Following the resolution of the federal Supreme Court (SCJN) regarding the constitutional reform on indigenous matters, the conflict in Chiapas has moved into a new phase. Indigenous organizations and civil society have shown their opposition to the resolution, while the EZLN has kept silent.

This silence does not mean the end of the struggle for indigenous peoples’ rights. On the contrary, it represents a strategy that aims at building autonomy from the communities, through concrete actions. Autonomy is the focus of the Feature in this report.

There is no single model for autonomy, but rather various ways to understand it and practice it. In each case, the construction of autonomy presents communities and society at large with difficulties and challenges; one of them is the need to overcome conflicts resulting from diversity between different experiences of autonomy.

Four months after several Zapatista civic leaders were assassinated in their autonomous municipalities, the investigations have not made any progress and the accused are still at large. There are different interpretations about the violent events of July and August. Whether or not all the events were part of a larger strategy, they all occurred in a highly tense environment. They are the result of unresolved conflict, a conflict that leads its participants to interpret events through the logic of war.

Twenty-seven members of the armed group Development, Peace and Justice (Desarrollo, Paz y Justicia) were detained in September by the Attorney General’s Office of Chiapas. This fact, together with internal divisions that have arisen over the last two years, has weakened the organization; yet it still represents a source of tension in the Northern region.

Human rights organizations have criticized the decision of the Federal Attorney General’s Office (PGR) to dissolve the Special Unit for Crimes Committed by Suspected Armed Groups without having resolved the problem of paramilitaries in Chiapas.

Mobilizations were organized in Mexico on October 12 to protest neo-liberalism. In Chiapas, popular organizations joined forces to block roads, close borders and protest against the indigenous reform, the government’s economic policy, the Puebla-Panama Plan and the Free Trade Area of the Americas. That very same day the National Consultation against the FTAA started in Mexico as part of the regional and continental movement to change the face of globalization. The indigenous peoples have acquired a significant role within this movement.

President Vicente Fox faces a hostile parliamentary opposition as a result of his obliging foreign policy with the United States. More recently, there were also tensions around the debate over the federal budget for 2003. The opposition has strongly criticized planned cuts in social spending.

The revisionism on the period of dirty war in the 1970s and 1980s undertaken by the Special Attorney General’s Office appointed by the Executive, could bring about the end of impunity to two once untouchable institutions currently under criticism: the Armed Forces and the Institutional Revolucionary Party (PRI).

In an effort to improve the Army’s public image, Military Justice condemned retired Generals Quirós Hermosillo and Acosta Chaparro with crimes related to drug trafficking. It will also try them soon for the murder of 143 people in Guerrero during the dirty war. Nevertheless, national and international human rights organizations have strongly criticized Military Justice for taking these crimes under its jurisdiction, since they were originally denounced to the Special Attorney General’s Office.

October marked the first aniversary of the assassination of the human-rights lawyer Digna Ochoa. The case has not yet been cleared up.

RECOMMENDED ACTIONS:

• Write to President Fox expressing the hope of the international community that the Mexican State will revise the constitutional reform concerning indigenous matters in order to make it compliant with the San Andres Accords and with the ILO’s Convention 169.
• Call upon the ILO to demand from the Mexican State legislation on indigenous peoples in compliance with Convention 169.
• Urge the government of Chiapas to urgently investigate, in an impartial and effective manner, the violent events of August, and bring the guilty to justice.
• Disseminate information such as this report about the situation in Chiapas and Mexico.

Please write to:

Lic. Vicente Fox
Presidente de la República
Residencia Oficial de los Pinos
11850 México D.F., México
Fax: (+52. 55) 55 22 41 17
http://www.presidencia.gob.mx/?P=17

Dr. Juan Somavia
Director General
Organización Internacional del Trabajo
4, route des Morillons
CH-1211, Geneva 22, Suiza
Fax: (+41.22) 917 90 10
cabinet@ilo.org

Lic. Pablo Salazar Mendiguchía
Gobernador del Estado de Chiapas
Palacio de Gobierno, 1º piso
29009, Tuxtla Gutiérrez
Chiapas, México
Fax: (+52.961) 612 0917