|
Are
we all Zapatistas?
“We
are all Zapatistas” has been painted on
banners, walls and shouted at demonstrations in recent years. The
slogan has been used by leftists, anarchists, advocates of fair-trade
schemes and even for commercial gain. But who are the Zapatistas?
The
Zapatistas take their name from Emiliano Zapata who led the Ejército
Libertador del Sur (Liberation Army of the South) during the
Mexican Revolutionary war from 1910 until his assassination in 1919.
During the 30-year dictatorship of Porfirio Diaz which preceded the
revolution much of the land farmed by the indigenous people was
enclosed to form haciendas or ranches for the production of
food for export markets forcing peasants into, both wage- and
debt-slavery to the often cruel ranch owners. Zapata’s
army sought to institute the Plan of Ayala for the repossession of
the haciendas for landless peasants where pre-enclosure legal
titles existed and partial expropriation of land, with compensation,
where legal titles didn’t exist. The
Liberation Army of the South initially fought the federal forces who
sought to uphold the dictatorship of Porfirio Diaz. Zapata’s
army also fought the constitutionalist forces which eventually
replaced Diaz as well as the intervening military dictatorship.
Despite
the defeat of Zapata’s army, the 1917
Mexican Constitution contained a provision for the return of communal
lands appropriated by the haciendas and to provide new lands
called ejidos to landless peasants. Communal lands and ejidos
are owned by the people of a village and plots within the designated
areas are divided amongst individual families to work. However, this
article of the constitution was never fully implemented, or yielded
only small or unproductive land areas to the peasants. In 1992,
President Carlos Salinas de Gortari revoked the constitutional
commitment protecting communal land from private ownership in
preparation for implementation of the North American Free Trade
Agreement (NAFTA). The NAFTA would also remove agricultural price
support affecting peasants who were increasingly reliant on small
scale cash crop production.
On
the day the NAFTA came into force the Ejército Zapatista de
Liberación Nacional (EZLN, Zapatista
Army of National Liberation) officially declared war on the Mexican
government and invaded six main population centres and many ranches
in the Chiapas region of south eastern
Mexico. It is the EZLN and their supporters that are referred to as
Zapatistas.
Open
conflict in Chiapas lasted twelve bloody days in which hundreds lost
their lives mainly due to aerial bombardment of EZLN-held towns by
the Mexican army. By 1995, tens of thousands of troops were
stationed in the region. There has been little open combat since,
but a network of checkpoints, army patrols, military incursions and
alliances with local paramilitary groups have been used to intimidate
and wear down the EZLN. The EZLN signed an accord with the Mexican
Government in 1996 to institute peace and political rights for the
people of Chiapas, though the government later reneged on many of the
provisions. Paramilitaries, who have subsequently been linked to
local landowners and ruling party officials, assassinated 45
Zapatistas in the town of Acteal in December 1997.
Chiapas
is about the same size (area and population) as the Republic of
Ireland. The area has a long history of conflict over land. Peasants
have been forced onto the thin, rocky soils and steep slopes of the
highlands with the encroachment of cattle ranching, coffee and sugar
plantations from the more fertile lowland regions. Land availability
has also been reduced by forestry and mineral, gas and oil extraction
operations. Migration from neighbouring Guatemala, migration of
those fleeing poverty in Mexico and the return of many of those who
had migrated to urban areas for employment after crisis of capitalism
in the early 1980s caused rapid population increase and eventual
retreat into the inhospitable Lacandon jungle where the Zapatista
rebellion is centred.
The
EZLN was formed in the early 1980s by Leninists who had migrated into
the Chiapas jungle to lead the peasantry to revolution. One of those
who joined the EZLN was the man now known as Subcommandante Marcos,
the Zapatista’s military leader and most
famous spokesman. The EZLN found that many of the peasants there
could not support the idea of the revolutionary vanguard and language
of ‘Marxism’. What
followed was what Marcos calls a period of “indianization”. The Leninist founders of the EZLN steeped
themselves in native Mayan
culture. In the words of Marcos, quoted by Yvon Le Bot (El
Sueno Zapatista, 1997):
“Suddenly
the revolution transformed itself into something essentially moral.
Ethical. More than the redistribution of wealth or the expropriation
of the means of production, the revolution began to be the
possibility for a human being to have a space for dignity.”
The “indianization”
of the EZLN seemed to infuse the organisation with the local
traditions of direct and decentralised democracy. However, in
material terms the EZLN retained much of the previous
reformist ideology. The Declaration of War, written in 1993,
stated that the EZLN was acting legitimately to overthrow the ruling
government because of their unconstitutional actions. The statement
also says that the EZLN proudly carry the national flag into battle.
In
June this year the EZLN announced a new political initiative in the Sixth
Declaration of the Selva Lacandona. They
suggest a
national campaign,
“which
will be clearly of the left, or anti-capitalist, or anti-neoliberal,
or for justice, democracy and liberty for the Mexican people, in
order to demand that we make a new Constitution, new laws which take
into account the demands of the Mexican people, which are: housing,
land, work, food, health, education, information, culture,
independence, democracy, justice, liberty and peace. We are also
letting you know that the EZLN will establish a policy of alliances
with non-electoral organizations and movements which define
themselves, in theory and practice, as being of the left, . . “
The
stipulations for organisations wishing to join the national campaign
are a democratic structure and a “clear
commitment for joint and co-ordinated defence of national
sovereignty, with intransigent opposition to privatization attempts
of electricity, oil, water and natural resources.”
In addition, the Zapatistas offered food aid to Cuba for their
resistance to the USA’s embargo, express
admiration for Che Guevara and Simon Bolivar and offered to send
handicrafts, coffee or soup to activists in Europe to help with the
struggle against neo-liberalism. The Zapatistas clearly think that
capitalism can be run in the interests of the workers through state
possession of industry and with the absence
of the intervention by foreign capital.
Continued on Page13 
To Contents To
Socialist Party
Page
links
|
Page
1
|
Page
2 |
Page
3 |
Page
4 |
Page
5 |
Page
6 |
Page
7 |
Page
8 |
Page
9 |
Page
10 |
Page
11 |
Page
12 |
Page
13 |
Page
14 |
Page
15 |
Page
16 |
Page
17 |
Page
18 |
Page
19 |
Page
20 |
|
