The Zapatista National Liberation Army emerged from the New Year’s
uprising as a national political force. Chiapas’ recent history explains
how an oppressed and impoverished peasantry came to view armed
struggle as their best optionand were able to pull off an insurrection.
On January 1st, the day the North Am- erican Free Trade
Agreement (NAFTA) went into effect, a previously
unknown guerrilla group in the Mexican state of Chia-
pas burst onto the national scene by capturing a half dozen towns by force of
arms. The army took four days to drive them back into the mountains at the
cost of a hundred lives. As
the badly shaken Mexican
government tries to negoti- ate a settlement, the rebelsled by the elo-
quent, green-eyed Coman- the rebel/ion.
dante Marcos are gath-
ering sympathy around the country. The Zapatista National Libera-
tion Army (EZLN) emerged from the New Year’s uprising as a
national political force. The Zap- atistas’ claim to a following in
other parts of the country and their
threat to spread the war elsewhere
are both entirely credible. But Chia- pas is their home base, and to explain how an oppressed and
Lu/s Hernndez, the author of several
books on agrarian politics, is an advisor
to a national coffee-growers’ organiza-
tion and a regular contributor to the
Mexico City daily, La Jornada.
Translated from the Spanish by Mark
Fried.
impoverished peasantry came to view armed struggle as their best
optionand were able to pull off
an insurrectionwe must examine
the particular experience of Chia-
pas’ recent history. This peasant war, the current
incarnation of a tradition of cyclic
Indian revolts, grew out of nearly
20 years of political agitation in the
countryside, primarily over land. The agrarian reform that in some states practically eradicated the
large latifundios of pre-revolution-
ary Mexico was never fully imple- mented in Chiapas. The state is the principal source of the nation’s coffee, and just over a hundred
people (0.16% of all cof-
fee farmers) control 12% of all coffee lands. Land tenure is actually more
skewed than these figures
suggest, since some prop- erties are registered in the
names of third persons in order to evade constitu-
tional restrictions on max- imum size. These large
farms have the best land,
most of the credit, and the
best infrastructure. Yet the real problem isn’t in coffee, it’s in cat-
tle. According to 1980 fig- ures (the most recent available), some 6,000 families hold more than
three million hectares of pasture-
land, equivalent to nearly half the territory of all Chiapas’ rural land-
holdings. Many of these vast cattle
ranches were created through vio-
lent and illegal invasions of ejido
(community-held) or national land.
In the Ocosingo Lions Club, as
recently as 1971, there hung a sign that was the ranchers’ motto: “In
the Law of the Jungle it is willed!
that Indians and blackbirds must be killed.” Threats, jailings and
killings of peasantssometimes at the hands of the ranchers’ private
armies, other times the result of the
army or a judge acting on the
ranchers’ behalffill the pages of
6 NICLA REPORTON THE AMERICAS
Government tanks move into Chiapas in January to put down
0 0
0UPDATE I MEXICO
Chiapas’ tabloid press. Several
international human rights organi- zations, among them Amnesty International and Americas Watch,
have documented these attacks. The concentration of land and natural resources in a few hands
also facilitated the takeover of all elective offices by a small inter-
locking network known as the “Chiapas Family.” With a few
notable exceptions, the Family is
made up of the big ranchers, coffee
magnates and lumber barons who
have traditionally fed at the public
trough. This is the case not only in state and local government, but
also in the powerful mass
organizations dominated by the ruling Rev- olutionary Institutional
Party (PRI). Local political bosses, known as caciques, exer-
cise great personal power in Chiapas, like elsewhere
in Mexico. A good exam- ple is Jorge Felino Mon-
tesinos Melgar, strongman of the town of Motozintla and until recently state leader of the National Peasant Council (CNC),
one of the PRI’s organiza-
tions. Among other things, this representative of Chi-
apas’ peasants controls all transport in the area of Motozintla,
where he was elected mayor three times, and is currently a federal
congressman. His wife heads up the regional Civil Registry; his
compadre Hermelindo Jan Robiero
is the tax collector; his brother-in- law is the mayor of Siltepec; his nephew is the mayor of La
Grandeza; another compadre is the
mayor of El Porvenir… In the highlands a relatively large number of political bosses are Indians, many of them bilin-
gual teachers. These caciques usu- ally control the marketing of
liquor, soft drinks, flowers, candles and fireworks. Needless to say,
they benefit from the practice of traditional rituals in which these products are consumed. They often control transportation and
land rentals as well; and of course,
they control the PRI and CNC municipal committees. Not sur-
prisingly, political dissidence is
frequently expressed as religious differences which question the
mechanisms by which the caciques
accumulate wealth. For example,
Protestants who refuse to partici- pate in funding fiestas for the patron saints are sometimes
expelled from the community and
their lands confiscated.
These local political bosses
Indian and non-Indian alikehave
used demands for regional autono- my to block the federal govern-
ment’ s efforts to modernize tradi- tional modes of domination.
“Chiapas para los chiapanecos” may be an appealing slogan in a country as overly centralized as
Mexico, but it has been employed to keep democratic grassroots movements from allying with pro-
gressive federal officials. Similar-
ly, when war erupted in nearby Central America, the Chiapas Fam-
ily moved quickly to convince the
federal government that the state’s
stability depended on strengthen-
ing, rather than weakening, their
stranglehold on political and eco-
nomic power. To fight this oppres- sive system, the peasants of Chia- pas have founded some of the
country’s most important regional organizations. Chiapas’ small cof- fee producers were the first to chal- lenge the state coffee company,
and to set up self-managed coffee
farms. They were the second group in the country to found a rural
credit union. They were pioneers in
the production of organic coffee
along with farmers in neighboring
Oaxacaand in the development
of alternative marketing channels.
T
he growth of peasant
struggle throughout the state after 1974
was influenced by a num-
ber of factors. The influx of 15,000 to 30,000 Guatemalan temporary workers to the large coffee
farms, undercutting the pay of migrants from the
Chiapas highlands, prompted agricultural workers to organize.
Growing population and unemployment increased the pressure on land and
drove many to petition for agrarian reform. This was
further complicated by the arrival in the early 1980s of nearly
80,000 Guatemalan refugees flee- ing the dirty war in their country.
Unplanned colonization of the jun-
gle caused ecological disaster by
1985, and brought the agricultural frontier to a close. Peasants were also assisted by “outside” organizers. Liberation
theology-inspired Catholic clergy began to do politically oriented
pastoral work. Several new politi-
cal parties started doing grassroots organizing, among them Proletari- an Line, People United, the
Independent Organization of Agri- cultural Workers and Peasants- Mexican Communist Party
People presumed to be linked to the EZLN are massacred on the
road to Ocosingo, Chiapas on January 5.
Vol XXVII, No 5 MAR/APRIL 1994 7UPDATE / MEXICO
(CIOAC-PCM), and the Socialist Workers Party. And in 1979 a broad-based democratic union
movement emerged among the state’s teachers, some of whom
began organizing peasants. Three key organizations from the mid-1970s still exist today. The
Union of Ejido Unions works pri-
marily in the Lacandn Jungle, the
northern part of the state, and the
Sierra Madre Mountains. It seeks to win peasant control over the
productive process by pressuring the state through mobilization, but
it prefers negotiation over direct
Attacks by ranchers
not only united the
peasants of the
jungle but fed their
sense of collective
identity as victims of
abuse by the
wealthy.
confrontation. The second organi-
zation, CIOAC, focuses on orga- nizing the seasonal and permanent
workers on coffee farms and cattle
ranches in the towns of Simojovel, Huitiupn and El Bosque. It has
sought to link the union struggle to the electoral and programmatic activities of the old Communist
Party, and later to its successor, the
Unified Socialist Party.
The third main group, the Emil-
iano Zapata Peasant Organization (OCEZ), grew out of the communi-
ty of Venustiano Cananza. It strug-
gles for land and against repres-
sion, primarily by confronting the state through direct action. In addi- tion to these three, a number of
local organizing efforts resulted in land takeovers and bloody con-
frontations with local bosses, but
all of them suffered repression and
internal divisions.
The widespread insurgence among the state’s primary and sec-
ondary school teachers for better pay and the democratization of
their union had a great impact on
broader social struggles. Beginning in 1979, thousands of teachers held
strikes, work-stoppages, sit-ins and marches to Mexico City. In the
process they sought the solidarity of parents, the majority of whom
were peasants. These, in turn, viewed the teachers’ struggle as an object lesson in how to achieve
their own demands. Once the democratic teachers’
movement managed to win control
over the state union, it became an
interlocutor with the state govem- ment on behalf of the peasant
movement, and encouraged teach- ers to “link up with the people.” In
1986, teachers took up the struggle of com farmers for an increase in
the guaranteed price of coru, land-
ing seven of their leaders in jail.
By August, 1989, the teachers
had organized five teacher-peasant conferences, in which some 400
community representatives partici- pated. The organization that emerged from this process, Peas-
ant-Teacher Solidarity, was quite
successful in promoting democracy in the countryside. They won con-
trol of many municipal committees
of the PRI, as well as several may- orships in Indian towns. At the
beginning of the administration of Governor Patrocinio Gonzalez Garrido in 1989, the movement
controlled 14 municipal govern- ments. But by the time his term ended last year, several of the movement’s mayors were in jail
for conuptionsome for good rea- sons, others on trumped-up
chargesand one had been assas- sinated on the orders of the local
political boss. A new cycle of struggle began on October 12, 1992 at an astound-
ing demonstration in San Cristobal
de las Casas to commemorate the five-hundredth anniversary of
indigenous and popular resistance. Thousands of peasants from differ- ent ethnic groups took over the
narrow streets of the colonial capi- tal of the Chiapas highlands and
vented their rage on the symbol of
white dominationbreaking into bits the statue of conquistador
Diego de Mazazriegos. According to some of the participants, that
moment marked a tuming point, a
catharsis of collective anger which
brought into people’s conscious- ness what many already felt: that
armed struggle was the only path to achieve Indian demands. The people who preached the need to take up arms had been
doing careful grassroots organizing for some time in the Lancandon
Jungle and several highland com-
munities in the area. Their move-
ment remained underground and
grew by recruiting key cadre from
the legal organizations operating in the region. They persuasively argued that armed struggle was
justified by the explosive combina- tion of unresolved land claims,
lack of social services, institutional
atrophy, authoritarian political bosses, monstrous deformations in
the justice system, and the general lack of democracy.
A
lthough the colonization of
the Lancandon Jungle was
initially promoted by the large lumber companies who need-
ed workers to cut the trees, it inten-
sified as a result of the failure of agrarian reform in Chiapas and elsewhere. From the 1940s onward, the people who came to
live in the jungle were those who had lost the struggle for land at
home. Some were sent to this fron-
tier by an agrarian bureaucracy unwilling to challenge the large landowners, while others were
simply pushed off their lands and
had nowhere else to go.
8 NACIA REPORT ON THE AMERICASUPDATE / MEXICO
In their efforts to build commu-
nities and lives in the uninhabited
jungle, they relied on the presence and accompaniment of the Catholic
Church, which in this region was
particularly respectful of people’s traditional customsand on the
notable absence of governmental
institutions. Religion became the
glue that held these new communi- ties together. Catechists not only
taught people the “word of God”
but, literate and mobile, many of
them able to speak Spanish, they became key links to the outside
world. A second element that gave
cohesion to these communities was
the struggle for title to their land.
In 1972, President Luis EcheverrIa
gave 66 Lacandn Indian families title to 614,321 hectares, and
denied all rights to the 26 indige-
nous communities of other ethnic groups. The signing of the Joint Accord for the Protection of the
Lacandn Jungle in March, 1987
opened a process of negotiation which culminated in January, 1989
when President Carlos Salinas de
Gortari signed a presidential decree to title the properties of the 26
communities. Behind these negotiations and
accords lay a lot of hard work on
the part of the region’s peasant
organizations. In the process, peas- ants came into increasingly bitter conflict with large ranchers who were expanding into the jungle,
violently expelling people from their lands, and accusing them of
promoting land takeovers. Attacks by ranchers not only united the
peasants of the jungle but fed their
sense of collective identity as vic-
tims of abuse by the wealthy.
Two strategies were always pre- sent in these struggles. On the one
hand were those who encouraged
the formation of democratic resis-
tance organizations and the promo-
tion of peasant self-government. On the other were those who believed this was necessary but
insufficient, that only changing the
system through armed struggle could provide a real solution. The
first vision gave rise to organiza- tions such as the Union of Ejido
Unions; the second to what today
is known as the Zapatista National Liberation Army. For years the
path of peasant self-government was considered primary, despite the closed attitude of local and state officials. Only in the past three years has this position lost influence among the region’s
inhabitants. One basic reason is the continued conflict with ranchers
and their hired
guns. Although the ranchers lost title to much of the jungle, they maintained con-
trol of most of
the natural and
cultivated pas- tureland and of the cattle that
graze there.
Ac c u sto med to quick and
easy profits from cheap land A cam pesino farmer
and cheap labor, Chiapas.
ranchers blamed
peasants for falling profits caused by their own lack of investment,
and proceeded to throw more peas- ants off their land. Any peasant
organization that requested land through the agrarian reform became a target of rancher vio-
lence, supported and often carried
out by local officials.
The insurrection also grew out of
the economic crisis. The prices of
the region’s major products wood, coffee, cattle and corn have all deteriorated drastically.
The 1989 moratorium on wood- cutting (a step back from the accord signed in 1987) denied peasants an important source of
income. The fall of the internation-
al price of coffee from U.S.$120-
140 per hundredweight in 1989 to an average of $60-70 today, as
well as federal economic policies,
led to a 65% drop in income for
coffee producers over the past five years. What’s more, the disman-
tling of the federal coffee compa-
ny, Inmecaf, deprived peasants of marketing mechanisms and a
source of technical assistance. The region was hurt by the
falling profitability of cattle ranch-
ing. Corn farming, too, lost pro-
ductivity due to population growth and the consequent reduction of
30-year slash-and-burn cycles to
passes the Mayan ruins of Pa/en que in
two-year ones. With a few miser-
able handouts, Salinas’ much-tout-
ed National Solidarity Program (PRONASOL) was barely able to
soften the blows of falling income
and fewer jobs. Despite their inno- vative efforts, the new self-man-
aged enterprises grouped in the National Coordinator of Coffee-
Growers’ Organizations were also
unable to stop the increase in
impoverishment. The third factor behind the turn
to arms is the government’s inca- pacity to resolve the underlying
political problem, which would involve dismantling the web of
economic and political interests on which the untenable status quo
depends. Along with the Church,
Vo XXVII, No 5 MAR/APRIL 1994 gUPDATE I MEXICO
non-governmental organizations (NGOs), and democratic peasant organizations, certain federal
development agencies, particularly the National Indigenist Institute, have worked to “civilize” the struggle between ranchers and
peasants. But for 20 years, state officials
have blocked nearly all attempts at reform promoted by the federal
government, many of which were
based on the erroneous assumption
that local elites would actually take
up its progressive initiatives and run with them. To make matters
worse, current federal policies to streamline government have left democratic organizations with even fewer institutional mecha-
nisms to defend their interests.
The state judiciary has been par-
ticularly effective in shutting out
the peasantry. The state penal code authorizes the punishment of the intellectual authors of supposed
crimes, and outlaws the occupation
of public squares. The judicial police have earned a well-deserved
reputation for abuse and violations of human rights. Likewise, the
penitentiary system holds people for months without trial, which
drove one prisoner in Cerro Hueco
jail to set himself on fire in protest
in 1992. Nearly every democratic
peasant organization active in Chi-
apas has members in jail.
Lest we forget, electoral fraud is
choking Chiapas along with the rest of the country. The 1991 elec-
tion results were blatantly fraudu-
lentshowing municipalities rife with conflict to have cast 100% of
their votes for the PRI.
The conviction that all avenues
of legal struggle had been exhaust- ed was brought to a head by the
harsh policies adopted by the state government in 1990, when the leaders of the “Xi’ Nich” move- ment in Palenque and the parish
priest of Simojovel, Joel Padrn, were jailed for supporting land
claims. Although a broad regional
mobilization, national protests, and
Church intervention won their free-
dom, the experience was viewed as
a watershed. If the achievement of
such small victories in local con-
flicts required nationwide protests,
people reasoned, then the only way to resolve the state’s many prob- lems would be by democratizing
the entire country.
The final straw came when Presi-
dent Salinaswho had begun his
administration with some encour-
aging signals (freeing prisoners and settling longstanding land claims)backed the governor’s
The state judiciary
has shut out the
peasantry. Nearly
every democratic
organization active
in Chiapas has
members in jail.
iron hand and proceeded to impose the reform of Article 27 of the
Constitution, ending legal protec- tion for community ejido lands.
G
iven these material condi- tions, it’s not surprising that the disciplined and
tenacious efforts of political-mili-
tary organizations to promote the option of armed struggle found fer-
tile ground. Their cadre are not for-
eigners or outsiders, but local peo- ple familiar with the culture and
rhythms of indigenous communi- ties and well-known by broad sec-
tors of the population. Add to this
their evident military and ideologi-
cal preparation, and it’s not hard to
grasp how they were able to launch the rebellion which shook the
nation on New Year’s Day.
The uprising was a mix of des-
peration born of a bitter present and
an uncertain future, and rage at past
defeats and constant humiliation by
the powerful. But it was also driven by the dream of recovering the
great Indian nation that once was, and the incredible self-assurance people attained from having suc-
cessfully conquered the jungle. Many of the radical measures
required to resolve the conflict in
Chiapas are needed throughout Mexico: an agrarian reform that
destroys the power of corrupt local
elites; regional economic develop-
ment programs led by grassroots organizations; a complete overhaul
of the judicial system including purging the security forces of
human rights violators; and democ-
ratic reform of the political system
to end the PRI’s monopoly control
of public offices and mass organi-
zations. Not everyone in the Chiapas countryside believes now is the
time to adopt the strategy and tac-
tics of peasant warfare. Neither do
all of the organizations that work
in the zone of conflict wish to be
considered belligerent forces. The
uprising does, however, have sym-
pathizers. People have long memo- ries, and many see this as an opportunity to get back at their oppressors; but caciques and ranchers also bear many grudges,
and know they need only call their enemies Zapatistas to exact
revenge. The peasant war in Chiapas has
opened up issues that the national
elites had hoped would be forgot-
ten. It bared to the world a side of Mexico that was not taken into
account when Congress voted by acclamation “to join the First World.” It is time to bring the political system in line with the
overall maturity of Mexican soci-
ety. The new Mayan war is a signal that the hour of real political reform has arrivedand there is no turning back.
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