The massacre at Acteal last December
was not an accidental or isolated event.
In fact, it was a carefully planned act
of war against Zapatista rebels and their
supporters.
On December 22, 1997, in the small village of
Acteal in the highlands of Chiapas, 45 unarmed
men, women and children were massacred by a
paramilitary group linked to Mexico’s ruling Institutional
Revolutionary Party (PRI). The bloodbath was the most
recent episode of political violence in the ongoing con-
flict in Chiapas, in which 1,500 people have been killed, most by state security forces or paramilitaries. It was a
dramatic reminder that in the seemingly endless war in
southeastern Mexico, the great majority of the victims
belong to only one group-those who oppose the gov-
ernment. This is truly a dirty war.
Luis Hernindez Navarro is an editor and columnist at the
Mexico City daily paper La Jornada. He is also an advisor to the National Council of Coffee-Growing Cooperatives based in Mexico City. Translated from the Spanish by Fred Rosen.
Today, four years after the Zapatista Army of National
Liberation (EZLN) declared war on the Mexican govern-
ment, peace seems more distant than ever. Whatever light
could once be seen at the end of the tunnel has vanished.
The government’s refusal to comply with the Indigenous
Rights and Culture Accords it signed with the EZLN on
February 16, 1996 has added to the climate of uncertainty
and political disorder in the state. Chiapas, indeed, has
become the black hole of Mexican politics.
While the government speaks of peace, it has sought to
destroy the Zapatistas militarily. It agreed to a cease-fire
shortly after the emergence of the EZLN on January 1,
1994, but within a year it had broken the fragile peace,
launching a military offensive against the Zapatistas in
February 1995. The army was able to push back the EZLN
but not defeat it. As a result, the government has turned to
low-intensity warfare in an effort to overpower the rebels
militarily and politically. Key to the government’s strat-
egy has been promoting and assisting the formation of
paramilitary groups, to which it has delegated the task of
repressing the indigenous rebellion and terrorizing the
civilian population.
The massacre at Acteal was not an isolated or acciden-
tal event. It was not, as the government claims, the spon-
taneous product of the fanaticism of indigenous factions
confronted with intercommunal or intracommunal prob-
lems. In fact, it was a carefully planned act of war whose
objective was to trigger an escalation of the conflict by
VOL XXXI, No 5 MARCH/APRiL 1998 7REPORT ON CHIAPAS & COLOMBIA
diluting civil resistance and terrorizing the groups in civil
society who could potentially mediate the conflict in
Chiapas.
Most of the victims of the Acteal massacre were Tzotzil
Maya members of a group called Las Avejas (The Bees).
Las Avejas had joined the democratic struggle against the
semi-feudal political bosses of the state of Chiapas, and
while they supported the goals of the Zapatistas, they
rejected the use of arms and were committed to the non-
violent transformation of political life in their state. The
killings were an attempt to crack open the fishbowl in
which the Zapatista guerrillas swim-an attempt to elim-
inate all civic mediations, so as to force the indigenous
rebels to confront those in power directly. Within the logic
of counterinsurgency, the massacre also serves as exem-
plary punishment for those who dare to challenge the local
and national hegemony of the ruling party.
The bloodbath in Acteal came just six months after
the municipal and congressional elections held last
July, which seemed to herald a new political geog-
raphy in Mexico. The PRI lost its absolute majority in the
Some believed that
the breakdown of
PRI rule would
promote
democratization
in Mexico. Instead,
there has been a
feudalization of
power and a rise in
political violence.
lower house to a four-
party coalition, while
maintaining its control
of the Senate. And
though the PRI retained
three of the five state
governments that were
up for grabs, the center-
right National Action
Party (PAN) took the
other two. The big win-
ner, however, was the
center-left Party of the
Democratic Revolution
(PRD), a party that has
been violently harassed
by the government from
its very inception. The
PRD’s Cuauht6moc
Cdrdenas defeated the PRI candidate for the governorship
of Mexico City-the first time in five decades this post
was up for election-by a wide margin.
The fact that the opposition won in relatively clean and
fair elections led many observers to qualify the July vote
as the beginning of Mexico’s transition to democracy. In
hindsight, it is clear that this optimism ignored major
anomalies in local elections, the coercion and buying of
votes in rural areas and the exclusion of entire indige-
nous areas from the electoral process. Indeed, events in
recent months have shown that Mexico is nowhere near
the democratic “normalization” proclaimed by its pres-
ident, and that it is in fact in the throes of a profound
crisis of the state.
As the power of the presidency has deteriorated in
recent years-President Zedillo likes to say that it has
been “delimited”-a reactionary coalition of state gov-
ernors and party bosses has emerged in its place within
the ruling PRI. While some believed that the breakdown
of PRI rule would promote greater democratization and
decentralization in Mexico, the result has actually been
a feudalization of power and a dramatic rise in politi-
cal violence. Chiapas is precisely one of those violent
semi-feudal enclaves in which the local PRI has allot-
ted itself more power with the weakening of the
Mexican presidency. Meanwhile, wide areas of the
country-particularly the indigenous regions in the
southeast-have been militarized and the number of
politically motivated killings has increased, making this
Mexico’s worst human rights crisis in years. Common
crime is on the rise, and government officials seem
incapable of finding a response other than the milita-
rization of the police.
R NACIA REPORT ON THE AMERICASREPORT ON CHIAPAS & COLOMBIA
Chiapas? BY ANDRES AUBRY AND ANGELICA INDA
ally stealing food and animals from Samuel Sanchez weapons give them
neighboring farms. Because they Sanchez, a PR! a power and status
own no land and have no reliable deputy to the which neither they
means of subsistence, they are Chiapas State nor their landless
forced to live outside the law. Their known leader of parents have ever dislocation from community life the ‘Peace and enjoyed before. also means that they have no rea- justice” paramili- The paramilitaries
son to attend assemblies, and thus tary group. are active through- have no part in communal decision- t out the indigenous
making processes. Their criminal regions in northern and eastern behavior, therefore, is at least in % 7 Chiapas, where the presence of the
part a product of the government’s j I I 1 Mexican army assures them perfect economic, agricultural and labor J impunity. Their objective is to dis-
policies. mantle all civilian groups that sup-
Because of their itinerant life in porttheZapatistaArmyof National
search of work, and their estrange- Liberation (EZLN). They do so by ter-
ment from community life, these rorizing communities, forcibly dis- landless young men have no sense placing the civilian population, and
of communal responsibility. They disrupting their livelihoods. In
have never experienced the civic Chenalh, for example, the para-
education that comes with the pen- militaries not only killed unarmed
odic assemblies in which the collective destinies of civilians, but destroyed productive facilities, harvests their communal lands, villages or municipalities are and even farming to
ols in order to deprive members of
decided. Their only teachers have been those who dissident communities o
f the possibility of future
instructed them in the proper use of their weapons. income. The paramili
taries attacked the Acteal vil-
Joining paramilitary groups has offered these young lagers at the beginning of the coffee harvest, more-
men a quick solution to their economic desperation. over, in a year when prices were expected to be high,
The heavy war tax they collect every two weeks from with the aim of remo
ving entire communities of agni-
all adults living in their areas of influence gives them cultural produc
ers from the sources of their livelihood.
regular income, and their war booty of animals, crops The tragic irony i
n Chiapas is that the very forces which
and household items is far more than what they could have deprived these
landless youths of their livelihood
obtain by stealing from neighboring farms. Being a are now using them to
rob their own communities
paramilitary also confers prestige. Their sophisticated of a future.R
Several factors are at play in the crisis of the Mexican
state. The political regime, which many have character-
ized as a one-party state, has become obsolete, but it has
not yet been replaced by a new system. The contradic-
tions between a set of political institutions based on top-
down corporatist and clientelistic relations on the one
hand, and an increasingly mature civil society which
seeks full political participation on the other, remains a
source of permanent conflict.
The crisis is also the result of factional wars within the
state itself, sparked by the elimination of the traditional
rules of the game by former President Carlos Salinas.
These factional wars have been exacerbated by the grow-
ing role of “narco-politics” in national life, a role so con-
siderable that a large drug cartel was recently able to
purchase the services of the military officer entrusted with
the Zedillo government’s war on drugs. The web that links
the drug world to the world of Mexican politics grows
more extensive each day.
Voi XXXI, No 5 MARCH/APRIL 1998
T
o flesh out the specific logic of the terrible
violence committed at Acteal, we must begin, as
they do in detective stories, by asking who bene-
fits from the crime. In this sense, the most significant
evidence is the strategic repositioning and growth by
5,000 troops of the Mexican army in Chiapas. Troops stationed in the nearby states of Campeche and Yucatan
have been transferred to the Chiapas highlands. In the
two weeks following the massacre, there were 51 army
incursions into Zapatista territory, including four into
the EZLN stronghold of Aguascalientes. These troop
movements have their public-relations cover the army
is not pursuing Zapatistas, but making sure that Indians
stop killing each other. Troop movements are not part
of the conflict, the government claims, but part of the
solution. While in the past, increasing the number of
troops in Chiapas was justified by the “war on drugs,” now it is justified to prevent new acts of violence
between armed interest groups, to maintain law and orderREPORT ON CHIAPAS & COLOMBIA
and control the “savagery” of the Indians, and to halt the
spread of arms.
In short, the institution that has grown most in strength
since the Acteal massacre is the Mexican army-the same
institution charged with fighting the rebellion. The increas-
ing militarization of the highlands did not correspond to
Zapatista movements, as the army claimed, as there have
been no such movements in recent months. Neither were
army movements aimed at halting paramilitary actions,
which have continued with absolute impunity in the areas
under army control, nor have any paramilitary groups been
disarmed. Rather, the presence of the army seeks, simply,
to surround Zapatismo in order to prevent it from further
consolidating its presence and its autonomous communi-
ties. It is not coincidental that the area within which Acteal
is located, the municipality of Chenalh6, is not only a
The 1995 army
offensive effectively
forced the
Zapatistas further
Zapatista bulwark, but the
heart of the highlands and
a natural corridor con-
necting a broad region
of the Lacand6n Jungle.
The autonomous
municipalities promoted
by the Zapatistas in
into the jungle, but various towns throughout the state of Chiapas had
it did nothing to become real nightmares
for the federal govern- stop the spread of ment. The 1995 military
the autonomous offensive against the
EZLN effectively forced
local governments. the Zapatista army further
into the jungle, but it
did nothing to stop the
spread of the autonomous local governments. Within
the official geopolitical logic, these municipalities had
taken on the same meaning as the liberated Zapatista areas
prior to the government offensive.
After the Acteal massacre, there were some cosmetic
changes in government policy toward Chiapas. A few offi-
cials were removed from their posts, including the minis-
ter of the interior and the governor of Chiapas, who had
direct ties to the paramilitary units that carried out the mas-
sacre. On January 22, President Zedillo announced that the
government would accept the mediation of the National
Mediation Commission (CONAI), led by Bishop Samuel
Ruiz, and the congressional Mediation and Pacification
Commission (COCOPA). He also announced that some
“alleged Zapatista” prisoners would be freed.
These concessions seemed to signal both a commitment
on the part of the government to a peaceful solution and
its intention to comply with the San Andr6s accords nego-
tiated in 1996. After attacking the credibility of CONAI
and COCOPA for years, the Acteal massacre and its after-
math forced the government to recognize that unless it was
willing to accept the mediation of the Mexican Church and
Congress, it might be forced to accept international medi-
ation at a later date. Hemmed in internationally and devoid
of credibility within the country, the government was
forced to play on the field staked out by the EZLN, mean-
ing accepting mediation and compliance with the San
Andr6s accords.
espite these policy changes, however, the more
substantive aspect of government policy in Chiapas
has changed very little. The approach adopted with
the 1995 military offensive-squeezing the Zapatistas mil-
itarily, paramilitarizing the conflict, trying to wear out the
rebels’ bases of support and hoping it would all blow
over-remains essentially intact today. While the govern-
ment was negotiating peace in the San Andr6s talks, the
state security forces were dislodging and killing peasants.
This duplicitous policy was more than just a reflection of
the differences between “hawks” and “doves” within the
government. It was two faces of the same coin. While the
government spoke of peace, it was actively pursuing the
disarming of the EZLN. It was not prepared to negotiate
on the basis of Zapatista demands, and it was barely will-
ing to negotiate the EZLN’s reinsertion into civilian life.
Ever since Ernesto Zedillo assumed the presidency, his
administration has employed the same approach. While
on one hand he speaks of seeking a peaceful resolution to
the conflict, on the other he pursues a military solution. In
the interim, the government hopes the conflict will simply
deteriorate, that the opposing forces will wear themselves
out, and that forgetting will defeat memory. But with the
deaths in Acteal, the last vestiges of credibility of the gov-
ernment’s Chiapas discourse have been buried. While in
the past, official promises have rarely corresponded to offi-
cial acts, the gap is now enormous. Two months after the
massacre, the government remains seated on the defen-
dant’s bench proclaiming its innocence, but it has yet to
articulate a believable version of the massacre.
Mexican politics remain uncertain and contradictory. On
one side there is a worn-out regime that refuses to relin-
quish power, a political class that refuses to think about
the long term, a population that has suffered 15 years of
neoliberal policies and shows signs of deep discontent, the
growing influence of the drug trade, an ongoing war in the
southeast, two active guerrilla groups, and a serious dete-
rioration of human rights. On the other, is the emergence
of a democratic opposition, its impressive electoral tri-
umphs, and the influential role played by many indepen-
dent groups in civil society. Is Mexico emerging as a
vibrant democracy? Or is it sinking, Colombia style, into
all-out war? How the conflict in Chiapas is played out over
the next several months will be crucial in answering these
questions.
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