For Humanity and Against Neoliberalism : Chiapas 1996

Zapatista action!
          An International of hope?

         4,000 people meet in Chiapas 
   'for humanity and against neo-liberalism'

In July of 1994 people from Ireland travelled to an 
international conference called by the Zapatistas in 
Chiapas.  This is a report on the conference from 
 one of the Irish delegates.  A much longer version
of this report with pictures and documents from the 
encounter can be found at
      http://www.geocities.com/CapitolHill/3102/

>From their emergence on New Years Day, 1994 the EZLN 
have talked about wanting to open up a space in which 
civil society could meet and discuss Mexico's problems.  
They have put this forward as their alternative to seizing 
power.  

The EZLN's alternative of the 'political space' was at first 
unclear but has been clarified in action over the past few 
years.  The indigenous communities have put huge 
amounts of resources into constructing conference centres 
in the jungle and mountains and inviting Mexican 'civil 
society' to come to these centres and find ways of changing 
Mexican society.  They have been called Aguascalientes in 
reference to the town where Zapata and others met in 1914 
to draw up the Mexican constitution.

The solution to Mexico's problems cannot just be on the 
Mexican level.  The US has showed itself to be opposed to 
even the most moderate of reforms and willing to use or 
sponsor armed force in order to prevent those advocating 
reform coming to power.  There is no need here to go into 
the history of Latin America, of intervention in Chile, 
Cuba, El Salvador or Nicaragua here.

The EZLN have created these spaces therefore not just for 
Mexican civil society but also for the indigenous people of 
the continent of America and indeed everyone on the 
continent.  In the "First Declaration of Realidad" this was 
carried to the next logical step with an invite to everyone 
in the world.  

Unlike many previous liberation movements that saw 
liberation in national terms alone the EZLN have 
identified the enemy they face as not just unjust local 
rulers and their imperialist master but the entire ideology 
and system of global capitalism.  In Latin American and 
many other areas of the world this has been called 'neo--
liberalism' but in Ireland it would probably be most 
familiar under the name of 'Thatcherism'. 

The first declaration described this system in universal 
terms 

"Instead of humanity, it offers us stock market value 
indexes, instead of dignity it offers us globalization of 
misery, instead of hope it offers us an emptiness, instead of 
life it offers us the international of terror." 

and called people together so

"Against the international of terror representing 
neoliberalism, we must raise the international of hope. 
Hope, above borders, languages, colors, cultures, sexes, 
strategies, and thoughts, of all those who prefer humanity 
alive." 

It was proposed to hold an 'Intercontinental Gathering for 
Humanity and against Neo-liberalism' in Chiapas in July 
of 1996 to start the process of constructing this 
'international of hope'.  This was obviously very 
ambitious and apparently there was considerable debate 
within the communities over whether this was a good use 
of resources.  Was it reasonable to suppose that any 
number of people would go through the difficulty and 
expense of travelling from their own countries to Mexico 
and then down to Mexico's most isolated state.

In Ireland only a small number of people around the Irish 
Mexico Group heard this call.  We met with very limited 
interest in this project, but there was a small gathering 
which produced a statement defining what neo-liberalism 
meant in the Irish context.  There was also sufficent 
interest to motivate a couple of people to go to the 
European gathering in Berlin and the Intercontinental 
gathering in Chiapas.

It only became clear that considerable numbers were likely 
to turn up with the holding of the continental gatherings.  
Just under 1,000 people turned up in Berlin to discuss what 
neo-liberalism meant in Europe.  Although mostly 
composed of people involved around various Mexican 
solidarity groups people also turned up from outside these 
circles.  

In July the Irish delegation travelled to Mexico city via 
Madrid and then by plane and car to San Cristo'bel the 
largest of the towns seized in 1994 and the gathering point 
for people to be accredited and transported to the various 
sites.  It was hard to get firm number of who was there but 
it appears between 3,000 and 4,000 people travelled to 
Chiapas from  Italy, Brazil, Britain, Paraguay, Chile, 
Philippines, Germany, Peru, Argentina, Austria, Uruguay, 
Guatemala, Belgium, Venezuela, Iran, Denmark, 
Nicaragua, Zaire, France, Haiti, Ecuador, Greece, Japan, 
Kurdistan, Ireland, Costa Rica, Cuba, Sweden, The 
Netherlands, South Africa, Switzerland, Spain, Portugal, 
The United States, The Basque Country, Turkey, Canada, 
Puerto Rico, Bolivia, Australia, Mauritania, Mexico, 
Norway, Colombia.

One of the largest delegations was from France, about 300 
people for the strike wave of December 1995 against the 
French states implementation of neo-liberalism played a 
considerable role in motivating people to come.  The 
actual meeting were held in five different venues marking 
out the edges of Zapatista territory, each beside an 
indigenous community which had built and would service 
the site.  Getting to them involved long bus rides, through 
day and night on jungle and mountain roads.  There was a 
certain low level of police and military harassment, one 
convoy was held up for three hours at a migration police 
checkpoint but for the most part they kept away or 
contented themselves with silly stunts like flying planes at 
tree top level over some of the meeting places.

Each Aguascalientes  consisted of a central stadium 
surrounded by sleeping huts, toilets, eaten and cooking 
facilities, showers, information and medical centres and 
the equivalent of school tuck shops selling biscuits, coke 
and cigarettes.  The indigenous people staffed all these 
facilities and the EZLN militia posted lookouts on the 
perimeter, the gates and surrounding countryside.  There 
commitment to this vague project of building an 
'international of hope' was all the more impressive when 
you considered these host communities lived in desperate 
poverty on a diet of beans, tortilla and rice for every meal.  
We had of course paid for our accommodation and 
transport but obviously the construction and purchase of 
provisions for the week had to be carried out before they 
knew whether anyone would actually turn up.

In the event we came and after opening welcoming 
ceremonies settled down in our respective sites to 
discussion.  There were five sites each discussing a 
different theme of neo-liberalism (e.g. economics) and each 
of these sites in turn divided into four or five tables.  Many 
people had come with prepared pieces and these and the 
discussions around them were used to draft statements 
form each of the tables.

Coming from 43 countries the range of issues covered were 
as you might imagine vast.  Sometimes we were talking 
about being at different stages of the same neo-liberal 
process, for instance the hard drug trade which commonly 
mean's virtual enslavement for those growing the crops in 
one place, the militarisation and corruption of those 
whose countries they are transported through in another 
and the death and destruction in the communities where 
they are sold.  From Bolivia, through Mexico to the inner 
cities of America and Dublin neo-liberalism had created a 
common thread of misery.   

We heard how the problems cause by attacks on social 
spending ran from, Chile to Japan, from Mexico to France, 
from Ireland to Australia.  But we also heard of how these 
attacks, the attempts to write off whole communities as 
uneconomic were being resisted.  We began to feel we were 
part of a global struggle but one on which we had yet to 
recognise each other.

Alongside this identification of problems was an 
exploration of why previous attempts at getting rid of 
capitalism had failed.  Those coming to the conference had 
many different political backgrounds but common themes 
came to be identified. In particular the way in which many 
previous opposition movements had become obsessed 
with seizing power as a means of transforming society.

In talking about constructing a new international of hope 
we began to think of ways that we could fight for change 
that would not end up dependant on a new state to enforce 
them.  An interesting discussion took place around how 
economic control could be taken out of the hands of the 
multi-nationals and regained at a local level without this 
being mediated through a state.  Other discussions 
followed about the inability of parliamentary democracy to 
represent people.

Definite conclusions were hard to come by.  In general we 
identified the need for each community to determine its 
own struggle and for these struggles to form national and 
an international network from below.  For the most part 
the EZLN stayed out of the discussion but between two or 
four Zapatistas from the Indigenous Revolutionary 
Clandestine Committee sat in on each session and it would 
appear reported back and discussed what was happening in 
each one.  In any case at the end of the conference the 
EZLN were able to present an overall declaration which 
took many of the core ideas from each of the table 
discussions.  This is the "2nd declaration of La Realidad".  

The core section of the declaration was a proposed consulta 
that each national group would carry out in their country 
in the first weeks of December.  The consulta declares 
opposition to neo-liberalism and its effects and the 
intention to create two networks, the first a network of 
struggles in resistance to neo-liberalism.  The second a 
network of communication that will carry the news of 
these struggles to each other.

The rest of the document pointed out that the state could 
not isolate us and stop us talking despite the barriers that it 
had created in our way.  That we were not abut creating 
another pretend international organisation but rather that 
the network if it arose would not be declared into being by 
those at the meeting but rather would be created by many 
people in the aftermath of it.

For those of us in Ireland implementation of the ideas in 
the consulta is a difficult task.  There is almost no tradition 
of politics from below in this country, almost all 
opposition movements have based themselves on the 
need for a strong party or individual leader to show the 
way forwards.  There is little concept of changing society on 
the basis of communities and workplaces determining 
their own future.  So our first barrier is to get out the idea 
that this is a possibility.

There are major movements involving thousands of 
people around what are called 'single issues', most notable 
at the time of writing the anti-water charges campaign and 
the anti-heroin campaign.  Both these involve thousands 
of people in Dublin and there are other examples 
throughout the country but there is very little belief in the 
possibility of a complete transformation of society.  We 
cannot create such a belief but what we can do is encourage 
the national formation of networks which are the 
equivalent of the international networks talked about in 
the "2nd declaration of La Realidad".

A much longer version
of this report with pictures and documents from the 
encounter can be found at
      http://www.geocities.com/CapitolHill/3102/
This report is from Mexico Bullitin No 1

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    Find out about the Revolution in Mexico
  http://www.geocities.com/CapitolHill/3102/

    This summer 4,000 people from 43 countries met
   "for Humanity and against neoliberalism" there
http://www.geocities.com/CapitolHill/3849/gatherdx.html
