The Escalation of the War in Chiapas
Navarro, Luis Hernández
The massacre at Acteal last December was not an accidental or isolated event. In fact, it was a carefully planned act of war against Zapatista rebels and their supporters. On December 22, 1997,...
...Instead, there has been a feudalization of power and a rise in political violence...
...These troop movements have their public-relations cover the army is not pursuing Zapatistas, but making sure that Indians stop killing each other...
...mantle all civilian groups that supBecause of their itinerant life in porttheZapatistaArmyof National search of work, and their estrange- Liberation (EZLN...
...Neither were army movements aimed at halting paramilitary actions, which have continued with absolute impunity in the areas under army control, nor have any paramilitary groups been disarmed...
...espite these policy changes, however, the more substantive aspect of government policy in Chiapas has changed very little...
...Their criminal regions in northern and eastern behavior, therefore, is at least in % 7 Chiapas, where the presence of the part a product of the government's j I I 1 Mexican army assures them perfect economic, agricultural and labor J impunity...
...The political regime, which many have characterized as a one-party state, has become obsolete, but it has not yet been replaced by a new system...
...After the Acteal massacre, there were some cosmetic changes in government policy toward Chiapas...
...A few officials were removed from their posts, including the minister of the interior and the governor of Chiapas, who had direct ties to the paramilitary units that carried out the massacre...
...In short, the institution that has grown most in strength since the Acteal massacre is the Mexican army-the same institution charged with fighting the rebellion...
...On one side there is a worn-out regime that refuses to relinquish power, a political class that refuses to think about the long term, a population that has suffered 15 years of neoliberal policies and shows signs of deep discontent, the growing influence of the drug trade, an ongoing war in the southeast, two active guerrilla groups, and a serious deterioration of human rights...
...The PRI lost its absolute majority in the Some believed that the breakdown of PRI rule would promote democratization in Mexico...
...These factional wars have been exacerbated by the growing role of "narco-politics" in national life, a role so considerable that a large drug cartel was recently able to purchase the services of the military officer entrusted with the Zedillo government's war on drugs...
...As a result, the government has turned to low-intensity warfare in an effort to overpower the rebels militarily and politically...
...The bloodbath was the most recent episode of political violence in the ongoing conflict in Chiapas, in which 1,500 people have been killed, most by state security forces or paramilitaries...
...The increasing militarization of the highlands did not correspond to Zapatista movements, as the army claimed, as there have been no such movements in recent months...
...Or is it sinking, Colombia style, into all-out war...
...The crisis is also the result of factional wars within the state itself, sparked by the elimination of the traditional rules of the game by former President Carlos Salinas...
...This is truly a dirty war...
...Within the logic of counterinsurgency, the massacre also serves as exemplary punishment for those who dare to challenge the local and national hegemony of the ruling party...
...a power and status own no land and have no reliable deputy to the which neither they means of subsistence, they are Chiapas State nor their landless forced to live outside the law...
...In fact, it was a carefully planned act of war whose objective was to trigger an escalation of the conflict by VOL XXXI, No 5 MARCH/APRiL 1998 7REPORT ON CHIAPAS & COLOMBIA diluting civil resistance and terrorizing the groups in civil society who could potentially mediate the conflict in Chiapas...
...While some believed that the breakdown of PRI rule would promote greater democratization and decentralization in Mexico, the result has actually been a feudalization of power and a dramatic rise in political violence...
...In have never experienced the civic Chenalh, for example, the paraeducation that comes with the pen- militaries not only killed unarmed odic assemblies in which the collective destinies of civilians, but destroyed productive facilities, harvests their communal lands, villages or municipalities are and even farming to ols in order to deprive members of decided...
...While the government spoke of peace, it was actively pursuing the disarming of the EZLN...
...over, in a year when prices were expected to be high, The heavy war tax they collect every two weeks from with the aim of remo ving entire communities of agniall adults living in their areas of influence gives them cultural produc ers from the sources of their livelihood...
...He also announced that some "alleged Zapatista" prisoners would be freed...
...The big winner, however, was the center-left Party of the Democratic Revolution (PRD), a party that has been violently harassed by the government from its very inception...
...The 1995 military the autonomous offensive against the EZLN effectively forced local governments...
...income...
...On December 22, 1997, in the small village of Acteal in the highlands of Chiapas, 45 unarmed men, women and children were massacred by a paramilitary group linked to Mexico's ruling Institutional Revolutionary Party (PRI...
...In hindsight, it is clear that this optimism ignored major anomalies in local elections, the coercion and buying of votes in rural areas and the exclusion of entire indigenous areas from the electoral process...
...The web that links the drug world to the world of Mexican politics grows more extensive each day...
...Hemmed in internationally and devoid of credibility within the country, the government was forced to play on the field staked out by the EZLN, meaning accepting mediation and compliance with the San Andr6s accords...
...While the government was negotiating peace in the San Andr6s talks, the state security forces were dislodging and killing peasants...
...The bloodbath in Acteal came just six months after the municipal and congressional elections held last July, which seemed to herald a new political geography in Mexico...
...Rather, the presence of the army seeks, simply, to surround Zapatismo in order to prevent it from further consolidating its presence and its autonomous communities...
...Is Mexico emerging as a vibrant democracy...
...also means that they have no rea- justice" paramili- The paramilitaries son to attend assemblies, and thus tary group...
...Their known leader of parents have ever dislocation from community life the 'Peace and enjoyed before...
...are active through- have no part in communal decision- t out the indigenous making processes...
...How the conflict in Chiapas is played out over the next several months will be crucial in answering these questions...
...The autonomous municipalities promoted by the Zapatistas in into the jungle, but various towns throughout the state of Chiapas had it did nothing to become real nightmares for the federal govern- stop the spread of ment...
...Their only teachers have been those who dissident communities o f the possibility of future instructed them in the proper use of their weapons...
...While in the past, increasing the number of troops in Chiapas was justified by the "war on drugs," now it is justified to prevent new acts of violence between armed interest groups, to maintain law and orderREPORT ON CHIAPAS & COLOMBIA and control the "savagery" of the Indians, and to halt the spread of arms...
...They disrupting their livelihoods...
...This duplicitous policy was more than just a reflection of the differences between "hawks" and "doves" within the government...
...Today, four years after the Zapatista Army of National Liberation (EZLN) declared war on the Mexican government, peace seems more distant than ever...
...Chiapas is precisely one of those violent semi-feudal enclaves in which the local PRI has allotted itself more power with the weakening of the Mexican presidency...
...As the power of the presidency has deteriorated in recent years-President Zedillo likes to say that it has been "delimited"-a reactionary coalition of state governors and party bosses has emerged in its place within the ruling PRI...
...Their sophisticated of a future.R Several factors are at play in the crisis of the Mexican state...
...It agreed to a cease-fire shortly after the emergence of the EZLN on January 1, 1994, but within a year it had broken the fragile peace, launching a military offensive against the Zapatistas in February 1995...
...The government's refusal to comply with the Indigenous Rights and Culture Accords it signed with the EZLN on February 16, 1996 has added to the climate of uncertainty and political disorder in the state...
...They do so by terment from community life, these rorizing communities, forcibly dis- landless young men have no sense placing the civilian population, and of communal responsibility...
...It was two faces of the same coin...
...Las Avejas had joined the democratic struggle against the semi-feudal political bosses of the state of Chiapas, and while they supported the goals of the Zapatistas, they rejected the use of arms and were committed to the nonviolent transformation of political life in their state...
...Whatever light could once be seen at the end of the tunnel has vanished...
...On January 22, President Zedillo announced that the government would accept the mediation of the National Mediation Commission (CONAI), led by Bishop Samuel Ruiz, and the congressional Mediation and Pacification Commission (COCOPA...
...lower house to a fourparty coalition, while maintaining its control of the Senate...
...regular income, and their war booty of animals, crops The tragic irony i n Chiapas is that the very forces which and household items is far more than what they could have deprived these landless youths of their livelihood obtain by stealing from neighboring farms...
...Troop movements are not part of the conflict, the government claims, but part of the solution...
...The killings were an attempt to crack open the fishbowl in which the Zapatista guerrillas swim-an attempt to eliminate all civic mediations, so as to force the indigenous rebels to confront those in power directly...
...Two months after the massacre, the government remains seated on the defendant's bench proclaiming its innocence, but it has yet to articulate a believable version of the massacre...
...While in the past, official promises have rarely corresponded to official acts, the gap is now enormous...
...While on one hand he speaks of seeking a peaceful resolution to the conflict, on the other he pursues a military solution...
...the Zapatista army further into the jungle, but it did nothing to stop the spread of the autonomous local governments...
...He is also an advisor to the National Council of Coffee-Growing Cooperatives based in Mexico City...
...Mexican politics remain uncertain and contradictory...
...These concessions seemed to signal both a commitment on the part of the government to a peaceful solution and its intention to comply with the San Andr6s accords negotiated in 1996...
...After attacking the credibility of CONAI and COCOPA for years, the Acteal massacre and its aftermath forced the government to recognize that unless it was willing to accept the mediation of the Mexican Church and Congress, it might be forced to accept international mediation at a later date...
...Voi XXXI, No 5 MARCH/APRIL 1998 T o flesh out the specific logic of the terrible violence committed at Acteal, we must begin, as they do in detective stories, by asking who benefits from the crime...
...Troops stationed in the nearby states of Campeche and Yucatan have been transferred to the Chiapas highlands...
...In this sense, the most significant evidence is the strategic repositioning and growth by 5,000 troops of the Mexican army in Chiapas...
...BY ANDRES AUBRY AND ANGELICA INDA ally stealing food and animals from Samuel Sanchez weapons give them neighboring farms...
...The army was able to push back the EZLN but not defeat it...
...Meanwhile, wide areas of the country-particularly the indigenous regions in the southeast-have been militarized and the number of politically motivated killings has increased, making this Mexico's worst human rights crisis in years...
...But with the deaths in Acteal, the last vestiges of credibility of the government's Chiapas discourse have been buried...
...And though the PRI retained three of the five state governments that were up for grabs, the centerright National Action Party (PAN) took the other two...
...Key to the government's strategy has been promoting and assisting the formation of paramilitary groups, to which it has delegated the task of repressing the indigenous rebellion and terrorizing the civilian population...
...The fact that the opposition won in relatively clean and fair elections led many observers to qualify the July vote as the beginning of Mexico's transition to democracy...
...Translated from the Spanish by Fred Rosen...
...While the government speaks of peace, it has sought to destroy the Zapatistas militarily...
...The PRD's Cuauht6moc Cdrdenas defeated the PRI candidate for the governorship of Mexico City-the first time in five decades this post was up for election-by a wide margin...
...It was not prepared to negotiate on the basis of Zapatista demands, and it was barely willing to negotiate the EZLN's reinsertion into civilian life...
...R NACIA REPORT ON THE AMERICASREPORT ON CHIAPAS & COLOMBIA Chiapas...
...Indeed, events in recent months have shown that Mexico is nowhere near the democratic "normalization" proclaimed by its president, and that it is in fact in the throes of a profound crisis of the state...
...It was not, as the government claims, the spontaneous product of the fanaticism of indigenous factions confronted with intercommunal or intracommunal problems...
...The paramili taries attacked the Acteal vilJoining paramilitary groups has offered these young lagers at the beginning of the coffee harvest, moremen a quick solution to their economic desperation...
...Ever since Ernesto Zedillo assumed the presidency, his administration has employed the same approach...
...Common crime is on the rise, and government officials seem incapable of finding a response other than the militarization of the police...
...Within the official geopolitical logic, these municipalities had taken on the same meaning as the liberated Zapatista areas prior to the government offensive...
...In the interim, the government hopes the conflict will simply deteriorate, that the opposing forces will wear themselves out, and that forgetting will defeat memory...
...It was a dramatic reminder that in the seemingly endless war in southeastern Mexico, the great majority of the victims belong to only one group-those who oppose the government...
...Most of the victims of the Acteal massacre were Tzotzil Maya members of a group called Las Avejas (The Bees...
...On the other, is the emergence of a democratic opposition, its impressive electoral triumphs, and the influential role played by many independent groups in civil society...
...It is not coincidental that the area within which Acteal is located, the municipality of Chenalh6, is not only a The 1995 army offensive effectively forced the Zapatistas further Zapatista bulwark, but the heart of the highlands and a natural corridor connecting a broad region of the Lacand6n Jungle...
...Because they Sanchez, a PR...
...Their objective is to dispolicies...
...Being a are now using them to rob their own communities paramilitary also confers prestige...
...The massacre at Acteal was not an isolated or accidental event...
...The contradictions between a set of political institutions based on topdown corporatist and clientelistic relations on the one hand, and an increasingly mature civil society which seeks full political participation on the other, remains a source of permanent conflict...
...In the two weeks following the massacre, there were 51 army incursions into Zapatista territory, including four into the EZLN stronghold of Aguascalientes...
...Luis Hernindez Navarro is an editor and columnist at the Mexico City daily paper La Jornada...
...The approach adopted with the 1995 military offensive-squeezing the Zapatistas militarily, paramilitarizing the conflict, trying to wear out the rebels' bases of support and hoping it would all blow over-remains essentially intact today...
...Chiapas, indeed, has become the black hole of Mexican politics...
Vol. 31 • March 1998 • No. 5
