Tierra y Libertad

In Chiapas there are many different stories about the Zapatistas, the indigenous movement that rose up in 1994 to demand land rights and autonomy for indigenous communities. Some say the movement is dead. Graffiti on buildings denies this, proclaiming “Zapata Lives” (Zapata is the Mexican revolutionary hero for whom the Zapatistas are named). Still others claim that, although a positive force during the first few years, Zapatismo has become corrupted, that its spokesperson, Subcomondante Marcos, lives in Cancun, a millionaire with many women.
It is hard to piece together the true story, or perhaps there are many true stories. There are a few things I am sure of though. The movement is not dead. 15 years after hundreds of armed indigenous Zapatistas took the streets of San Cristobal de las Casas, demanding autonomy and the end of neoliberal regimes that reflected a continuation of 500 years of colonization and marginalization, the movement while changed, is alive. I have now visited two of five caracoles, centers of the Zapatista government the Junta de Buen Gobierno. I have seen meetings of swarms of Zapatistas representing hundreds of small autonomous communities. I have talked to little Zapatista children about the Junta, and seen the real version of the now world famous image of a ski-masked Zapatista. I have also seen huge military bases that dot the picturesque rolling hills of rural Chiapas, trucks of fully armed soldiers dodging donkeys and children on narrow country roads. They are there to intimidate, to threaten, to control a movement that still scares the Mexican state. Some democracy: a military that, rather than protecting its people, fights against them; a government that rather than hearing the voices of its most needy, buys arms, builds bases and contracts young men to leave their impoverished communities to fight against their own neighbors.
Yesterday I drove for two hours through rolling green hills patterned with small houses, grazing cows with huge drooping chins and rib cages pushing against their skin, small roadside shops offering buckets of neatly stacked mangoes alongside Coca Cola and Cheetos, small clearcuts, burning fields to get rid of grass and weeds. I was heading to the Zapatista caracol of Morelia with Pedro who works with Otros Mundos, the organization that I am working with to complete my research project. Although we didn’t get to talk with the Junta (7 people chosen by the communities in each municipal to represent the municipal for a two week term), the ride there was very interesting as Pedro explained to me more about the land rights issues that fueled the Zapatista movement and the tricks the government is paying to corrode the movement from the inside.
In my simplified version I will try and explain. Basically, for hundreds of years much of the land in Chiapas (and probably other parts of Mexico too) has been owned by wealthy Spanish who allow the indigenous peasants to live and work on their land almost as slaves in exchange for a percentage of the harvest (the main crop by far was, and continues to be, corn). Pedro told me that the percentage demanded has continued to grow, leaving the families that work the land desperately poor. Recently, the drop in corn prices due to huge amounts of cheap, subsidized imports from the US (thanks to NAFTA) has meant that even families that have some corn to sell are left selling at prices below the cost of production. A popular slogan here is “The land belongs to the people that work it.” When the Zapatistas rose up in 1994 on the day NAFTA was signed, this demand for land rights was a driving force behind their arms and cries. They succeeded in driving out hundreds of huge land owners in Chiapas and returning the land to those who worked it, the indigenous. Many of the land owners pushed out were cattle ranchers whom the government reimbursed for the loss of their land, and who went on to set up highly modernized farms in central Mexico.
Sounds great. But things have been changing over the last 15 years in large part due to the tricks of a government eager to break the power of the Zapatistas. Firstly, in 1992 the Mexican government reformed the property laws that had been a great triumph of Zapata and the indigenous in the 1910 Mexican revolution. Previously land that was communally owned (called ejidos) could not be sold, but in 1992 the Mexican state declared that private property was a right and that ejidos could now be split up and sold. As a result many Zapatistas, still struggling to make ends meet, have left the movement, sold their newly gained land for dirt cheap (often to the same cattle ranches that used to exploit them) and moved to the city where they struggle to find work and community in a society that still shuns indigenous peoples. Furthermore, with the establishment of autonomous Zapatista municipals throughout Chiapas, the Mexican government suddenly became very generous: PROCAMPO, PROGRESA, oportunidades, schools, hospitals, cement floors, cattle given to the people for a small amount of interest (bought from the same big business ranchers that got pushed off the land) etc. etc. With these enticements the government divides Zapatista communities into those who cave in for the government’s band-aids and those who refuse to fall for more lies and false promises.
Obviously the situation is complex and this description lacks many more sides to complete the picture, but it’s a start to understanding the fight over land that largely inspired the Zapatistas. It is also another look into the convoluted schemes of the Mexican government. On a side note, I have yet to meet one Mexican who believes the swine flu is not some grand political game conjured up to distract the people from what’s going on in the government. The lack of trust the Mexican population has for its government is astounding! But I am beginning to see why.