[NYTr] A decade after Acteal, war is again on Mexico's horizon

Fri Dec 21 10:55:19 EST 2007

sent by Milt Shapiro (mexnews)

TheGuardian - Dec 21, 2007 [no URL provided]

A decade after Acteal, war is again on Mexico's horizon:

To those who remember the violent campaigns against Zapatistas, the 
tensions today feel eerily, dangerously familiar

by Naomi Klein
San Cristobal

Nativity scenes are plentiful in San Cristobal de las Casas, a 
colonial city in the highlands of Chiapas, Mexico. But the one that 
greets visitors at the entrance to the TierrAdentro cultural centre 
has a local twist: figurines on donkeys wear miniature ski masks and 
carry wooden guns.

It is high season for "Zapatourism", the industry of international 
travellers that has sprung up around the indigenous uprising here, 
and TierrAdentro is ground zero. Zapatista-made weavings, posters and 
jewellery are selling briskly. In the courtyard restaurant, where the 
mood at 10pm is festive, verging on fuzzy, college students drink Sol 
beer. A young man holds up a photograph of the rebel leader, 
Subcomandante Marcos, as always in a mask with a pipe, and kisses it. 
As he does so, his friends snap yet another picture of this most 
documented of movements.

I am taken through the revellers to a room at the back of the 
cultural centre, closed to the public. The sombre mood here seems a 
world away. Ernesto Ledesma Arronte, a 40-year-old ponytailed 
researcher, is hunched over military maps and human rights incident 
reports. "Did you understand what Marcos said?" he asks me. "It was 
very strong. He hasn't said anything like that in many years."

Ledesma Arronte is referring to a speech that Marcos made the night 
before, at a conference outside San Cristobal. The speech was titled 
Feeling Red: the Calendar and the Geography of War. Because it was 
Marcos, it was poetic and slightly elliptical. But to Ledesma 
Arronte's ears, it was a code-red alert. "Those of us who have made 
war know how to recognise the paths by which it is prepared and 
brought near," Marcos said. "The signs of war on the horizon are 
clear. War, like fear, also has a smell. And now we are starting to 
breathe its foetid odour in our lands."

Marcos's assessment supports what Ledesma Arronte and his fellow 
researchers at the Centre of Political Analysis and Social and 
Economic Investigations have been tracking with their maps and 
charts. On the 56 permanent military bases that the Mexican state 
runs on indigenous land in Chiapas, there has been a marked increase 
in activity. Weapons and equipment are being dramatically upgraded 
and new battalions are moving in, including special forces - all 
signs of escalation.

As the Zapatistas became a global symbol for a new model of 
resistance, it was possible to forget that the war in Chiapas never 
actually ended. For his part, Marcos - despite his clandestine 
identity - has been playing a defiantly open role in Mexican 
politics, most notably during the fiercely contested 2006 
presidential elections. Rather than endorsing the centre-left 
candidate, Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador, he spearheaded a parallel 
"Other Campaign", holding rallies that called attention to issues 
ignored by the major candidates.

In this period, Marcos's role as military leader of the Zapatista 
Army of National Liberation (EZLN) seemed to fade into the 
background. He was Delegate Zero - the anti-candidate. The previous 
evening, Marcos had announced that the conference would be his last 
such appearance for some time. "Look, the EZLN is an army," he 
reminded his audience, and he is its "military chief".

That army faces a grave new threat - one that cuts to the heart of 
the Zapatistas' struggle. During the 1994 uprising, the EZLN claimed 
large stretches of land and collectivised them, its most tangible 
victory.

In the San Andres accords of 1996, the right to territory was 
recognised, but the Mexican government has refused to fully ratify 
the accords. After failing to enshrine these rights, the Zapatistas 
decided to turn them into facts on the ground. They formed their own 
government structures - good?government councils - and stepped up the 
building of autonomous schools and clinics. As the Zapatistas expand 
their role as the de facto government in large areas of Chiapas, the 
federal and state government's determination to undermine them is 
intensifying.

"Now," says Ledesma Arronte, "they have their method." The method is 
to use the deep desire for land among all peasants in Chiapas against 
the Zapatistas. Ledesma Arronte's organisation has documented the 
ways in which, in just one region, the govern ment has spent 
approximately $16m expropriating land, before passing it on - to 
members of the many families linked to the notoriously corrupt 
Institutional Revolutionary party (PRI). Often, the land is already 
occupied by Zapatista families. Most ominously, many of the new 
"owners" are linked to thuggish paramilitary groups, which are trying 
to force the Zapatistas from the newly titled land.

Since September there has been a marked escalation in violence, 
including shots fired into the air, brutal beatings, and Zapatista 
families reporting being threatened with death, rape and 
dismemberment. Soon the soldiers in their barracks may well have the 
excuse they need to descend: restoring "peace" among feuding 
indigenous groups. For months, the Zapatistas have been resisting 
violence and trying to expose these provocations. But by choosing not 
to line up behind Lopez Obrador in the 2006 election, the movement 
made powerful enemies. And now, says Marcos, their calls for help are 
being met with a deafening silence.

Exactly 10 years ago, on December 22 1997, as part of the 
anti-Zapatista campaign, a paramilitary gang opened fire in a small 
church in the village of Acteal, killing 45 indigenous people, 16 of 
them children and adolescents. Some of the bodies were hacked with 
machetes. The state police heard the gunfire and did nothing. For 
weeks now, Mexico's newspapers have been filled with articles marking 
the anniversary of the massacre.

In Chiapas, however, many people point out that conditions today feel 
eerily familiar: the paramilitaries, the rising tension, the 
mysterious activities of soldiers, the renewed isolation from the 
rest of the country. And they have a plea to those who supported them 
in the past: don't just look back. Look forward, and prevent another 
Acteal massacre before it happens.