Who are the Paramilitaries?
Aubry, Andrés & Inda, Angélica
Paramilitary violence is not new in Chiapas. The men who make up the units now referred to as paramilitaries used to be called pistoleros (hired gunmen), or white guards. They were generally...
...Because they Sanchez, a PR...
...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...
...Their only teachers have been those who dissident communities o f the possibility of future instructed them in the proper use of their weapons...
...Their sophisticated of a future...
...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...
...They disrupting their livelihoods...
...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...
...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...
...In addition to Acteal, where the massacre took place, another 16 Iocalities-containing a third of the villages and half the populationhave been the target of paramilitary violence...
...In the municipality of Chenalh6, where 45 indigenous people were massacred last December, we documented the existence of 246 members of paramilitary groups...
...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...
...This article originall appeared in La Jornada on December 23, 1997...
...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...
...ally stealing food and animals from Samuel Sanchez weapons give them neighboring farms...
...are active through- have no part in communal decision- t out the indigenous making processes...
...Those who participate in these paramilitary groups are almost exclusively young men frustrated by landlessness and unemployment...
...In have never experienced the civic Chenalho, 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...
...income...
...Their known leader of parents have ever dislocation from community life the 'Peace and enjoyed before...
...And although the government denies the existence of these groups, there is overwhelming evidence that political leaders in Chiapas linked to the ruling Institutional Revolutionary Party (PRI) are providing them with weapons and logistical support...
...mantle all civilian groups that supBecause of their itinerant life in porttheZapatistaArmyof National search of work, and their estrange- Liberation (EZLN...
...Translated from the Spanish by Fred Rosen...
...They were generally individuals hired from outside local communities to protect the interests of wealthy and powerful landowners...
...Their objective is to dispolicies...
...Like their parents, they survive on their wits and by occasionAndres Aubry is an anthropologist and historian based in San Crist6bal, Chiapas, Angelica Inda is Director of the Historical Archives at the Diocese of San Cristobal...
...Today, however, these private soldiers come from within the communities where they operate...
...Being a are now using them to rob their own communities paramilitary also confers prestige...
...also means that they have no rea- justice" paramili- The paramilitaries son to attend assemblies, and thus tary group...
...The long-standing crisis in agrarian reform, coupled with demographic growth, have created a situation in which these young men, especially those who are married and have families, are forced to wander in search of work...
Vol. 31 • March 1998 • No. 5
