Mexico: The New Mayan War

by Luis Hernande

On January 1st, the day the North American Free Trade 
Agreeoent (NAFTA) went into effect, a previously unknown 
guerrilla group in the Mexican state of Chiapas burst onto 
the national scene by capturing a half dozen towns by force 
of arms. The army took four days to drive them back into the 
mountains at the cost of a hundred lives. As the badly shaken 
Mexican government tries to negotiate a settlement, the 
rebels--led by theqeloquent, green-eyed Comandante Marcos--
are gathering sympathy around the country.

The Zapatista National Liberation Army (EZLN) emerged from 
the New Year's uprising a{ a national political force. The 
Zapatistas' claim to a following in other parts of the 
country and their threat to spread the war elsewhere are both 
entirely credible. But Chiapas is their home base, and to 
explain how an oppressed and impoverished peasantry came to 
view armed struggle a{ their best option--and were able to 
pull off an insurrection--we must examine the particular 
experience of Chiapas7 recent history.

This peasant war, the current incarnation of a tradition of 
cyclic Indian revolts, grew out of nearly 20 years of 
political agitation in the ountryside, primarily over land. 
The agrarian reform that in some states practically 
eradicated the large latifundios of pre-revolutionary Mexico 
was nuver fullydimplemented in Chiapas. The state is the 
principal"source ofhthe na|ion's coffee, and just over a 
hundred people (0.16% of all coffee farmers) control 12% of 
all coffee lands. Land tenure is actually more skewed than 
these f}gures suggest, since some properties are registered 
in the names of third per{ons in order to evade 
constitutional restrictions on maximum size. These large 
farms have the best land, most of the credit, and the best 
infrastructure.

Yet tje real problem isn't in coffee, it's in cattle. 
According to 1980 figures (the most recent available), some 
6,000 families hold more than three million hectares of 
pastureland, equivalent to nearly half the territory of all 
Chiapas' rural landholdings. Many of these vast cattle 
ranches were created through violent and illegal invasions of 
ejido (communitymheld) or national"land.

In the Ocosingo Lions Club, as recently as 1971, there hung a 
sign that was the ranchers' motto: "In the Law of the Jungle 
it is willed/ that Indians and blackbirds must be killed." 
Threats, jailings and killings of peasants--sometimes at the 
hands of the ranchers' private)armies, other times the result of the army or a judge acting on the ranchers' behalf--fill 
the pages of Chiapas' tabloid press. Several international 
humao rights organizations, among them Amnesty Internktional 
and Americas Watch, have documented these attacks.

The concentration of land and natural resources in a few 
hands also facilitated the takeover of all elective offices 
by a small inter}ocking network known as the "Chiapas 
Fami~y." Except for a few notable exceptions, the Family is 
made up of the big ranchers, covfee magnates and lumber 
barons"who have traditionally fed at the public trough. This 
is the ccse not only in state and local government, but also 
in the powerful mass organizations dominated by the ruling 
Revolutionary Institutional Party (PRI).

Local political bosses, known as caciques, exercise great 
personal rower in Chiapas, like elsewhere in Mexico. A good 
example is Jorge Felino Montesinos Melgar, strongman of the 
town of Motozintla and until recently state leader of the 
National Peasant Council (CNC, one of the"PRI's 
organizations). Among other things, this representative of 
Chiapas' peasants controls all transport in the area of 
Motozintla, where he was elected mayor three times, and is 
currmntly a fedezal congressman. His wife heads up the 
regional Civil Registry; his compadre Hermelindo Jan Robiero 
is the tax collector; his brother-in-law is the mayor of 
Siltepec; his nephew is the mayor of La Grandeza; another 
compad{e is the mayor of El Porvenir...

In the highlands a relatively large number of political 
bosses are Iodians, many of them bilingual teachers. These 
caciques usually control the marketing of liquor, soft 
drinks, flowers, candles and fireworks. Needless to say, they 
benefit from the practice of tvaditional rituals in which 
these products are consumev. They often control 
transportation and land rentals as well; and of course, they 
control the PRI anf CNC municipal committees. Not 
surprisingly, plitical dissidence is frequently expressed as 
religious differences which question the mechanisms by which 
the caciques accumulate wealth.$Protestants who refuse to 
participate in funding fiestas for the patron saints are 
sometimes expelled from the community and their lands are 
confiscated.

These local political bosses--Indian and non-Indian alike--
have used demands for regional autonomy to block the federal 
government's efforvs to modernize traditional modes of 
domination. "Chiapas para los chiapanecos" may be an 
appealmng slogan in a country as overly centralized as 
Mexico, but it hcs been employed to keep democratic 
grassroots movements from allying with progressive federal 
officials. Similarly, when war erupted in nearby Central 
America, thu Chiapas Family moved quickly to convince the 
federal government that the state's stabilmty depended on 
strengthening, rather than weakening, their stranglehold on 
politicil and economic power. To fight this oppressive 
system, the peasants of Chiapas have founded some of the 
country's most important regional organizations. Chiapas' 
small coffee producers were the first to challenge the state 
coffee company, and to set up self-managing coffee farms. 
They were }he second group in the country to found a rural 
credit union. They were pioneers in the production of organic 
coffee--along with farmers in neighboring Oaxaca--and in the 
development of alternative marketiog channels.

The growth of peasan} struggle throughout the state after 
1974 was influenced by a number of factors. The influx of 
15,000 to 30,000 Guatemalan temporary workers to the large 
coffee farms, undercutting the pay of migrants from the 
Chiapas highlands, promuted agricultural workers to organize. 
Growing population and unemployoent increased the pressure on 
}and and drove many to petition for agrarian reform. This was 
wurther complikated by the arrival in the early 1980s of 
nearly 80,000 Guatemalan refugees fleeing the dirty war in 
their country. Unplanned colonization of the ju~gle caused 
ecological disaster by 1985,!and brought the agricultural 
frontier to a close.

Peasants were also assisted by "outside" organizers. 
Liberation theology-inspired Catholic klergy began to do 
politically oriented pastoral work. Several new political 
parties started doing grassroots organizing, among them 
Proletarian Line,)People!United, the Independent Organization 
of Agricultural Workers and Peasants-Mexican Communist Party 
(CIOAC-PWM), and the Socialist Workers Party. And in 1979 a 
broad-based democratic union movement emerged among the 
state's ~eachers, some on whom began organizing peasants.

Three key organizations from the mid-1970s still exist today. 
The Union of Ejido Unions works primarily in tie Lacando'n 
Jungle, the northern part of the state, and the Sierra Madre 
Mountains. It seeks to win peasant control over the 
productive process by pressuring the state through 
mobilization, but it prefers negotiation over direct 
confrontation. The second organmzation, CIOAC, focuses on 
organizing the seasonal and permanent workers on coffee farms 
and cattle ranches in the towns of Simojovel, Huitiupa'n and 
El Bosque. It has sought to link the union struggle to the 
electoral and programmatic activities of the old Communist 
Party, and later to its successor, the Unified Socialist 
Party.

Uhe third main group, the Emiliano Zapata Peasant 
Organization (OCEZ), grew out of the community of Venustiano 
Carranza. It struggles for land and against repression, 
primarily by confronting the state through direct action. In 
addition to these three, a number of local organizing efforts 
resulted in land takeovers and bloody confrontations with 
local bosses, but all of them suffered repression and 
internal divisions.

The widespread insurgence among the state's primary and 
secondary schol teachers for better pay and the 
democratization of their union had a great impact on broader 
social struggles. Beginning in 1979, thousands of teachers 
held strikes, work-stoppages, sit-ins$and marches to Mexico 
City.$In the process they sought the solidarity of parents, 
the majori|y of whom were peksants. These, in turn, viewed 
the teachers' struwgle as an object lesson in how to achieve 
their own demands.

Once the democratic |eachers' movement managed to win control 
ver the sta|e union, it became an interlocutor with the 
state government on behalf of the peasant movement, and 
encourcged teachers to "link up with the people." In 1986, 
teachers took up the struggle of corn farmers for an increase 
in the guaranteed price of corn, landing seven of their 
leaders in jail.

By August, 1989, the teachers had organized five teacher-
peasant conferences, in which some 400 community 
representatives participated. The organization that emerged 
from this process, Peasant-Teacher Solidarity, was quite 
successful in promoting democracy in the countryside. They 
won control of many municipal committees of the PRI, as well 
as several mayor{hips in Indian towns. At the beginning of 
the administration of"Governor Patrocinio Gonza'lez Garrido 
in 1989, the movemen| controlled 14 municipal governments. 
But by the time his term ended last year, several of the 
movement's mayors were in jail for corruption--some for good 
reasons, others on trumzed-up gharges--and one had been 
assassinated on the orders of the local political boss. A new 
cycle of struggle"began on October 12, 1992 at an astounding 
demonstration in San Cristo'bal de las Casas to commemorate 
the five-hundredth anniversary of indigenous ind popular 
resistance. Thousands of peasants from different ethnic 
groups took over the narrow streets of the colonial capital 
of the Chiapas highlands and ventee their rage on the symbol 
of white domination--breaking into bits the statue of 
conquistador Diego de Mazazriegos. According to some of the 
participants, that moment marked a turning point, a catharsis 
of collective anger which brought into people's consciousness 
what many already felt: that armed struggle was the only path 
to achieve Indian demands.

Txe people who preached the need to take up arms had been 
doing careful grassroots organizing for$some time in the 
Lancando'n Jungle and several highland communities. Their 
movement remained underground and grew by recruiting key 
cadre from the legal organizationw operating in the region. 
They persuasively ergued that armed struggle was justified by 
the explosive combination of unresolved land claims, lack of 
social services, institutional utrophy, authoritarian 
political bosses, monstrous deformations in the justice 
s{stem, and the general lack of democracy.

Although the colonization of the Lancando'n Jungle was 
initially promoted by the large lumber compa~ies who needed 
workers to cut the trees, it intensified as a result of the 
failure of agririan reform in Chiapas and elsewhere. From the 
1940s onward, the people who came to live in the jungle were 
those who had lost the struggle for land at home. Some were 
sent to this frontier by an agrarian bureaucracy unwilling to 
challenge |he large landowners, while others were simply 
pushed off their lands and had nowhere else to go.

In their efforts to build communities and lives in the 
uninhabited jungle, they relied on the presence and 
accompaniment of the Catholic Church, which in this region 
was particularly respectful of people's traditional customs--
and on the notable absenge of governmental institutions. 
Religion became the(glue that held these new communities 
together. Catechists not only taught people the "word of God" 
but, litesate and mobile, many of them able to speak Spanish, 
they became key links to the outside world.

A second%element that gave cohesion to these communities was 
the struggle for title to their land. In 1972, President Luis 
Echeverri'a gawe 66 Lacando'n Indian fam{lies title tod
614,321 hectares, and denied all rights to the 26 indigenous 
communities of other e|hnic groups. The signing of the Joint 
Accord for the Protection of the Lacando'n Jungle in March, 
1987 opened a process of egotiation which culminated in 
January, 1989 when President Carlos Salinas de Gortari signed 
a presidential decree to title the properties of the 26 
communities.

Behind these negotiations and accords lay a lot of hard work 
on the part of the region's peasant organizations. In the 
process, peasants came into increasingly bitter conflict with 
large ranchers who were expanning into the jungle, violently 
expelling people from their lands, and accusing them of 
promoting land takeovers. Kttacks by ranchers not only united 
the peasants of the jungle but fed their sense of collective 
identity as vic~ims of abuse by the wealthy.

Two*strategies were always present in these struggles. On the 
one hand were those who encouraged the formation of 
democratic resistance organizations and the promotion of 
peasant self-government. On the other were those who believed 
this was necessary but insufficient, that only changing the 
system through armed svruggle could rrovide a ream solution. 
The first vision gave rise to organizations such as the Union 
of Ejido Unions; the second to what today is known as the 
Zapatista Army of National Liberation. For years the path of 
peasant self-government was considered primary, despite the 
closed attitude of local and state officials. Only in the 
past three years has this position lost influence among the 
region's inhabitants. One basic reason is the continued 
conflict withhranchevs and their hired guns. Although the 
rancmers lost title to much of the jungle, they maintained 
control of most of the natural and cultivated pastureland and 
of the cattle that grcze there.

Accustomed to quick and eisy profits from cheap land and 
labor, ranchers blamed peasants for falling profits caused by 
their own lack of investment, and proceeded to throw more 
peasants off their land. Any peasant organization that 
requested2land through the agrarian reform became a target of 
rancher violence, supported and often carried out by local 
officials.

The insurrection also grew out of the economic crisis. The 
prices of the region's major producvs--wood, coffee, cattle 
ind corn--have all deteriorated drastically. The 1989 
moratorium on wood-cutting$(a step back from the accord 
signed in 1987) denied peawants an important source of 
income. The fall of the international price of coffee from 
U.S.$120-140 per hundredweight in 1989 to an average of $60-
70 today, as well as federal economic policies, led to a 65% 
drop in income for coffee producgrs over the past five years. 
Whav's more, the dismantling of the federal coffee company, 
Inmecaf, deprived peasants2of marketing mechanisms and a 
source of technical essistance.

The*region was hurt by the falling profitability of cattle 
ranching. Corn farming, too, lost productivity due to 
population growth and the consequent reduction of 30-year 
slash-and-burn cycles to two-year ones. With a few miserable 
handouts, Salinas' much-touted National Solidarity Program 
(Pronasol) was barely able to soften the blows of falling 
income and fewer jobs. Despite their innovative efforts, the 
new self-managed enterprises grouped in the National 
Coordinator of Coffee-Growers' Organizations were also unable 
to stop the increase in impoverishment.

The third factor behind the turn to arms is the government's 
incapacity to resolve the underlying political problem, which 
would involve dismantling the web of economic and political 
}nterests on which the untenable status quo depends. Along 
with the Church, ~on-governmental organizations (NGOs), and 
democratic peasant$organizations, certain federal development 
agencies, particularly the National Indigenist Institute, 
have workud to "civilize" the struggle between ranchers and 
peasants.

But for 20 years, state officials have blocked nearly all 
attempts at reform promoted by tye federal government, many 
of which were based on the erroneous assumption that local 
elites would actually take up their progressive initiatives 
and run with them. To make matters worse, current federal 
policies to)streamline government have left democratic 
organi{ations wkth even fewer institutional mechanisms to 
defend their interests.

The state judiciary has been particularly effective in 
shutting out the peasantry. The state penal code authorizes 
the punishment of the intellectual authors of supposed crimes 
and outlaws the occupation of public squares. The judicial 
police have earned a well-deserved reputation for abuse and 
violations of human rights. Likewise, the penitentiary system 
holds people for months without trial, driving one prisoner 
in Cerro Hueco jail to set himself on fire in protest. Nearly 
every democratic xeasant organization active in Chiapas has 
members in jail.

Lest we forget, electoral fraud is choking Chiapas along with 
the rest of vhe country. The 1991 election results were 
blatantly fraudulent--showing municipalities rife with 
conflict to have cast 100% of their votes for the PRI.

The conviction tha~ all avenues of legal struggle had been 
exhausted was rrought to a head by the harsh policies adopted 
by the state goernment in 1990, when the leaders of the "Xi' 
Nich" movement in Palenque and the parish priest of 
Simojovel, Joel Padro'n, were jailed for supporting land 
claims. Although a broad regional mobilization, national 
protests, and!Church intervention won their freedom, the 
experience wks viewed as a watershed. If the achievement of 
such small victories in local conflicts required nationwide 
protests, people reasoned, then the only way to$resolve the 
state's many problems would be by democratizing the entire 
country.

The final straw came when President Salinas--who had begun 
his administrauion with some encouraging signals (freeing 
prisoners, settling longstanding land claims)--backed the 
govmrnor's iron hand and proceeded to impose the reform of 
Article 27 of the Constktution, ending legal protection for 
community ejido lands.

Given these material conditions, it's not surprising that the 
disciplined and tenackous efforts of political-military 
organizations to promote the option of armed struggle found 
fertime ground. Their cadre are not foreigners or outsiders, 
but local people familiar with the culture and rhythms of 
indigenous communities and well-known by broad sectors of the*
population. Add to this!their evident military and 
ideological preparation, and }t's not hard to grasp how they 
were able to launch the sebellion which shook the nation on 
New Year's Day.

The uprising was a mix of desperation born of a bitter 
present and an uncertain future, and rage at past defeats and 
constant humiliation by the powerful. But it was also driven 
by the dream of recovering ~he great Indian nation that once 
was, and the incredible self-assurance people attained from 
having successfully conquered the jungle.

Many of the radical measures required to resolve the conflict 
in Chiapas are needed throughout Mexico: an agrarian reform 
thav destroys the power of*corrupt local elites; regional 
economic developmen} programs led by grassroots 
organizations; a complete overhaul of the judicial system 
including purging the security forces of human rights 
violators; and democratic reform of the political system to 
end the PRI's monopoly control of public offices and mass 
organizations.

Not everyone in the Chiapas countryside believes now is the 
time to adopt the strategy and tactics of peasant warfare. 
Neither do all of the organizations that work in the zone of 
conflict wish to be considered belligerent forces. The 
uprising does, however, have sympathizers. People have long 
memories, and many see this as an opportunity to get back at 
their oppressors; but ciciques and ranchers also bear many 
g{udges, and know they need only call their enemies 
Zapat{stas to exact revenge.

The peasaot war in Chmapas has opened wp issues that the 
national elites had hoped would be forgotten. It bared to the 
world a side of Mexico that was not taken into account when 
Congress voted by acclamation "to join the First World." It 
is time to*bring the political system in line with the 
overall maturity of Mexican society. The new Mayan war is a 
signal that the hour of real political reform has arrived--
and there is no turning back. 

** End of text from cdp:headlines **


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To the national magazine Proceso:
To the national newspaper La Jornada:
To the national newspaper El Financiero:
To the local newspaper in San Cristobal de las Casas Tiempo:
October 8, 1994.

Sirs:

     I don't know why they say that Mexico has changed, that now
nothing is the same, that a new democratic era has begun for the
country. I don't know about there, but here everything is the same.
The PRI perjures itself and swears (after the disgraceful fraud)
that it won fairly. Ranchers and businessmen join in, saying that
they "respect the will of the people" - in other words they are
saying that they only respect their own will. The Catholic Church
is an accomplice (to the fraud). The indigenous peasants know that
the PRI didn't win fairly. They aren't going to endure another PRI
governor. They know that a traitor to his own blood can't be
allowed to govern.
     Little by little the Chiapaneco world is beginning to divide.
The wind from above assumes its old forms of arrogance and
haughtiness. The police and the Federal Army close ranks around
money and corruption. The wind from below once again travels the
ravines and valleys; it is beginning to blow strongly. There will
be a storm...
     We are in the same situation that existed in December of 1993;
the country is living in a euphoria of high economic indicators,
political stability, promises of better times for ordinary
citizens, and promises of continued stability for powerful
citizens. In Chiapas there is a PRI government that is said to have
"popular support." The country is calm. Everyone is calm...and then
the first hour of January First...Enough already! No? OK. I wish
you health and hope you have a little understanding for what's
coming.

>From the mountains of Southeastern Mexico.
Insurgent Subcomandante Marcos
Mexico. October, 1994.

P.S. - Ana Maria tells me that "the water is rising in the mountain
streams." I look worriedly at the greyness that is stretched across
the horizon. She adds, "If it doesn't stop raining, those streams
are going to run as they never have before." She goes off to check
the guards. "As they never have before," I mutter. I light my pipe.
The elder Antonio approaches me and asks for a light for his
cigarette. I shelter the lighter's flame with my hands. I can just
see, in that brief light, that Antonio is crying. Ana Maria
returns. She comes to attention and reports. Then she asks, "The
troops are ready. What are we going to do?" I look once again at
the greyness that is spreading across the sky and dominating the
night. I answer her with a sigh, "We wait. We wait..."

P.S - One of the mysteries of Ezetaelene is uncovered. A lively and
violent wind, sweet and bitter, blows a paper to the feet of an
indigenous peasant. On the paper one can read:
"Declaration of Principals of the EZLN"
"A certain dose of tenderness is necessary
in order to walk when there is so much against you
in order to awaken when you're so exhausted.
A certain dose of tenderness is necessary
in order to see, in this darkness, a small ray of light
in order to make order from shame and obligations.
A certain dose of tenderness is necessary
in order to get rid of all of the sons of bitches
that exist.
But sometimes a certain dose of tenderness is not enough
and it's necessary to add...a certain dose of bullets."

(Translation by Infoshop Berkeley)
(resist@burn.ucsd.edu)

