MEXICO: Zapatista Comeback Seeks Leftist Allies

By IPS Correspondents Reprint | | Print |

Diego Cevallos

MEXICO CITY, Jul 1 2005 (IPS) - The Zapatista guerrillas in the southern Mexican state of Chiapas have once again taken up their dusty banner in the fight against neoliberalism, announcing that they would tour the country in search of alliances with “the true left.”

The Zapatista National Liberation Army (EZLN) is thus returning to the scene after years of silence, because as the indigenous group’s spokespersons said, “we have reached the point where we can go no further, and besides we could lose everything we have if we just stay the way we are.”

As on earlier Zapatista tours, the masked insurgents will travel without weapons and with a green-light from the government of Vicente Fox, which welcomed the latest announcements by the rebel group.

The EZLN was among the first organisers of the global struggle against neoliberalism and globalisation, holding international gatherings on these issues in the jungles of Chiapas in the late 1990s, which drew prominent global figures like U.S. filmmaker Oliver Stone and human rights activist and former French first lady Danielle Mitterand.

The last public action of the Zapatistas was a highly-publicised visit to the capital by their leaders in 2001 to urge Congress to pass a bill on indigenous autonomy that was based on the only agreement to emerge from the peace talks between the EZLN and the government of Ernesto Samper (1994-2000), which were broken off in 1996.

The law was approved, but with amendments that were rejected by the rebels, who as a result refused to engage in negotiations with the Fox administration.

Today, after four years out of the media spotlight, the Zapatistas are once again taking up their place in the international anti-globalisation movement.

“If they just continued the way they were going, their fate would have been marginalisation and isolation,” said Lucio Contreras, a political scientist at the National Autonomous University of Mexico.

“But they are making a comeback, and they are doing so with a strong, interesting initial impulse, but one that also entails the risk of ending up as just one more initiative destined to fade out like so many others,” he told IPS.

The poorly-armed EZLN engaged in just 12 days of fighting with the army when it first burst out of the remote jungles of Chiapas in January 1994, occupying highways and villages to declare war on the government and demand democracy, freedom and justice for indigenous peoples.

The ceasefire ordered at the time by the government of Carlos Salinas (1988-1994) has been in effect since then, and the Zapatistas practice de facto self-government in the rural areas, villages and towns under their control, despite a heavy military presence.

They also coexist with paramilitary groups that regularly harass their supporters and have even committed massacres.

The EZLN controls a small impoverished portion of Chiapas, which is the poorest state in this country of 104 million, but possesses large reserves of oil and gas. Most of the population of the state, which borders Guatemala, is made up of indigenous people.

The details of the group’s new plans are still vague.

“To all of those who are resisting (neoliberalism and globalisation) around the world, we are telling you that we must hold new intercontinental gatherings. Perhaps this coming December or January, we have to think about it,” says one of the several communiqués that the group has issued over the past two weeks, which it jointly dubbed the “sixth declaration from the Lacandona jungle”.

“And we think it should be held in a place with a big prison, because what if they crack down on us and throw us in jail – that way we wouldn’t be all crowded as prisoners, but would be well-organised. And there in prison we could continue the intercontinental gathering for humanity and against neoliberalism,” the statement adds.

Using grammatical constructions in Spanish that are typical of Mexico’s indigenous people, the Zapatistas have outlined in their recent public statements their history and their reflections on capitalism and Mexican politics today.

“It would be a good thing to listen to the EZLN and incorporate its arguments in the debate,” because the group makes valid observations on local and international problems, said historian Lorenzo Meyer.

The group presented its new initiatives in a political climate marked by the heated dispute among the leaders who hope to succeed President Fox after next year’s elections.

According to the Zapatistas, all of the country’s political leaders are “scoundrels”, and the only sectors that they see as capable of bringing about change and fighting injustice and are civil society and leftist organisations with no party affiliation.

In their criticism of the country’s political class, the Zapatistas include Mexico City Mayor Andrés López Obrador of the leftist Democratic Revolutionary Party (PRD), the front-runner in the polls among the potential presidential candidates.

“Subcomandante Marcos”, the most famous of the Zapatistas, who claims however not to be the group’s leader, says López Obrador’s platform and policies are centrist, rather than leftist, and that the centre is “nothing more than the moderate right.”

The Zapatistas said they would tour Mexico to forge alliances with leftist social groupings, workers, small farmers, women, and community organisations, to come up with “a new way of doing politics” and demand the rewriting of the constitution, which they said is the only way to provide the necessary guarantees of justice.

“We will build, along with these people who are humble and simple like us, a national programme of struggle, but a programme that is clearly leftist – in other words, anti-capitalist, anti-neoliberal, and in favour of justice, democracy and freedom for the Mexican people,” says the most recent communiqué.

“Today when there is only justice for the rich, freedom only for their big business and democracy only for painting election propaganda on the walls, we think that only the left can come up with a plan of struggle so that our fatherland, Mexico, does not die.”

But in Meyer’s view, it is obvious that Mexico’s politicians are not going to pay attention to the criticisms “from the mountains of southeastern Mexico”, from those who have no real power, do not take part in elections, and have no economic interests.

Because the Zapatistas are outsiders in politics, their success now depends on how many people they can mobilise and how realistic and convincing their proposals are, said Contreras.

With respect to their call for joining forces with organisations around the world opposed to the current model of globalisation, the analyst said the Zapatistas could get lost in that multitude of gatherings and demonstrations held by anti-globalisation activists every year, and that there would be no possibility of accurately gauging the group’s real influence on the international stage.

Since 2001, the World Social Forum has been held annually, drawing tens of thousands of critics of globalisation in its present shape and form, under the slogan “Another World Is Possible”.

But while the EZLN is frequently mentioned and held up as an example during the World Social Forum, the group itself has never referred to the global gathering in its public statements.

The Zapatistas merely stated this week that “we will forge more relationships of mutual respect and support with people and organisations that resist and fight against neoliberalism and for humanity.”

“Because what we want is to tell all of you who resist and fight, in your own ways and your own countries, that you are not alone, that we the Zapatistas, although we are very small, support you and will find a way to help you in your struggles and talk to you in order to learn, because what we have learned is how to learn,” they added.