This article was produced for the UK Zapatista Solidarity Network for a meeting to be held at the Anarchist Bookfair in London on October 18th 2008.

We are others, the other. If this world does not have a place for us, then another world must be made. With no tool other than our rage, no material other than our dignity. We still must encounter each other more, know each other better. What is missing is yet to come...

The Zapatista communities in resistance, with their autonomous schools, clinics and decision-making structures, have been an inspiration to the anti-capitalist movement. Now Zapatista villages and lands are sustaining increasingly violent attacks by the state and paramilitaries.

Military harassment – the danger of confrontation.

Mexico today is taking advantage of the proliferation of organised crime and drug cartels to provide a justification for ever-increasing numbers of military or armed police operations, involving blatant human rights violations, paramilitaries, and the use of torture. These brutal nationwide operations are more and more often driven by the priorities and interests of the US government. At the same time Mexican law enforcement officials are regularly shown to be the perpetrators of the crime, drug, kidnap, and assassination offences they are supposed to combat.

It is in this context that the Mexican army is intensifying the systematic strategy of low intensity warfare (i.e. civilian targeted warfare) that it operates within the Zapatista zone. Many regions are now, in effect, militarised territory, where the army operates daily patrols, surrounding, intimidating, and making incursions into isolated indigenous communities, using military vehicles carrying soldiers bearing high-calibre weapons, while helicopters fly overhead.

Mexican Army soldiers entered into communities in at least 4 regions of Chiapas. One of these was San Jeronimo Tulija, where they entered in a convoy of eleven trucks, accompanied by 300 Mexican Federal Agency of Investigation agents and state Preventative Police, while helicopters flew overhead.[i] This harassment and aggression represents a deliberate provocation, to which, so far, the Zapatistas have been able to respond by organising and improving their vigilance and their unarmed resistance.

Capise is a San Cristobal-based NGO which monitors military and paramilitary activity in Chiapas. It reports that within the 56 permanent large military camps in the indigenous zone, 90% of the military troops are now composed of elite special forces, supported by and supporting 6 paramilitary groups sponsored by Juan Sabines, governor of Chiapas. Capise point out that this tactical and military deployment is violating the free zones, the spaces for free movement that should exist in times of truce and peace. They believe it represents “a comprehensive project against indigenous self-determination”.[ii]

“The Zapatistas don’t have problems with ‘internal security’. .. The communities know how to resolve conflicts fairly and calmly. But the people live under a continuous ‘external’ threat: military and police harassment and the belligerence of paramilitaries. The government authorities themselves are the security problem for the Zapatista villages.”[iii]

Paramilitary activity

The government of Chiapas has re-activated and armed paramilitary groups, which masquerade as rural indigenous rights organisations, e.g. the Organisation for the Defence of Indigenous and Peasant Peoples (OPDDIC). These armed groups invade communities, attack women and children, burn houses, steal animals and building materials, destroy corn crops, threaten to return to evict the community often giving a date, and generally physically and psychologically harass and frighten the members of the community. When the paramilitaries come, they are often accompanied by the police and helicopters.

On August 31^st 2008, the Zapatista Good Government Junta in Morelia issued a denuncia regarding a series of attacks by OPDDIC members on Zapatistas of K’an Akil community (Olga Isabel autonomous municipality), in the northern zone of Chiapas. One Zapatista suffered a gunshot wound in his abdomen. The Junta reported that some of the armed attackers wore “military type” uniforms.[iv]

Because these paramilitaries are also indigenous, the impression is given of inter-community conflicts. In addition to the armed threats, Zapatistas report that members of paramilitary groups enter and infiltrate communities dressed as civilians to find out how the Zapatistas are organising, and who the most influential individuals are, in order to target them for death threats, kidnap and torture.[v] In February 2008 two Zapatista support bases from Betel Yochip, a community dominated by OPDDIC, were detained by state highway place and two other armed men, taken to jail and tortured for nine hours.[vi]

The land, basis of everything

In 1994, in many areas, the Zapatistas ‘recuperated’, and became collective owners of, the fields they once worked as slaves, and which they now work together for themselves. Those in power plan to once again drive the indigenous from their lands. “Without land we have no meaning and no livelihood, because without land we have no roots”.[vii]

The government is now giving titles to these reclaimed lands to groups of indigenous people who belong to different political organisations, and arming them as paramilitaries, with the direct aim of provoking conflict. Capise calculate that 917 families, living on 13,234 hectares, are at direct risk of dispossession and eviction.[viii] The caracoles of Morelia and La Garrucha are the most affected, having the most ‘recuperated’ land.

The JBG of Oventic issued a statement in March 2008 “We are being pressurised in many different ways to abandon our resistance....The bad government wants to strip us of our right to live and enjoy what mother earth gives us...It fills the paramilitaries with hatred so they will snatch away our right to our land”[ix]

The intention is clearly to deprive the movement of its base, roots and meaning by evicting the grassroots communities from their land, with the intention of destroying their autonomy. Along with the privatisation of oil, electricity, and what few natural resources remain, everything in Mexico is up for sale. Now the only un-privatised land is indigenous territory and these are the lands which have the most natural resources, and so are potentially the most ‘profitable’.[x]

Use of social programmes for counterinsurgency

Other incentives offered to indigenous communities to encourage them to attack Zapatista ones, and to Zapatistas to try to make them abandon their resistance, are government aid programmes, and handouts such as cement, corrugated roofing, and solar panels. There are both federal and state programmes, designed to coerce or co-opt people into submission. In many communities there are both Zapatistas and non-Zapatistas, so this is another way of promoting confrontations and clashes. People are given animals, which they then put on Zapatista land. The aim of these programmes is to buy support for the government from the civilian population as part of the offensive against the autonomous communities.[xi]

Conflicts are also promoted over supplies of water and electricity, with Zapatistas being denied the use of these services. In February 2008, the Federal Electricity Commission, at the instigation of paramilitaries, cut the electricity supply to several Zapatista communities. In May 2008 the headquarters of the Caracol of Morelia was attacked by 300 police and PRI authorities who imprisoned people in their houses, beat them with sticks, stones and machetes, broke doors and windows, and cut the electricity supply to some of the houses, causing a serious state of alarm.[xii]

The Zapatistas refuse all government aid, and they refuse, at all costs, to leave their land. “We spilled our blood for the land, not for a government handout”.[xiii] They also refuse to respond violently, and try to resolve the land problems by sharing the land.

The struggle for water

Nothing makes more difference to the health and well-being of the communities, in particular the work-load, status and suffering of the women, the survival of children under five, and the ability of female children to go to school, than a secure supply of safe, clean water. A group of Zapatista communities in the Zinacantan area have been aggressively deprived of the use of their only spring since 2002, and still have to bring in water, with great difficulty, over the mountain, from elsewhere. A demonstration against this deprivation was fired on and several suffered bullet wounds.

An area of 120 hectares on top of Huitepec, ‘the Hill of Water’, was declared a ‘Zapatista community ecological reserve’ in March 2007. As the source of water for San Cristobal, Zinacantan, dozens of rebel communities, and the nearby Coca-Cola plant, the hill is revered by the highland Maya as a sacred site, and besieged by national and transnational capital seeking to suck the Hill of Water dry.[xiv]

In 2008, the area’s new mayor promised to evict the Zapatistas, and further promised roads to local communities who would help him. He seems to have been motivated by the prospect of building luxury properties on the slopes of the hill. One well was apparently poisoned at this time.

The European caravan of Observation and Solidarity visited Huitepec in August 2008 and, noting a proliferation of barbed wire, reported: “ Here Coca-Cola is taking water sources from the indigenous, depriving them of water and selling the land to multi-nationals so they can use it for tourist developments”.[xv]

The Plan Puebla Panama: privatisation and infrastructure.

The Plan Puebla Panama is a development of territorial domination in Southern Mexico and Central America, focussing on infrastructure megaprojects. It is designed to attract private national and transnational investment to the area and aimed at transforming a peasant economy into a neoliberal capitalist system.[xvi]

In Chiapas one of the aims of the PPP is to wipe out the Zapatista movement; another is to privatise and exploit the rich natural resources of the area under the smokescreen of environmental protection. This includes the damming of rivers for hydro-electric schemes (destroying communities in the process), and the construction of mega-highways. By paving the roads into the Montes Azules Biosphere Reserve the government both opened the area to capitalist exploitation and facilitated the quick movement of troops into Zapatista areas, increasing the military siege of this zone.

The community of Nueva Revolucion is threatened with destruction by the building of a hydroelectric dam, while 8 de marzo would be destroyed by the roads built to a planned new eco-tourism complex. If a planned fish farm is built, the dam will flood the community of Francisco Villa.[xvii]

Much of central Chiapas is also threatened by mining concessions for a variety of precious metals. Speaking of the presence of Canadian mining companies, representatives of a Tzeltal community said in July 2008 “We know that mining brings contamination to our lands, our streams and our rivers. It causes much illness and death to our people. It provokes division among the poor, violation of our human rights and our dignity as indigenous peoples, consuming thousands of litres of water and great quantities of electricity”.[xviii] One example is Cruzton, a pro-Zapatista community of 44 families, where in April 500 Chiapas police kicked in doors and broke into houses, detaining and taking away six men. This police harassment has continued and the community have not been allowed to farm their cornfields; the aim appears to be to enable gold exploration in the area by Canadian mining companies.[xix]

The other side of ecotourism

One of the main areas of conflict between paramilitary groups and Zapatista base communities has been in the area of the planned ‘tourist corridor’ known as ‘the Palenque-Agua Azul integrally planned centre’. This development involves the construction of the San Cristobal-Palenque highway, a new airport at Palenque, and the construction of a vast ‘eco-archaeological’ tourist resort with rooms for over 7000 tourists, commercial zones, a golf course and a ‘nature theme park’. This theme park lies largely within EZLN recuperated territory, where the Zapatistas are trying to protect the natural environment.

Maderas del Pueblo (Woods of the People) recently wrote to the Chiapas government denouncing this latest outbreak of aggression and harassment towards indigenous communities in the area of the famous waterfalls at Agua Azul: “We cannot fail to link these paramilitary-style actions to the ambitions of powerful national and transnational interests to seize control of indigenous territory, rich in strategic natural resources (biodiversity, water and forest cover), with the intention of privatising them for multimillion private profit disguised as environmental services. In this case the dispute is over booty consisting of the water and the beautiful natural scenery of this unspoiled area, which under the disguise of a false ‘ecotourism’ (in reality an elite adventure tourism) is at the root of these unpunished aggressions”.[xx]

OPDDIC wishes to control the income from tourism in this area. Their most recent attacks and threats of displacement and death towards the community of San Sebastian Bachajon and the Jesuit mission there, have been over the control of the hut where tourists pay for entry to the area around the falls.[xxi] Other communities in the area, such as Bolon Ajaw, are under continual attack from paramilitary groups, and civil society organisations have urged tourists to boycott the Agua Azul waterfalls until these attacks stop. (see ‘protest at airports’ later)

La Jornada recently reported “dozens of indigenous communities located between San Cristobal de las Casas and Palenque are challenging construction of a toll highway that would connect the two tourist centres. The proposed 100 mile highway, which would impact hundreds of indigenous communities, is supported by hotel owners and tourist agencies in both cities. Indigenous communities are opposed to giving up land for the benefit of tourist operations”.[xxii]

The same comments could apply to the current evictions in the area of the Montes Azules Biosphere Reserve. A report published in June[xxiii] tells of forced evictions, aggressions, and the disappearance of whole communities. In August 2008, two communities in the reserve were told, at gunpoint, by state and federal officials and police that they would have to accept re-location or be evicted by force.[xxiv]

The ‘war on drugs’

It is well-known that the Zapatistas do not allow the cultivation, use or possession of drugs or alcohol in their territory. However, the government is taking advantage of the current situation in Mexico (este Mexico que agoniza - this dying country[xxv] ) to send the army into Zapatista territory, on the pretext of looking for drugs, to harass, intimidate and provoke. In June 2008, a convoy of 200 Mexican army troops in tanks and trucks, accompanied by local and state police, attempted to enter the Caracol of La Garrucha and two neighbouring communities, saying they were ‘looking for drugs’. In each community the residents came out and turned them away.[xxvi]

La Garrucha is a particularly sensitive area for the Zapatistas, as it is the area where some members of the comandancia are said to live, and they interpreted this invasion as serious provocation. European observers have confirmed that there were no drugs growing in the region.[xxvii] These aggressions form part of a government campaign to take advantage of the current national resentment against narco-trafficking and organised crime, as a way to reduce public support for the Zapatistas by linking them to these activities.[xxviii] They are one example of the repressive use of the war on drugs by Mexico’s security forces. Zapatista base communities also report military personnel entering their territory and spreading marijuana seeds. [xxix]

Similarities to Colombia : the threat from the United States

This year the United States government, under the Merida Initiative, (better known as Plan Mexico), authorised $1.6 billion for funding the Mexican military over the next four years, to ‘fight drug traffic, combat terrorism and enforce US security concerns’. Like Plan Colombia, this merges the anti-drug mission with the US so-called ‘war on terror’, provides for hunting down ‘terrorists’ within Mexico, and means the Mexican military are now driven by the needs of the US government.[xxx]

In Colombia, equipment and training for fighting drugs have long been used to suppress social activists and attack insurgent groups. The Colombian government and army have very close ties with paramilitary groups, supplying them with arms and training funded by the United States. Now in Mexico they are trying to include the EZLN in this category of terrorists and drug-traffickers.

Media silence

It seems the Mexican government have initiated a media campaign to deceive and confuse public opinion. With the exception of La Jornada, there has been virtual silence in the Mexican media concerning the militarisation and constant attacks on Zapatista communities. The Zapatistas say “we are out of fashion” (pasamos de la moda)[xxxi]. They lost a lot of popular support by taking a principled stand against supporting an electoral candidate, in accordance with their belief in autonomy and not taking power. They have also lost support among civil society groups, many of whom put all their efforts into the recent campaign to release political prisoners. It is this isolation which now makes the movement so vulnerable.

“At this time, the state government of Chiapas and the federal government are waging a campaign against the Zapatista communities. ‘Official’ evictions, paramilitary attacks, invasions sponsored by officials, persecutions and threats, have become once again part of the surroundings of the indigenous communities who have set upon constructing their own destiny and improving their living conditions, always without losing their indigenous identity.... Just like in the worst times .... the government is attacking the poor and needy, while catering to and benefiting the powerful. ... In contrast to other occasions, these aggressions have been met by the silence of those voices that before rose to protest and demand justice.... We will do what we have to do,resist.”[xxxii]

Active non-violence

The aim of the creation of paramilitary groups, the land evictions and the social programmes is to destroy Zapatista autonomy by creating an artificial social conflict, so that the government forces can come in to ‘restore peace’, and crush forever the EZLN and all it represents.[xxxiii] So far, the movement has had twelve days of Fire, and nearly fifteen years of the Word. While the Zapatistas have never given up their arms, they have not responded to attacks with violence, they have respected the ceasefire treaty, and they have taken preventive measures, involving surveillance and unarmed resistance. “The Zapatistas have been heroic in seeking a democracy that has no room for violence or repression”.[xxxiv] As part of their belief in a world where all worlds fit, they have constantly sought the peaceful way, and this is one aspect of the inspiration so many people have gained from Zapatismo.

However, the greater the repression and aggression, the greater the risk they face. As Gustavo Esteva wrote in a recent article “This is an extreme situation: the attacks on Zapatista communities, which have not ceased since 1994, are reaching the point where there seems to be no alternative but armed resistance.... It should be clear to everyone that the Zapatistas cannot be displaced from their lands and territories, and that under no circumstances will they surrender.... The war that is taking place does not just target the Zapatistas. But various factors and circumstances put them back into the centre of confrontation and link their destiny with that of the country would be suicidal not to take them into account.”[xxxv]

Vulnerability and isolation

The Zapatistas remain strong in their autonomy and their principled resistance, but they are now more vulnerable than they have ever been, faced with “an imposed government which represses and dispossesses with scandalous impunity”, [xxxvi]combined with an unprecedented isolation and silence from both the media and civil society. They say the situation is like fifteen years ago, but in reverse. In 1993 the Zapatistas were preparing to attack without people or media behind them; this time it is the government who are preparing the attack.[xxxvii]

The Other Campaign

In 2005 the Zapatistas released the Sixth Declaration of the Lacandon Jungle,[xxxviii] in which they explained their view of the world and how they intended to reach out to the Other, to join with, listen to and learn from all the persecuted groups ‘from below and to the left’ who did not belong to any political party, and to see how all could work together to find ‘another way of doing politics’. This was to be done on a national and international basis. It was all about listening, respect for difference, and changing the world. This truly radical proposal was not something the forces of power and money could allow to happen, and from the beginning it met with vicious repression, directed at all groups who had ‘adhered’ to the Other Campaign. Since Calderon took power in 2006 this repression has intensified, now more than ever, while the government sees social fighters as criminals and opposes all those who defend human rights. [xxxix]

The original plan was for Zapatistas to travel throughout Mexico to meet and listen to the stories of ‘the simple and humble people who struggle’. This plan was had to be put on hold following the appalling acts of repression perpetrated in Atenco in May 2006[xl]. Starting again in October 2006, it had to be suspended once more in September 2007, as a result of the evictions, attacks, invasions, persecutions and threats suffered by the Zapatista communities.[xli] Capise and others believe that the greater militarisation and increase in attacks on Zapatista communities is the government’s response to the organisation of the Other Campaign throughout Mexico, and that they are doing everything possible to destroy it.

In December 2007, the EZLN announced a period of silence and withdrawal from outside events. “This is the last time, at least for a while, that we will be able to come out (of our lands). Our communities, our companer@s, are being attacked in a way that hasn’t happened for a long time. It has happened before, that’s true, but it is the first time since that early morning in January 1994 that the social, national, and international response has been insignificant or null. In contrast to other occasions, these aggressions have been met by the silence of those voices that before rose to protest and to demand justice, and that now fall silent..... Those of us who have made war know how to recognize the paths by which it is prepared and brought near. The signs of war on the horizon are clear. War, like fear, also has a smell. And now we are starting to breathe its foul stench in our lands."[xlii]

What is missing is yet to come

In July and August 2008, when the European Solidarity Caravan visited Zapatista communities, Marcos and Moises spoke to them in La Garrucha, speaking of their history and their autonomy. They also spoke of their dreams: “We want a place here, our own, where they will leave us in peace, where they will ask nothing of us. That is what freedom means: where we decide what we want to do” and of their responsibilities: “we have a moral duty to our companer@s. We want the day to come when we can say three things to our dead: we did not give in, we did not sell out, we did not surrender.”[xliii]

The next steps: dignity and rage

In September 2008, the EZLN broke their silence, calling for a renewal of the campaign for liberty and justice for Atenco, in particular for the political prisoners who had just received cruel sentences. Then they announced the ‘first global festival of dignity and rage: another world, another path, below and to the left’, to be held to mark their 25^th anniversary, and that of fifteen years of the ‘war against oblivion’, during which time “it has been our goal to be a bridge on which the many rebellions of the world can walk back and forth”.

“Here below, we are left with nothing. Except rage. And dignity...We must listen to each other then, learn to know each other... So that our dignity takes root again and births another world”. [xliv]

A lesson for humanity

The Zapatista movement, a unique example of autonomy and principled resistance, of collective decision-making, of respect for difference, has been an inspiration to indigenous people and to campesinos throughout the world, to the wretched, forgotten and excluded of the earth, to the anti-capitalist and anti-globalisation movement, and to all who struggle for democracy, liberty and justice. In a greedy and competitive world, with its emphasis on war and consumption and the plundering and devastation of the planet, the Zapatistas offer a rare light of hope, that there is another way. “If the catastrophe that is coming can be avoided and humanity is to have another opportunity, it will because these others, below and to the left, not only resist, but are already drawing the profile of something else (otra cosa).[xlv]

At a recent Europe-wide demonstration a spokesperson from the Edinburgh-Chiapas Solidarity Group said “The Zapatistas’ autonomous communities in resistance are an inspiring example of how people can control their own lives and share resources in an egalitarian way. They show people the world over that we don’t need the bad governments or profit-hungry corporations”.

It is essential that we join together to find ways to stop this campaign to destroy the Zapatista communities. They continue to resist; they have always said they will never surrender, never give up. Experienced observers are stressing that the need for action now is urgent, that we cannot let the movement be destroyed. As Jorge Alonso pleaded in his recent article, predicting an imminent massacre. “And we have to hurry, because time is running out”.[xlvi]

On 22 August groups involved in the UK Zapatista Solidarity Network organised protests at Edinburgh and Bournemouth airports in solidarity with the Zapatista communities - we want to be able to organise actions on a much wider scale, could you and your group/friends discuss if you could participate in such actions in future ? If interested contact us via Edinburgh Chiapas Solidarity Group edinchiapas@yahoo.co.uk

(Please note all communities mentioned in this article are either Zapatista base communities, or supporters of the Other Campaign.)
For more information in English:

UK Zapatista Solidarity Network. http://ukzapatistas.wordpress.com

Edinburgh-Chiapas Solidarity Group. http://www.edinchiapas.org.uk

http://chiapas.mediodindependientes.org

http://enlacezapatista.ezln.org.mx

Send messages of protest to:

THE PRESIDENT OF MEXICO
Felipe de Jesús Calderón Hinojosa
Presidente de la República
Residencia Oficial de los Pinos Casa Miguel Alemán
Col. San Miguel Chapultepec, C.P. 11850, DISTRITO FEDERAL, México
Telephone: +52 (55) 27891100 Fax: +52 (55) 52772376
E-Mail: felipe.calderon@presidencia.gob.mx

THE GOVERNOR OF CHIAPAS Lic. Juan José Sabines Guerrero
Gobernador Constitucional del Estado de Chiapas
Palacio de Gobierno del Estado de Chiapas
Av. Central y Primera Oriente, Colonia Centro, C.P.29009
Tuxtla Gutiérrez, Chiapas, México
secparticular@chiapas.gob.mx
Fax: +52 961 6188088 Telephone + 52 961 6188056

THE MEXICAN AMBASSADOR IN THE UK
Juan José Bremer de Martino Ambassador of Mexico in the UK
Mexican Embass16 St. George StreeLondon W1S 1FD
Tel: 020 7499 8586E mail - Go to http://www.sre.gob.mx/reinounido