“God protect us, so that we are not scared anymore”

After six years of excessive military presence in Chiapas, little is known of some of its impacts on the indigenous communities. While there has been reporting on divisions, confrontations, massacres, displacements, and the increase in disease, some aspects have received little attention. One of these is the impact of this war on children who continue to suffer in a variety of ways. Because of their natural vulnerability, they are among the hardest hit by the violence.

The Impact of Militarization

In the northern region of Chiapas, a 13-year-old girl is in search of some kind of income to help feed her family. Trembling, she enters a military compound and offers her body in exchange for a few pesos.

Estimates of the number of federal troops in Chiapas vary from 30,000 to 50,000. While the government does not provide figures for troop strength, it has been possible to document the growth of army installations. Since 1995, their number has quadrupled (from 74 to 296, according to the research group CIEPAC), and new installations continue to be established. The pervasive presence of the military in the conflict areas is apparent to even a casual visitor.

Military presence in and around indigenous communities in Chiapas is having profound effects on the population on many different levels. In some cases, the basis for interactions with local people is a militarization of public services. The military has “social work” stations that offer a variety of services: medical check-ups, medicine, hair cuts, etc. The military also gives out water and food, builds roads, and gives free rides to government supporters. In many communities, the soldiers play on town basketball courts and soccer fields, so that young people from the town must interact with soldiers if they want to play ball. Soldiers and state police have also been known to hand out candy to the children, play violent videos on the only available television in the town, and bring pornographic magazines to show to the teenagers and the children in some communities. All of these interactions give the soldiers the chance to not only influence the children but also to gather information.

The army and police represent power and wealth, and that is attractive to the young people. Many teenage boys have begun dressing in clothes that look like army and police uniforms. Similarly, as a peace camp observer in the northern region explains, “Many of the 14 and 15-year-old girls have begun to want to marry soldiers and police officers because, with their guns and money, they seem powerful.”

Many communities have reported that the soldiers have prostitutes and use drugs in front of the children. In fact, prostitution and drug use in the indigenous communities near military camps have become much more widespread whereas they were extremely rare before 1994. Many of the prostitutes that come to the military camps are still children themselves. For these girls, it has meant an increase in sexually transmitted diseases and pregnancies that bear unwanted and stigmatized children. Prostitution continues though, because these young girls or their families feel that they have no other choice in light of their desperate economic situation, which is greatly exacerbated by the war.

The influence of the military is especially powerful in the children of government supporters who, because of their political position, have more contact with the military. There is concern by parents and civil society groups that the very nature of the military and the activities of paramilitary groups in the area are teaching the children that violence is the appropriate and preferred way to solve problems.

Violent Attacks

“I am 12 years old and I lost my whole family. Only I stayed here by myself, . . .with no one of my blood, and I am only here because the people that came here helped me so that I wasn’t abandoned.”
Acteal massacre survivor

Despite the cease-fire, since 1994 at least several hundred people, children among them, have been killed in the fighting in Chiapas, and many more have been wounded or beaten. Over 20,000 have been displaced from their homes. Children have witnessed terrible acts of violence. Some have seen a parent killed before their eyes. Others have watched their houses burned, their animals killed, and their parents beaten, before being forced from their homes at gun-point by paramilitary groups.

Sometimes the children themselves have been a target. On December 22, 1997, a paramilitary group massacred 45 unarmed members of the pacifist group Las Abejas (The Bees) in the community of Acteal. The victims, who were praying and fasting for peace in the church, included 15 children, 21 women (one of them seven months pregnant) and nine men. A number of children were wounded, and some of the survivors were left orphans.

The constant stream of rumors and the free movement of paramilitary groups keep the people, especially the children, in a state of fear and anticipation. As a result the people in Acteal do not feel safe hunting for firewood or returning to their cornfields. Women dare not walk alone, and children stay close to the house when they are playing.

The struggle for survival amid the ongoing threat of violence makes it difficult for the people to work on healing from the loss and trauma they have suffered. This expression of unresolved trauma has manifested itself medically in Acteal. Many children have had a skin sickness called neurodermatitis that is caused by intense trauma. A health promoter noted, “As a result of the general situation, including the trauma, the children get sick more frequently and with more intensity. You see this most in the survivors of the massacre. And the children cannot express what is happening inside very well. Because of this the majority of the children remain in silence. They live in constant fear without a way for these emotions to be released.”

There has also been a rise in sexual assault and domestic violence among Chiapas indigenous since 1994. COLEM, a women’s group in San Cristobal, reports that the number of rape cases it has seen increased almost 50% in 1994 and more than 300% in 1995. Between 1993 and 1997, the victims in 37% of the sexual assault cases seen by COLEM were girls under the age of 18. The aggressors in 45% of the sexual assault cases were in a position of authority, i.e. police, military, doctors, teachers, etc. In addition, according to COLEM, since 1994 domestic violence has risen 20-30%. This rise in sexual assault and domestic abuse may be attributed, at least in part, to the increased level of tension and stress (and a subsequent rise in alcoholism) and to the close proximity of the military to the civilian population. So even though many children are not directly experiencing the violence of the war, they are much more likely now to have to face violence within their own homes.

The Drama of the Displaced

In Chenalho, two brothers, ages 6 and 9, and a sister, age 11, carry a full load of firewood on their backs with a strap that goes around their foreheads. Bent over, sweating, these internal refugees carry this load over mountains and hills behind their father until, after an hour and a half, they reach their plastic and tin house where they have lived for three years since being displaced from their community.

As a result of the continuing violence, 15-20,000 people have been displaced from their homes in Chiapas, more than half of them children. A victim from the northern region of Chiapas recounts a typical story: “On July 18, 1996, they carried out an operation, the Army and the police, along with Development, Peace and Justice [a paramilitary group]. They shot up the church, they broke the images, they looted houses and stole our animals. We went to the mountains to hide. Many people died. One of my little boys died. He got sick, and we couldn’t take him to the doctor out of fear of ambushes by Peace and Justice.”

As long as the conflict continues to fester, it can be expected that more and more men, women, and children will finally give in to the pressure of living in divided, oppressive communities and move to a place where at least they know that their next-door neighbor will not threaten their lives.

In some communities in the Lacandon Jungle, the government is pressuring the communities directly. It has accused some communities in the Montes Azules biosphere of damaging the environment and it has attempted to relocate them with a combination of promises and threats. Here we cite the words of the children of these communities: “We have a right to live in this place where we were born , just like other children who were born in other parts of the world. Wise sirs, scholars of animals and plants, do not ask the authorities to kill us or to displace us. Have a little conscience, governors and scholars. You too have children. The children of Montes Azules are not the enemies of our mother, who is the paradise of nature. We have lived here for years with the birds, the animals and the plants. We too are concerned about the life of Mother Nature. We invite you to join with us in conserving her.”

Each displaced family has its own story, but they all left in the midst of fear, walking for many miles, often at night and in the rain, to reach safety. And they have all experienced a profound loss. One of the children who had to flee his community talks about all that he left behind: “The dog got lost and the priistas ( supporters of the ruling party) took him. The school is in my town and I want to study. The flowers, the dogs, the chickens were lost. The paramilitaries took them. Cats, cooking pots, corn grinders have been lost. We were scared because they threatened us with their rifles, and they also shot their rifles.”

The children understand that they are still in danger. They hear the constant rumors that the paramilitaries are coming to kill the refugees. In the community of X’oyep, the children participate in weekly community prayers, where the people pray “that the people return [to their communities], that the soldiers leave, and that God protect us, so that we are not scared anymore.”

For the children from the communities that take in the displaced population, it is difficult to suddenly have hundreds of strange children and their families living in their community. Though they are not displaced themselves, they are faced with having to share their homes, their food, and their land. The consequence of this generosity is that these children now share in the suffering of the displaced. One child from X’oyep describes their situation: “When the displaced people got here, we crowded together with them in our houses, and afterwards they made their own houses out of plastic. .. Before we had enough trees, but we gave permission to the people who fled their community to cut firewood. We felt bad for them because they didn’t have anything, and that’s how our trees are all gone.”

The most severe problem for displaced people is the lack of land. In their own communities, the people could grow vegetables as well as their traditional corn and beans on their own land. In the camps, though, none of that is available. In some refugee camps, 100% of the children are in the first stage of malnutrition, and some are moving into the second and third stages. Their state of malnutrition, along with their very close quarters (in some cases, there are 20 to 30 people living in a house of 8 by 5 meters), make the children more vulnerable to the respiratory infections, skin infections, and diarrhea that constantly run through these communities. Not only do these illnesses affect the physical development of these children, but because of this vulnerability, without prompt medical attention they are at greater risk of death from these curable diseases.

Education is difficult, to say the least, for all of the displaced children. In many communities, there is no school for the children. In some, schools exist, but there are other problems. In Poconichim, because of the influx of displaced persons there are up to 70 students for each teacher. In other communities children don’t go to school because they must have a birth certificate to enroll, and they either never had one or it was lost or burned when they fled their communities.

Living in Divided Communities

In 1996 there was a confrontation between government supporters and opposition groups in the community of Jolnixtie, in the highly polarized northern region. The opposition groups fled their communities under threat from the paramilitaries. In their absence, their houses, animals and crops were pillaged and burned. After four months, the displaced returned to live just down the road from the people who robbed them and threatened their lives. Both sides were wary, afraid that the other was going to attack. The children were conscious of their parents’ suffering and worry, and the obvious source of it.

In the community of Puebla in the Chiapas highlands, some families finally fled in part because the division was so marked that the children of government supporters were threatening the children of Las Abejas while they were in school. In other communities, the children are separated entirely, with one school for children of government supporters and another for children of opposition supporters.

Meanwhile, the military presence in the region serves to maintain divisions and make a genuine resolution more difficult.

The Exploitation of Child Workers

In San Cristobal de las Casas, a 10-year-old boy is forced to work so that his family can survive. Every day he walks the streets, from early morning to 11:00 or 12:00 at night, burdened with bracelets and Zapatista dolls, begging tourists to buy his goods. Though he walks the streets of a wealthy city with many schools, he will probably never attend one.

Children all over Chiapas spend long days working in the fields, taking care of younger siblings, carrying firewood, and doing countless other things to help their families survive. There is a certain population, though, that works outside of their homes and plots of land, selling gum, bracelets, or whatever is necessary to earn a few pesos. Since 1994, many children have migrated with or without their families to San Cristobal de las Casas, one of the largest cities in Chiapas.

For these children, the prospect of education, even through primary school, is remote. In addition, without the support structure of their community and culture, they are targets of discrimination and abuse, not only because of their poverty and their vulnerability but because of their indigenous race. According to Melel Xojobal (an organization that works with street children), “The situation for the children on the street is very hard. They are mistreated by each other, by the authorities, and by the general population. Some adults use the children’s labor to their own benefit and in some of the most serious cases make them sell drugs or prostitute themselves.”

Storm Clouds and Rays of Hope

Amid the trauma and suffering, there are also signs of hope and renewal. For example, the community of Acteal is far from immobilized by its situation. A social worker noted, “There is a sense of community, of solidarity, of helping each other. There is a community nucleus to reflect and share in, to celebrate the word of God, or to conmemorate together on the 22^nd of every month the anniversary of the Acteal massacre. All of this helps the children to feel that though they left their community and though they have this profound loss, this new space is their space. And they are adapting because of this solidarity amongst the people.”

Nonetheless, the lives of the majority of the children in the conflict areas are dominated by poverty and tension.

It is noteworthy that Mexico signed and ratified the UN Convention on the Rights of Children. That document states that children have the right: to live in healthy conditions, appropriate for their development; to be protected from economic exploitation and from work that does them harm; to physical and psychological recuperation if the child has been the victim of maltreatment; to attend school; to play and rest; to live with their family in a secure environment; to express their opinion and have it taken into account; and to freedom of thought and religion.

For thousands of children in Chiapas, all of these rights are being systematically violated every day. They live their lives under threat of injury or death; they bear the influences of the military and paramilitary groups; they sell their wares or their bodies to survive; they have lost their homes, their animals, their loved ones and neighbors; they are shut out from schools and medical attention; they are caught in the middle of a conflict that they never asked for, and whose consequences they will inherit.

It remains to be seen what the long-term effects of low intensity warfare will be on these children as they grow up to be adults and have children themselves. Clearly the future of Mexican society depends on the emotional and physical health of its children, and true peace in Chiapas can only be achieved when the needs of these children are met.