Pubdate: Mon, 09 Apr 2001
Source: Nation, The (US)
Copyright: 2001, The Nation Company
Contact:  33 Irving Place, 8th Floor,  New York, NY 10003
Website: http://www.thenation.com/
Author: Al Giordano

ZAPATISTAS ON THE MARCH

Mexico City

Many compared it to marching through a dream.

After seven years under siege by 70,000 Mexican Army troops in the jungles 
and highlands of Chiapas, the Zapatista National Liberation Army (EZLN) 
sent twenty-four delegates, including its pipe-smoking writer-spokesman 
Subcomandante Marcos, on a triumphant two-week motorcade that landed in 
Mexico City on March 11.

"I don't believe that in any place, in any space in this world--and I have 
the memory of my own revolution twenty-six years ago--I don't remember a 
more moving moment than I lived yesterday," declared the septuagenarian 
Portuguese Nobel Prize-winning author Jose Saramago the next morning.

The US press coverage of the march, limited though it was, hinted at such 
an apotheosis: the cheering multitudes that greeted the Zapatistas from the 
roadsides and at mass rallies in twelve states along the route, the flowery 
words of peace and civil rights coming to Mexico's mythical newfound 
democracy. But for the Zapatistas and Mexico's indigenous movement, the 
struggle now turns into a battle to codify the movement's progress into law.

The caravan came to demand constitutional recognition for Mexico's 10 
million indigenous citizens, subjected to generations of repression, 
poverty, racism and exploitation of their lands and labor.

As Mexico's President Vicente Fox passed his hundredth day in office, he 
reiterated calls to the Zapatistas to negotiate a peace.

Not until the government fulfills the promises it has already made, 
answered the rebels: release of Zapatista political prisoners, closure of 
seven of the 259 military bases in Chiapas, and congressional passage of 
the law that would ratify the 1996 San Andres peace agreements signed by 
the government [see Jerry W. Sanders, "Two Mexicos and Fox's Quandary," 
February 26].

The geographical advance was accompanied by a steady rise in the popularity 
of Marcos and the Zapatistas in opinion polls, an average gain of two 
percentage points per day, with over 50 percent in support.

The implementation of the San Andres Accords is now the sticking point.

Marcos and the Zapatistas, with more than 1,000 delegates from the 
Indigenous National Congress, encamped at the base of Mexico City's 
Cuicuilco pyramid--a circular, 370-foot-diameter stone monument that has 
survived at least 2,600 years of lava flows, earthquakes and urban sprawl.

Underscoring their credo, "We will not sign a false peace," the Zapatistas 
caused a fierce uproar when, as the caravan was launched from San 
Cristobal, Chiapas, they named architect Fernando Yanez Munoz as their 
representative to the federal Congress. Mexican police agencies have long 
claimed that Yanez is Comandante German, the feared national guerrilla 
leader of the 1970s and '80s who, they say, helped found the Zapatista army 
in the jungle in 1983, a charge that Yanez has denied.

The Zapatistas have also, for the first time, called upon other guerrilla 
movements to protect their journey and remain alert, implying that if the 
state doesn't keep its word, an armed guerrilla response could explode 
nationwide.

Maria Luisa Tomasini, 78, a Chiapas native designated by Marcos as the 
"grandmother of all the Zapatistas," analyzed his call to the other 
insurgent groupsas she was returning from the March 7 Zapatista rally in 
Iguala, Guerrero, a state with at least sixteen armed clandestine guerrilla 
organizations. "Clearly," she said, "it was a threat to the government that 
it had better comply."

The powerful sectors that have always gotten their way in Mexico--bankers, 
chambers of commerce chiefs, right-wing clergy, the TV networks and key 
legislators--are working furiously to sabotage the road to a genuine peace. 
Fox's party, the PAN, teamed up with the former ruling party, the PRI, 
against the left-wing PRD party to propose that the Zapatistas meet with 
twenty congressional leaders instead of the entire Congress. Marcos, noting 
that the indigenous of Mexico have always been hidden "in the kitchen, on 
the back porch," rejected the offer, arguing that the Zapatistas and the 
Indigenous National Congress deserve to address the whole Congress. 
Hard-liners continue to seek any roadblock to passage of the full 
indigenous rights bill with hysterical claims that autonomy would fracture 
the nation, and they vow radical surgery to the initiative.

On March 19 the Zapatistas announced they will return to the jungle, citing 
the "close minded" attitude of "cavemen politicians," saying, "Nothing will 
be able to stop the popular mobilization" that stems from the Congress's 
failure to act. "We will return with everyone who we are." Immediately, 
thirteen national peasant-farmer groups pledged nationwide marches, 
students plotted direct action and five major indigenous groups in Oaxaca 
vowed to close the Pan American Highway until Congress passes the accords. 
Congressional leaders begged the Zapatistas to stay, Fox urged the Congress 
to meet with the rebels and the drama now moves in unpredictable directions.

The guiding principle of the San Andres Accords is autonomy.

The word has galvanized many beyond Mexico's indigenous populations. The 
battered Mexican left--peasant farmers, urban workers and especially the 
nation's youth--view themselves, too, under the banner of autonomy.

Indeed, the popularity of the Zapatista struggle around the world derives 
at least in part from the coherent language of opposition to globalized and 
savage capitalism that they have constructed. French sociologist Alain 
Torraine, who accompanied the caravan, praised the Zapatistas during a 
March 12 discussion with Marcos and the comandantes in Mexico City, 
marveling, "The entire world, and we are speaking of the left, is looking 
for a new language." Comandante David, a Tzotzil delegate who was a chief 
negotiator and architect of the San Andres Accords, acknowledges that the 
demand for autonomy goes far beyond indigenous rights. "We are going to 
explain directly to the indigenous and nonindigenous brothers of the 
country that indigenous rights are for the good of all the peoples," he 
said while preparing to leave on the caravan.

Autonomy--what might be called "home rule" in other parts of the 
world--includes local control of land use, a sore point for big business in 
Mexico, its eyes on natural resources.

Beyond Mexico, US investors and corporate interests, with expectations that 
Fox will be the most effective deliveryman yet of Mexican resources under 
NAFTA, are stoking the subterfuge. Former US Ambassador to Mexico James 
Jones, now a railroad baron and rainmaker for the Manat, Phelps and 
Phillips law and lobbying firm in Washington, is on the board of directors 
of TV Azteca, the most notorious manipulator of public opinion among all 
the Mexican media.

TV Azteca joined the other broadcasting giant, Televisa, to present a March 
3 Concert for Peace live from Aztec Stadium, featuring a laser light show, 
a Woodstock-style logo and the usual condescension toward "our indigenous 
brothers." The prepackaged video aired with the concert didn't mention 
autonomy, or indigenous political prisoners, or 500 years of 
conquest--certainly not justice in connection with the 1997 massacre of 
unarmed indigenous peasants at Acteal. The only proposed solution was to 
send aid to the poor, barefoot indigenous communities, an approach known in 
Mexican politics as "clientism." Many analysts saw Fox's fingerprints on 
the TV peace show, as both stations rely on state permission to broadcast 
in Mexico. Indeed, one of the demands of the San Andres Accords is the 
right of indigenous peoples to break that control by forming their own 
media, including the use of radio and television frequencies.

The question of indigenous autonomy also has consequences for the 
US-imposed "war on drugs." The San Andres Accords would restore indigenous 
rights to the use of currently illicit sacred plants and codify the 
pre-eminence of ancient forms of community justice.

Luciano, a spokesman for the Zapatista community of Polho, explained to me 
in 1998 how the autonomous system works without constructing a single 
prison cell: "If a young man grows marijuana, he goes before a municipal 
judge to be disciplined and oriented so that he won't ever do it again.

If the youth does it again, there is no response whatsoever: He cannot be 
pardoned a second time. He would then be expelled from the community."

That the Zapatista communities have had far more success in driving out the 
narcotraffickers and preventing drug and alcohol abuse than any other 
region of the Americas is of little concern to the big talkers of law and 
order. Opponents charge that autonomy in matters of criminal justice would 
"balkanize" the country and subvert the "rule of law."

Indigenous and social movements across Latin America--in Ecuador, Colombia, 
Bolivia, Peru, Panama, Brazil and other nations--had representatives 
quietly observing the caravan.

In spite of the powers stacked against them, the Zapatistas, newly 
strengthened, their national support deepened, have many cards yet to play 
in forcing legislative victory.

In the latest of the ironies under NAFTA, autonomy may thus, and soon, 
become Mexico's leading export product.
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MAP posted-by: Jo-D