News and Letters Lead Article January-February 1998

Massacre of Chiapas Indians stirs mass ferment throughout Mexico

by Mitch Weerth

A turning point has been reached in the peasant revolution in Mexico. The massacre of 45 unarmed Tzotzil Indians, mostly women and children, on Dec. 22 in Acteal, Chiapas, by paramilitary forces trained by the government, has issued the definitive proclamation that the Zedillo administration sees only genocide as the answer to the demands of the country's most destitute population.


In order to drive this message home, the army brazenly followed up on the massacre by advancing into dozens of communities of displaced peasants and Zapatista supporters in the first weeks of the new year. They conducted searches in these towns where enthusiasm continues for the Zapatista National Liberation Army, or EZLN. They robbed them of their food and animals, and burned dwellings on the pretext of "protecting" the inhabitants from the paramilitary force that carried out the massacre. So far they have not succeeded in provoking an armed conflict with the EZLN, but this is clearly not their only objective.


While Zedillo and his interior secretary come up with new lies each day to rationalize their actions as those of a neutral force unwillingly thrust into "a war among the poor," one of "inter-family and inter-community conflicts," their 50,000 troops armed to the teeth with tanks and helicopter gunships continue their march. Although nearly half of the Mexican army is in Chiapas, they tell the rest of the country and the world this is "social work" they're conducting.


They bypass the illegally armed paramilitary strongholds of the local governments and landowners to go after unarmed Indian peasants. Many of them are organized in "mobile" communities, having been displaced at least once before from their original homes over the past two years by the paramilitary "white guards." Acteal was one such community.


WOMEN DEFEND THE COMMUNITY


While the EZLN has been forced to retreat further into the mountains since the massacre, women have been blocking the advance of the troops by preventing them from entering some villages. If only with six or ten, they form a line and shout at the troops to stay out and "not murder your brothers and sisters." Without their actions the military would easily succeed in displacing many more than the 5,000 that have already been dislodged from their homes.


For two days straight in the second week of January, dozens of Tzeltal women were able to keep the army from advancing on the important EJIDO (communal property) of Morelia. The army then had to set up camp five kilometers from there.


On Jan. 12, the day of international protests, 500 Tojolabal and Tzeltal Indians from a dozen independent organizations confronted the police in Ocosingo on their march. It was there that one Tzeltal woman was killed when the police fired into the crowd.


Afterwards, representatives of the organizations demanded, in addition to justice for the murder, the formation of a "Constituent Congress that would result in a new political project with viability and legitimacy among the population."


The same demand is being expressed by the organization K'inal Antzetik (Women's Land) which has been holding a fast since Jan. 8 at the cathedral in San Cristobal de las Casas. One Tzeltal man expressed his view of the recent events this way: "The women are demonstrating their valor like never before in Mexico's history. Those in Morelia are an example for other women, and for us too."


ALL EYES ON CHIAPAS


The fact that Mexico's four-year-old civil war has reached a dangerous juncture has not been lost on the rest of Mexican society, nor on those outside the country who have solidarized with the movement throughout this time.


Over the holidays there were protests from Canada to Tokyo, and from Uruguay to the Republic of Togo. In Spain several cities held large protests in the days after the massacre.


In Buenos Aires the Mexican embassy headed by an ex-governor of Chiapas was served a letter by protesters which read in part: "You gentlemen assassins, do you know you only killed the bodies of our brothers? We will cry a long time for them, but their spirits will fill ours for the struggle. Their death has paired the pain with a newborn conviction that we need a new world."


Not surprisingly, the depth of this general outrage has not been matched by that of any state power. Nothing has come from the U.S. government other than an initial weak condemnation from the one who could do the most to force Zedillo's hand, Bill Clinton.


Within Mexico the popular response has been continuous. There have been protests in at least 20 cities, representing nearly every state, and in the capital itself some new developments have occurred.


Several participants in the march in Mexico City on the international day of protest described it as not only the biggest they have seen since 1994 but the most important in terms of how many workers came out spontaneously as the progression moved toward the Zocalo (city center). As it was put in one report that appeared in the daily LA JORNADA: "What a difference from the marches of February 1995 [when the army last tried to invade Zapatista territory]! Then it was the middle class that predominated, those who could read and had access to the communiquŽs of Marcos."


Another important event took place in the capital a week earlier, this one organized by FZLN youth (Zapatista Front for National Liberation, which is autonomous from the EZLN) who had recently returned from a trip to Chiapas. For three hours on the morning of Jan. 5, 32 of them occupied the offices of two radio stations with the intention of broadcasting a pre-recorded, 30-minute testimony of Tzotzil Indians of the massacre. Their aim was to "break the informational blockade of the violence in Chiapas," and they succeeded in attracting a number of local residents who were able to keep the police from throwing them out. At the same time, dozens of FZLN sympathizers also blocked the entrances to the stock exchange for two hours to publicize the plight of the "indigenas."


MASS ASPIRATIONS EXCEED LEADERSHIP'S


Sadly, though, both of these events were condemned that very evening by the FZLN leadership, who considered the day's activities to be "a grave political error" for which they "expressed our regrets to the workers in the media, especially at the radio station." This despite the fact that the youth didn't so much as knock over a flower vase in the building.


Three days later, an influential leftist writer, Carlos Monsivais, chimed in with his denunciation of the youth. Monsivais's critiques of the government's internal crises as well as its handling of Chiapas are frequently published in La Jornada, as was his long correspondence with EZLN spokesman Subcomandante Marcos earlier in the war. Now, however, in response to the youth he wrote that "this type of action exhibits with pathos the desperation, the sense of being hounded, of political impotence, exactly the contrary of what one would want to promote."


THESE TWO RESPONSES, ONE FROM THE FZLN LEADERSHIP AND ANOTHER FROM AN INDEPENDENT LEFTIST, ARE REPRESENTATIVE OF THE CRISIS WITHIN THE LEFT EVERYWHERE.


The youth certainly are "desperate," "hounded," and "politically impotent" in the ghetto of 20 million that is today's Mexico City. The great irony, however, is that they and the workers express a more concrete vision of freedom than most of the Left. With their actions they express what the "leaders" never seem able to convince themselves of in theory: that a new society is only possible through the unity of the indigenous peasant and urban workers' movements, both armed with a concept of a profound change in social relations.


In Chiapas, Bishop Samuel Ruiz Garcia has done much to support the struggle, and no doubt will continue to. To an extent, he has also captured what the workers and youth in Mexico City are trying to express. In a recent interview, for example, he said: "We cannot ask for radical change in Chiapas without a real transformation of the system which generates these violent situations. In this sense, the question returns northward." For his insight he was nearly assassinated in November, along with another bishop, by the paramilitaries.


But it should come as no surprise to us that he too does not have confidence that the "wretched of the earth" have the ability to bring about the peace he would like to see. As he also put it, "There are certain things that we cannot expect in an ideal form, like a total transformation of this global system that might open a road to peace." We are told our only option is to "oppose the oppressive dynamics of the system," in the hope that we will be able to resurrect a more benign form of capitalism.


We have pointed out in earlier issues of NEWS & LETTERS the powerful impact this Liberation Theology has had on the EZLN itself, especially as expressed by Subcomandante Marcos. It is understandable, though, that he too would reduce the struggle to one against "neoliberalism," and seek support from the institutions of "civil society." For when the campesino movement is isolated by a Left that is bereft of a full philosophy of freedom, there are no other options.


WHAT KIND OF SOLIDARITY?


What can be done to change this? First, our solidarity must be expressed in a TOTAL opposition to renewed efforts of Zedillo and Clinton to exterminate the new openings brought about through the last four years of the Zapatista struggle. This includes recognition of their demands of autonomy and women's rights as expressed in the San Andres accords, signed by the government, in 1996.


These accords can only be carried out if the army leaves Chiapas and the paramilitaries are disarmed. There must be respect for the EZLN's right to be armed, and a united call for the "disappearance of powers" in the state followed by a reorganization on all levels.


But must our solidarity stop there? Every one of the above points have been reiterated daily, including by the main center-left opposition party, the PRD headed by Cuauhtemoc Cardenas, who last year won the mayorship of Mexico City thanks to greater and greater mass hatred of the ruling party, PRI. Yet the PRI government is not, at this moment, overly concerned that any political opposition exists that can stay its authoritarian hand. So what will have to happen in order to change the fantastic imbalance of forces that keeps the demands from being carried out?


The only way to answer this question today is to search for those, both within Mexico as well as in the U.S., who are hearing the clamor for a truly new society emerging from below. We can expect much of the Left to continue reducing the struggle to narrow channels. Where, though, are those who are seeing the need for an organized expression of a total opposition to the capitalist labor process and its despotic organization of every corner of society?


It is true that without such a philosophical position coming from the Left, the mass movement will continue, at least in fits and starts. That makes it all the more important not to limit our solidarity to opposing the PRI juggernaut, but to hold up our end of a cross-border philosophic dialogue.


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