“They take away our land and, with them as bosses, we build airports on it when we will never travel by plane. We build highways and will never have a car. (…) We build shopping malls and will never have money to shop in them. We build urban areas with all the services and will only ever see them from afar. (…) In short, we build a world that excludes us, a world that will never accept us but which could not exist without us.”
(Words of the EZLN in the Polytechnic Institute, Mexico City, 3/16/01)

More than eight years after the Zapatista uprising, the agrarian question in Chiapas is still a central issue in most of the conflicts and divisions which have worsened over time. In this state which leads the country in poverty, more than two thirds of the population still makes their living from agricultural activities. This reaffirms the fundamental character of the agrarian disputes. The challenges, however, are much greater and have to do with an economic system that leaves farmers, mainly indigenous people, with few alternatives.

Impact of the 1994 uprising

Although in 1992 the federal government declared the end of land redistribution, the armed uprising of 1994 acted as a catalyst in the fight for land in Chiapas, and provided an excellent opportunity for the social movement to reaffirm and intensify its demands. Land invasion accelerated, not only by Zapatista groups but also by other organizations. “The creation at the end of January 1994 of the State Council of Indigenous and Peasant Organizations (CEOIC) opened up a period of rural mobilization that involved at least eight thousand claimants from eleven organizations demanding land. In the first six months of 1994, 340 private estates covering more than 50,000 hectares were invaded” (Harvey).

In 1996, Agrarian Agreements were signed with 62 peasant organizations and 85 independent groups. The government committed itself to providing solutions to the demands for land. On the other hand, the peasant organizations promised not to carry out more invasions, to vacate land not available for acquisition, and to consider agrarian claims settled. However, the magnitude of the problem becomes evident when the number of hectares invaded (more than 50,000) is compared to the amount of land that owners were willing to sell (11,910 hectares). The government hoped for a quick solution to the agrarian problem; however, land invasions have continued, and probably will continue as long as underlying structural solutions are not provided (Reyes).

Nevertheless, these negotiations did have an impact. Until 1995, many peasant organizations supported the EZLN in their fight, but these relations were broken when some organizations decided to negotiate partial agreements with the government.

Other factors in the equation

It would be impossible to discuss the Chiapas land problem in all of its complexity in an article of this length. Therefore we will briefly enumerate some of its components.

First of all, the agrarian conflict is intensely politicized. Many of the demands for land have been accompanied by demands for democracy, justice and respect for human rights. These demands have been quite justified because evictions are usually accompanied by abuses, arbitrary arrests, and even murders which remain unpunished.

Second, contrary to what many people believe, the problem of large estates is no longer relevant in the conflict zone. “By 1990, social property and small private holdings of less than five hectares represented more than 77% of the total amount of land, a figure which reaches over 90% in many counties in the Highlands region” (Viqueira).

On the other hand, the constantly increasing population re sults in an ever decreasing amount of land available to the peasants. This encourages use of the land for personal consumption, which in turn also affects land productivity. In fact, in the regions where small holdings predominate (where the cultivated land covers less area), more than 75% of the population usually earns less than minimum wage (Viqueira).

Third, even if the government distributed all the available land (in fact, it claims to have done so already), as long as the rate of population growth remains constant (2.12% per year), more land will always be needed. Today, 51% of the population in Chiapas is less than 20 years old. Therefore, the demand for land can never be satisfied if alternative forms of economic development and employment are not found for the active population. The increase in migration to the cities and to the United States in recent years is not unfounded.

Fourth, few employment opportunities exist outside the agricultural sector. Also, the indigenous population has little probability of gaining access to any that do exist due to educational limitations.

Fifth, the lands that were distributed were only marginally fertile. Irrigation systems are scarce, and livestock has accelerated the process of deterioration in the arable regions. On the other hand, it is difficult to have strict environmental preservation laws in a region of incessant demand for land. The best known case in this regard is the Montes Azules Integral Biosphere (Jungle region), where the threat of eviction continues for more than 40 indigenous communities.

Legality versus Legitimacy

Land disputes among farmers are as old as the PRI government policy of granting the same piece of land to more than one group of applicants, in order to divide and weaken organizing possibilities in the sector. Moreover, after 1994 land distribution was part of a counterinsurgency policy designed to isolate and cut off the Zapatistas. Several cases exist in which peasant organizations connected to the government were granted land in estates which had been invaded by Zapatistas.

Currently, other difficulties are arising because of divisions between previously allied organizations. Are the ‘recovered’ lands, i.e., those invaded by Zapatistas beginning in 1994, communal property? In more than one instance, another organization, allied with the EZLN, negotiated the ownership of these lands with the government to the benefit of everybody (including the Zapatistas). Today, in the context of increasing division among these organizations, the conflict arises between legality (property rights) and legitimacy. A phrase that can be heard in the Jungle region by the Zapatistas is: “We shed our blood”.

One concern of the EZLN is that the organizations with which they are currently in conflict could sell land parcels to a third party according to the constitutional reform of 1992 that allows the sale of communal land. The banners in Cuxuljá (scene of a recent harsh dispute of this kind) illustrate this point: “the land is our mother, it may not be bought nor sold,” and “land is not merchandise, to sell it would be treason.”

Often, behind the land disputes, what we find is rather a fight for political control or hegemony over a certain territory and its inhabitants. On the other hand, an additional source of tension is that, in order to benefit from certain government programs, farmers must present individual title to the land. This clashes with the communal property system that is still prevalent in indigenous regions.

Problem without a solution?

Although the agrarian struggle in Chiapas is no longer against the large estates, since they are now scarce, the inequality is still tremendous. Undoubtedly, agrarian demands will not stop because of the issues mentioned above: population increase, scarce natural resources, expansion of livestock holdings, obstacles to more efficient land use and the lack of training and employment in other sectors. All of this can be translated as the nonexistence of alternatives to the rural problem within the current system.

At the end of April, the Chiapas state Secretary for Indigenous People, Porfirio Encino, acknowledged that intercommunity problems had been detected in at least 40 localities in the counties of Ocosingo, Altamirano and Las Margaritas. He also affirmed that beyond the agrarian issues, “the root of these problems has to do with the dialogue [suspended between the federal government and the EZLN ] and the non-fulfillment of the San Andres Accords.”

In this sense, it is worth remembering some of the criticisms which have been leveled at the indigenous reform approved by the federal congress last year and at the Puebla-Panama Plan: Indigenous people no longer want to be the objects of welfare policies, but to be subjects and part of the discussion, not only with regard to agrarian policies but to everything involving their economic and social development. The times call for a comprehensive change, not for partial or short-term solutions.

The Agrarian Question: Many Historical Gaps

There can be no doubt that the current issues are heavily weighted by past policies, which have been characterized to a great degree by repression and agrarian reforms intended to be a “discretionary fix between local landowners and the federal government.” This policy was developed to suit “the needs of the system at any given moment and was aimed at protecting the great agrarian properties, in this way securing the rural vote for the official party” (Garcia de Leon).

Although one of the achievements of the Mexican Revolution at the beginning of the twentieth century was to initiate the Agrarian Reform to give land to the peasants, in Chiapas landowners successfully organized a counterrevolution to protect their privileges. The agrarian laws of the 1920´s also benefited them.

It was not until the Lazaro Cardenas administration (1934-1940) that significant agrarian distributions were carried out in this state. By 1940 there were fewer than half as many large plantations as those existing in 1900. Nevertheless, the better quality land remained in the hands of the large landowners (Gomez and Kovic). At the same time, agrarian policy was aimed at promoting livestock activity in the region.

Between 1940 and 1965, the national policy of import substitution gave priority to the industrial sector over the agricultural sector. As a result, between 1965 and 1980, national agricultural production declined from 14% to 7% of the GNP. This led to the country becoming dependant on imports for half the national corn consumption.

As of 1970, under president Echeverria, land settlement in the Jungle region of Chiapas was promoted. But soon inequities emerged again, as the population outgrew the amount of available land (Collier).

A key moment in the fight for collective rights was the Indigenous Congress of 1974: peasants realized that they all shared the same problems and decided to organize themselves in their demand for land (Gomez and Kovic). The development of “Zapatismo” would later benefit from this growing organizational process.

In order to protect the interests of large land holders, the government of Chiapas granted some five thousand certificates setting aside land for livestock production in the ’80’s, thus protecting more than a million hectares against land claims by social organizations.

In addition, during all these years, land grants were given maintaining the “bonds of corruption between the owners involved and the peasant beneficiaries, whose political loyalty and promise not to continue backing land claims and occupations was demanded.” (Garcia de Leon).

BIBLIOGRAPHY

• Collier, George A.: Reforms of Mexico’s agrarian code: Impacts on the Peasantry. Background of the rebellion in Chiapas. (1994).
• García de León, Antonio: Fronteras interiores. Chiapas: una modernidad particular (2002).
• Gómez Cruz P.J. y Kovic C.M: Con un pueblo vivo en tierra negada (1989-1993). (1994).
• Harvey, Neil: The Chiapas Rebellion. The struggle for land and democracy. (1998).
• Reyes Ramos, María Eugenia: El reparto de tierras y la política agraria en Chiapas. 1914-1988 (1992), y Espacios disputados. Transformaciones Rurales en Chiapas (1998).
• Viqueira, Juan Pedro: Los peligros del Chiapas imaginario. (Letras Libres, enero 1999)