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San Andres V- A "new" Solidarity
By Cecilia Rodriguez
National Center for Democracy, Liberty and Justice
"We seek a new peace, not one of hunger, misery, submission,
and humiliation, but one of dignity and justice..and we are
willing to give up our lives in order to find it"
Comandante David
Ejercito Zapatista de Liberacion Nacional
July 24, 1995
CHRONOLOGY
THE GOVERNMENT on the subject of reduction of military
tensions--REJECTS EZLN proposal to move troops to positions
held before the February 9th assault in order that the EZLN
would return to the position held before January 1, 1994.
It PROPOSES a plan for "routes" occupied by both armed
forces, a plan similar to the one used to end the Salvadoran
conflict. The EZLN would occupy areas within government
troop lines. This proposal was referred to as "the plan for
reservations".
THE EZLN RESPONDS-- Immediately it counterproposes a
route to Guadalupe Tepeyac, the site of the historic
"Aguascalientes", but the government instantly rejects it.
Upon its return to the July 6th negotiations it proposes a
route from Ocosingo to San Quintin as a "trial" effort.
THE GOVERNMENT-- Again rejects the counteroffer
claiming it is "extemporaneous" and WITHDRAWS its route
proposal. It accuses the EZLN of using the proposal for
"propaganda" purposes. NO proposal remains on the table.
THE GOVERNMENT on the subject of the timeline for the
peace talks-Through Jorge Del Valle the government suggests
"profound and intense" negotiations by holding 20 days of
discussions for each theme on the agenda. According to
simple calculations this would consume 4 years and 11
months, while the EZLN's proposal can have a potential
duration of 3 years and 1 month.
THE GOVERNMENT COMPLAINS--The EZLN is not serious about
the peace negotiations and is utilizing delay tactics. It
threatens to "move ahead to resolve the economic problems of
the area without the EZLN".
THE GOVERNMENT DECLARES in the words of Marco Antonio
Bernal, the coordinator of the government peace delegation,
"Why yes, we believe that the Zapatistas are liars who do
not want peace, but to buy time in order to continue to lie
and hide behind the mask and the mountains. WE also believe
they are insolent and foul-mouthed and other things after
what occurred this morning".
Comandante Tacho responds--"Your face is that of a good
person, but your heart is filled with hypocrisy." The
possibilities of substantive agreements were distant in this
5th encounter between the Mexican Government and the
Zapatista Army of National Liberacion.
II-TWO
The 900 military policemen who surround the site of the
pace talks have, over time, acquired accouterments. Now
they sport white braids hung from their right shoulder,
spotless white shoelaces on shiny black boots and white
gloves. They march into formation each time they post guard.
With eyes shifting under low-brimmed helmets, they observe
as civilian participants, campesinos, and the residents of
San Andres conduct their business in the small, cluttered
plaza. In addition to their spiffier appearance, the
military has also deployed a new look-out post on a building
catty-corner to the site of the peace talks, radio towers,
and sundry undercover agents who seem to do little more than
look like agents and pull on the antennas of their cellular
phones.
There is clear evidence of the hardening of the
government line everywhere. Like a cauldron sitting on
glowing coals, Mexico simmers with the growing resistance of
its people. Weakened by its corruption and internal purges,
the government is cautious before a growing national and
international civilian movement which only gains in strength
each time the government opts for armed force. Yet its
strategy of low-intensity warfare against the Zapatistas
creeps forward much as its troops do in the Lacandon jungle.
In addition to the recent deportation of three priests
in Chiapas, the publication of a recent book by Carlos Tello
Diaz (a great grandson of Porfirio Diaz) is an expansion of
the government's effort to publicly discredit the EZLN.
Based largely on government intelligence reports, the book
clearly attempts to legitimize the official government line.
According to the book the EZLN is nothing more than a
"rabid " handful of old-line leftists who use indigenous
people to forward a socialist agenda, the CCRI holds no real
power and bishop Samuel Ruiz and his church are a central
spoke of the Zapatista movement. Tello's book received
front page treatment in may national publications as well as
a significant splash in the electronic media. It was
conveniently made public days before the peace talks.
The cauldron simmers in Mexico. The Zapatistas promote
a mobilization of peaceful civilian movements, the
organization of international solidarity efforts. They wage
a battle of ideas and words, of innovative proposals, of
calls to conscience and of an integral effort to fined a
peaceful solution. The government meanwhile continues to use
intimidation, starvation by occupation, selective
assassination, illegal detention and the blatant
manipulation of propaganda.
It will soon be 19 months since the Zapatistas burst
into the public eye. The initial outpouring of romanticism,
spontaneity and curiosity has ended. The difficult and
important task of building a peaceful national liberation
movement and maintaining the viability of a peaceful
transition remains. In addition to that the Zapatistas face
the formidable task of advancing history in Latin America.
The Zapatistas and their supporters struggle to overcome the
cannibalistic habits of the left and the clear failures of
socialist theory. They struggle to integrate the grassroots
as no other group in history has done. After spending ten
years educating, training, and building communities; the
Zapatistas are intent on avoiding the mistakes of other
armed struggles. At great military and political expense,
they have held off the war in the hopes that national and
international consciousness would develop and that moderate
and progressive forces could forge a unity capable of
harvesting the kind of social change as yet unknown to
history.
To that end, the Zapatista's latest innovation is the
national and international plebiscite. Mexico has had only
one other plebiscite in one hundred years of its history.
This one however has been requested by an armed and
clandestine group; it is the first in world history. It is
being organized by a non-governmental organization and
promoted by the Democratic National Convention, a civic
group that is a brainchild of the EZLN. In addition to the
difficulties that arise naturally with such a novel task,
the Plebiscite confronts the challenge of a lack of
resources, and the establishment of working relationships
among such disparate groups. Yet the civilian movement has
undertaken the task with such enthusiasm that major
ideological differences have been set aside. In its
insistent search for a democratic practice, the EZLN offers
the people of Mexico a moment in which to exercise it, to
find a voice for the will of the populace, something that
the present government of Mexico has been unable to do.
While some may claim that the innovations of the EZLN
have not been completely successful, no one can say that
they have not changed Mexico and world history forever. Yet
the change a t this moment is intangible and fragile. It is
manifest in the tiny steps which ordinary citizens take in
an effort to re-awaken or even give birth to a new kind of
democracy, a representative democracy whose base is civic
involvement. It struggles to survive in a cynical world
more prepared for despair than possibility. It challenges
all previously held concepts about how change takes place.
The Zapatistas depart from traditional leftist theory,
precisely in what the government refuses to acknowledge---
their indigenous base. This is a clear departure from
traditional "guerrilla" theory, as is their open and frank
dialogue with the populace as well as their willingness to
allow others to take the lead, and to engage in debilitating
peace talks with a group of negotiators who appear to be
deaf. The Zapatistas do not negotiate from a machista
position of force--they use reason and the moral authority
that comes from the sacrifice of their lives to continue to
persuade people to seek a change in Mexico.
From the Mexicans and the Zapatistas we learn that the
ideals contained in the words "democracy, liberty and
justice" are expensive and difficult to achieve. They cost
lives, health egos and sacrifice. They require imagination,
flexibility, integrity, and the ability to take enormous
risks. "The plebiscite" said Comandante David "is very
important. It is a form by which to dialogue on a national
level, by which to break the silence and change the
attitudes of the government and of the powerful. It is a way
in which to give voice to the smallest ones, the voice of
the faceless, nameless ones without history, and a method of
work of those who want a just and dignified peace."
In the witless style of Chicken Little, the government
delegation commented that "the results of the plebiscite
would not be an obstacle" for the peace negotiations." It
then promptly concluded the 5th encounter arguing that the
EZLN was only buying time for the plebiscite. The EZLN
proposed the 6th peace talks be hold on August 20th. The
government prefers September 5th.
III- THREE
The civilians who post guard in the peace cordon at San
Andres Sacam'chen must stand for four hours each shift.
When they are lucky, the clouds crawl slowly down the green
mountains and the sun peeps out occasionally from behind
them. Then, the hours drift by in a silent dance of aching
feet. Most of the time though the rain pours and the
civilians carefully hold out the front of their ponchos, in
order to made a small circle of dry land at their feet. Or
the sun glares down mercilessly, and they shift their hats
in order to keep it from their eyes. Unable to hear or see
anything, they carefully study the enclosed building where
the Zapatistas and the government delegation are meeting.
Otherwise, one can sleep, read, converse with old
friends, wander from one end of the plaza to the other and
watch the children play. The unifying task is waiting. The
civilians stand at attention when the door suddenly opens ..
They clutter together at strategic points in order to catch
a glimpse of the unfolding events.
These are either brief narratives of agendas and the
always-moving communiqus of the Zapatistas. Long days
filled with waiting, and even longer damp nights filled with
silence and the unbearable desire to sit or gaze at
something new. The hundreds of people committed to the
vision of the Zapatistas at San Andres Sacam'chen however,
do not complain. They are proud and anxious to stand, happy
to give up the subsistence routine of their lives in order
to come to San Andres and wait, regardless of the hunger and
exhaustion. This is their grain of sand after all, to stand
through inclement weather, and use their bodies to protect
the Zapatistas.
And in the silent waiting of these indigenous
communities lays the most powerful lesson of all, more
powerful than all the weaponry assembled against the
Zapatistas, more powerful than the hundreds of television
hours now being used to discredit them. Resistance is the
ability to fight with whatever one has, in whatever way
possible. Resistance is collective. The campesinos together
meld in a long chain of humanity, indistinguishable one from
the other.
It will require significant financial, moral and
physical support in order for the national democracy
movement that the Zapatistas have helped to birth, to
succeed. Like everything else in its wake, its success will
require a "new solidarity". This solidarity can not be based
on a pedestal upon which we place a people struggling to
find a new way of doing things, and which we abandon when we
learn, that they are people just like us. It cannot be a
solidarity filled with rhetoric about "imperialism", "the
masses" or cluttered with perfectionism that will never
exist in the very human process of social change.
This new solidarity must take risks-- it must organize
in base communities. It must develop "unprecedented
proposals"--it must collaborate in ways it has not done
before and avoid becoming an expensive parasite which
absorbs all the resources and fails to accomplish its goals.
It must combine the financial donations which allow a people
to survive and struggle, with the political tenacity and
vision to complement the fierce determination of the Mexican
people. it must leave behind the armchair psychosis of the
left which glorifies armed struggle as the superior method
by which to resolve political conflict. It must leave behind
its self-righteous absorption with its own agenda, and be
willing to learn, to wait, and to engage.
Only then will this new solidarity be a fitting
companion to the new peace so eloquently expressed by
Comandante David. together they will overcome the
exhaustion of a world embittered by the failures of all
previous economic theory. Hand in hand, they will stand at
the threshold of a new international order based on
democracy, liberty and justice.
NUTS AND BOLTS
Given the critical nature of the struggle for a new
peace in Mexico, you can personally do the following almost
immediately;
1. Send a substantial contribution to the Mexican
Commission for the National Plebiscite. The commission must
raise $100,000 in order to make the plebiscite happen.
Contributions should be sent to the Banco Inverlat SA
(branch #038), account # 910695-2, in the name of Esperanza
Ayar Macias.
2. Support the humanitarian aid caravan being organized
by Pastors for Peace due to arrive in Chiapas on August
27th. For more information, please call Pastors for Peace
at (612) 378-0062 or <p4p@igc.apc.org> for specific
information. The campesinos have been severely impacted by
the militarization of southern Mexico. Unless there is a
significant increase in humanitarian aid, the widespread
hunger and illness which already grips the area will
intensify. Will we allow hunger to be the only compensation
for a people who dared to stand for their dignity?
3. Participate in the International Plebiscite by
personally filling out a ballot. Take a bunch to your
union, school, health club, church. Talk to people and
explain the importance of their participation. The
International Commission of the CND has authorized three
stages for the International Plebiscite to correspond with
national events. Participation in the International
Plebiscite is open to all peoples of the world. Please plan
other events and gather as many ballots as possible.
JULY 31 - Deadline for the completion of the first stage.
AUGUST 20 - Completion of the second stage to coincide with
the National Plebiscite.
SEPTEMBER 13 - Completion of the third stage to coincide
with the completion of the National Student Plebiscite.
4. Participate in the peace camps located in many of
the villages which have been militarized. your presence and
hard work in these communities are an enormous moral
support, and a deterrent to continued military harassment
and intimidation.
For more information about "new" solidarity contact the
Center for Democracy, Liberty and Justice at (915) 532-8382
or email at <moonlight@igc.apc.org>.