Five years after Chiapas rebellion
It is five years since the Zapatista uprising burst onto the world stage on January 1 1994 when they occupied the city of San Cristobal de las Casas and six other towns in the state of Chiapas in Mexico. It is a fitting time therefore to look back on what has been achieved by the Zapatistas as well as what solidarity tasks are posed for the left internationally.
Below Terry Conway argues that while the mobilisations led by the Zapatista army (EZLN) and their supporters have not led to the downfall of the PRI government, it has deepened their isolation and led to a crisis of confidence which may in the end be terminal.
We also carry a piece from Mexican Labour News and Analysis which marks the first anniversary of the new union Federation, the UNT. The building of a political alternative to the PRI Presidential system must of necessity lead to and need a major rupture in the trade unions. While the promise of the UNT remains unfulfilled, the development is never the less an important one.
The crisis of the ruling party, the Institutional Revolutionary Party (PRI) and its state has deepened considerably during the period since the Zapatistas first launched their offensive against the government and its neo-liberal line.
The PRI has continued its hold on power through its tried and tested method of electoral fraud taken to new levels of bathos. It has combined this with a merciless low intensity war against the indigenous communities which has seen the encampment of 75,000 government troops in the state of Chiapas.
The balance sheet of that war combined with the long process of social exclusion imposed on the indigenous people of Chiapas and deepened by the NAFTA agreement is clear from the state’s own statistics. Of 42 million poor persons in the country, only 6 per cent receive school breakfasts and only 5 per cent are able to purchase milk at 2 pesos per litre.
UNICEF, who have launched a fund of $2.5 million dollars to assist the children of Mexico, as well as those of Honduras, Guatemala, Belize and El Salvador in the wake of Hurricane Mitch, also provide telling statistics. They explain that Chiapas is among the most deficient areas in the whole region with regard to primary education, with a little more than 70 per cent of the population in deplorable and indigent conditions.
Again the government was condemned out of the mouths of its own supporters when 16 PRI senators, the so-called Galileo group, revealed the results of an investigation into living conditions in Chiapas in November 1998. They found that 90 per cent of Chiapans live in poverty and 75 per cent in extreme poverty. They demanded a review of government policy in the state and concluded that even if the Zapatistas were to disappear it would have little effect in the region as " the causes that gave rise to the conflict would remain unresolved."
Such statements are not made out of any concern for the people of Chiapas - but from fear that the current strategy of the PRI will not remain successful in containing the legitimate demands of the people.
Perhaps the high point of the balance of forces between the Zapatistas and their allies and the ruling party was achieved with the signing of the San Andreas accords in January 1996.
The importance of the Accords lies almost as much in the consultative and participatory process in their negotiation and formulation as in their contents. Some 500 representatives of Mexico’s 32 indigenous peoples and from 178 indigenous organisations were invited by the EZLN and PRI government negotiators to a National Indigenous Forum in San Cristobal de Las Casas in February 1996.
Regional indigenous forums took place throughout the country simultaneously. The EZLN adopted the demands of these forums as their own, leading to the signing of the accords with the government a month later.
The Accords demand "a new relationship between the State and the indigenous peoples", including the recognition of indigenous rights and autonomy as defined in Convention 169 of the International Labour Organisation.
The Accords necessitate the re-municipalisation of indigenous regions, the free determination of the indigenous peoples, the promotion and protection of indigenous cultures and customs, the promotion of bilingual and culturally aware education, the creation of autonomous indigenous mass media, including radio and TV stations, and the rights of indigenous women to hold positions of authority and to have equality with men at all levels of government.
Most crucially, they demand the direct control and use of the natural resources on and under indigenous lands. This demand represents a direct threat to neoliberal designs to expropriate and exploit all the natural and human resources of these areas for the interests of the Trans-National Corporations and international investors, a far more radical form of autonomy than that which already exists in some states such as Oaxaca. which would break tip and possibly render impossible the realisation of’ the planned "corridors of development".
As such the Accords represent an important precedent which other non-indigenous groups and movements might well be inspired to take up in the struggle for their own kinds of autonomy.
While it was clear at the time of the signing of the accords that it was only an unfavourable balance of forces that led the government to make this agreement, this has been underlined starkly by the subsequent repudiation of the accords by President Ernesto Zedillo.
The Accords however, together with demands for an end to the militarisation of Chiapas, have continually acted as a reference point for the Zapatistas - a rallying cry for their supporters as well as the context for attempted negotiations with the state.
The latest attempt at formal discussions took place at the end of November 1998 - the first meeting since talks were suspended in September 1996 between the Zapatistas and the Cocopa; a congressional commission set up to promote dialogue with the EZLN which is made up of representatives from the five largest parties at the Federal and Chiapan state levels.
The extreme isolation of the Zedillo government was underlined in the run up to the talks by the fact that not only the representatives of the opposition Democratic Revolutionary Party (PRD) in Cocopa, but one of the representatives of the PRI itself refused to attend the meeting. They argued that the federal government had not put in place the necessary conditions for the dialogue to take place.
No one was then surprised when after just 40 minutes of discussions the 29 representatives of the EZLN walked out of the meeting. They pointed out that the legislators of the Cocopa had a "racist" and "humiliating" attitude and explained that the basic material conditions for the meeting had not been provided.
But at the same time the Zapatistas were using the opportunity to continue the preparation for the National Consultation it is planning for early this year.
The EZLN have always known that in order to force any movement towards implementation of the San Andreas accords they will need to continue and deepen the broadest possible mobilisations across Mexican society.
Therefore they are planning an unofficial national referendum on the accords as a way of stepping up the pressure on the government. Representatives of 2000 popular organisations across Mexico met with them to plan the campaign for the referendum
It will be the success or otherwise of such mobilisations throughout Mexico, together with other developments such as those amongst trade unionists which will in the end determine the fate of the government of Zedillo and PRI rule itself.