Chiapas and the Zapatistas - a first encounter.

The highlands of Chiapas are overwhelmingly green, mountainous and dramatic. Its hard to imagine anyone 'conquering' this impossible seeming landscape. Over the last 13 years, since the Zaptista uprising of 1994, the Mexican government has moved 70 000 of its military into the area, mostly to repress the Zapatistas and their movement for autonomy.



My first encounter with the masked people of the EZLN was at CEDICI-UniTierra in San Cristobla del las Casa- the old colonial city center of the Chiapan Highlands. Hundreds of people were packed into a small conference room to hear the round table on 'Defending the Earth and its Territories,' with delegates from Brazil, India and Korea. I think many of the large crowd came to see and hear the mysterious subcommandante Marcos, the white skinned, spokesperson of the Zapatistas.



Marcos has been critized for gaining a cultish following, but his high profile stratergy has, in some incidents, used the attention of well known members of western civil society, to prevent repressive actions by the Zedillo and Chiapas state government. If we are looking for the romance of a heroic leader, Marcos with his poetry and metaphoric tales, could fit the bill. The Zapatista struggle, however, has been anything but romantic.



Emerging armed and dangerous in 1994 with a force that shook the government, the Zapatistas put aside their weapons and entered 20 months of lengthy negotaitions with the government that came to nothing. Called the San Andreas Accords, the government never followed through on its adoption of the Indian Accords. The Zapatistas began to create their own autonomous communities, claiming about 38 autonomous zones in Chiapas by 2000.





The governments response since 1994 to the Zapatistsa, has been the intense militirization of Chiapas, with over 70 000 troops, (2) occupying Chiapas and intimidating local communites. Over the last 13 years, thousands of Indians have been jailed, tortured or killed: suspected leaders, supporters, orgnizers, participants or those affiliated with the Zapatistsa movement. The threat of autonomy was too much for the then Zedillo administration and it, and the Chiapan government, reacted with added brutality. Many members of autonomous communities had to flee into the mountains(3) for safety, as the government troops destroyed their villages.

It was not, nor remains, only the army involved in this " dirty war". Government armed paramilitaries, mostly PRI supporters, have intimidated and killed Zapatistsa and their allies. Some of the more horrific incidents on record are: Acteal 1997, El Bosque 1998, El Charco, 1998.


The Church at Ateal , where 47 people, mostly women and children of Las Abejas (the bees) were gunned down in cold blood while the military at a nearby base did not intervene.




There is something almost magical about these masked men and women. Small in stature and beautifully dressed in bright colors and ribbons, their image has been commercialized on posters, t-shirts, coffee cups and dolls in the tourists markets of San Cristobal. The Zapatistsas are however, deadly serious about the" work" that they have before them.

The Intergalatica with the Zapatistas and the People of the World, at Morelia, 2007, was my second encounter with the Zapatistas and their deliberate and thorough way of community assembly - something so different from a meeting structure in the west. Over hours and hours, the speeches eventually merged into one consistent voice of struggle against the bad government and conditions of poverty. Its a strange process of acculturation to sit for hours and listen. In the assembly structure, each person is heard, each community represented.



The Zapatistsas have since 2006 begun organizing beyond their territory, through the Other Campaign, a stratergy developed in reaction to Calderón's contested election victory in 2006. It reaches north and south, east and west across Mexico and unites all indigenous people in the same struggle- essentailly one of autonomy over land and resources and against the "mal gobierno" that fails to address the needs of the indigenous communities in Mexico.



1. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tzotzil
2. The War Against Oblivion" Ross, John: Common Courage Press.
3. ibid