The conflict in Chiapas entered a new phase after the September decision by the federal Supreme Court (SCJN), which upheld the constitutional reform on indigenous matters. Following critical reactions to the resolution by various groups (see SIPAZ Report, August 2002), the dominant feature in this period is the silence of the EZLN (Zapatista Army for National Liberation).

This silence, that some interpret as an omission, is seen by others as part of a political decision to build their own project of autonomy without depending on the institutional aspects of the State, which has not met their demands. For some observers, the indigenous peoples tested how long they could wait from the three democratic powers, and now they have embarked on a long-term process to strengthen and develop the various forms of autonomy, starting with their own reconstruction as peoples. (See Feature). The major challenge posed by this project is the unity of the indigenous movement –a task that remains to be taken up.

Although silence is understood as part of a resistance strategy, some observers believe that the EZLN will probably wait for the opportunity to launch a political initiative addressed to the whole Mexican society.

In the meantime, the Zapatista resistance takes place in the framework of unavoidable tensions with local authorities as well as with formerly allied organizations that are currently disputing territorial and political control. People also get worn out from resistance and in some cases they even quit, or are being expelled when they do not accept the demands that come with it.

November 17, nineteen years after the founding of the EZLN and for the presentation of the magazine Rebellion, Subcommander Marcos broke his silence by making public a letter in which he dismisses the three main parties and responds to those who say, “The Zapatistas are finished.” “The only thing that’s finished or running out for the Zapatistas”, Marcos wrote, “is their patience.”

The victims from August: military objective?

Four months after several civic leaders were assassinated in the autonomous Zapatista municipalities (see SIPAZ Report, August 2002), the investigations have not made any progress and no one has been detained. The accused are still at large.

There are different interpretations about the violent events from July and August. According to the Attorney General’s Office of Chiapas (PGJE), there is no clear link between the deaths, which resulted from different motives derived from community conflicts. For some observers close to the state government, it responds to actions from the local PRI party, trying to destabilize the government of Pablo Salazar in order to regain political ground for the Parliamentary elections in 2003.

Social organizations and those in the opposition read these events, at an early stage, as part of the federal strategy to remove communities settled in the rich and coveted Montes Azules Biosphere. Later, many coincided in their interpretation of the aggressions toward the Zapatistas and of the increased military presence the days before, as a way to test the intention of military response on the side of the EZLN shortly before the resolution of the SCJN (which was already foreseen).

Whether the events were part or not of a planned political strategy, what is undeniable is the context of high tension in which they have occurred. They are the result of a conflict that is neither dealt with nor resolved, and that leads groups to use the logic of war to interpret events.

A month before the fifth anniversary of the massacre at Acteal (12/22/97), 19 Tzotzils were sentenced to 36 years in prison for the crime. Twelve others are expected to receive the same sentence. The Fray Bartolome de las Casas Human Rights Center (CDHFBC) insisted on the need for investigators to uncover the massacre’s intellectual authors, including officials of the state government at that time and military and police units.

In San Juan Chamula county, violent confrontations between traditional Catholics and Evangelicals were reported. A November 14 ambush in the community of Tzetelton left seven traditionalists with gunshot wounds. The PGJE, which is investigating the events, stated that they were more the result of disputes over political control than religious intolerance.

In spite of this tension and conflict in the state, president Fox reiterated in his recent tour in Europe that “there is peace in Chiapas and with the Zapatistas”, statements which drew criticism from the opposition.

Peace and Justice: detentions and divisions

The events in August reopened the debate around the existence of paramilitary groups in Chiapas. Among the Zapatistas and other opposition groups, the word ‘paramilitary’ tends to be used in a broad sense to allude to armed-groups opposed to the EZLN. Governor Salazar insists that the armed-groups operating in Chiapas are not paramilitary in the strict sense, because they do not receive support from state institutions (as was the case with the former government). Human Rights activists, on the other hand, say that there is collaboration between those groups, some local PRI chiefs (which control local government structures), the Army and the security forces. This would be the case of a group known by the acronym OPDIC, linked to congressman Pedro Chulín, and also of Los Aguilares, a group of bandits and mercenaries.

They also say that the Federal Attorney General’s Office (PGR) lacks the will to thoroughly investigate and prosecute such groups. In fact, the operations that resulted in the detention of several of their members were of state and not of federal responsibility. Confirming these criticisms, in November the PGR announced that the Special Unit for the Handling of Crimes Committed by Armed Civil Groups (a division created after the massacre of Acteal) would be disbanded –this in spite of the fact that, as the CDHFBC stated, “The serious problem of paramilitaries has not been resolved and the truth about them is still unknown.”

Twenty-seven members from the armed-group Development, Peace and Justice (DPJ) were detained in Tila in mid September following an order by the State Attorney General’s Office. Among them was the leader Sabelino Torres, accused of being the main culprit in several crimes: robbery, kidnapping, illegal possession of arms restricted for military use and murders. Among the detainees is Carlos Torres, former mayor of Tila, accused of diverting municipal funds to the armed organization.

These detentions, together with that of the leader Diego Vazquez last February, could indicate the end of DPJ, at least in its old composition. The organization also started disintegrating due to its internal divisions. The fist breakaway group founded in 2000 the Regional Union of Land and Forest Indigenous Communities (UCIAF), which is strong in the municipality of Sabanilla; recently another group broke away, the one known as Regional Union of Peasant and Indigenous Communities (URCCI), formed by the legal sector of the organization that manages economic programs from the government.

Globalization of resistence

As planned, mobilizations took place in several Mexican states on October 12. In Chiapas, networks of Zapatista civil society, social, indigenous and peasant organizations blocked roads, closed borders, organized demonstrations and showed in a variety of ways their rejection to the indigenous reform to the Constitution, to the economic policy of the government, to the Puebla-Panama Plan (PPP) and to the Free Trade Area of the Americas (FTAA). The protest also included some Central American countries.

The First Chiapas Meeting Confronting Neo-liberalism took place from October 9 to October 12 in San Cristóbal de las Casas. It was organized by NGOs and social organizations from Chiapas with the objective of drawing up a common plan of action around the following themes: food security, fair trade, land, pesticides and genetically modified foods, dams, privatization of energy and water, biodiversity and biopiracy, maquiladoras, immigration, PPP, FTAA, indigenous rights and autonomy, militarization, etc.

On October 12 the National Consultation against FTAA also started in Mexico. It will end in March 2003. This consultation is part of the continental campaign aimed at preventing the ratification of this free trade agreement promoted by the United States. In Chiapas the consultation has received enthusiastic support by social organizations and civic networks.

Meanwhile, there has been an increase in several parts of the state of protest and resistance actions against the announced construction of almost ten hydroelectric dams as part of the PPP. It is foreseen that these dams will have highly negative environmental and social impacts, damaging the ecosystem and displacing communities. At the same time, the resistance of the Chiapas population against the Federal Electrical Commission (CFE) continues, protesting the high rates of electricity.

This resistance places Chiapas as part of the regional and continental movement against a model of ‘development‘ that has already shown it does not bring any benefits for the peoples. In that struggle, the indigenous peoples are gaining a growing significant role. The dominant model of globalization is seen by them as a threat not only to their identity but to their very existence as peoples.

With respect to the PPP, it seems to have moved to an impasse following the government’s decision to keep a low profile on the issue, placing it under the control of Foreign Affairs. Nevertheless, critics say that with or without the name PPP, the works planned as part of it are already under implementation and they will have the foreseen negative effects.

The lack of information and transparency around the negotiations of PPP and FTAA creates great distrust and refusal on the side of the population. And it allows a glimpse of the kinds of conflicts that will arise in Chiapas -and in the region- in the near future.

Transition or rendering the country ungovernable?

At the inauguration of a new legislative period in September, President Vicente Fox presented his second government report to a hostile Congress and to a public whose opinion has become increasingly critical and unhappy with the results of his administration.

One of the main reasons for the opposition’s discontent has been Fox’s relationship with the United States. The PRI and PRD parties have accused the administration of being the most obliging ever to the country’s powerful northern neighbor. At the center of these critiques is the Foreign Affairs Minister, Castañeda, who has been blamed for taking Mexican-Cuban relations (historically very close) to the edge of breaking diplomatic ties.

Some observers have even talked of rendering the country “ungovernable” when referring to the multiple and simultaneous areas where the Fox administration is failing to show capacity to attend and resolve efficiently.

While the resistance from the opposition and from the Mexican Union of Electrical Workers (SME) to his constitutional reform to legalize private investment in the electrical sector was growing, Fox had to face another powerful union, that of the workers in the petroleum industry. The union threatened to paralyze the country if its salary demands were not attended to. In reality, the underlying conflict was the ongoing judicial investigation into the diversion of 640 million pesos from the state petroleum company, PEMEX, to the union; these funds were used for the electoral campaign of the PRI candidate, Francisco Labastida, in 2000.

But, what became known as Pemexgate, turned into a boomerang for the president and he had to face his own electoral scandal. There is an investigation undertaken by the Federal Electoral Institute –which has not yet concluded- about the presumed illegal origin of millions of pesos used in the electoral campaign by the group Friends of Fox.

Another factor adding to the tension has been the debate over the federal budget for 2003; the opposition and the National Conference of Governors (CONAGO) have harshly criticized the Executive branch for cuts it is planning for social spending and for revenue designated for states.

Civil society is organizing against prevailing economic policy. In November more than 40 workers’ organizations formed the Mexican Union Front to resist labor reforms and privatizations, and an ample spectrum of social organizations announced the formation of a united front to struggle against neoliberal policies.

Storm on the horizon

Two coming events could further complicate the already difficult scenario. One, tariffs for food products among partners of the North America Free Trade Agreement will be removed at the beginning of 2003. Manufacturers and peasant unions have announced that the measure will be disastrous for Mexican agriculture, which is already unable to compete with subsidized production from the North. Although the government has announced special measures to counteract the negative effects, the forecasts are very pessimistic.

Two, the revisionism from the period of the dirty war in the 1970s and 1980s undertaken by the Special Prosecutor’s Office for Social and Political Movements of the Past appointed by the Executive branch, could bring about the end of impunity to two institutions which were untouchable in the former regime and are currently critized: the Armed Forces and the PRI.

The Army seems to be trying to clean its public image. Accordingly, it decided to condemn retired Generals Acosta Chaparro and Quirós Hermosillo (detained two years ago for links with drug trafficking) at the same time when a whole battalion was dismantled in the North of the country for the same reason.

The same generals will soon be tried for the murder of 143 people in Guerrero, during the dirty war. Although the accusations come from denounces documented by the National Human Rights Commission (CNDH) and filed to the Special Prosecurtor’s Office, the Attorney General’s Office for Military Justice (PGJM) brought the investigation under its jurisdiction. This has generated criticisms from national and international human rights organizations, who say that Military Justice offers no guarantees and has been a source of impunity for crimes committed by the military.

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