the social policies and programs were focused more and more on cooptation and domestication of social and popular movements through “organizational strengthening” (explicit policy of the WB), acting directly on the movements’ leaders and bases. The “fight against poverty” transforms dynamic and combative movements into hierarchical organizations to make the counterinsurgency war functional.
A gamut of actions were deployed that range from workshops and formation courses to monetary transfers and the lending of services for the purpose of breaking apart entire popular organizations. Of course, counterinsurgency was not talked about, but rather “empowerment” of the poor, about “participation,” about “mobilization,” and even “autonomy,” when at the end of the 1990s the movements were dodging the barriers of state control.
In that period the World Bank stopped managing the social and work programs so that the movements managed them. Those suited to managing the social policies are those coming from the left and from the movements, because they know them from inside, dominate the rules and methods, they know who to interest, with which leaders to establish relationships and in what way to approach them. In the whole region, be it under progressive or conservative governments, it’s usually former leftists that are at the front of the ministries of social development.
Zapatismo is the only rebel movement that refuses to receive social programs. “We are not beggars,” Subcomandante Insurgente Moisés said at the homage to Compañero Galeano. As the Zapatistas don’t bow down to the government’s charity, disguised as the fight against hunger, the counterinsurgency policy converts what were popular organizations into paramilitary groups for confronting poor against poor. The objective of the asymmetric war is that the Army arrives to “pacify,” (or keep the peace) with blood and fire.
Upon placing dignity at the steering wheel of command, the EZLN works so that the peoples and communities are not converted into an object of state charity, but rather into subjects of the construction of a different world. If they were to accept social policies, the Zapatistas would be undermining the autonomies. Constructing in this way, based on collective efforts, is more dignified than extending their hand to receive crumbs. Zapatismo has made collective dignity their political line and emancipatory horizon.
The old political culture says that dignity is not sufficient for defending oneself from the bullets and death of the system; that they lack material resources for confronting the repressive apparatuses and for constructing socialism. Those resources would be in the State; therefore, the old political culture proposes occupying the State as a shortcut towards a new world. That culture does not admit that that path was already traveled in many places and that it doesn’t lead to the new world, but rather a world of corruption.
By rejecting the social policies Zapatismo bets on the collective work of the peoples as the engine for change. The new world cannot be built except by expropriating the means of production and exchange from the appropriators. But it’s not reduced to that. The new world is the fruit of work, not of handouts. On the recuperated land and factories, collective works are the creators of the new.
Zapatismo has opted for peace, not war. It does not accept the poor confronting the poor. This is, also, an ethical option turned into a method for making politics. In some way, Zapatismo aspires that those of below not let themselves be manipulated by those of above. To the old culture that is something impossible, which is resolved by converting vanguards into subjects. It would also seem impossible that those from below construct the new world with their efforts alone, with dignity, as we were able to verify in la escuelita.
Even so, a third and definitive question remains: ¿how is the new world defended from armed aggressions? It depends on what we are capable of doing in each place, in each moment. The answer is everyone.
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Translator’s Notes:
[1] The English publication is: War without end (New York, Vintage Books, 1972)
[2] Development Projects for the Black and Indian Peoples of Ecuador
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Originally Published in Spanish by La Jornada
Translation: Chiapas Support Committee
Friday, May 30, 2014
http://www.jornada.unam.mx/2014/05/30/opinion/022a2pol
Chiapas Support Committee 