110 lines
13 KiB
Plaintext
110 lines
13 KiB
Plaintext
THE REVOLT AGAINST DEVELOPMENT-THE CRISIS AND CHIAPAS
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A PRELIMINARY SKETCH
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Before diving into the specific features of the Chiapas uprising it is important to understand the crisis in Mexico. It is not a one-
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sided structural crisis conjured up by a political scientist or some other academic high priest but a two way give and take between two
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polar antagonists- Capital (which in Mexico is inimitably but not exclusively tied to the government and the PRI) and the many varied
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sectors of the working class (from industrial workers and technicians in the cities to the many groupings of campesinos and landless
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laborers in the countryside). The crisis comes as the fine edge between thes camps. At the risk of making an over generalized
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analogy the Chiapas conflict is like a very big rock which has been thrown into an already wildly agitated pool. To take the analogy
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farther the shock waves emanating from this rock have spread throughout the country extending into the heart of the governing PRI
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itself. A recent New York Times article (FEB. 8) reported that several townhalls outside of the warzone in Chiapas have been seized by
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small campesino groups independent of the EZLN but who have realized their own ability to reclaim their autonomous power by way
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of the uprising. This is the extent and nature of the crisis.
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Predictably enough the orthodox Right and Left have trotted out their usual cliches and mystifications concerning Chiapas but
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Chiapas is not Cuba, El Salvador or Guatemala. The uprising is following a pattern unique to the specific features of class
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antagonism in Mexico. This pattern has its historical origins in the agrarian revolts of the last few centuries of Mexican history.
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Agrarismo as a social force developed out of the material conditions of 19th century Mexico. Before the 19th century,
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campesino resistance often took on the everyday forms of tax evasion, draft resistance or the occasional bloody, short insurrection
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but toward the end of the century this cycle of struggle began to evolve into another plane of resistance. The construction of railroads
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throughout Mexico in the last part of the 19th cent. lead to the creation of an export-oriented agricultural market. The large
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hacienda owners who were the only ones in a real position to capitalize on this development began a vigorous campaign of
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dispossessing the lands of the traditional village ejidos. A variety of tactics were used most hinging upon either legal maneuvers
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supported inevitably by the caciques of the local and federal government or the use of hired gunmen (pistoleros). Campesino
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resistance quite reasonably began to take on an increasingly militant flavor as these expropriations increased. A triangular agrarista
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alliance began to evolve at this time between a periodically active village mass, the local militants, and outside agitators composed
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mostly of anarchist urban intellectuals and workers. Agrarismo sprang directly from the autonomous cycle of rural struggle.
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Agraristas frequently called for the creation of the municipo libre , a decentralized village-based region free of the intervention of State
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and Capital. This desire was seen in the periodic burning of government records which accompanied their revolts. A reliance on
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armed struggle against the pistoleros, police and army became a central feature of their struggle alongside the call for the seizure of
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the large land holdings. Zapata's army which had originally risen up against the sugar plantations of Morelos (and later in the Revolution
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against all of Mexico's bosses) came full heartedly from this cycle of struggle.
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Despite the land reform measures of the Revolution, which were codified as Article 27 in the Constitution, this cycle continues
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into the present. In Chiapas as in many other parts of Mexico land is still overwhelmingly concentrated in the hands of a few large
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landowners. For example in the municipio of Tenegapa 3.8% of the landowners own over 60% of the land. This wealthy 3.8% is composed
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entirely of rancheros who are nearly all mestizo while predictably the bottom 96.2% are small Indian campesinos.
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Land disputes between this group still take on the intensity of agrarian struggles of the past. Large landowners still rely on hired
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gunman and correspondingly campesinos and indigenous groups throughout Mexico have relied on small armed self-defense groups.
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Beginning in the 1940's with Ruben Jamarillo's armed rebellion in Morelos (Jamarillo incidentally had ridden with Zapata in his youth)
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a slew of small self-defense groups have sprung up in several states including Hidalgo, Guerrero, Veracruz and Oaxaca. In 1993 alone two
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such groups were formed. Last spring 80 people in the town of Paso de Aguila (on the Tehuantepec isthmus) sold their cattle, bought guns
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and took to the hills after gunmen from a local ranch attacked the ejido. A little farther north a similar group calling itself the Eastern
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Mexican Democratic Front of Emiliano Zapata announce its creation. The Front claims to have re-appropriated 80,000 acres of land in the
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region.
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According to sources close to the rebel group (and supported by the Mexico City thinktank, the Center for Studies of Armed
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Movements) the EZLN had been originally formed as a similar campesino self-defense group four or five years ago. Andres Aubry,
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a French anthropologist who has lived in Chiapas for decades, said of the EZLN, "unlike the guerillas in Guatemala, they are not seeking out
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bases of support among the campesinos, but coming up from them. In that they are like Zapata himself." Since its inception the EZLN has
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quite obviously taken on a more ambitious trajectory of its own. Jose Luis Moreno, a former militant in an urban guerilla group, the
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September 23 League, attributes part of the EZLN's success to its ability to build horizontal alliances with urban groups. Certainly the
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presence of obviously urban intellectuals such as the much hyped Sub-comandante Marcos(who is rumored to have been an
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anthropologist at the Casa na Bolom) points to this. The EZLN has also reached out to the remants of Mexico's urban underground. The
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bombing of the Plaza Univerisdad in Mexico City and the Municipal Plaza in Acapulco have been attributed to an old urban guerrilla
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group, the Clandestine Workers and Campesinos Popular Union (PROCUP). Interestingly enough PROCUP itself has roots in the rural
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struggle of the 60's and 70's. PROCUP along with another rural turned urban group, the Party of the Poor (not the keg variety I would bet),
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are assumed to have a hand in the bombings of two electrical towers in Michocan and Puebla which were attributed to the EZLN.
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Like the agraristas of the late 19th and early 20th cent. the EZLN has risen directly from the specific features of class conflict in
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rural Chiapas. In discussing these features it is impossible to get away from a explanation of the key role the Mexican State plays in
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this conflict. In rural Mexico a two layered system of political control exists. At the federal level you have the national government and the
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PRI. At the local level the caciques hold power with a complex patronage system. Both of these levels rely on alternating between
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the velvet glove and the iron fist for social control. The velvet glove nearly always means costly (and conspicuous) development
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programs while the iron fist covers a whole slew of repressive measures spanning the fence from beatings, torture, withholding of
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social services, and murder. The method usually corresponds tactically to the level of struggle put forward by the local working
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class.
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The interplay between class struggle and government development programs have created massive environmental
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destruction in Chiapas or more precisely the Selva Lacandon, the rainforest which used to cover most of the eastern part of the State.
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The story of the destruction of the Lacandon (an estimated 80% in the last 20 years) is very much tied into this crisis. Although this
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story really extends back all the way to the turn of the century mahogany debt peonage camps immortalized in fiction by B. Traven's
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Rebellion of the Hanged the most dramatic and relevant phase lies in the last 20-30 years. Responding to the pressures for land reform by
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campesinos in southern Mexico the federal government began to look in the 1960's to the Lacandon as a panacea for its social control
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problem. Large scale development schemes were dreamed up for the new "frontier" which included alongside intensive logging and oil
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exploration the resettlement of 150,000 landless peasants mainly drawn from indigenous Mayan-speaking groups like the Tzotzil,
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Tzeltal, Chol, Sekema and Tojolabal.
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What followed is a pattern which mirrors the destruction of the Amazon rainforest. The Lacandon's topsoil, like most tropical
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rainforest, is unsuited for long term agriculture. After the new settlers had slashed and burned the forest on theirejidos they could
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hope to get only 2 or 3 good years out of the soil. A cycle followed in which the campesinos were forced to squat and clear more and more
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of the Lacandon. Meanwhile the rancheros were busy buying up, swindling or coercing large tracts of cleared forest lands from the
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settlers. Cattle overgrazing reduced the already damaged forest lands into wasteland while social tensions rose rapidly between the
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frustrated campesinos and cacique--dominated rancheros. As a result of this pattern, only 275,000- 325,000 hectares of an
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original 1.3 million hectares of forest were left intact.
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The federal government's response to this rising level of conflict clearly demonstrated the old velvet glove/iron fist social
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control method. Government development programs aimed to pacify the area by two methods. The first was to pull the semi-autonomous
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indigenous farmers closer into the wage labor market by conducting largescale infrastructure projects such as massive hydroelectric
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dams, road construction, oil exploration,etc. The second was through old fashioned pork barrel politics. Local caciques meted out projects
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in accordance to the amount of political support or favors that were given to them. In 1991 the Salinas government attempted to curb a
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widescale backlash against debt-crisis fueled austerity programs by creating the $9 billion dollar Solidaridad program. Solidaridad
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predictably fell into the same pattern of development. As one Chiapas resident put it "we can't eat basketball courts."
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The inability of development to curb campesino resistance has lead to the government's increased reliance on the iron fist of
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repression. Human rights abuse has a long history in Chiapas. To cite one example in 1975 soldiers of the 46th Battalion attacked the
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Lacandon community of San Francisco, burned down their homes and drove them from the land (which was later given to several large
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landowners in the region). Since that time hundreds of cases of beatings, torture and murders have occured under the hands of
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gunmen, police and soldiers. Less dramatically but just as harsh has been the use of underdevelopment as a passive weapon. In many of
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the newly formed Lacandon communities especially along the dirt roads social services such as adequate medical care or running water
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have been never been developed as promised or have been allowed to slowly deteriate.
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It is from these conditions that members of several, local autonomous groups such as the Emiliano Zapata Independent
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National Peasant Alliance (ANCIEZ) decided to form the EZLN. This bottom up evolution places the EZLN in an entirely different category
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from the usual foco external vanguard strategy which dominates most Latin American armed groups. The EZLN shares far more with
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the Mexican agrarista tradition than it does with the fidelistas. When the EZLN took San Cristobal it opened up several stores and
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pharmacies to the people producing according to one eye witness an LA-style festival of the oppressed. Government records were taken
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out and exposed to the people on the street showing a very different attitude than the typical meet-the-new-boss attitude of successful
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guerrilla groups. However keep in mind this not to say that the EZLN are perfect little anti-authoritarian angels. Importantly they are an
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army in every sense of the word including a hiearchical command structure and a certain degree of military ruthlessness. Also a very
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distinctive Marxist-Leninist element exists inside the EZLN including a few militants from guerrilla groups and sects like the Maoist Linea
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Proletaria.Whether these elements will lead them to become detached from the autonomous cycles of struggle inside the Lacandon
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is yet to be determined.
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-Chris Kutalik
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Atlatl Collective
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Pobox 650116
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Austin,TX 78765
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