A
Review Of John Ross' Zapatistas
By Stephen Lendman
23 March, 2007
Countercurrents.org
John Ross is a Latin American
correspondent and activist who's been living in and writing about Mexico
for nearly four decades turning out some of the most important and incisive
analysis of events there of anyone covering the country, its history,
politics and people. Few writers anywhere make the country come alive
like he can. He lives among the people and knows them well including
Zapatista leader Subcommandante Marcos who may have given Ross his first
ever interview.
Ross has written eight books
of fiction and non-fiction and is one of the few surviving Beat poets
with nine chapbooks of poetry in and out of print, the latest of which
is due out soon called Bomba. He's also been called a new John Reed
(who wrote the classic 10 Days that Shook the World on the Russian Revolution)
covering a new Mexican revolution playing out around the country from
its most indigenous, impoverished South in Chiapas and Oaxaca to the
streets of its capital in Mexico City.
Ross' books include the Annexation
of Mexico, From the Aztecs to the IMF and his eyewitness frontline trilogy
on the Zapatista rebellion beginning with Rebellion From the Roots,
Indian Uprising in Chiapas in 1995 for which he received the American
Book award; The War Against Oblivion, The Zapatista Chronicles; and
his latest work and subject of this review - Zapatistas, Making Another
World Possible, Chronicles of Resistance 2000 - 2006 just published.
It's subtitle is taken from the misnamed anti-globalization citizens'
movement for global justice from Seattle to Doha, Genoa, Washington,
Prague, Quebec, Miami, Cancun, Hong Kong and dozens of other locations
everywhere where ordinary people are struggling for a better world against
the dark neoliberal forces pitted against them.
The book's theme is the heroic
ongoing Zapatista struggle for autonomy and liberation as "a dramatic
and inspiring effort to make this possibility a reality" matched
off against a made-in-Washington world of permanent wars for conquest
and domination from the sands and streets of Iraq and desolate rubble
of Afghanistan to the Israeli genocidal terror war against the Palestinians
to the streets of Mexico City and Oaxaca and the mountains and jungles
of Chiapas.
This book comes after Ross'
Murdered by Capitalism, A Memoir of 150 Years of Life & Death on
the American Left in 2004 for which he received the Upton Sinclair award.
Ross is a gifted writer whose prose is passionate and poetic. From its
beginning, he documented the Zapatista "rebellion from the roots,"
and in his latest book covers it from the July, 2000 election of corporatist
Vincente Fox through the mid-2006 stolen presidential election, unresolved
when the book went to press. He notes like all other elections in the
country, it was orchestrated "before, during, and after the ballots
(were) cast" just like they are in the belly of the bestial empire
in el norte whose current high office incumbent Ross calls "an
electoral pickpocket (twice over)."
He also reminds us of past
events that may foretell Mexico's future: "The metabolism of revolution
in Mexico is precisely timed. It seems to burst from the subterranean
chambers every hundred years or so - 1810, 1910, 2010? To be continued."
And he notes the theft of the 1910 election from Francisco Madero triggered
the Mexican Revolution led by Emiliano Zapata Salazar with readers left
to wonder if Subcommandante Marcos is his modern incarnation. Stay tuned.
As in Venezuela, the Mexican revolution will not be televised, but John
Ross will chronicle it.
The Zapatistas' Chronicles
of Resistance - From Its Beginning
Ross begins his book with
a Preamble of the Zapatistas' own words saying: "We are the Zapatistas
of the EZLN (who) rose up in January 1994 because we were tired of all
the evil the powerful did to us, that they only humiliated us, robbed
us, killed us, and no one ever said or did anything. For all that we
said 'Basta' (enough) we weren't going to permit that they treat us
worse than animals anymore." The Zapatista commentary continues
saying they want democracy, liberty and justice for all Mexicans, and
to get it they organized to defend themselves and fight for it. And
so they have. Their spirit of resistance continues in their ongoing
struggle for autonomy and freedom.
Ross begins volume three
of his trilogy in year 2000, but let's go back to where it all began
to understand its roots. The Zapatista Army of National Liberation (EZLN)
was founded in 1983 taking its name from the Liberation Army of the
South led by Emiliano Zapata Salazar, the incorruptible Mexican Indian
peasant rebel leader who supported agrarian reform and land redistribution
in the battles of the Mexican Revolution. It began in 1910, went on
till 1921, and saw Zapata betrayed and executed by government troops
in 1919. It wasn't before he got new agrarian land laws passed that
for a time returned to the people what President Porfirio Diaz confiscated
to sell off to foreign investors the way things work today where everything's
for sale under market-based rules. It's the reason for indigenous Mexican
impoverishment today the way it is everywhere and why modern-day Zapatistas
began their campaign to end centuries of imperial repression to liberate
their people.
They planned quietly for
years learning from successes and failures of earlier peasant struggles.
The were all crushed or co-opted by the ruling Institutional Revolutionary
Party (PRI) showing real change in Chiapas could only come through struggle
from outside the political process that time and again proved those
in power can't be trusted even though the Zapatistas gave gave the system
a chance to prove otherwise knowing it would let them down which it
did. It's the way it is in all developing states and most elsewhere
as well. Mexico is no exception, and it may be one of the worst under
repressive oligarch rule for the privileged and the people be damned,
especially the indigenous Indian ones Mexico has plenty of.
Ross chronicled the Zapatistas'
struggle in two previous books beginning January 1, 1994 when 2,000
from the EZLN marched into San Cristobal de las Casas and five other
municipal seats in Mexico's Chiapas state. They seized control stunning
the nation's leaders who knew something was up but kept it under wraps
so as not to affect passage of the NAFTA that brought it on. The EZLN
declared war on the Mexican state and its long-standing contempt for
ordinary peoples' rights and needs now with new harsh neoliberal trade
policies in place that could cost them their lives. Their struggle would
highlight the plight of Mexico's 70 million poor and 20 million indigenous
people including in the most indigenous city in the world plagued by
poverty - Mexico City.
Rebellion for change erupted
in the open the first day NAFTA went into effect. Zapatistas in Chiapas
called it a "death sentence." It would threaten their agriculture
and way of life creating even more hardship than Indian campesinos already
face. Chiapas is the poorest of Mexico's 31 states where most people
live off the land earning a meager living in the best of times growing
crops, the staple of which is corn, "maiz." The state is predominantly
rural with 70% of its 4.3 million people living in 20,000 localities
in 111 municipalities mostly in the countryside. The state capital of
Tuxtla Gutierrez is its one major city with a population of 250,000
while several others have populations half that size or less, one of
which is San Cristobal de las Casas in the mountainous central highlands
that was one of the six municipal seats the EZLN took in its 1994 rebellion
from the roots against the Mexican government.
Their action stunned the
nation and world, and President Carlos Salinas de Gortari responded
ferociously against Chiapans cutting short his planned celebration.
The Zapatistas weren't to be denied as they stated in their manifesto
that "We are a product of 500 years of struggle...against slavery....against
Spain (and then) to avoid being absorbed by North American imperialism...
later the dictatorship of Porfirio Diaz (so) people rebelled and leaders
like Villa and Zapata emerged, poor men just like us (so we continue
the struggle for our) inalienable right (under the Mexican constitution)
to alter or modify their form of government (and set up) liberated areas
(in which the people will have) the right to freely and democratically
elect their own administrative authorities."
They weren't alone as hundreds
of thousands of supporters flooded Mexico City's vast Zocalo plaza near
the country's Palacio Nacional seat of power. They sent a strong message
of solidarity to the "People the Color of the Earth" in the
South forcing Salinas to abort his effort after 12 days without subduing
the first major Global South blow against the neoliberal new world order
that prevailed triumphantly unchallenged in Mexico following the dissolution
of the former Soviet Union - until the New Year's day rebellion from
the roots changed things.
A single event may have inspired
the EZLN's shot heard round the world launching their armed rebellion
for autonomy. It was the Salinas government's 1992 decision to repeal
Article 27 in the country's constitution that came out of the 1917 Revolution.
It gave only natural born or naturalized Mexicans the right to own land
and water, stipulated all land is originally the nation's property that
can grant control of it to private citizens with restrictions, and that
only the state may control, extract and process oil and its derivatives.
It also returned stolen peasant lands to their owners and generally
protected Mexican peoples' land ownership rights from foreign exploitation.
Repealing Article 27 changed
everything for what the Revolution had "giveth," Carlos Salinas
had "taketh" away by ending land distribution to the landless.
His action drove a "final nail in the revolution's coffin"
polarizing indigenous peoples and igniting the uprising beginning the
day NAFTA became law. Rewriting the Article was a key condition of NAFTA
that would henceforth deny indigenous peoples' right to the land so
the state could sell or lease it to private investors (aka corporate
predators), mostly from el norte.
Mexico's poor, including
its rural indigenous population, suffered terribly in the last generation
from the disastrous effects of global restructuring tight monetary and
fiscal policies, unfair "neoliberalized trade laws, privatizations
of state enterprises, and abandonment of earlier economic and industrial
development strategies. The result was regional growth collapsed throughout
Latin America. From 1960 - 1980, regional per capita GDP grew 82% falling
to 9% from 1980 - 2000 and 4% from 2000 - 2005.
It meant trouble always affecting
the most vulnerable poor the most. It hit Mexico with falling oil prices,
high interest rates, rising inflation, an overvalued currency, and a
deteriorating balance of payments causing capital flight that by 1982
saw the peso collapse and economy hit hard. IMF and World Bank-imposed
mafia-style loan arrangements followed imposing their special kind of
austerity to people least able to tolerate it. It included structural
adjustments with large-scale privatizations of state-owned industries,
economic deregulation, and mandated wage restraint allowing inflation
to grow faster than personal income with the poor feeling it most again.
As predicted, things got
much worse under NAFTA-imposed trade rules. They hit the rural poor
the hardest especially the country's farmers crushed under the weight
of heavily subsidized Northern agribusiness they can't compete against
including for corn, "maiz," the sacred crop, the struggle
for which went to the root of the Zapatista rebellion also against made-in-the-USA
neoliberal new world order rules of the game rigged against them.
They include Washington Consensus
market uber alles diktats that led to Mexico's growing dependency on
capital inflows with lots of "hot money" free to enter and
leave the country under its deregulated financial markets. Again it
caused an unsustainable current account deficit and peso collapse in
early 1995 resulting in the country's worst economic depression in 60
years after experiencing the same type collapse 14 years earlier.
The Zapatistas got hammered
by it with no relief when economic conditions improved. It caused mass
discontent and anger making the country ripe for rebellion as an elite
few grew rich at the expense of the great majority sinking deeper into
poverty and no where more than in indigenous rural areas like Chiapas.
The Oakland Institute think
tank specializing in social, economic and environmental issues documented
the harm done. Their researchers reported heavily subsidized US corn
exports to Mexico tripled after NAFTA and in 2003 topped 8 million tons.
It came at the expense of Mexico's farmers where corn is the country's
staple. It drove over two million of them off the land that was predicted
in advance and allowed to happen anyway. It ruined lives and led to
suicides but not like in India where WTO-imposed trade rules caused
100,000 deaths because of farm foreclosures from indebtedness.
The worst is still to come
in Mexico if UCLA professor and Research Director of the North American
Integration and Development Center Raul Hinojosa's worse case prediction
comes true. He believes NAFTA will eventually force 10 million poor
farmers off the land with Ross saying it's already over 6 million people
in a country where farm families average five members and they're all
counted in the bloodletting.
Ross laid out the other ugly
damage from NAFTA's first 10 years through 2003:
-- All Mexican banks controlled
by foreign corporate giants, mainly from the US.
-- All the railroads sold
off to Union Pacific with former President Ernesto Zedillo now on its
board as his reward.
-- The country's mines and
airlines in private hands.
-- Two million hectares of
tropical forest destroyed for private development with junk tree plantations
sprouting up throughout Southern Mexico controlled by corporate behemoths
like International Paper and Temple-Inland.
-- Homegrown industries,
especially in textiles and plastics, shut down unable to complete with
US giants.
-- Even the "Maquiladora
Miracle" once creating 2 million jobs on the US border losing out
to China and other lower wage countries in the inevitable race to the
bottom WTO one-way trade deals always cause to countries from North
and South.
-- Real wages down 20% over
10 years with the disparity of wealth far greater than in 1994 when
the Zapatista struggle began.
-- 600 Wal-Mart megastores
crushing small homegrown retailers and Mexican chains. Wal-Mart de Mexico
SAB is the country's largest private employer and biggest retailer in
Latin America far and away. This predatory colossus dominates Mexican
retailing (like it does up North) with forecasted 2007 sales of $21
billion and soaring profits gotten at the expense of its workers even
more than in the US because in Mexico Wal-Mex can get away with anything.
-- The Mexican landscape
littered with thousands of McDonald's, Burger King's, Wendy's, and other
US retail chains destroying local culture and homogenizing markets to
sell the same stuff in Mexico as in Milwaukee, Missouri and Maine.
-- The importation and consumption
of genetically modified (GMO) corn presenting a clear danger to "the
People of the Corn" by displacing and contaminating locally-grown
varieties cultivated for thousands of years as dietary and cultural
staples. The GMO poison from el norte is now spreading like an uncontrollable
infestation from indigenous cornfield to cornfield.
Add to the above, former
President Vincente Fox's Plan Puebla-Panama (PPP) that so far flopped
but isn't dead. He proposed it early in his term as a multi-billion
dollar development scheme to turn Southern Mexico (including Chiapas)
and Central America all the way to Panama into a colossal free trade
paradise displacing indigenous people, destroying their culture and
sacred corn, and harming the environment for profit. He wanted to induce
private investment by handing over to them the region's natural resources
including its oil, water, minerals, timber and ecological biodiversity.
Fox wanted to rip into the area with new ports, airports, bullet trains,
bridges, superhighways, 25 hydroelectric dams, new telecommunication
facilities, electrical grids, and a new Panama Canal - for starters,
with more development to follow. He also wanted to open the country's
wildlife reserves for bioprospecting in a giveaway to giant seed, chemical
and drug companies and connect everything with new highways linking
Mexico to Central America facilitating business throughout the region
- meaning indigenous people had to make way for it.
The area planned for development
is enormous and so far stalled. It covers 102 million hectares with
64 million inhabitants in eight countries few of whom would benefit
from a scheme to exploit masquerading as infrastructure and private
development and more without consent of the people the way it's always
done. It's the reason the plan went nowhere - so far. It's irrelevant
to the poor, rural South gaining nothing except picking up the tab so
corporate predators can take their land for private gain selling back
to the people what's already theirs like Chiapas' fresh water that's
40% of the country's total Coca-Cola is dying to get its hands on. It
would also destroy the last significant tropical rain forest in Chiapas'
Montes Azules Integral Biosphere in the Lacandon jungle where the government
wants to remove native Mayans from lands belonging to them.
An Enduring Struggle
for Liberation and Autonomy
The EZLN struggled to win
redress for their major demands, but the Zedillo government in the 1990s
reneged on a promise to address them. The key betrayal came in 1996
when EZLN leaders thought they had a deal known as the San Andres Accords.
It was a landmark document based on the International Labor Organization's
Resolution 169, the universally accepted benchmark for defining an indigenous
people stipulating they have both territory or habitat and "territoriality"
meaning they have autonomy over their own lands free from government
control.
Had it passed, it would have
given Mexico's 57 distinct indigenous peoples local autonomy over all
aspects of their lives - agrarian policy, natural resources, the environment,
health and educational institutions, judicial system, and their overall
social and cultural rights. It needed to be legislatively approved by
changes in state, federal, local laws and the Mexican Constitution committing
the government to eliminate "the poverty, the marginalization and
insufficient political participation of millions of indigenous Mexicans."
But like before and always, it wasn't to be as PRI President Zedillo,
an "inflexible globophile" and technocratic servant of empire,
upheld Mexico's business as usual mal gobierno (bad government) dark
forces reneging on the deal as fast as he could unleash Mexican army
troops against the people of Chiapas stepping up his "dirty war"
on them to undermine their popular support and end the EZLN rebellion.
"PRIista" Zedillo
failed, biting off more than he could chew, because the Zapatistas then
and now aren't giving up their struggle or going away. Their response
was a greater effort to mobilize broader support throughout the country.
In 1999, the collective Zapatista Revolutionary Indigenous Clandestine
Committee (CCRI) leadership made up of 23 commanders and spokesperson
Subcommandante Marcos organized a national consulta, or referendum,
for indigenous rights and implementation of the San Andres Accords that
were signed in 1996. More than three million Mexicans participated with
95% of them endorsing the EZLN's demands providing the kind of mass
support hard to ignore.
In December, 2000, National
Action Party's (PAN) Vincente Fox (and former Coca-Colaista big cheese)
had to address it. He shook Mexico's political firmament in the July
elections becoming the country's first president able to end the PRI's
stranglehold single party 71 year rule under a system known as "Presidentialism."
After taking office, he arrogantly promised to cut the Gordian knot
deadlock with the EZLN and would meet with Subcommandante Marcos to
"fix things up in 15 minutes" by committing to submit the
San Andres Accords or La Ley Cocopa Indian Rights Law to Congress for
resolution where almost for certain they'd be none.
Still, the Zapatistas and
their supporters went on the road for it for 16 days going from Chiapas
to Mexico City in February and March 2001. The climax was a mass rally
of hundreds of thousands in the capital's Zocalo, to no avail as the
Congress gutted the Accords ending the EZLN's hope for redress through
the political process that was reinforced when the nation's Supreme
Court upheld the legislators 8 - 3 on September 7, 2002. It left the
Zapatistas high and dry and more than ever determined to work for change
outside the political process that works for the privileged, not the
people.
La Otra Campana -
The EZLN's Other Campaign
The Zapatista's Other Campaign
grew out of the organization's Sixth Declaration of the Lacandon Jungle
(the Sexta) issued June, 2005 calling for a new approach outside traditional
party politics the EZLN rejects because it doesn't work for ordinary
people. The idea was to build a grand alliance of all jodidos (the "screwed"
over people) to include Indians and the "real left" to join
in solidarity from the bottom up outside the political process and call
a constitutional convention to write a new anti-neoliberal document
protecting the nation's land and resources as well as enact an Indian
Rights law.
The Other Campaign went on
the road to all parts of the country during the 2006 electoral period
working outside the political process withholding support for opposition
Party of the Democratic Revolution (PRD) presidential candidate and
ex-PRIista Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador, popularly known as ALMO.
Ross calls him El Peje, his
nickname, noting while serving as Mexico City's popular mayor he eschewed
ostentation; provided essential social services for the people like
free milk for young mothers; shelters for the homeless; and jobs for
tens of thousands. He also cut deals with the business class from Mexico's
Council of Businessmen (CMHN) made up of the country's 37 richest men
like he did with billionaire tycoon Carlos Slim showing he was a "demon
in disguise, a demagogue, (a) dreaded politician. A danger, in short,
for Mexico." A man who sleeps with the devil. Not anyone the Zapatistas
could trust or support, and they didn't, sitting out the campaign to
further their own to end Mexico's unjust economic system of corrupted
predatory capitalism exploiting people for profit. Their goal is noble,
and they're committed to it - to one day bring real social, economic
and democratic change to the country but do it outside party politics
within which it can never happen.
Working through the system
always turns out the same. The dominant PRI and PAN are Mexico's Republicans
and Democrats - two wings of the nation's property party exploiting
the masses to serve the country's capital interests, latifundistas,
and foreign investors from el norte. It hardly matters whether PAN or
PRI rules with the PRD scarcely better as most in it are recycled "PRIANS"
(formerly from PRI and PAN) - aka, Mexico's bipartisan criminal class
with softer edges offering the people more crumbs, but still crumbs.
In power they'd never address the Zapatistas' original 13 demands -
land, work, labor, bread, education, health, shelter, communication,
culture, independence, democracy, liberty, and peace as well as foster
solidarity with the aggrieved.
Ross' criticism is even harsher
calling the PRD "mortally flawed, venomously venial and vulnerable
to splintering into brittle battle over scraps of power." In his
judgment, if ALMO became president (he didn't, but it was unresolved
at press time), the dominant business class, Washington, and even the
Church would slap him down each time he proposed overly generous crumbs.
And if he managed doing more than thought possible, Ross adds an exclamation
point - "Think Salvadore Allende" who was no match for Nixon-Kissinger
the way a Mexican progressive today would be out of his league against
the demon-duo Bush-Cheney, even meaner and nastier than their uglier-than-sin
predecessors.
They don't daunt the EZLN's
13 year resolve against mal gobierno, running strong and gaining strength
with the Other Campaign continuing throughout 2006. It's still ongoing
in the new year with the country now under PAN president-by-mass-electoral-fraud
Felipe Calderon. Ross will pick up the story in his next book, sure
to come, continuing his chronicle of rebellion for a better world Zapatistas
are in the vanguard for.
La Otra Campana grew out
of planning meetings and is comprised of many thousands of supporters
including Indians, farmers, workers, social movements, NGOs, autonomous
collectives, all groups on the left and all others willing to join a
social movement for change. The plan was to take Subcommandante Marcos
(who's mestizo, not Indian) and a 16 member Sexta commission on a six
month barnstorming blizzard, beginning January 1, 2006, to all 31 Mexican
states to meet and listen to a diverse range of people, groups and organizations.
They want their ideas as input to use toward building broader support
toward the goal of real change in a country stultified by decades of
corruption and mass exploitation.
This was the fifth time the
Zapatistas left their Chiapas stronghold home taking their message to
the country, the last time being in 2001 for the "March of Those
Who Are The Color of the Earth" after Congress gutted the La Ley
Cocopa or Indian Rights Law. This time the plan was much more ambitious
with goals great enough to make Marcos tell his followers "we could
be jailed, we could be killed. We may never return home" because
at stake is the future of Mexico also playing out in the streets of
Oaxaca since May for social justice long denied because getting it is
never easy in a country ruled by powerful interests unwilling to sacrifice
their privilege and till now never having to.
The Other Campaign aims high
continuing into 2007. It calls for enacting a new constitution barring
privatization of public resources and getting rid of the whole array
of neoliberal poison served up by Washington-controlled international
lending agencies and WTO one-way "bunko game" free trade deals
unmasked as unfair. It also wants indigenous autonomy for Mexico's 57
individual Indian peoples and a nationwide public stage for the EZLN
to spread its message to people in every Mexican state. It comes down
to "the Other Campaign vs. Politics as Usual" meaning elections
for sale to the highest bidder or easily stolen when the Mexican power
structure controls them and won't tolerate power to the people in a
country run by and for the privileged alone, the way it's always been.
The EZLN renounces them all while knowing the PRI's return to power
would be a big step backward in Mexico's glacial struggle for democracy
that at best advances in mini-fragile steps easily reversible.
The Other Campaign is still
ongoing aiming toward its longer range goal for a new constitution with
regional autonomy run from the bottom up outside the political process
it wants no part of. Today the EZLN is the most interesting, radical
and important grass roots democratic movement in the world. Subcommandante
Marcos believes new fraudulently elected Mexican president Felipe Calderon
"is going to start to fall from his first day (December 1 and)
we're on the eve of a great uprising or civil war." He believes
the Mexican people will join him in "spontaneous uprisings, explosions
all over, civil war" the way it's gone on uninterrupted in Oaxaca
since May. "When we rise up (he says), we're going to sweep away
the entire political class, including those who say they're the parliamentary
left" as the political process corrupts them like all the others.
It's the way all social revolutions
take root that begin from a committed core, then broaden into a unified
network of mutual support for real democratic change. The spirit of
resistance is alive in Latin America. It bubbled up in Venezuela, Bolivia
and Ecuador, and in Mexico it's electric and more alive than since Emiliano
Zapata Salazar led the 1910 Revolution that ushered in a period of real
change, albeit short-lived. Today Mexicans again are fed up with decades
of fraud, corruption and abuse, and modern-day Zapatistas are in the
vanguard of resistance for real social democratic change for people
long denied it. No one knows how this will end and if it will turn out
to be a watershed moment in the country's history. Those in power never
yield it easily, so things may get ugly as events play out. For now,
Mexico's future is unfolding on its streets and mountains and jungles
of Chiapas that will chart the road ahead for better or worse to an
uncertain time the Zapatistas are struggling to make a better one.
It isn't easy, and since
early 2007 Zapatista communities have been up against increasing opposition
from a government-allied paramilitary group called the Organization
for the Defense of Indigenous and Peasant Rights (Opddic). It uses threats
of violence, land invasions, crop thefts, beatings and kidnappings to
expropriate Zapatista land so private developers can exploit natural
resources and develop large tourist projects. Opddic has been around
since the late 1990s but grew more powerful while Vincente Fox was president.
It's present activities signal what's ahead from the Calderon government's
policy to seize Zapatista land, weaken the movement, and give corporate
predators an open field to develop the land indigenous Chiapans claim
as their own.
Zapatistas say they'll defend
their lands against Opddic incursions but up till now have avoided violence.
That may not last as attacks continue that may be intended to provoke
a response strong enough to set up the ominous possibility the government
may step in with force making things very ugly.
It won't step in to help
the Chiapas-based NGO Center for Economic Political Investigations of
Community Action (CIEPAC) threatened by a late February note saying:
"Enjoy your last day. We will kill you I am looking for you and
now we have found you." This followed other incidents of threatening
surveillance and harassment against CIEPAC members for several months.
The organization takes the threats seriously and asks for "national
and international organized groups (to join) in solidarity (to) maintain
your vigilance in anticipation of events that might occur shortly, continue
your solidarity with social movements in Mexico, and denounce the continuous
violations to human rights that are affecting civil society in this
country." Whatever may happen, John Ross will be there following
the Zapatistas' struggle against the dark forces affecting them and
ordinary people everywhere.
Ross ends his current chronicle
in 2006 where it began - in Chiapas with the Mayan people the color
of the earth and the corn, "maiz" in the "milpa"
that's the core of their life. The country and people can't survive
without it. He writes: "The Zapatistas are Mayans and the Mayans
are the People of Maize, not just because it is the center of their
universe but because they are actually made from it. And like the maize....the
people the color of the earth return, renew themselves, are reborn and
flourish." They won't allow the country's dark forces to take that
from them. Their spirit is alive and so is their hope another world
is possible. Their struggle for it continues, and Ross will be there
chronicling it all for us.
Stephen Lendman
lives in Chicago and can be reached at [email protected].
Also visit his blog site
at sjlendman.blogspot.com and listen each week to the
Steve Lendman News and Information Hour on The Micro Effect.com Saturdays
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