ZAPATISTAS ON-LINE
The Zapatistas’ facility with e-mail is only one facet of their savvy use of the media. The media images of their initial campaign were created with a clear understanding of what the effect would be.
By Deedee Halleck
Within a few hours after the takeover of San Cristóbal de las Casas by the Zapatistas on the morning of January 1, computer screens around the world sparked with news of the uprising. By January 3, the Subcomandante himself was on-line. In Marcos’ prose, one senses an expertise and familiarity with computer-based text, if not directly with e-mail. For a press corps clutching their modem-connected laptops, Marcos became the first super hero of the net. The Lacandón jungle address became the locus of a global news agency whose lead dispatches were written by guerrilla combatants themselves:
Jan 1. 1994
We are the inheritors and the true builders of our nation. The dispossessed, we are millions, and we thereby call upon our brothers and sisters to join this struggle as the only path, so that we will not die of hunger due to the insatiable ambition of a 70-year dictatorship led by a gang of traitors that represents the most reactionary groups….
To the people of Mexico: We the men and women, full and free, are conscious that the war that we have declared is our last resort, but also a just one … JOIN THE INSURGENT FORCES OF THE ZAPATISTA NATIONAL LIBERATION ARMY.
The lyric prose of the Zapatistas’ first declaration was reproduced nationally in the Mexican daily La Jornada. Within hours, it was translated into English (and within the first week, into many other languages). The declaration was down-loaded into the files of newspaper and magazine journalists, and was posted on dozens of computer bulletin boards and conferences to be reproduced in hard copy in hundreds of venues. Voz Fronteriza, the newspaper of the Student Movement of Aztlán Chicanos (MECHA) at the university where I teach, brought out a special Zapatista edition, reproducing the declaration in large type spread over six pages. Latin American institutes and Spanish departments in the United States made instant “wall newspapers” of the declaration with tear-sheet printouts.
Over the following weeks, Internet watchers avidly scanned the exciting news from the jungle. E-mailers reacted with comments and speculation. There were hundreds of screens of discussion over whether or not Marcos was a priest. Even a high-ranking Jesuit official came on-line to deny any connection to his order.
Since the first week in January, over a dozen official EZLN “communiqués” have been sent out. There is a great deal of speculation about exactly how these messages have been transmitted. Word has it that Marcos has a laptop. The communiques are most likely written on disks which are carried down from the jungle camp. Whatever the method, Marcos’ messages–replete with literary and cultural references–captured the imagination of the Mexican population.
Dialogue on the Internet was particularly heavy in the days after the assassination of PRI presidential candidate Luis Donaldo Colosio. From the academic community came speculation about possible conspiracies. From the jungle came a bleak and gloomy reverie which made reference to the full moon:
March 24, 1994
Communication to Proceso, La Jornada, El Financiero, El Tiemp, the national and international press.
Sirs:
Them … why did they have to do this? Who are they punishing with this crime? If they are trying to justify a military action against us and against our cause, why did they not kill one of us? The country would have bled less than with this infamy which now makes us shudder. Who was this man harming? Who gains from his blood? …Let them come. Here we are, where we were born and where we grew up, where there is a great heart which sustains us, where our dead and our history reside. Here we are, in the mountains of southeast Mexico…Come for us…Now nothing is safe, much less the hopes for peace. Farewell.
Subcomandante Insurgente Marcos.
P.S. For those that no one sees. Greetings brother Zapatista-moles. We have shown thanks for your patient and obscure work. The black night of infamy comes again. The end of our cycle is near. We promise you that we will shine intensely, so as to outdo the sun, before disappearing forever. Until the last hour we will salute the dark side which supported our brilliance. Interior light which shone through us so as to shed light on this small piece of history…It is the dark side of the moon that makes possible the bright side of the moon. Like us, if we are the dark side of the moon. We are no less for it. It is rather because we are willing to be the dark side that it is possible for all to see the moon (and, because in order to see it you have to learn to fly very high). And so it is that few are willing to suffer so that others will not suffer and to die so that others may live. Farewell.
Subcomandante Marcos.
This message resonated within the nocturnal hacker community, not only because they are “the dark side” of the corporate computer world, but because many could probably see the full moon out their windows as they read the communiqué. This was war news in real time.[1]
What effect the e-mail activity had on actual events is hard to assess at this point. At the very least, it is clear that the direct communiques from the guerrilla leadership served as a block against disinformation. Although many journalists have trooped to the mountains to get interviews, the rebels do not need to wait for the Western press to come to them. They have the means to disseminate information through a widely based electronic network. The difference with past rebel uprisings is striking. For instance, until the New York Times published Herbert Mathews’ Sierra Maestra interview with Fidel in 1957, the revolutionary activity in Cuba was virtually unknown to the rest of the world.[2]
The uses of the net to present the stance of the Zapatistas during the negotiations forced even Televisa, the government-controlled television network, to report the official demands of the guerrillas. Indeed, the EZLN was able to get its side of the story across during a critical moment in the negotiation process when the government prematurely announced a peace agreement:
March 15,1994
Shadows of new rage. Our path protects those who have nothing.
To the State Council of Indigenous People and Peasants:
To the Mexican People:
To the people and governments of the world:
To the national and international press:
The federal government, usurper of popular will, has reverted to lying about what happened during the dialogue in San Cristóbal de las Casas, Chiapas. The evil government says that there are “agreements” when there was only dialogue. Do not allow yourself to be taken in by lies. Brothers, the powerful now usurp the truth and try to deceive us by saying that peace is just a question of a signature.
How can there he peace if the causes of the war continue to cry out due to our perpetual misery? The arrogance which resides in the governors’ palaces and the home of the wealthy businessmen and landowners continues to shout war and death for our race.
Respectfully,
From the southeast of Mexico
Clandestine Indigenous Revolutionary Committee
General Command of the Zapatista National Liberation
Army (EZLN).
The direct communiqués were–and still are–a hedge against increased government repression. The first-hand detailed news of the bombing raids on January 5 was widely published. This almost certainly intensified the solidarity campaign and helped to bring people out for the massive demonstrations in Mexico City, and for the smaller, but significant showings in rallies throughout the world.
In the United States, the “lanic gopher” at the University of Texas (lanic.utexas.edu) provides a chronological history of the modem traffic on Chiapas. One of the items with the most responses is a discussion of John Womack’s position on the Zapatistas. As a major biographer of Emiliano Zapata, Womack’s position obviously carries a great deal of academic weight. His questioning of the authenticity of the Zapatistas brought on a clatter of keyboards defending the EZLN and documenting the connections between the Zapatistas of today and their forebears.
Internet conferences were used to post emergency communiqués and circulate information about solidarity actions.[3] A survey of the postings shows the hunger for accurate news: requests for information, questions about certain facts, searches for biographical details. Of particular note is the speed with which information was translated and retransmitted. English-language versions of articles from La Jornada and El Financiero were posted within a few hours of their appearance. Experts in various areas would often tag on addenda to re-posted news. Agronomists and anthropologists who specialize in Chiapas and Central American agriculture jumped in to add details and background.
Indeed, the Zapatistas’ facility with e-mail was only one facet of their savvy use of the media. The media images of the initial campaign were created with a clear understanding of what the effect would be. The graffiti painted on the buildings in San Cristóbal (sometimes in English for CNN cameras) and the smoldering remains of the municipal records were images designed to give maximum media effect with a minimum of war. The timing of the January 1 event was precisely arranged. The bourgeoisie of Mexico were celebrating the new year and the beginning of NAFTA, when they were rudely awakened from their dreams of an easy transition. Bursting through their TV screens were the new icons of romantic rebellion: the ski-masked Zorro/Zapata guerrilleros.
The Zapatistas, of course, are not the only Mexicans on the information superhighway. In the last few years there has been an exponential growth of computer communications in the country. Although much of this activity has been concentrated in the maquila/industrial sector, most recently spurred on by NAFTA, there is substantial use of e-mail in Mexican universities. Surprisingly, even small-scale agriculture is becoming computerized. As the Wall Street Journal has noted, “poor farmers can track the prices, in Mexico and internationally, for the apples, limes, papayas and mangos they grow.”[4]
Predictably, the Mexican government is scrambling to get their counter-insurgency efforts on-line. Many have speculated that the government tried to close down the rebels’ computer link. For a short period of time, laneta–the Mexican source for Internet–was down, and worried communicators flooded several conferences with accusations of government censorship. Whether or not the government was responsible, the general panic that erupted when the network was broken shows how essential the laneta connection has become. The connection was restored by circuitously re-routing the information, proving to many that it is not so easy to censor the Internet. While no one can prove that the government deliberately tampered with the Chiapas connections, charges of sabotage seemed credible to many net-surfers. The breakdown was suspicious if only because it occurred at the height of the negotiations with the government, just when the Zapatistas were releasing their eloquently stated demands. Considering the widespread support for the EZLN throughout Mexico, this eloquence was not the sort of thing the government wanted floating around during the negotiations.
Both within and outside of Mexico, the Zapatista presence on the Internet has had a powerful effect. The Chiapas computer conferences, and the publications that have emanated from them, have allowed many people to feel closer to a revolutionary process. A vital part of any revolutionary movement is the degree of hope that is mobilized. Perhaps the most effective outcome of Chiapas on-line has been the boosting of psychological morale of Latin American activists, anti-GATT cadre and human rights workers. The January actions were a hit with grassroots organizers worldwide who daily wage legal and moral battles for many of the same causes that the EZLN champions. However momentary the triumph of the small and barely armed group of peasants who confronted the transnational marketing infrastructure in January, they have brought a measure of hope that has been in woefully short supply during the past few years. There was a sense of direct connection, of an authentic “interactive” movement, as groups and individuals forwarded messages, excerpted passages, pinned up tear sheets and posted their own comments on-line. The Zapatistas have been exemplary in their mobilization of new technologies to disseminate information and to point out the emancipatory potential in the Internet:
June 16, 1994
Now is the time for hope to organize itself and to walk forward in the valleys and in the cities.
And on the computer networks.
Connect.
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Deedee Halleck teaches in the Department of Communication at the University of California at San Diego.
NOTES
1 . Mathews spread the word not only for Fidel’s rebels, but for the Loyalist cause during the Spanish Civil War when he and Ernest Hemingway posted regular dispatches from the cities and countryside besieged by the Fascists.
2. The communiqués from the EZLN and Marcos are being compiled by Harry Cleaver of the University of Texas, and will be published as Zapatista! Documents of the New Mexican Revolution (New York: Autonomedia, 1994).
3. An e-mail announcement on January 13 of the completion of a videotape report from Chiapas, A Cry for Freedom and Democracy, by CheChe Martínez, brought over a hundred orders for the tape within a few weeks. The tape was used by many solidarity groups for community forums on the situation in Mexico. In several instances after using the tape, individuals would repost the announcement in other conferences, resulting in even wider distribution (for info amartinez@igc.apc.org).
4. Paul B. Carroll, “Foreign Competition Spurs Mexico to Move Into High-Tech World, ” Wall Street Journal, July 5, 1994, p. A9. See the entire article for a discussion of the rapid development of computer communications.
