Planting the tree of tomorrow: the Zapatistas, land, liberty and justice

Graeme Chesters recently spent time in Mexico accompanying representatives of the Zapatista communities on their journey from Chiapas to Mexico City, to rally support for indigenous autonomy and communal land rights. Here, he reflects on the meaning of Zapatismo and examines why radical environmentalists worldwide have supported and drawn inspiration from the struggle of the Mayan peoples of Mexico.

GRAEME CHESTERS

‘How many peoples in the worlds that make up the world can say as we do, that they are doing what they want to? We think there are many, that the worlds of the world are filled with crazy and foolish people each planting their trees for each of their tomorrows, and that the day will come when this mountainside of the universe that some people call Planet Earth will be filled with trees of all colours, and there will be so many birds and comforts that…yes, it is likely no one will remember the first ones, because all the yesterdays which vex us today will be no more than an old page in the old book of the old history.’ Subcommandante Insurgente Marcos [i]

Zapatismo, Marcos and the ‘Caravanistas’

The Zapatista struggle connects some of the most acute problems facing the world today including those associated with globalisation from above. The process of economic homogenisation brought about by the pursuance of an international free trade agenda and the subsequent environmental and social costs allied to it. It is also uniquely interesting and worthy of discussion because for many it has come to represent the possibility of a thoughtful and determined resistance to these costs. Answering the ‘inevitability’ of neo-liberal economics through the reconstitution of a political project rooted in the lay knowledge of the local, in the specific and democratic organising processes of the indigenous Mayan peoples, yet international in its reach and appeal.

So, what is at the core of Zapatismo? What brought environmental, social justice and anti-capitalist activists from around the world to Mexico to participate in the ‘Zapatour’, a sixteen day caravan journey from the mist filled mountains of the south east to the polluted expanses of Mexico City? Was it romanticism, environmental activism, indigenous rights, revolutionary tourism? Were we a human shield, security of some sort, international solidarity, or just fellow travellers in this global anti-globalisation road show?

Some, notably Naomi Klein[ii] have cited the mystique of Subcommandante Marcos, the masked poet warrior and Zapatista spokesperson who has skilfully combined both words and weapons in advancing the cause of the indigenous peoples of Mexico, so long excluded from meaningful participation in the decisions that effect their lives, land and liberty. Others, including the US press ignored both issues and personalities, denigrating us, the ‘caravanistas’, as foreign militants, misguided youth, meddlers and troublemakers, which is of course to some extent true. However, as always this is one truth amongst many, some of which are far more problematic for those who see this mobilisation of international civil society as something distant, other, and of marginal interest either to the environmental movement or to the bigger political picture.

Revolutionary Environment(alists!)

The Zapatista National Liberation Army (EZLN) first came to the world’s attention on January 1st, 1994, the day that the North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA) came into force. In a well-planned and armed uprising, 3000 Zapatistas briefly occupied seven towns in the state of Chiapas declaring ‘Ya basta!’ - Enough is enough! This was to be the beginning of what has come to be known as the ‘war against oblivion’[iii] a war against the certitude of poverty, disease, hunger and environmental desecration which was the fate of the indigenous and their lands, a process that NAFTA had already begun to accelerate.

Free trade as interpreted in this agreement meant the reform of Article 27 of the Mexican Constitution, which had been one of the outcomes of the Mexican revolution, the catalyst for 75 years of agrarian reform and the foundation stone of the ejido system of communal land ownership. With this legal ‘barrier’ to trade removed, the way would be open for transnational agro-industries to purchase what had previously been communally held lands.

Interestingly this reform stems from Carlos Hank Gonzalez, one of the luminaries on the Forbes’ super-millionaires list, and at the time one of the most powerful politicians in Mexico. It came just at the time the Commercial Forest Production Plan Corporation was initiating plans to export 6 million cubic meters of cellulose annually from the region, an investment of 400 million dollars. The aim, once access to the land was guaranteed and since partially fulfilled by International Paper, was to turn Mayan Mexico into a giant eucalyptus plantation for the use of the international paper and pulp industry.

Yet despite Mexico having a paper production deficit, it has a far more pronounced problem of malnutrition, nearly 40% of the population have some level of malnutrition according to the National Institute of Nutrition and between 21-23 million Mexicans are now living in conditions of extreme poverty according to a United Nations definition. It is difficult to imagine then, how turning food producing lands into eucalyptus plantations makes any sense given these circumstances. As the Zapatistas’ first declaration makes clear, one of the reasons they rose up was to ‘suspend the robbery of our natural resources’.[iv]

After a mere 12 days of engagement with the Mexican army who had responded to the uprising by bombing Zapatista communities and killing at least 145 indigenous people, a ceasefire was declared. In the following two years, despite the Zapatistas entry into peace talks, the Mexican army engaged in low intensity warfare against the indigenous communities in Zapatista controlled areas, displacing 20,000 campesinos and leading to the militarisation of Chiapas with over 70,000 troops occupying the state. Then finally in February 1996 after protracted negotiations in San Andres Larrainzar, the EZLN and the government signed a set of peace accords outlining a program of land reform, indigenous autonomy and cultural and political rights. In December of 1996, despite this agreement, the then President of Mexico - Ernesto Zedillo rejected the San Andres Accords and the low intensity warfare became even more ferocious. Within a year 45 indigenous campesinos, the majority of whom were women and children were massacred in a church in the Zapatista community of Acteal.

The Zapatista communities of the Lacandon jungle inhabit an area rich in natural resources, the Zapatista command is close to Los Montes Azules (The Blue Mountains) an area of incredible bio-diversity. This is a United Nations protected biosphere reserve, a museum piece, illustrative of the once densely wooded area that stretched from the Yucatan Peninsula, through the Selva Lacandona and on into Guatemala. Yet, these forests and their communities are under threat by the paper industry, by petroleum exploration, by gas production. Chiapas bleeds raw materials and resources and in return gets nothing. 55% of national hydroelectric energy comes from the state yet only a third of the homes there have electricity. Chiapas produces petroleum, electricity, wood, coffee (over a third of that produced in Mexico), cattle, corn, fruit and honey, most of which is exported to other parts of Mexico and the rest of the world. For example, over two and a half thousand tons of honey is produced in Chiapas all of which goes to the U.S. or Europe, a tiny fraction of the revenue generated by this finds its way back to the Chiapaneco people. 40% of the nations plant varieties, 36% of its mammal species, 66% of its bird species, 20% of the freshwater fish, and 80% of its butterfly species are to found in Chiapas.

In return for this bounty, educational provision is the worst in the country, health care is almost non-existent, 50% of the people have limited access to drinking water and two-thirds have no sewage system. Poverty is rife, in some areas almost 80% of the people are malnourished and the regional infrastructure for communications is devoted to service corporations and their expropriation of resources.

‘This land continues to pay tribute to the imperialists: petroleum, electricity, cattle, money, coffee, banana, corn, cacao, tobacco, sugar, melon, sorghum, mamey, mango, tamarind, avocado and Chiapaneco blood all flow as a result of the thousand teeth sunk into the throat of the Mexican Southeast.’[v] Subcommandante Insurgente Marcos

The Caravan

The Zapatista caravan was a response to the proclamations of Mexico’s new President Vicente Fox, a former chief executive with Coca-Cola who finally ended 71 years of rule by the PRI (the Institutional Revolutionary Party) and became President in December 2000. His promise during the elections was that if given an opportunity he could end the conflict with the Zapatistas ‘in fifteen minutes’. The Zapatista Commandacia offered three conditions in response, which if met would allow them to participate in further dialogue with the government. These were the demilitarisation of the seven army bases closest to Zapatista communities, the release of all Zapatista prisoners and the fulfilment of the San Andres Accords, which would involve their ratification by the Mexican Congress. They also announced that 24 members of the Zapatista Commandacia would leave their bases in the Lacandon jungle and travel to Mexico City. Here they would bring their words to the heart of the country, an unprecedented and audacious move which brought with it an immense amount of risk, not least because Subcommandante Marcos the man the state had wanted dead for the past seven years was to be one of those travelling. Following this announcement was a call for national and international civil society, those who had been and continued to be inspired by the Zapatista struggle, to accompany the caravan on its journey, on its mission to ‘open a crack in history’.

This call saw environmentalist and social justice activists from around the world descend on Chiapas, their motivations as varied as the places they came from. These included seasoned American leftists familiar with Latin America struggles and somewhat thrown by ‘Zapatismo’ - an intuition as opposed to an ideology according to Marcos, through to youthful ‘veterans’ of the London, Seattle and Prague protests. With them came the writers, academics, poets and polemicists. Then the religious activists of many denominations including the wonderful ‘Pastors for Peace’. The Little Yellow School Bus, which is now familiar in Mexico for its work in helping the construction of schools in Zapatista communities rolled along under the collective weight of an international crew of activists. Equally unique was the attendance of over three hundred Italian anarchists from the white overalls movement which is rooted in the social centres of the big Italian cities and has provided a near constant solidarity presence in Zapatista areas of influence since the conflict began.

The Journey

Journeying with the caravan was a lesson in humility and dignity, of exposure to forms of local resistance that are patient and profound and a reminder that we need to listen more to those whose lives are lived at the sharp end of globalisation. Packed into a series of unlikely looking coaches, nearly all decorated with spray paint or banners were indigenous, mestizos and gringos, travelling deep into the paradox that is at the heart of this most contemporary of social struggles. The paradox that is globalisation from below.

This is the paradox where armed police ended up protecting the most wanted man in Latin America, occasionally signalling with thumbs up and taking sneaky photographs. Where communities who have struggled to feed themselves because of NAFTA feed foreign activists for free, where communities who are paid to have fizzy drink murals on their homes paint homage to the Zapatistas on every other wall. This is a movement that pursues contradictions, the Zapatistas with their ski-masks, seemingly incongruous in the Mexican heat, but bearing testament to the indigenous use of ritual masks - cover themselves to be seen, arm themselves with guns that aspire to be useless and seek ‘everything for everyone and nothing for ourselves’. If this is Zapatismo then it is indeed a movement with open arms, a movement that embraces both people and complexity.

So, what was it like and why were we there? Well the security aspect seemed tenuous at the best of times, we, a rag tag army of internationalists providing security for a guerrilla command who have successfully avoided the lethal attention of 70,000 Mexican troops. Except of course in these days of ‘human shields’, where politics at an international level is often contested in the realm of the media, when the media can be bothered to look. In this sense, our presence was obviously a cause of concern for the Mexican government and one which no doubt contributed to them providing a security cordon and accompaniment along the route. A route that ultimately ended in Mexico City, in the Zocalo, one of the largest public squares in the world and filled to overflowing to welcome the Zapatistas.

Perhaps this was why we were there, to remind ourselves of the potential of this movement, to remind ourselves that history has not ended, that things can be and are different. Over a million people lined the streets to proclaim their support and march with the Zapatista Commandacia into the City. A route to the floor of the Mexican Congress, where days later and for the first time, an indigenous woman, a masked guerrilla indigenous woman – Commandante Esther, held the attention of the Mexican political establishment ‘bringing the word of truth and respect’ asking only for ‘a country where difference is recognized and respected.
Where being and thinking differently is no reason for going to jail, for
being persecuted, or for dying.’[vi] This was a journey from the ‘one NO to the many yeses’ from military struggle to the ascendance of civil society.

So, what is behind the international mobilisation, why did so many arrive from so many places? Is it really a cult of personality, as some have claimed? Is Marcos the anti-globalisation movement’s deus ex machina, our Madonna – his head mike intact, digital watch with altimeter, pipe smoke and pipe dreams, dreaming 'our dream' on live television the night before entering the City, talking, joking, looking tired, but alive relaxed and fated. At some level, it no doubt is, he is a remarkable figure seemingly gifted in words and action, humorous and personable, simultaneously pragmatic and real, utopian and iconic, and yet this isn’t it.

There is something far more concrete here and it echoed from every other activist I met, we had begun to recognise a social movement, some of us, maybe, for the first time, with its ideas and aspirations coming directly from the people. Marcos is central to this, but he remains a cipher, the interlocutor in a dialogue between the people, (indigenous and other) and power, both at state and transnational levels. Always playful, in both his dialogue and identity, as with the stories he tells his soft-spoken humour, these are indigenous characteristics resonating with tradition and flowing from a rich oral culture. Against which is set his assumed identity, his mestizo identity, a caricature of the modern, two digital watches and a microphone headset. Can he really need to be in constant communication, is he somehow pinned to the demands of digitised time? This is a person enveloped in self-mythology, inventing and re-inventing symbols that communicate both tradition and the angst of the modern, simultaneously yearning for the past and embracing the contemporary. Todos somos Marcos says the ubiquitous T-shirt, for sale in every Mexican market place - ‘We are all Marcos’ and this is probably as clear a definition of his importance as we are likely to get.

Zapatismo

So what is the ‘other’ the indefatigable draw of ‘Zapatismo’. Why did activists from Earth First!, Reclaim The Streets and other groups in the UK travel five and a half thousand miles to show their support? What is it that brought Mexico City to a standstill, hundreds of thousands to the Zocalo to hear Marcos? Something occurred to me during 6 hours I spent waiting for the Zapatista caravan in Milpa Alta, six hours to watch and wander. Why is a mountain town as pretty and picturesque as it evidently is, why is it not in the guidebooks? How is it that the security cordon for the Zapatistas composed entirely of teenagers can keep the peace? Who decided who would cook, who would create banners, who would decorate the stage or entertain?

Simple comes back the answer, this is a rebel town, the companeros and companeras of Milpa Alta took these decisions. It was they who chose to stop hotels being built, to limit canteenas, to avoid the twin curses of tourism and drinking that have elsewhere sucked the life from their communities and exacerbated both crime and domestic violence. Teenagers, even children can be security guards, because who could cross such a line, who could lower themselves to intimidate children, push past the wishes of a community. The people here take the decisions now. As simple an idea as this is, in practice it looks incredibly radical, ‘this is what democracy looks like’ screamed the anti-WTO protesters in Seattle and maybe this is what democracy looks like. For a movement with radical democracy at its heart may offer a profound challenge, despite or in due part to its fetishism for ski-masks, pipes and poetry.

Zapatismo, is important because it draws attention to and epitomises the unsustainability of a global division of labour premised upon the expropriation of labour, resources and raw materials for the profit of a tiny cabal, whilst in return those who labour, live with, and work on the land get nothing. It demonstrates the simple thesis that globalisation is capitalism writ large and it asks for, even demands, a response to the even simpler question – what do we do about it? The answer it insists must always be plural and must always allow for difference, this difference is not that of the endless ‘newness’ of the free market, or the difference of post-modern theorists who see no possibility of a coherent political project anymore. This is unity in diversity and is essential if we are to plant the trees of tomorrow.

‘In the end, we know – and that is why we are here – that the fangs of the false light will fall, and, with stones and grains of maize, a tree will grow in any place in any world. And, even if no one then will have memory, the tree will know that the first ones were necessary and kept their word.[vii]’ Subcommandante Insurgente Marcos.

Graeme Chesters is Research Fellow in the Centre for Local Policy Studies at Edge Hill College, he is also a founder member of the Shifting Ground co-op: http://www.shiftingground.org. He is currently working on a book ‘We Are Everywhere; the irresistible rise of anti-capitalism’ which is due to be published in 2002: http://www.weareeverywhere.org

To find out more about the Zapatista struggle and the situation in Mexico more generally go to: http://www.eco.utexas.edu/faculty/Cleaver/chiapas95.html