Zapatista Communities Under Attack

In 1994 the rallying cry for land and freedom that sparked the Zapatista rebellion echoed across the globe and landed on the front page of the The New York Times, which hailed it as the “first postmodern Latin American revolution”. Nineteen years down the line the corporate media seems to have forgotten about that “spark that lit up the world”. On 17 November 2012 the EZLN –  the movement’s political military organisation – celebrated its 29th anniversary. It was a time not only to celebrate almost two decades of struggle for justice, dignity and democracy, but also an opportunity to build solidarity with those communities currently under attack by the Mexican state.

The rebellion itself began on New Year’s Day 1994, when some 3,000 poorly armed indigenous rebels seized six towns in Chiapas, Mexico’s southernmost state. Few disputed their right to be angry. Poverty in the area, defined as the percentage of the population that lives on less than a dollar per day, hovered around 56% when the rebellion began, with many families lacking access to basic healthcare and education, while a small elite controlled much of the arable land and held the farming population in near-feudal conditions. In rural communities, an estimated 20% of children died before the age of five.

Since then, members of the Zapatista communities, known as bases of support (BAZ), have been constructing their own autonomous systems of education, healthcare, co-operative working, justice, grassroots democracy, community organisation, feminist values, agro-ecology, appropriate technology, and other social and economic projects, without any involvement from the government. They wish to live according to their own indigenous ways of being, and have created a living example of a (or another) possible world, an example which gives inspiration and hope to people all over the world.

In response to the ‘threat’ posed by these communities, the Mexican state has deployed financial blockades and dispatched armed paramilitary-style attack groups to carry out alarmingly violent assaults on some of the Zapatista communities. An example of this is “Plan Chiapas 94”. The plan prescribes “a forced displacement of communities under zapatista influence including a warranted refugee area, annihilation of the Dioceses of San Cristobal (zapatista stronghold), capture of any Mexican identified as EZLN, expulsion of pernicious foreigners, slaughter or control of the communities’ livestock; destruction of their harvest; and deployment of the ‘civil defense’ to break the relationship of mutual aid that exists between the population and the outlaws”.

One of the most serious recent attacks carried out under “Plan Chiapas 94” was an invasion by the paramilitary group known as ‘Peace and Justice’ into the Zapatista communities of Comandante Abel and Unión Hidalgo in September 2012, during which the community was forcefully displaced. Recalling those tragic moments, a BAZ member recounts: “They chased us with bullets, and when we arrived in a new place place we were already sick.” He adds: “I felt like there was a jaguar after me, I was lost and terrified, I felt as if I was no longer in the world.”

The communities remain displaced and the Zapatistas’ land is still occupied by the aggressors, who are currently building their own houses as a way to secure occupation. The efforts are actively supported by the local police. A BAZ spokesperson said: “Through a loudspeaker the paramilitaries are announcing, day and night, that they are going to ‘eat’ us, because we are outlaws, we are beyond the reach of justice and the law.” She adds: “The government buys people, and then persuades them to take our land. It is their policy of war and attrition to make us surrender. We will not stop our struggle and we are not going to give up.”

In 2010, the BAZ of San Marcos Avilés opened its own autonomous school. Since then, the community has become the target of constant attempts to enforce displacement, and of destruction and theft of crops, livestock, property and food. A member of the San Marcos Avilés said: “They think we are worthless. They treat us badly, like animals. They do what they want with us. When we sow our maize, we cannot take it home. They come to steal our beans, sugar cane, bananas, they steal everything. All we do is sow and work and there is nothing. We cannot enjoy the fruits of our labour with our children, because members of the political parties are eating it on the orders of the bad government.”

However, in a tone of defiance the BAZ adds, “they should not think that provocation, threats, assaults and persecution will stop the Zapatista struggle for the construction of our autonomy and for national liberation. Because whatever the cost, and whatever happens, we will continue to go forward, as is our right.”  In response to these violent acts of aggression and displacement, an International Solidarity Campaign called “Worldwide Echo in Support of the Zapatistas” has been organised by supporters of the Zapatistas, demanding “an immediate and absolute end to the war against the Zapatistas”.

The campaign states: “The government and its people have their strategies, their violence, their terror. But we state here that we also have an option in the face of so much repression: we have the option to organise ourselves and to fight for justice, dignity, and autonomy.” As Hugo Blanco, a renowned Peruvian activist, argues in a newly-released statement of support to the campaign, “it is therefore both an obligation and in the direct interests of all of us who are seeking a new world, of all who want a horizontal society in solidarity, of all who understand that the 1% is leading us to the extinction of the human species and who are committed to its survival; we must organise with all our strength and collective intelligence in the defence of this island of freedom and democracy in Chiapas, which shows us that building another world, a world where there is room for many worlds, is truly possible.”

To learn more about the Zapatistas’ struggle, visit sanmarcosavilesen.wordpress.com