Silence in the Mexican south

The Zapatistas have now retreated into silence

By Nick Caistor in Chiapas

A tiny old man wearing a green oilskin hat and a red poncho
comes shuffling up to me in the street. He's got a huge
plastic bag hanging down his back, held on by a strap across
his forehead, and he wants to sell me whatever is in it.

He is one of the majority of indigenous people who live in
this region in Mexico's deep south.

We're in the town of San Cristobal de las Casas, the gateway
to the highlands of Chiapas.

It's an imposing colonial town, the capital of the state
under Spanish rule. It's situated about 11,000 feet up in
the mountains, and is surrounded by misty pine woods, which
become denser and wetter in the forests even further up in
the mountains.

San Cristobal was the most important of the towns seized by
the Zapatista army in their revolt back in 1994, when their
uprising alerted the whole world to the misery and
discontent of the local indigenous population.

Peace commission

Some 200 people were killed during the revolt, and there
have been almost as many deaths in the region since.

Eventually, the Zapatistas agreed to sit down with a
government peace commission. After several years of off-on
talks, the two sides agreed on a peace settlement - the San
Andres accord.

This peace deal allowed the indigenous people of Chiapas and
other states of the Mexican federation - some 10 million
people altogether - a large measure of autonomy.

It agreed to let the indigenous communities to own their
lands collectively rather than individually. It allowed
their traditional authorities to be the ones who
administered justice in indigenous areas and established
other mechanisms for the indigenous voices to be heard and
respected as equals.

The government in power until 2000 did nothing to implement
these peace accords. But Vicente Fox, who swept to power in
that year's elections on a promise to bring change to all
levels of Mexican society, boasted that he could solve the
indigenous problem in Chiapas "in 15 minutes."

Autonomy

He started well. He sent the San Andres peace agreement to
the Mexican Congress for it to be debated and signed into
law. This guaranteed a new and more just status for all
Mexico's indigenous peoples.

But many members of Congress, particularly in the PRI party,
did not like the deal. They thought it was giving away too
much, and transforming the indigenous people from citizens
without rights to citizens who had more guarantees than
anyone else in Mexico.

They were worried that the autonomy being offered to
Zapatistas and other groups might create states within
Mexico, and make the country ungovernable.

So the federal Congress in Mexico City modified almost all
of the clauses of the peace agreement, and then passed this
modified legislation into law. Since then, the states in the
Mexican federation with a large indigenous population have
rejected the new "Indian law".

"We're back to the Spanish colonial system," one indigenous
commentator argued. "They want to control us as if we were
children, to look after our affairs until they consider us
adult enough to take responsibility for ourselves."

Jungle retreat

The Zapatista response was even more emphatic. They rejected
the new legislation, and since then have refused to talk to
anyone. They have withdrawn to their strongholds in the
Chiapas mountains and retreated into complete silence.

Whereas before they made pronouncements, used e-mail and
other electronic means to give their views on the situation
in Mexico and the rest of the world, they are now saying
nothing at all.

This silence is deeply worrying the Mexican authorities.
They have no idea what it might mean - could it be leading
up to another armed revolt, as the Zapatistas have never
handed in their weapons. Or could it mean that the most
famous Zapatista leader, sub-comandante Marcos, is either
very ill or dead?

There are still some 20,000 federal troops in Chiapas, and
though at the moment there is no armed conflict, the danger
of violence is still very real.

"We're in no hurry," one of the spokesmen for the indigenous
groups told me. "For 500 years now, the authorities have
refused to listen to us. Now all of a sudden, they're
anxious to know what we think, what we're going to do.
That's their problem - we have time on our side."

I finally understood what the little old man was trying to
sell me - "tierra", or earth, soil for my pot plants. The
sack on his back was full of the rich earth from Chiapas.

When I tried to explain I had no use for it, he looked up at
me in complete disbelief. Then without saying a word, he
shuffled off down the hill and out of town, back into the
mountains.