Peace Talks, But No Peace
Kampwirth, Karen
Shortly after the 1994 New Year rebellion, the Zapatistas and the government negotiated a cease-fire. Four years later, Chiapas has become militarized, alternating between negotations and...
...by the government, as had been the case with earlier paramilitary atrocities...
...Finally, on October 1, the two sides sat down at what was supposed to be a series of working groups...
...The accords called for increased autonomy for indigenous communities through a series of legal and political reforms, including a promise that the Congress of Chiapas would pass new agrarian reform legislation...
...On November 30, the EZLN accepted the document, despite some serious flaws from the perspective of the rebels...
...While Lacandonean communities were united in their anger at the government's broken promises, the north and central highlands were deeply divided...
...Shortly following the cease-fire which ended the open military confrontation of the first days of the uprising of the Zapatista Army of National Liberation (EZLN), high-level peace talks were held between the rebels and representatives of the ruling Institutional Revolutionary Party (PRI...
...There would be more rounds of negotiations over the next few years, but the most important political events would not occur at the negotiating table...
...5 In fact, representatives of the ruling party were eager to talk with the Zapatistas, because engaging in talks would help to preserve the image of the Mexican state as reasonable, as preferring talks to violence, as different from the Central American states that had faced guerrilla rebellions a few years earlier...
...La Jornada (Mexico City), December 23, 1997...
...4 (Mexico City: Ediciones Era, 1997), p. 85...
...With Robledo out of office, the cries of electoral fraud were effectively muted...
...Jesis Ramlrez Cuevas, "Jamas atendi6 la policla estatal los Ilamados de auxilio: testigos...
...4. Alonso Urrutia and Candelaria Rodriguez, "Robledo se fue cuando estaba mas fortalecido que nunca: ganaderos," La Jornada (Mexico City), February 16, 1995...
...There was general agreement that the scope of the February 1994 talks between the Zapatistas and the government had to be as broad as the Zapatista agenda itself, which included not only economic demands but a call for social and political reform...
...9-10...
...While the election of the PRI's Ernesto Zedillo as president was generally perceived to be clean, in many cases, local-level elections were widely believed to have been fraudulent...
...What if they are still there and they shoot us in the head...
...The elections were widely heralded-at least in other parts of Mexico-as a major step toward the institutionalization of real democracy in the country...
...Some of the indigenous residents of those regions were threatened by the Zapatista agenda, since they had something to lose if the PRI's hegemony were to break down...
...In the days that followed, more than 40 men were accused and detained, including the former municipal president of Chenalh6, Jacinto Arias Cruz of the PRI...
...These divisions and the pressures they placed on Camacho VoL XXXI, No 5 MARCH/APRIL 1998 Karen Kampwirth is assistant professor of political science at Knox College...
...Despite the government's violation of the 1994 ceasefire, the EZLN nonetheless agreed to start a new round of peace talks...
...One such key event was the 1994 national and gubernatorial elections...
...6 The outcome of the first working group was a set of accords on indigenous rights and culture that were signed on February 16, 1996...
...Congress created the legal framework for new talks by passing the "Law for Dialogue, Conciliation and Peace with Dignity in Chiapas" on March 11, 1995...
...And in contrast to 1994, when the talks were held in the spectacular colonial cathedral of San Crist6bal, the 1995 talks took place in temporary shelters hastily erected on a basketball court in the highland town of San Andr6s Larriinzar...
...Four years later, Chiapas has become militarized, alternating between negotations and violence-never truly at war but never truly at peace...
...This was the case in Chiapas, where the PRI's Eduardo Robledo was elected governor...
...as the resources available to the opposition parties, which had always been outspent by the ruling PRI...
...The Zapatistas rejected Robledo's victory and, after months of futile protests, issued a call for the creation of a Transitional Rebel Government...
...Neither of these changes could have happened without the sweeping electoral reforms that were passed in July and August of the previous year...
...While official support for the white guards was rescinded in the early 1990s as part of the process of agricultural modernization that led to the NAFTA accords, those private police forces continued to exist, occasionally joining forces with the police and the army to battle peasants in disputes over land...
...The next day, the EZLN, prompted by these blatant demonstrations of bad faith, withdrew from the negotiations, seven months after the accords had been signed...
...A survey conducted on January 7, 1994, showed that 61% of the residents of Mexico City supported the Zapatistas' goals...
...5. Luis Hernandez Navarro, "Entre la memoria y el olvido: Guerrillas, movimiento indigena y reformas legales en la hora del EZLN," in Neus Espresate, ed., Chiapas, Vol...
...On December 8, the man many believed had received the majority of the votes in the August election, Amado Avendafio, was inaugurated as governor in an open-air ceremony that took place at the same time as the official, invitation-only inauguration of Robledo...
...The white guards enforced the rule of the ranchers and big landowners, especially in those parts of Chiapas where public authorities had a weak presence...
...1 4 Paramilitary groups have been most active in contested areas of the north and central highlands, where support for the Zapatistas is high but where the Zapatista army could offer much less protection than it could in the Lancand6n jungle...
...7 At the request of the EZLN, photographers were not allowed at the official ceremony because the Zapatistas suspected that the government was more interested in the photo opportunity than in the content of the accords themselves...
...Commander Garcia Rivas gave P6rez and three women permission to visit the scene of the massacre, but refused to provide any protection or support...
...21...
...Juan Manuel Venegas, "Madrazo: En Acteal, conflicto intercomunitario," La Jornada (Mexico City), December 27, 1997...
...The same document was presented to the Minister of the Interior, who accepted it on behalf of the government, but asked for time to show it to President Zedillo, who was out of the country at the time...
...The first four years of the Zapatista rebellion were framed by two very different events...
...1 7 At 11:30 that morning, just an hour after the killings began, three villagers sought help from the commander of a local police station...
...As the opposition grew and became better organized, the federal government increasingly moved towards a militarization of the conflict...
...About a half an hour later, a call was made to the telephone booth of Acteal, apparently by someone in the central government, who told the villager who answered the phone that a police patrol would be investigating the shooting...
...With night falling fast, P6rez requested to be freed in order to attend to the wounded...
...Between 1994 and March 8, 1996, 100 PRD activists were assassinated in Chiapas...
...The electoral reforms increased the autonomy of the electoral tribunal as well Just weeks before the Acteal massacre, Chiapas governor Julio CUsar Ruiz Ferro gave $575,000 to the so-called "Peace and Justice" paramilitary group...
...1 3 Just weeks before the massacre at Acteal, Peace and Justice received a grant of $575,000 from Chiapas governor Julio CUsar Ruiz Ferro...
...Arguing that Zedillo's modifications of the document violated the ground rules of the negotiations, the Zapatistas rejected the accord on January 11, 1997.9 All of 1997 would pass without a return to the negotiating table...
...Legally, the legislature of the state of Chiapas should have selected a new governor...
...Mexican army from The massacre had received far indigenous communities too much attention to be ignored in Chiapas...
...It drafted a document that intended to address the concerns of both the government and the EZLN which the parties could either accept or reject, but not modify...
...to limit the scope of the talks resulted in a set of agreements which addressed some of the regional economic and social issues raised by the Zapatistas, but made no connection between these inequities and the existence of single-party rule at the national level...
...Angeles Mariscal, "En tres aios, 11,443 desplazados...
...The reforms also opened the office of governor of Mexico City--a position that in the past had always been appointed-to electoral competition.10 In northern and central Mexico, a more democratic era appeared on the horizon...
...In an appeal to opposition forces nationwide, the EZLN called for the first of three National Democratic Conventions to be held in August...
...Without firing a shot, the Zapatistas were consolidating their presence in Chiapas and extending their influence in civil society at the national level...
...The rebel government headed by Avendafio would "govern" from an office in a 26-building complex in San Crist6bal that was owned by the National Indigenous Institute (INI) until the day of the inaugurations, when it was seized by a coalition of unarmed indigenous groups...
...Ricardo Becerra, Pedro Salazar and Jose Woldenburg, La reforma electoral de 1996: Una descripcidn general (Mexico City: Fondo de Cultura Econ6mica, 1997), pp...
...These regions, marked by high rates of landlessness and unemployment, were ripe for the mobilization of pro-PRI paramilitary groups...
...Their suspicions proved correct...
...The talks were held in the cathedral of San Crist6bal de las Casas in February 1994 and mediated by a commission headed by Bishop Samuel Ruiz...
...Over the next several months, a wide array of new coalitions and organizations were formed, including the National Women's Convention, state conventions in Chiapas, Oaxaca, Morelos, Veracruz, Durango, Sinaloa, Zacatecas, Guerrero and Michoacdn, and the Movement of National Liberation, headed by former presidential candidate and current governor of Mexico City, Cuauht6moc Cdrdenas...
...Like Ruiz Ferro, Albores Guill6n represents the old school of PRI politics-the school of the big landowners, the ranchers, the people who would stop at nothing to annihilate the Zapatistas...
...While the Zapatistas wanted to hold the second round of peace talks in Mexico City, to emphasize the fact that their demands were national in scope, the central government rejected their proposal, threatening to arrest any Zapatista leaders who left the confines of the state of Chiapas...
...It was in this context that the municipal and congressional midterm elections were held in July...
...1 6 But their partial autonomy also meant that, if they decided to kill many people at once-as they did in Acteal-there was little that the state and federal authorities could do about it...
...20...
...They seized a significant amount of the territory that had been under NACLA REPORT ON THE AMERICAS CREPORT ON CHIAPAS & COLOMBIA Zapatista control, and arrested dozens of unarmed political activists suspected of being Zapatista supporters...
...Julio Hernandez L6pez, "Astillero" and "Chiapas: Recambios en el Vacio," La Jornada (Mexico City), January 8, 1998...
...As one observer put it, the Zedillo Administration was "willing to talk but not to negotiate, and certainly not to fulfill promises...
...CIACH, "The Covert War Waged by Gunmen," p. 2. 14...
...But instead of investigating the reported massacre in progress, Commander Ricardo Garcia Rivas detained the three villagers...
...This is certainly not the only school of thought within the PRI, but as the Christmas massacre demonstrated so clearly, it continues to be the dominant one in the state of Chiapas...
...Through such appeals, the Zapatistas were able to quickly transform and unify the political opposition...
...Many Zapatista supporters blocked roads and burned ballot boxes rather than let the ruling party enjoy the stamp of electoral approval...
...Cuauht6moc Cirdenas VOL XXXI, No 5 MARCH/APRIL 1998 17REPORT ON CHIAPAS & COLOMBIA from the center-left PRD was elected governor of Mexico City, and the PRI lost control of the lower house of Congress to a coalition of opposition parties...
...We can't go there," he said...
...Within two weeks, both the minister of the interior and the governor of the state of Chiapas had stepped down...
...That same week, the National Women's Convention met for the first time, also in Quer6taro...
...en 1997, 500 muertes violentas," La Jornada (Mexico City), December 31, 1997...
...Their attackers had no trouble following them-they were from the area and knew the terrain well...
...Notably, while most Mexicans generally opposed the Zapatistas' use of violence, they did not oppose their goals...
...Julia Preston, "Feuding Indian Villages Bringing Mexican Region to Brink of War," The New York Times, February 2, 1998...
...But amidst the excitement that was sweeping most of the country, many forgot that in the southern states, little had changed...
...Center for Information and Analysis of Chiapas (CIACH), Coordinator of Nongovernmental Organizations for Peace (CONPAZ), and Processed Information Services (SIPRO), Para entender Chiapas: Chiapas en cifras (Mexico: Impretei, 1997), p. 100...
...Four days before Zedillo broke the cease-fire, the third meeting of the Democratic National Convention had come to a close...
...That percentage had risen to an impressive 75% by February 18, just as the peace talks were getting under way...
...2 0 The massacre in Acteal created a huge public relations problem for the state and federal governments...
...One of the most notorious groups, ironically named Peace and Justice, was openly led by local PRI deputy Samuel Sdinchez Sinchez...
...The negotiating position of the EZLN, on the other hand, had changed considerably since 1994...
...Unlike the first two meetings, which were held in the relative isolation of Chiapas, this meeting was held in the state of Quer6taro, uncomfortably close to the center of power in Mexico City...
...Angeles Mariscal, "Detenidos por la matanza declaran su filiaci6n priista," La Jornada (Mexico City), December 26, 1997...
...Peace Talks, But No Peace 1. Tim Golden, "Mexican Rebel Leader Sees No Quick Settlement," The New York Times, February 20, 1994...
...1 2 By the 1990s, the presence of the white guards in Chiapas had diminished, but this was not the end of extralegal armed groups in the region...
...79 (November 11, 1997), pp...
...The original text and the federal government's subsequent changes are reprinted in COCOPA/Ejecutivo, "Balance comparativo entre la propuesta de reformas constitucionales presentada por la COCOPA y las observaciones del Ejecutivo," in Neus Espresate, ed., Chiapas, Vol...
...T he second round of negotiations, which eventually led to the 1996 San Andr6s accords, took place in a very different political context than those held in 1994...
...After the military offensive of February 1995, paramilitary groups were created-with significant support from local PRI politicians-to fill the vacuum...
...7. Rosa Rojas and Elio Henriquez, "Acuerdos de Larrainzar sobre reconocimiento constitucional del sistema juridico indigena,"La Jornada (Mexico City), November 17, 1996...
...The vicar of the archdiocese, Gonzalo Ituarte, called the secretary general of the state government...
...In subsequent President Zedillo has proven willing to talk but not to truly negotiate with the Zapatistas...
...As long as paramilitaries killed only two or three people at a time, they were only a marginal political liability for the government, even though over 500 people had been killed by paramilitaries in the state of Chiapas in 1997 alone...
...263-269...
...months, the federal government refused to enact any of the legislation necessary to implement the accords, and paramilitary violence in northern Chiapas continued...
...8. Luis Hernandez Navarro, "Entre la memoria y el olvido," pp...
...Remarkably, Manuel Camacho, former mayor of Mexico City and head of the government's negotiating team, appeared to agree with the rebels' analysis, publicly recognizing that peace required "a commitment to democracy"-a commitment that has been virtually nonexistent in Chiapas over the past decades.' Regardless of Camacho's sincerity, however, there were deep divisions within the ruling party, which were revealed most clearly a month later when the PRI's presidential candidate, Luis Donaldo Colosio, was assassinated in Tijuana...
...Four years later, during Christmas week 1997, a pro- On December 29, government paramilitary group 1997, Mexican soldiers massacred 45 unarmed Zapatista "visit" Zapatista sympa- thizers who were supporters in the highland town of forced to flee their Acteal...
...The autopsies would later show that the vast majority of their 45 victims were shot in the back...
...The calls for democratization at the local and national levels were crucial to the Zapatista's agenda-as long as ruling-party politicians were not accountable to Mexican citizens, they could easily rescind any agreement reached at the negotiating table...
...CIACH, "The Covert War Waged by Gunmen, White Guards, and Paramilitary Forces," La Opini6n, No...
...Their response to the sounds of the massacre in progress was to fire shots into the air, but they did not intervene or try to stop the killings.18 At noon, the police were once again informed of the events in progress, this time by several people who had escaped the paramilitary bloodbath...
...and Juan Manuel Venegas and Angeles Mariscal, "Albores Guill6n sustituye a Rulz Ferro...
...After three months of deliberations, they rejected the accords, arguing that they completely ignored their demands for democratization...
...3 Following their rejection of the government's peace proposal, the Zapatistas had set in motion a series of political alliances to strengthen their own bargaining position...
...In contrast to the EZLN's jungle stronghold, where the government had little presence, the north and central highlands were areas in which there had been a high degree of government penetration...
...3. Tim Golden, "Rebels Battle for Hearts of Mexicans," The New York Times, February 26, 1994...
...Less than a week after the government launched its military offensive, there were important changes on the political front in Chiapas, which were designed to quell the ongoing protests against Governor Robledo...
...The Acteal massacre last December was only the most dramatic of a steady stream of violent incidents in the region between 1994 and 1998.11 In fact, violence against those who work for social and political change-often with either overt or covert support from state and national authorities-was a fact of life in Chiapas long before 1994...
...Jesis Ramirez Cuevas, "Jamas atendi6 la policda estatal los Ilamados de auxilio: testigos...
...Opening fire with their high-calibre weapons, they killed a few villagers in the chapel, while the others fled 18 NACIA REPORT ON THE AMERICASREPORT ON CHIAPAS & COLOMBIA into the mountains...
...It was this growing political threat that led President Zedillo to change his public stance toward the rebels in February 1995, when he ordered the arrest of top Zapatista leaders...
...9. Luis HernAndez Navarro, "Entre la memoria y el olvido," p. 88...
...Her forthcoming book is entitled Feminism and Guerrilla Politics in Latin America...
...Police patrols continued their rounds, some of them stationing themselves at a school no more than 700 yards from the chapel...
...8 The congressional commission that had participated in the San Andr6s talks made one last effort to save the negotiations...
...She wrote this article while she was a Visiting Research Fellow at the Center for U.S.-Mexican Studies at the University of California, San Diego...
...6. Luis Hernandez Navarro, "Entre la memoria y el olvido," pp...
...The great irony is that while the Zapatista uprising was a factor in prompting the electoral reforms, these had little if any impact on political life in Chiapas itself...
...4. 10...
...riesgo de choques," La Jornada (Mexico City), January 8, 1998...
...While Chiapas had disappeared from On January 28, 1998, the international press after the protesters blocked the peace process came to a halt in San Crist6bal-Palenque road, demanding the early 1996, it was once again withdrawal of the making international headlines...
...But while their replacement might have reflected a new way of conducting politics, the way in which the replacements were carried out was a classic example of centralized PRI power at work...
...In places where the elections did take place, some observers noted the old-style PRI at work making sure that their supporters voted early and often...
...Two important political changes came out of the election...
...15REPORT ON CHIAPAS & COLOMBIA Subcommandante Marcos is accompanied by mediators Bishop Samuel Ruiz Garcia and Congressman Juan Bafuelos on his way to negotiations with the government on July 29, 1996 in San Crist6bal de las Casas...
...n December 22, 1997, heavily armed and uniformed men approached a group of worshipers at the entrance to a chapel in the indigenous town of Acteal...
...2 The Zapatistas brought the agreements back to their communities for consideration...
...Seeing that they would get nowhere with the police, the Acteal residents called the Catholic Church's human rights office...
...In February 1994, the Zapatistas controlled large portions of the eastern third of the state of Chiapas, but after the 1995 army offensive, they controlled very little territory...
...tion, alternating between negotiations and violencenever truly at war but never truly at peace...
...1 5 For the PRI, the strategy of organizing and funding paramilitary groups had one great advantage over utilizing the military or police forces-plausible deniability...
...Throughout the day, Catholic Church officials continued their calls to government officials in the capital, who assured them that there was no reason for alarm...
...Again they were ignored...
...Zedillo sent the document back with a series of new provisions...
...In the years between these homes in Puebla, events, the state of Chiapas has Chenalh6 due to undergone a dramatic militariza- paramilitary violence...
...Jes0s Ramlrez Cuevas, "Jamas atendib la policla estatal los Ilamados de auxilio: testigos," La Jornada (Mexico City), December 30, 1997...
...The semiautonomous nature of the paramilitary forces allowed their funders to denounce paramilitary violence in a way that would not have been possible had the same acts been carried out by the military or police...
...7475...
...Instead, news of Ruiz Ferro's "personal decision" to step down, and of the appointment of Roberto Albores Guill6n as his replacement, was released in Mexico City hours before legislators in Chiapas were formally notified...
...1 9 Finally, at about 5:00 in the afternoon, a group of women told Cornelio P6rez, one of the people who had first tried to alert the police patrol, that there were many dead and wounded...
...Andr6s Aubrey and Ang6lica Inda, " Quienes son los 'paramilitares...
...To be sure, there were continuities-the PRI continued to dominate national and local politics, and while the officeholders had changed as a result of the 1994 elections, the government's stance on negotiations remained the same...
...AvendafHo, editor of the Chiapas daily El Tiempo, was an outspoken defender of indigenous rights for years before he first entered politics in 1994 as the gubernatorial candidate of the Party of the Democratic Revolution (PRD...
...8285...
...4 Because the state Constitution allows the governor to take a leave for up to 11 months, this guaranteed that there would be no new election...
...2. See Thomas Benjamin, A Rich Land, A Poor People: Politics and Society in Modern Chiapas (Albuquerque: University of New Mexico Press, 1996), pp...
...After the arrest warrants were issued, the army launched a massive military offensive in Chiapas...
...For six or seven hours, they stayed there without advancing further...
...He promised to call back in ten minutes but he never did...
...Many marginalized young men in these communities were easy to recruit into such groups, even to attack their fellow villagers...
...Robledo announced that he was taking an 11-month leave of absence and fellow PRIista Julio C6sar Ruiz Ferro immediately replaced him as governor...
...In the ensuing months, the Zapatistas and the government met to work out the details of the talks, including the location, the ground rules, and who would participate...
...The Zapatistas, fearing more electoral fraud, announced that they would not vote, but encouraged their supporters to vote their conscience if they thought that conditions for a fair election existed in their municipalities...
...To make matters worse, President Zedillo made absolutely no mention of the accords in his September 1st state of the union address...
...Private police forces known as the white guards, for instance, were created in 1961 when the state governor granted ranchers legal permission to carry arms and hire private police forces...
...And while in 1994, pro-Zapatista social movements were growing exponentially, by late 1995, the old government strategies of divide-and-conquer had proven effective in weakening those groups...
Vol. 31 • March 1998 • No. 5
