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A short presentation of the situation in Chiapas

June 30, 2004

We have a long history; we are part of a long process.  We can, perhaps, understand many things if we start with the last (20th) century; with the 60s when big transformations started in the state of Chiapas: the settlements that were founded in the jungle by hired hands from the big ranches of the north and of the county of  Las Margaritas, the intervention of federal interests in the natural resources (of Chiapas) like rivers, the functioning of hydroelectric plants, the discovery and exploration of oil and gas reserves, the exploitation of the Indian workers of the highlands mainly on the coffee and sugar plantations and on cattle ranches.

- A transformation, which even now hasn’t ended, started in these years. There are basic reference points: the Indian Congress which took place in San Cristóbal de Las Casas in 1974 and then the appearance of the Zapatista Army in 1994. Between these two events there are 20 years of searching: searching out ways, consciousness formation, organizational practice in the communities, the creation of organizations and the struggle for land expressed in petitions and the taking over of land by farm worker organizations.

- The military presence in Chiapas is a phenomena which began in the 70s and the repression of social leaders and, at the same time, the use of political control by means of governmental programs which are meant to better the conditions of living. In these years three elements were established which continue today: the interests of the Chiapas large land owners and political class, the interests of the federal government (in Chiapas) in function of national (as opposed to state) development now within the neoliberal model and the interests of the marginated people – the Indians, the rural population, hired farm workers, producers of corn, beans, coffee, cattle and the work force of the plantations and the cities.

We have been revising this history. We, the Network for Peace, made a pamphlet which shows the “War Process and the Peace Process” from 1994 to 2003 and we noticed the constancy of neoliberal interests on the one hand and on the other, the defense of Indian rights. This confrontation is a fundamentally economic war but it also has to do      with the military, the political, the cultural and the religious.

In the context it is very important to understand the pastoral work of Bishop Samuel (Ruiz García) from 1960 to 2000. Forty years of prolonged struggle based on an option for the poor, service on the National Mediation Commission (CONAI) and the constancy of his work in the search for the necessary conditions for a just and dignified peace.

It is important to point out that the federal government and the Zapatista Army signed the San Andrés Agreements on Indian rights and culture on February 16, 1996.

Now in 2004, we are in a situation where the different and contradictory interests, those of the federal government and the rights of the people, are more and more clear.

The nation is proposing a model of development which has to do with the development of transnational enterprises which put priority on strategic resources and have, as a fundamental point, the necessity of finding alternatives to the growing population and its margination.

• Another proposition comes from the individualist ideology and looks for partial solutions to the margination.

• Another proposition is the persistent and traditional model of power in the communities, which controls resources, the population itself and wields a political, cultural and religious power, with traditional mechanisms of pressuring the population.

• Another model is the land struggle and the struggle for political participation; the rural-Indian movement which has lead the agrarian struggles and which faced repression and which gave a configuration to Chiapas. This movement, now in fragments, has created a space for organizational independence with capacity to negotiate with the government and, at the same time, has a regional power.

• Finally there is the proposal of the Zapatista Army (EZLN): a process of  building autonomy with a policy of resistance before an imposed model, with clarity to defend Indian rights, with the capacity to operate with organizational strategies, with a solid vision of its political interests, which is nurtured by the experience of the struggles of the communities and which proposes an advance in the use of autonomous power, with autonomous counties and the Commission of Good Government (Juntas de Buen Gobierno) and above all with the capacity to assume the responsibility to create alternatives to the situation considering the necessity for a broad change in the structural relations of domination and plundering which operate in the communities.

Significant Problems:

• The displaced groups (internal refugees)

• Division in the communities

• Migration

• Militarization and para-militarization

• The harassment of the organized communities

Alternatives:

• Autonomies and resistance

• Cultural Rejuvenation

• The participation of women and the consciousness of the rights of women

• A human rights culture

• Economic Solidarity and Agroecology

• Autonomous Education 

Jorge Santiago S.

Director of DESMI, AC

Associate Member of CORECO, AC

Coreco A.C.

Venezuela 30

Barrio de Mexicanos

29240, San Cristóbal de Las Casas

Chiapas, México

Tel (+52) 967 678 24 78

 coreco@laneta.apc.org