[911] in peace2
New Violence in Chiapas
daemon@ATHENA.MIT.EDU (Saurabh Asthana)
Fri Aug 17 12:43:12 2001
Message-Id: <200108171640.f7HGeZE24911@chaos11.bwh.harvard.edu>
To: peace-list@mit.edu
Reply-to: rednblack@alum.mit.edu
Date: Fri, 17 Aug 2001 12:40:35 -0400
From: Saurabh Asthana <angrymob@chaos11.bwh.harvard.edu>
Interesting piece of Indymedia. Trouble's in the wind...
Saurabh
NEW VIOLENCE IN CHIAPAS
FILED 08/16/01
One year after his election, Mexican President Vicente Fox's ambitious campaign
promise to end the long-simmering Chiapas conflict "in fifteen minutes" appears
to be going up in smoke.
The Zapatista National Liberation Army (EZLN), which briefly took up arms in
1994 and still controls much of the Maya Indian back-country in southern Chiapas
state, pledged to lay down their guns if Mexico's Congress approved their peace
plan, a package of constitutional reforms recognizing the "autonomy" of Mexico's
10 million Indians.
But in April, Congress approved a gutted version of the reforms, weakening
clauses on Indian land rights and control over natural resources.
The EZLN immediately broke off dialogue with the government in protest. Chiapas
Indian communities are once again declaring themselves "in resistance," and-after
a lull since Fox took office in December-violence is spreading throughout the
state.
Nobel Prize winner Rigoberta Menchu, a Maya leader from Guatemala who helped
end the 30-year armed conflict in that country, called the gutting of the Chiapas
accords a "great retrogression" for peace, and decried that "a great opportunity
is being lost."
The state of Oaxaca, with Mexico's biggest Indian population, has launched
litigation challenging the gutted reforms, and Indians across Mexico pledge
resistance. But Fox-whose own pro-business National Action Party (PAN) led the
revision-refuses to use his veto power, and insists he will order the
constitutional changes published, at which point they will take effect.
On August 3, PAN legislator Fernando Perez Noriega said the government should
withdraw the EZLN's amnesty if the rebels don't return to the table. Arrest
orders for Subcommander Marcos and other EZLN leaders would be carried out-and
the cease-fire presumably broken. COCOPA, the congressional commission for peace
in Chiapas, is now considering the amnesty revocation. Attorney General Rafael
Macedo agreed that "it may be necessary to proceed with force."
With this tilt to the hard line, Army troops beefed up patrols and road
checkpoints in Chiapas-in violation of a second Zapatista peace demand, calling
for the demilitarization of their territories.
On July 31, thousands of Indians blocked roads across Chiapas, halting traffic
for four hours to demand that Congress restore the original reforms. The
pro-Zapatista group which organized the action, the Coordinator of Civil Society
in Resistance, issued a statement saying: "A few hours of irritation is nothing
compared to the 509 years of historic injustice in Mexico's Indian villages."
At the same time, violence rocked several areas of the state. On July 27, at
Barrio San Josˇ in the deep jungle region of Marques de Comillas, Indian
militants of the Regional Independent Campesino Movement (MOCRI) took eight
state aid workers hostage to demand restoration of the original reforms.
On August 2, 500 state police backed up by 16 vehicles and five helicopters
attacked Barrio San Josˇ, ransacking some 80 homes in search of the hostages,
and seizing 67 residents for "interrogation."
Most were taken to the harsh Cerro Hueco prison in the state capital, Tuxtla,
and held for several days without charges.
Eleven MOCRI militants were formally charged and imprisoned, and the hostages
were freed unharmed.
The local Zapatista authorities, the Autonomous Municipality of San Pedro de
Michoacan, issued a statement disavowing the MOCRI action but protesting the
police repression.
Also on July 27, in the highland village of Venustiano Carranza, the Emiliano
Zapata Campesino Organization (OCEZ) launched blockades of government offices to
protest the arrest of three of their militants in connection with the April
killing of eight local Indians.
The killings are believed to be revenge violence for earlier attacks on OCEZ
by a local pro -government paramilitary group.
On July 23, at the jungle settlement of Monte Libano, masked gunmen staged a
jailbreak of five local Indians accused of growing marijuana, leaving three
community police wounded. One later died in the hospital, and the government
accused the attackers of being Zapatistas.
Some of the violence may be instigated by paramilitaries or provocateurs. On July
28, seven were injured when a land dispute between local Indians turned violent
in Ocosingo. On August 4, hundreds of masked Indians armed with machetes and
clubs seized lands worked by private Indian collectives in Las Margaritas.
That same day, Indians from Tila, a village which had been terrorized by a
paramilitary group ironically named "Peace and Justice," reported to authorities
that the group had re-emerged, with masked gunmen menacing pro-Zapatista
communities, descending on hamlets at night and firing in the air.
The third EZLN peace demand, after approval of the reforms and demilitarization
of their territory, is for liberation of nine Zapatista political prisoners who
remain behind bars-and the government is unyielding here too.
On July 24, the six Zapatista prisoners in Cerro Hueco began a hunger strike in
support of the EZLN demands.
Within days, 67 other prisoners in Chiapas jails joined the strike, pledging to
refuse all nourishment until they are freed and the constitutional reforms
restored.
The historic election of Vicente Fox, who broke the grip of Mexico's long-ruling
political machine, was hailed as a victory for democracy. But his failure to
deliver for Mexico's Indians could cost him the peace. Mere weeks after a deal
with the Zapatistas seemed at hand, Chiapas may be closer to all-out war than it
has been in years.
by Bill Weinberg, Special to HighWitness News
