Remembering 28 Years of the EZLN

EZLN: 28 Years of Persistence For An Ideal

Jaime Martínez Veloz

 On November 17, 1983, 28 years ago, a small nucleus of men and women arrived in the heart of the Lacandón Jungle, bringing with them an accumulation of dreams and ideals for transforming Mexico into a just and democratic country. With patience, intelligence and method they linked with the communities and organizations that were living in different regions of Chiapas, as well as with the struggles that for years had fought with indigenous peoples against centuries-old oppression and humiliation. For a resident of Mexico’s urban zones, it is not easy to adapt to jungle conditions, but when higher proposals and firm convictions exist, they tolerate those conditions until achieving the ideals that motivate them.

In a State crossed by social, political and religious contradictions, the work of the original nucleus that impelled the formation and organization of the Zapatista National Liberation Army had to process natural differences and different conceptions around how to conduct the struggle against injustice and oblivion of which the indigenous communities of Mexico have been the object. A lot of work had to be carried out to achieve that on January 1, 1994, Mexico and the world turned over to look at Chiapas and had to recognize that the issue of the relationship of the Mexican State with its original peoples is a pending issue that has been outside of the national agenda.

The impact of the armed Zapatista Uprising mobilized Mexican society to oblige the State to dialogue with the insurgents to resolve the causes that required indigenous Chiapanecos to take up arms as the ultimate means to achieve the resolution of their centuries-old demands and their cries for justice.

The transcendence of the insurgent actions motivated the then PRI candidate, Luis Donaldo Colosio, to hold a more committed definition than any leader of that party had held, when in his March 6, 1994 speech in front of the Monument to the Revolution, he proposed: “We PRI members must reflect before Chiapas. As a part of stability and social justice it shames us to notice that we were not sensitive to the great complaints from our communities; that we were not at their side in their aspirations; that we were not at the height of the commitment that they hope for from us. It is the hour of doing justice to our indigenous peoples, of overcoming their backlogs and lacks; of respecting their dignity. It is the hour of celebrating a new pact by the Mexican State with the indigenous communities.”

After his assassination, this definition was filed in the forgotten box.

During the term of President Ernesto Zedillo, an intense negotiating process between the federal government and the EZLN was produced, where the National Mediation Commission (Conai, its Spanish acronym) played a relevant role. Bishop don Samuel Ruiz headed the Conai. The Congress of the Union, by conduct of the Cocopa had a relevant role; the figures of Heberto Castillo and Luis H. Álvarez were the principal support.

After an arduous negotiating process, the federal government and the EZLN addressed the first theme from the agenda agreed to by the parties, the theme of “Indigenous Rights and Culture,” and signed what today are known as the Accords of San Andrés Larráinzar, which were not recognized by ex President Zedillo, brandishing lies and false statements that hid the underground strategy that the federal government was impelling, for delivering assets, territory and sovereignty. In this way, seaports, airports, mining concessions, banks, railroads, satellites, energy production, oil exploration and the natural gas business were delivered to transnationals, some of which contracted the former president’s services and several of his closest collaborators. The EZLN was not only betrayed by the Mexican State, it was also persecuted, stigmatized and on several occasions has suffered the attempt at larger actions for the purpose of dealing a blow that could annihilate it or, at least, reduce it to a minimum.

Because of all that, the Zapatistas decided to carry out a strategy that would permit them to consolidate their communitarian structures, to establish mechanisms to resolve their issues and eventual internal differences, as well as with other organizations close to their communities. In this way, in 2003 the good government juntas were born, which have permitted them to strengthen their internal work and, at the same time, bring to a head important tasks in the areas of salud, education, food production and development of agricultural projects, despite their modest resources.

The enormous economic spill that the Federation has invested in Chiapas after the armed insurrection has been made public, where, paradoxically, those who exposed their life live in the same communities with the same lacks as in times previous to the uprising. Thanks to the EZLN, Chiapas now has an infrastructure that it did not have before January 1, 1994. Nevertheless, despite the needs of each community the ideal of one day achieving peace with justice and dignity continues alive that keeps them at the foot of the struggle, resisting in the most adverse conditions, interweaving dreams and longings, guided by the Zapatista ideal in effect that has kept them united for 28 years.

An affectionate hug to all the Zapatistas on this anniversary of their insurgent formation, as much to the support bases as to the general command, with the wish that some day their ideals of justice and liberty may take shape in the Mexican Constitution and are converted into a reality.

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Originally Published in Spanish by La Jornada

Friday, November 18, 2011

Para leer en español: http://www.jornada.unam.mx/2011/11/18/opinion/024a2pol

History and Time Prove EZLN Right

History and Time Prove EZLN Right

 By: Jaime Martínez Veloz

Para leer en español: http://www.jornada.unam.mx/2011/11/04/opinion/024a1pol

On February 16, 1996, the federal government and the EZLN signed the agreement on matters of indigenous rights and culture. It was the first theme on the agreed-upon agenda between the Zapatista delegation and its government counterpart. Arriving at that moment was the result of multiple collective and individual efforts. Many provocations had to be dodged, to be able to achieve a first agreement that permitted sheltering a hope for changes in our country.

After a few weeks, the expectations were radically modified: the attitude of ex president Zedillo changed, his conduct expressed irritation and what was agreed upon by his government’s delegation was not known publicly, while what was that agreed to in San Andrés was disqualified through a media offensive seldom seen. With a campaign of lies and fraudulent interpretations of the San Andrés Accords, he accused the EZLN and the Cocopa of wanting to create a “State within the State.”

In the 2000 [presidential] Campaign, Vicente Fox promised to resolve the conflict with the Zapatistas in 15 minutes and to send to the Congress of the Union the initiative in matters of indigenous rights and culture, which the Cocopa had formulated, with support in the San Andrés Accords. Nevertheless, the same arguments managed by Zedillo were imposed and terminated por denaturizing that agreed on between the federal government and the EZLN. The Fox government’s action, of sending the initiative to the Senate of the Republic, merely fulfilled his campaign propaganda.

One of the agreements in San Andrés, included the legislative initiative, points out that the “indigenous peoples of Mexico will have the right to the use and enjoyment of the natural resources of their lands and territories, except for those that are the dominion of the nation.” This paragraph, which does not contain any risk to the country and that vindicates the just longings of indigenous Mexicans, was used by the official propaganda of the Fox and Zedillo governments to accuse the Zapatistas of attempting to Balkanize the country.

What happened in Mexico in the 15 years previous to the San Andrés Accords permits us to see where the causes of irritation were for the governments of Vicente Fox and Ernesto Zedillo. Upon sending the Indigenous Law initiative to the Congress of the Union, seeking the mere media effect, the Fox government secretly granted permits to the US oil company Halliburton –property of then Vice President of the United States, Dick Cheney– to perforate wells in the Mexican Southeast, especially in Chiapas and Tabasco.

While the governmental propaganda of Ernesto Zedillo and Vicente Fox never tired of accusing the EZLN of wanting to appropriate the resources that belong to the nation, they delivered mining concessions to both Mexican corporations and foreign ones, whose business model favors their owners, not the country; the only tax that mining companies pay to Mexico is the ridiculous amount of five pesos per hectare (about a penny per acre). No tax exists that burdens the profits of those corporations. Mexico is a paradise for these companies, whose mines are located on lands of indigenous and ejidal (collective) communities. As a sample we can mention the mine of gold, copper and silver del National Agrarian Flatland Ejido of Mexicali, with proven reserves of almost 300 tons of metals. The owner of that concession pays the ejido owners 11, 000 pesos ($1,100.00 dollars) a year for rent. Even so, the power of attorney has the impudence to assert that the ejido owners “are not the owners of anything,” that the nation is the owner, but omits saying that the benefits and profits of that natural resource are not for the nation, but for the corporation that he represents.

Starting with the signing of the San Andrés Accords, officials from the areas of finance, energy and communications from the three previous governments have constituted the principal line of attack against them. Curiously, said officials now appear as members of the administrative councils of the energy and mining transnationals. Luis Téllez Kuenzler, former Energy Secretary and former Secretary of Communications and Transportation (SCT); Carlos Ruiz Sacristán, another former SCT Secretary; Gilberto Hershberger Reyes, former assistant secretary for Ordering of Rural Property in the Agrarian Reform Ministry, and Antonio Lozano Gracia, the former Attorney General of the Republic that requested the expedition of arrest warrants against the Zapatista leadership, are, among others, some of the former officials that are now members of the executive boards or the legal office of transnationals, those who have benefitted many of them (the transnationals) during their time in the public administration positions that they have occupied.

Vicente Fox’s statement comparing the EZLN’s struggle with drug trafficking sounds ridiculous within this context and has an air of provocation. That comparison offends indigenous peoples’ centuries-long struggles and demonstrates that he did not have a genuine interest in resolving an ancestral problem of deep Mexico. Placing subcomandante Marcos as “a criminal” is an absurdity from the ex president that at the start of his term of office, in his clumsy and awkward way, declared that the Sup was his “friend.” With friends like that who needs enemies. Maybe because of that, the Zapatistas have been suspicious of relationships with government personnel, because one never knows when they are going to bite you.

One of the few opportunities that the Republic has of walking through less thorny paths is to look to the best of our past and our recent history. For that the Accords of San Andrés Larráinzar constitute one of the most important reference points for reconstructing a large part of the social fabric, now torn by poverty and insecurity.

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Originally Published in Spanish by La Jornada

Saturday, November 4, 2011

http://www.jornada.unam.mx/2011/11/04/opinion/024a1pol

Translation: Chiapas Support Committee

Interview with Gustavo Esteva in Oaxaca

Para leer en español:  http://www.jornada.unam.mx/2011/09/13/politica/011n2pol

Oaxaca, “Trapped” by Violence Exercised by the State: Gustavo Esteva

** “Terrible, the condition of the indigenous; that encourages emigration”

By: Alonso Urrutia y Octavio Vélez, Envoy and correspondent

Oaxaca, Oaxaca, September 12, 2011

During recent years Oaxaca has confronted an “extreme violence,” which goes beyond that which the country currently suffers, with the aggravating factor “that it is a violence that essentially comes from the State, with a guaranty of impunity” to those who directly exercise it, assured Gustavo Esteva, member of the Coordination of the Citizen Space for Justice and Truth in this state.

Attacks on social strugglers co-exist with those that originate from the “economic order,” whose objective centers on stealing land from indigenous communities for the purpose of exploitation, coming from, among others, mining companies, Esteva added, who says that 800, 000 hectares have been sold in concessions to different companies, with the goal of taking the indigenous peoples away violently, “but that is not going to be permitted” by the organizations.

About the situation that prevails in Oaxaca, within the context of the passage of the Caravan for Peace, Esteva pointed out that the state has suffered a political decomposition, tied to the theme of security in the recent 15 years, aggravated by the “psychopathic tyranny” of Ulises Ruiz. Oaxaca is trapped in violence exercised by the State.

“We can say that it is a systematic repression, a strategy of intimidation of the people, of control of will, of domination. In the state, police, politician and criminal are interchangeable terms,” he indicated.

–Repression?

–It’s not only repression. It’s something more –responds Esteva, to denounce the State’s collusion with criminality.

“A clear example of this coexistence is the murder of the human rights defender Bety Cariño in San Juan Copala, in charge of paramilitaries financed by the State, on a humanitarian aid caravan. Some time later there was another caravan to the place, in the state’s attorney general participated, that could not reach Copala either, with the argument that the paramilitaries were there, the same ones that were financed by the State itself. That is Oaxaca. It is difficult to distinguish between what is criminal and what is institutional.”

–¿Is there an impunity in a sense different than that occurring on the national scale?

–There is collusion between criminals and the State here. One can refer to the criminals and the police and they are the same person. Today the difference is that in Oaxaca we have lost the fear of fear. In thousands of communities the violence that permeates other states has not been able to prosper, because of the strength of the social fabric, of the community organization, it is there where the solution is.”

State violence, he emphasized, had its most emblematic expression on November 25, 2006, when it acted against the then popular movement, with a result of deaths and injuries. “In reality it was when that Felipe Calderón war started, because it was a concerted action with the Ulises Ruiz government, which knew how to pressure it with the logic that if the fall of a governor was permitted, afterwards would come that [the fall] of a president.”

The condition of the indigenous is “terrible, and that has encouraged a strong migration that, paradoxically, is what permitted recuperating the ability to plant in the field, because the remittances are used to finance it (planting),” he pointed out.

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Originally Published in Spanish by La Jornada

Tuesday, September 13, 2011

http://www.jornada.unam.mx/2011/09/13/politica/011n2pol

Sicilia or the Power of Discourse

Sicilia or the Power of Discourse

By: Lorenzo Meyer

August 4, 2011 | Para leer esta columna en español, haga clic aquí

The Struggle for Legitimacy

In the last twenty years, there are two political discourses that have had a big impact in Mexico and even outside of Mexico, because of their ability to condense the grievances of a significant part of society: that of the rebels that formed the Zapatista National Liberation Army (EZLN) and the one that the Movement for Peace with Justice and Dignity (MPJD) is now constructing. The analysis and the memorial of grievances formulated by the EZLN and the MPJD awaken the interest and solidarity of many –and the hatred of some– because they contrast in a radical way with the form and content of the exhausted, irrelevant and not so credible discourse of those who govern the country: politicians, big business, foreign diplomats or religious leaders.

The EZLN’s discourse of the 1990s was accompanied by the use of arms, although they were few and never decisive (for an authentic armed challenge to the government or the armies of drug traffickers). The real damage to Salinas and the PRI regime was caused by the insurgents’ words and symbolic actions. Someone from Zedillo’s cabinet mocked the EZLN by classifying it as an “internet guerrilla,” without understanding that precisely there resided their intelligence and authentic force, in the social and historic arguments about ethics, with which it bared the poverty and falseness of neoliberal technocrat discourse –that which calls itself “social liberalism” in order to translate and make its harshness and submission to the “Washington Consensus” acceptable.

No one, from the heights of the government, the parties or big business or from the other arenas of the establishment, could refute efficiently the accusations by the Indigenous Chiapas rebels.

From the beginning the EZLN elected the playing field and took the initiative on the discussion with which it confronted the government: the centennial grievance of the original [indigenous] communities of Mexico. With its famous document: “For what are you going to pardon us; for not dying of hunger; for not being quiet in our misery…“ of January 18, 1994, neo-Zapatismo set aside an important part of Mexican and international society, and the technocrats could not thoroughly use their armed superiority to smash them. Some time ago the EZLN was isolated by a political-military circle and has stopped being at the center of Mexican political discussion, but it survives, it cannot be destroyed, and what still sustains it is the force of its discourse.

Different than the EZLN, the MPJD’s strength does not reside, not even symbolically, in rebellion and military force. To the contrary, its efficacy is rooted in a thorough criticism of arms, those of organized crime as well as those of the government, the first by brutal criminals and the second by also inefficient government instances.

The MPJD’s robustness comes from its decision and ability to give voice to a fed up general public –the now famous “we are up to here”– because of senseless criminal and governmental violence, on the rise and where the victims –criminals, police, soldiers and innocents– now add up to 50, 000 in a little less than 5 years.

The pen of the poet that organized and is at the front of the MPDJ, Javier Sicilia, today plays the same role as that Subcomandante Marcos played for the EZLN. The two are dipped in the ink of a religious thinking that after 500 years has undeniable resonance in Mexico. In fact, the word of Subcomandante Marcos was endorsed because of his commitment to the causes of indigenous Chiapanecos, that of Sicilia because of the horror and senseless murder of a son and of all the deaths that the “Calderón War” has caused and continues causing.

The Naked King

There are three fundamental discourses of Sicilia: that presented on May 8 in Mexico City’s Zócalo and the two with which he opened the meetings in Chapultepec, the first with Felipe Calderón on June 23 and the second with the representatives of the Legislative Power on July 28. The ideas formulated by Sicilia and that resonate, that have an echo among a good number of Mexicans, are many but can be summed up in one very general and fundamental [idea]: the content of the exercise of power is so distant from the interests of the bulk of the Mexican people that it turns out to be illegitimate and harmful.

In the Zócalo, Sicilia set forth and demanded that the victims stop being numbers for parts of the government and that their names be returned to them, their individuality, and that the significance of each one of those deaths be evaluated. Deaths [that are the] product of an absurd war, carried out by a profoundly corrupt governmental structure, unrepresentative and that at each one of its levels maintains ties with the criminal world that it claims to combat.

The MPJD’s June meeting with Felipe Calderón and part of his cabinet was historic, without precedent. There, Javier Sicilia said directly to him, literally in his face, to the Executive Power, that, in his position (as president) he was obligated to ask the nation in general and the victims of violence in particular for pardon, for a war between you [the rulers] and the drug traffickers” but “that is not our war.” That war was declared without previously having made “a profound political reform and a cleansing of institutions,” rotten institutions, and therefore the result means an injustice to a society that is paying a very high price for the lack of responsibility of a political class that has given priority to the security of institutions and not to human security, all of which has spilled over into a national emergency.

In the last meeting of the MPJD with the leadership of Congress at Chapultepec on July 28, the document with which Sicilia opened the meeting emphasized the lack of representativeness of our representative democracy. And that is not a “poetic truth” but a hard truth that the polls endorse: those called “popular representatives,” senators and deputies, are found at the bottom of the evaluations made by Mexican citizens (See the June 2011 Mitofsky Poll).

To the legislators, Javier Sicilia threw in their face that at times they act under the supposition that: “we citizens are idiots” and he accused them of being attentive not to the rhythms and beats of the heart of the country” but to their privileges and to “the partyocracy and petty interests” and pretending, “together with the criminals and other de facto (behind-the-scenes) powers, of kidnapping the nation’s democratic aspirations and the hope of wellbeing.” He also accused the Congress of being co-responsible for the 50, 000 deaths, 10, 000 disappearances, 120, 000 displaced and the insecurity of millions that have caused the illegal war against drug trafficking, illegal because the Executive made the decision to carry it on without asking for Congress’ permission and, once that decision was made, the legislators have done nothing to impede it, to stop the evil. Nor are they doing what they should to remedy the damage done. Because of all that, they, lacking as legislators, are obliged to publicly ask for pardon and, besides, to act in those very concrete fields that the MPJD has been demanding for doing justice for the victims –Mexicans and Central Americans–, to repair the institutions, to open genuinely hopeful horizons for youth and, finally to start to give political activity, especially facing next year’s elections, dignity, legitimacy and utility lost a long time ago. That not being the case, in 2012 we will have “an dishonorable government that will again administer the challenge of organized crime and distribute the country’s territory among factious powers, political employees, cartels and military forces.” The key term here is “again,” which implies that the terrible definition of the Mexico of today will persist.

The Finishing Touch

The truths expressed by Javier Sicilia in his three discourses are not really directed at the powerful, but at the citizen. They are not after all, all the truths that make up today’s Mexico, but all of them are resounding truths that have value by themselves and also because they are formulated from a dimension that did not seek to make politics in the ignoble sense that that term has among us. We are clearly dealing with a political phenomenon, but in the best sense of the term, that is only seen now and then: as an effort to transform a national tragedy into an energy that doesn’t seek positions but forging a collective conscience capable of imposing citizen dignity faced with a power that historically has done everything to negate it.

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Originally Published in Spanish by Reforma at http://www.reforma.com/editoriales/nacional/619/1236335/

Translation: Chiapas Support Committee/Comité de Apoyo a Chiapas

P.O. Box  3421, Oakland, CA  94609

Email: cezmat@igc.org

http://www.chiapas-support.org
http://www.facebook.com/pages/Chiapas-Support-Committee-Oakland/86234490686