Autonomedia writes: "Bush's War on International Terrorism Fixes The
Zapatistas in Its Sights

John Ross


SAN CRISTOBAL DE LAS CASAS (Oct. 9th) - The Indians stood bunched
together outside the shinny appliance store on the narrow main drag
of this old colonial city, transfixed by banks of television monitors
upon which jumbo jets kept plowing into crumbling skyscrapers."They
thought it was a movie at first" recalls the young clerk of that
black Tuesday morning, "they were talking in Tzotzil and I could not
understand."



Indian responses to traumatic events, even those as close to home as
the seven year-long uprising of the largely Mayan Zapatista Army of
National Liberation (EZLN), are often heavily veiled here in this
chronically-impoverished, deeply indigenous southern state.
"We were at a meeting of women and they told us that the North
Americans had been bombed. We did not understand this at first
because it is always the North Americans who bomb other people"
remembers "Irene", a member of an artisans collective in the
Zapatista highland autonomous municipality of Aldama. Back in 1994,
during the first days of the Mexican military's campaign against the
Zapatista rebels, U.S.- manufactured helicopters dropped several
bombs and Swiss jet fighters pumped U.S.-made missiles into and
around rebel villages.



This September 11th, when some of the men from Aldama arrived at
Ovantic, the EZLN's most public outpost in the Altos of Chiapas, the
community restaurant was packed and all eyes riveted on the only
television screen in town. "One companero joked that Bush was
'chichiron' (fried pork skin) but others shushed him" recalls
"Manuel", "we all saw that many people must be dead..."


All throughout the Mayan highlands and jungle of Chiapas, whole
villages gathered round single, flickering screens trying to make
sense of the disquieting images of September 11th. In some,
particularly the many Evangelical communities that dot the conflict
zone, Black Tuesday was seen as the beginning of the end of the world
- syncretically, Mayan sacred writings anticipate the end of this
world - and the beginning of the next - between
2010 and 2012.



In other villages, observed non-government organization workers, the
attitude was "more like what are the crazy gringos up to now? "We
go into a lot of communities and they are asking us to bring them
videos of the airplanes" reports Gustavo Castro, chief analyst with a
San Cristobal think tank that initials itself CIEPAC. "The indigenas
cannot locate New York City on the map and they do not know what the
twin towers were - but they know something has changed. They are
assimilating the images and engraving them on their
understandings. They have learned that the empire is vulnerable, that
the U.S. is not
invincible. Does this help them or hurt them? This is what they are
weighing now..."



Although the terror attack on the U.S. has not yet provoked response
from the General Command of the Zapatista Army of National
Liberation, Subcomandante Marcos and his companeros were no doubt as
mesmerized as the rest of the world by the unimagineable images
transmitted on their car battery-powered black and white set
September 11th. Tucked away in their mountain camps above the hamlet
with the haunting name of La
Realidad ("The Reality") down in the Lacandon jungle, the rebels'
Clandestine Indigenous Revolutionary Committee (CCRI) has not spoken
for five months, since May 1st, when the Mexican congress mutilated
an Indian Rights law for which they had long fought.
The Zapatistas have repeatedly been labeled terrorists by Mexican
and U.S. authorities - a current U.S. Drug Enforcement Administration
web page tags them as such, as does Diego Fernandez de Cevallos,
senate majority leader for President Vicente Fox's rightist National
Action or PAN party. Former president Ernesto Zedillo alleged the
EZLN was a terrorist organization during the first days of the 1995
economic collapse, and sent 30,000 troops into the jungle to bring
its leaders to justice. 21 Zapatista supporters were rounded up and
so charged - "terrorism" is usually teamed up with "sedition",
"subversion", and "conspiracy" on Mexican courtroom dockets. 20 of
the accused terrorists were subsequently absolved of all charges (one
militant who confessed to toppling an electricity pylon with a pick
up truck, was convicted.)



Chief of the Zapatista "terroristas" was Javier Elorriaga who spent
15 months behind bars before the charges dissolved. A mild-mannered,
pipe-smoking, Mexico City intellectual, Elorriaga is still
incredulous about the terrorism charges: "I am not a terrorist - the
EZLN has historically always been against terrorism..." If terrorism
is to be defined as the use of deadly violence against a civilian
population in order to sow fear and doubt about a government that can
no longer protect its citizens, then the Zapatistas have been more
terrorized than terroristic. The rebels' celebrated January 1st,
1994 uprising in the first hours of the North American Free Trade
Agreement, was directed at military and police forces that had
suppressed Indian social movements for decades, and not against
civilians - in fact, it was the military and police which were
responsible for almost all of the civilian loss of life during the
12-day shooting war. After less than two weeks of armed uprising,
the EZLN acceded to the demands of the civil society to silence their
guns and begin a dialogue with the government. There have been few
incidents of armed conflict since.



Although terrorism and guerrilla warfare have become synonymous in
U.S.President George Bush's declared war against the former, not all
guerrilleros are terrorists - and the EZLN is neither. Militarily,
the Zapatistas consider themselves a standing army that confronts the
enemy on the battlefield - the EZLN remains at war with the Mexican
government.



Since the first week of the 1994 uprising when some ultra-left
groups sought to display their solidarity by blowing up banks and
underground parking garages, the EZLN has repeatedly condemned
bombings as provocations that only bring more repression down upon
their bases - the Zapatistas espouse mass collective pressure, rather
than individual
acts of terrorism, as the most effective way to obtain social change.
In a sharp 1996 interchange with the Popular Revolutionary Army or
EPR, a group deemed responsible for multiple bombings and deadly
ambushes in which civilians have been killed (five members of a
split-off group are currently imprisoned for bombing banks this
August), the EZLN's silver-tongued spokesperson Subcomandante Marcos
flatly turned down EPR support: "we didn't ask for your support and
we don't want your support. We have different goals.
We are fighting for democracy and justice. If you ever came to
power, we would have to fight you too..." But more recently, the EZLN
has asked the Popular Revolutionary Army's endorsement of the
now-moribund Indian Rights law.



Since that law was mangled by congress, the EPR has stepped up its
activities in Chiapas and is thought responsible for a series of
attacks on police-military convoys between Puerto Cate and Simijovel
in the highlands - in one terrifying attack, three military vehicles
were blown up on the open road.



In addition to denouncing left terrorism, the EZLN condemns state
terrorism - whether that of U.S.-supplied Mexican army helicopters
bombing Indian villages in Chiapas, or the United Nations carpet
bombing Serbia. The EZLN once refused to meet with a high United
Nations human rights official because of U.N. sponsorship of the
bombings in the Balkans.



As if to enhance his Nostradamus-like aura, Subcomandante Marcos
sometimes prophecizes a world war much like Bush has planned against
international terrorism. In one document ("Seven Pieces of
Neo-liberalism",1997), the Sub describes globalization as "the
fragmentation of the nation-state", later to be united in a
U.S.-dominated
coalition "by violence" - this "megalopolis of power" would use
terrorist attack as a pretext to seize economic control of the
planet, a scenario eerily reminiscent of Bush-Republican
congressional strategies to win "fast track" authority to negotiate
the Free Trade Treaty of the Americas" (ALCA in Spanish) and impose
NAFTA upon the entire
continent, as a supposed bulwark against Bin Laden and his terrorist gang.



Despite the threat of World War III and the impending triumph of
corporate globalization, the EZLN remains locked in a deathly still
quiescence. Indeed, the ski-masked Indian
"terrorists" appear to be awaiting a very institutional signal - a
Mexican Supreme Court decision on the validity of the gutted Indian
Rights law that has been passed by congress and promulgated by Fox.
"It is as if they are giving the system one more chance" marvels
Castro, "the Zapatistas have taken the legal route. They have
dialogued and negotiated and signed agreements and held peaceful
protests - and they have gotten screwed over time! Vicente Fox ought
to be grateful to them for not being terrorists." At this writing,
320 appeals have been filed against the Indian Rights law with the
highest court in the land by
organizations such as the National Indigenous Congress,
majority-Indian municipalities
(counties), state governors, and political parties. One example: 250
indigenous municipalities in Oaxaca filed so many petitions to block
the law, that a pick-up truck had to be hired to haul five tons of
paper up to Mexico City to deposit the appeals with the
court. In Michoacan, rather than await a court decision expected
sometime early next year,
the Purepecha Nation has simply declared itself autonomous - Indian
autonomy was stripped from the law by the Mexican senate.



Indigenous autonomy is one Zapatista goal but certainly not the only
one. Still, by refusing to speak out until the high court has passed
judgment on the constitutionality of the Indian Rights law, the
comandantes have painted themselves into a silent
corner at a moment when many supporters feel keenly the absence of
their voice. "They
should be in the vanguard against the coming war but they are not
heard from" laments Noe Pineda, communications director for San
Cristobal's Fray Bartolome de las Casas Human Rights Center.



Nonetheless, Bush's War against Terrorism may soon force the rebels
to speak up for their own survival. Because Chiapas is a border
state with abundant resources, it is considered a "strategic zone"
for national security. Although no count is available, hundreds of
troops and immigration agents were rushed to safeguard the southern
border
following the Black Tuesday attacks. Now they are reportedly
fine-combing the jungle and the sierra for Arabs (13 Yemenis were
recently picked up in Palenque), "terrorists" (indistinct from
"Arabs" although the last international terrorist collared in Chiapas
was an
Austrian), and other subversives.



"Indians are always considered national security risks" remarks
Marcos Macias, the first indigino to ever head up the government's
National Indigenous Institute, "we are under permanent observation."
In times of high tension, such suspicions are not going to make
life any easier for the Mayan rebels, many of whose camps lie within
20 kilometers of a militarized border.



Moreover, Bush's campaign against international terrorism is going
to require a lot of oil to power the war machine and EZLN jungle
settlements appear to be sitting on top of important deposits of
fossil fuels - Marcos once boasted potential reserves rivaled those
of the Persian Gulf. Intensified efforts by the Fox administration
to exploit petroleum, natural gas, and uranium reserves on Zapatista
autonomous land under the guise of cooperation with Bush's war will
inevitably lead to Indian resistance in this corner of Chiapas. Under
the Bush doctrine of either being "with us or with the terrorists",
resistance to supplying Washington's war efforts could be tantamount
to terrorism
itself.



The gathering war clouds and deepening world recession have hit
Chiapas like a ton of stones. Tourism, the state's second industry,
has collapsed in the wake of terrorist attack, and the price of
coffee, Chiapas's key agricultural export, has toppled to its lowest
level in a generation, thrusting 500 Indian farmers a month into the
migration stream north to the U.S. Whole communities as spread as
Nuevo Huistan near the heart of the jungle, and San Juan Chamula in
the highlands, are now dependent upon remissions from "El Norte." In
both those communities, reports Fray Bart's Pineda, families say they
have not heard from their men since Black Tuesday.



The Zapatista flame first surged in the region ten years ago when the
bottom fell out of the coffee market and NAFTA threatened the Mayan
corn culture. But now, with the EZLN sworn to silence, observers
like Pineda and Castro sense that the EPR will seek to fill
the vacuum. "That is when the real terrorism could begin" Pineda
frets. Although the world is dominated by Washington's super-power
vision, seven years of indigenous struggle in the Zapatistas'
self-declared "war against oblivion" contain lessons for those who
are about to plunge the planet into an excess of global revenge.



On the eve of Christmas 1997, 46 members of Las Abejas ("The Bees"),
a coffee growing and honey gathering collective organized by the San
Cristobal diocese and sympathetic to the Zapatista cause, were
massacred by fanatic Presbyterians, members of the then-ruling
(71 years) Institutional Revolutionary Party (PRI), an act designed
by the military and state police to separate the Zapatistas from
their civil bases in the highlands. Given the smallness of the Abeja
community, the killings can be quantified as an act of terror
comparable to ten World Trade Center disasters. Nonetheless, the
return of hundreds
of Abeja families in recent months to communities from which they
were once forced to flee under threat of death, seems to underscore
that a modicum of reconciliation is still possible between the
terrorized and the terrorists.



John Ross, author of "The War Against Oblivion - Zapatista
Chronicles", the seven year saga of the Mayan Indian rebellion he has
been covering since its earliest hours, and a new chapbook of poetry
"Against Amnesia", will soon be leaving on an extended U.S. book
tour. For those who have invited Ross to speak in many venues across
the U.S.,
this will be the last "Mexico Barbaro" he will be able to personally
distribute. Those who have become addicted to these weekly glimpses
from the Mexican underbelly should write David Wilson at
nicadlw@earthlink.net and take out a subscription. For regular
readers, "Mexico Barbaro" will appear at ten day intervals until Ross
returns south in December."