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POLITICS-MEXICO: Zapatistas Emerge from the Shadows

Diego Cevallos

MEXICO CITY, Jul 25 2003 (IPS) - The leftist Zapatista National Liberation Army (EZLN), based in the southern Mexican state of Chiapas, have emerged from the shadows after two years of near silence to announce structural changes and new actions that "not everyone is going to like" and to break off ties with groups that the mostly indigenous guerrilla organisation says treat it as a sort of "Cinderella".

In four communiqués issued during the past week, the EZLN, which took up arms in 1994 but has not engaged in violence since, appears to be aiming at reconquering space in the Mexican political arena, something that will not be easy, say observers.

The Zapatistas invited their supporters to attend an Aug. 8 celebration at one of its so-called "aguascalientes", enclaves in the Chiapas jungles used as political and cultural centres.

The celebration will mark the closure of those centres, where the last few years have seen numerous meetings between the EZLN and civil society. "Something new" will be announced then, the result of long debates within the guerrilla organisation, said Zapatista leader Subcomandante Marcos in one of the communiqués.

Marcos said the aguascalientes were being eliminated because they had begun to draw non-governmental organisations (NGOs) – of local and international origins – that sought to make dubious donations and to force development projects on the local indigenous population, an attitude that the EZLN defined as the "Cinderella syndrome".

What the Zapatistas want is political collaboration to ensure recognition of indigenous people’s rights and to promote the "construction of a new world, in which many worlds coexist, where hand-outs and pity form part of science fiction novelsà or of a forgettable and dispensable past," wrote Marcos, who has not appeared in public in the past few years, and never without his trademark ski mask.

"The death of the aguascalientes is also the death of the ‘Cinderella Syndrome’ of some ‘civil societies’ and the paternalism of certain national and international NGOsà The Zapatista communities will no longer receive leftovers nor will they allow projects to be imposed upon them."

The EZLN has remained on the sidelines of Mexico’s political agenda since March 2001, after the guerrilla commanders led a convoy from Chiapas to Mexico City to demand approval of laws benefiting indigenous groups. The legislation was passed, but it was a weak version of the original bill, and the Zapatistas rejected it outright.

Since then the guerrillas, who have refused to renew peace talks with the government after they broke down in 1996, issued statements about certain local and international matters, but they did not have much impact and some came under fire from groups that previously had declared unconditional support for the EZLN.

This low profile maintained by the EZLN and Marcos, after having spent several years in the Mexican and international media spotlight, came during the government of Vicente Fox, the first president in seven decades who is not from the PRI (Institutional Revolutionary Party).

With the end of the PRI governments, which ruled Mexico uninterrupted since 1929, the EZLN, comprised mostly of Indians, saw its role as an opposition voice diminished. The Zapatistas had thrived on promoting political initiatives and mobilisations in favour of democracy and indigenous rights.

In 2001, most political analysts agreed that Fox had benefited from convincing the Zapatistas to leave the Chiapas jungles, where they had enjoyed a romantic and idealist image, and engage with the institutional political arena, thus accepting its rules and limitations.

Fox says he has kept the door open for the EZLN to return to the peace dialogue whenever it wants. But the guerrilla group has said it will not negotiate until a law the original version of the bill on indigenous rights is passed.

The Zapatistas, who at their peak were considered a reference point for the "fight against neo-liberal economics" and against the dominant model of globalisation, remained silent on all local and international events related to those issue in the past several months.

"It was to be expected that the EZLN would look for a new course of action to reclaim its struggle and its position, but it won’t be easy because the local political agenda today is focused on other actors," José Trinidad, a social movement researcher at the Autonomous National University of Mexico (UNAM), told IPS.

In one of the communiqués issued this week, Marcos wrote that the Zapatistas were "even angry with those who sympathise with their cause. Because they do not obey. When they are expected to speak, they are quiet. When they are expected to be quiet, they speak. When they are expected to lead, they fall behind. When they are expected to follow, they head in another direction."

"In other words, they are not to anyone’s liking. And they do not seem to care much. What they are worried about is their own heart, so they follow the path that it tells them," added the EZLN leader in a long text, with its usually literary bent, also containing reflections on the history of the Zapatistas since they emerged in the 1980s.

"Regardless, one can be assured that what (the Zapatistas) do or say from now on is not going to please many. Furthermore, as the ‘Sup’ (Marcos himself) says, the Zapatistas’ speciality is to create problems and then see who solves them."

Given the tone of the statements Marcos made this week, noted Trinidad, "it can be interpreted that the EZLN will attempt new strategies to leave the shadows, but one can be sure that they will continue to shun violence."

Thanks to a law on peace and dialogue enacted in 1994, the EZLN has remained in the Chiapas jungles since then without launching attacks.

The group, which experts estimate to include fewer than 5,000 people, mostly poorly armed, is considered by many to be the voice of the 10 million Indians in Mexico, the poorest social group in this country of 100 million people.

"Marcos is a page from the past," said Demetrio Sodi in January, legislative deputy of the leftist opposition Democratic Revolutionary Party (PRD), which previously had thrown its support behind the EZLN.

The Mexican Senate’s Commission on Indigenous Affairs this week withdrew recognition of the EZLN and of Marcos as interlocutors in the debate on the implementation of the legal reforms on indigenous rights approved in 2001.

The matter will be discussed "directly with the institutional authorities" of the indigenous peoples, announced commission member Luisa María Calderón, senator for the ruling National Action Party (PAN).