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NEWS & LETTERS, October - November 2007
Indigenous struggle in Chiapas continues
I traveled to the state of Chiapas, Mexico in March with a solidarity delegation hosted by Higher Grounds Trading Co., a fair trade coffee company based in Lake Leelanau, Michigan. Every year Higher Grounds takes delegations to the farms that grow the coffee eventually sold in the United States in order to establish lasting relationships. We visited the collectively owned farms of the Zapatista Army of National Liberation (EZLN), a movement of indigenous farmers that have created autonomous zones in the face of brutal oppression by both the Mexican government and paramilitary groups.
The Zapatistas first gained the international spotlight when they ignited an armed uprising against the Mexican government on Jan. 1, 1994, the same day that the North American Free Trade Agreement went into action, a symbol of the oppressive economic policies that the EZLN were combating.
Their demands were simple, indigenous autonomy and rights protecting their communities, which are among the most dispossessed elements of Mexican society. Their demands were met in 1996 within the San Andrés Accords, an agreement between the EZLN and the federal government that ensured that indigenous autonomy and rights would be protected at the state and national levels.
However, in the 11 years since the signing at San Andrés, the Mexican government has not only left its end of the agreement unfulfilled, but has moved backward in its relations with the indigenous of Chiapas and engaged in campaigns of state-sponsored terror against the Zapatista communities.
These communities have reorganized themselves into autonomous units, completely separate from the government, that work the land as ejidos, or communal land. Although the ejidos are officially recognized by Mexican law, the Zapatistas informed us of the military’s attempt to systematically disassemble collectively owned land and sell it off as private property. Almost every EZLN autonomous zone has experienced this at the hands of the paramilitary group cleverly named, Organization for the Defense of Indigenous and Peasant Rights (OPDDIC).
While we visited the Zapatista autonomous zone of Olga Isabel, locals told us that daily the militia is positioned around the community for a possible land seizure. Frequently OPDDIC attempts to tear down signs proclaiming the existence of autonomous zones as well as paint over Zapatista murals.
The community noted they will not violently engage any official or paramilitary, as all Zapatistas are now practicing purely pacifist resistance. Supporters say that provocations by paramilitaries and the official military welcome a violent reaction, as the Mexican army has the capability to exterminate every Zapatista within a week.
We were invited to the autonomous zone of Nuevo Rosario to help document the atrocities committed there. Recently Zapatistas of other communities, as well as international observers, have come to Nuevo Rosario to deter future attacks.
Local residents of the community detailed events in February explaining that about 140 members of OPDDIC and government supporters came and torched houses, stole wood and animals, decimated trees with chainsaws, broke the community oven to pieces and burned crops such as corn and fruit. Of the Zapatista crops that weren’t ruined, many were stolen.
As if the destruction of the community wasn’t enough, members of the paramilitary physically attacked families and abused women and children. Practicing pacifism along with all other EZLN, the citizens of Nuevo Rosario could simply watch as the plunderers burned their homes and fields to the ground.
The point was clear. OPDDIC wants to force the Zapatistas to cooperate with government-sponsored privatization and to turn their collective land into another free market for capitalists to use at their disposal. The EZLN voices of resistance in Nuevo Rosario echo those of all the autonomous zones, that the struggle is about more than land ownership, but culture as well.
Despite the devastation experienced at Nuevo Rosario one man’s answer came easily when asked if they’d stay on the land: "We’ll always stay, it’s our land that we’ll always work and we’ll use our word as our weapon."
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