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Zapatistas
Emerge from the Shadows
Diego
Cevallos
MEXICO CITY, Jul 25 (IPS) - The
leftist Zapatista National Liberation
Army (EZLN), based in the southern
Mexican state of Chiapas, have emerged
from the shadows after two years of
near silence to announce structural
changes and new actions that ”not
everyone is going to like” and to
break off ties with groups that the
mostly indigenous guerrilla
organisation says treat it as a sort
of ”Cinderella”.
In four communiqués issued during the
past week, the EZLN, which took up
arms in 1994 but has not engaged in
violence since, appears to be aiming
at reconquering space in the Mexican
political arena, something that will
not be easy, say observers.
The Zapatistas invited their
supporters to attend an Aug. 8
celebration at one of its so-called
”aguascalientes”, enclaves in the
Chiapas jungles used as political and
cultural centres.
The celebration will mark the closure
of those centres, where the last few
years have seen numerous meetings
between the EZLN and civil society.
”Something new” will be announced
then, the result of long debates
within the guerrilla organisation,
said Zapatista leader Subcomandante
Marcos in one of the communiqués.
Marcos said the aguascalientes were
being eliminated because they had
begun to draw non-governmental
organisations (NGOs) -- of local and
international origins -- that sought
to make dubious donations and to force
development projects on the local
indigenous population, an attitude
that the EZLN defined as the
”Cinderella syndrome”.
What the Zapatistas want is political
collaboration to ensure recognition of
indigenous people's rights and to
promote the ”construction of a new
world, in which many worlds coexist,
where hand-outs and pity form part of
science fiction novelsà or of a
forgettable and dispensable past,”
wrote Marcos, who has not appeared in
public in the past few years, and
never without his trademark ski mask.
”The death of the aguascalientes is
also the death of the 'Cinderella
Syndrome' of some 'civil societies'
and the paternalism of certain
national and international NGOsà The
Zapatista communities will no longer
receive leftovers nor will they allow
projects to be imposed upon them.”
The EZLN has remained on the sidelines
of Mexico's political agenda since
March 2001, after the guerrilla
commanders led a convoy from Chiapas
to Mexico City to demand approval of
laws benefiting indigenous groups. The
legislation was passed, but it was a
weak version of the original bill, and
the Zapatistas rejected it outright.
Since then the guerrillas, who have
refused to renew peace talks with the
government after they broke down in
1996, issued statements about certain
local and international matters, but
they did not have much impact and some
came under fire from groups that
previously had declared unconditional
support for the EZLN.
This low profile maintained by the
EZLN and Marcos, after having spent
several years in the Mexican and
international media spotlight, came
during the government of Vicente Fox,
the first president in seven decades
who is not from the PRI (Institutional
Revolutionary Party).
With the end of the PRI governments,
which ruled Mexico uninterrupted since
1929, the EZLN, comprised mostly of
Indians, saw its role as an opposition
voice diminished. The Zapatistas had
thrived on promoting political
initiatives and mobilisations in
favour of democracy and indigenous
rights.
In 2001, most political analysts
agreed that Fox had benefited from
convincing the Zapatistas to leave the
Chiapas jungles, where they had
enjoyed a romantic and idealist image,
and engage with the institutional
political arena, thus accepting its
rules and limitations.
Fox says he has kept the door open for
the EZLN to return to the peace
dialogue whenever it wants. But the
guerrilla group has said it will not
negotiate until a law the original
version of the bill on indigenous
rights is passed.
The Zapatistas, who at their peak were
considered a reference point for the
”fight against neo-liberal
economics” and against the dominant
model of globalisation, remained
silent on all local and international
events related to those issue in the
past several months.
”It was to be expected that the EZLN
would look for a new course of action
to reclaim its struggle and its
position, but it won't be easy because
the local political agenda today is
focused on other actors,” José
Trinidad, a social movement researcher
at the Autonomous National University
of Mexico (UNAM), told IPS.
In one of the communiqués issued this
week, Marcos wrote that the Zapatistas
were ”even angry with those who
sympathise with their cause. Because
they do not obey. When they are
expected to speak, they are quiet.
When they are expected to be quiet,
they speak. When they are expected to
lead, they fall behind. When they are
expected to follow, they head in
another direction.”
”In other words, they are not to
anyone's liking. And they do not seem
to care much. What they are worried
about is their own heart, so they
follow the path that it tells them,”
added the EZLN leader in a long text,
with its usually literary bent, also
containing reflections on the history
of the Zapatistas since they emerged
in the 1980s.
”Regardless, one can be assured that
what (the Zapatistas) do or say from
now on is not going to please many.
Furthermore, as the 'Sup' (Marcos
himself) says, the Zapatistas'
speciality is to create problems and
then see who solves them.”
Given the tone of the statements
Marcos made this week, noted Trinidad,
”it can be interpreted that the EZLN
will attempt new strategies to leave
the shadows, but one can be sure that
they will continue to shun
violence.”
Thanks to a law on peace and dialogue
enacted in 1994, the EZLN has remained
in the Chiapas jungles since then
without launching attacks.
The group, which experts estimate to
include fewer than 5,000 people,
mostly poorly armed, is considered by
many to be the voice of the 10 million
Indians in Mexico, the poorest social
group in this country of 100 million
people.
”Marcos is a page from the past,”
said Demetrio Sodi in January,
legislative deputy of the leftist
opposition Democratic Revolutionary
Party (PRD), which previously had
thrown its support behind the EZLN.
The Mexican Senate's Commission on
Indigenous Affairs this week withdrew
recognition of the EZLN and of Marcos
as interlocutors in the debate on the
implementation of the legal reforms on
indigenous rights approved in 2001.
The matter will be discussed
”directly with the institutional
authorities” of the indigenous
peoples, announced commission member
Luisa María Calderón, senator for
the ruling National Action Party
(PAN).
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