Socialist Action /February 1999
Autonomous Indian Movement Wins Oaxaca, Mexico, Election
By GABRIELA ENRIQUEZ and JAIME GONZALEZ
MEXICO CITY-On one side of the main square in Mazatlan Villa de Flores,
a town in the state of Oaxaca, stands a dilapidated one-story building.
It once housed the county administration in the days when Mazatlan was
ruled by the Mexican government's political machine, the so-called Institutional
Revolutionary Party (PRI). Its walls are full of cracks that presage the
eventual collapse of the structure.
Today, the building houses the police sent in by the Oaxaca state government.
Guards with automatic weapons are posted at the entrance, protected by a
wall of sand bags.
On the other side of the square rises the new county building, constructed
by the voluntary labor of more than a thousand members of the community
inspired by the indigenous town council. The arches of the balconies on
the second floor and the wooden frames of the windows display the good artistic
taste with which it was designed.
The new building is still unfinished. And, in places, the walls and roof
still show signs left by the bonfires that the PRI paramilitaries built
after they seized the building by force on Aug. 5, 1998. They were attempting
to oust the indigenous town council headed by Apolonio García Palacios.
The movement for autonomy in Mazatlan, grouped around the Community Council,
managed to defeat the PRI putsch through a mobilization that included a
hunger strike conducted in front of the Mexican Senate offices in the national
capital.
The latest episode in this political battle was the Dec. 13 elections
for county chairperson.
The vote was conducted in 40 community assemblies. The Community Assembly
candidate, Raymundo Rusas Carrizosa, got more than 60 percent of the 4150
votes cast, against 23 percent and 16 percent respectively for two PRI slates.
However, as in other parts of Mexico, the fighters for autonomy have
had to pay a high price at every step in the process. Since 1991, when an
Assembly candidate won the county chairmanship for the first time, the PRI
paramilitaries have perpetrated a long series of outrages-29 murders, violent
occupations of the county seat, kidnapping and beating of a number of women,
and a rape of an underage girl.
The case of Mazatlan is illustrative of both the advances of the indigenous
movement and the attacks on it. However, the epicenter of the indigenous
rebellion is still in Chiapas, where the government is continuing a brutal
campaign against the communities that have openly sympathized with the Zapatista
uprising that occurred at the beginning of 1994.
A long history of repression
It is necessary to offer a brief survey of some of the repressive actions
that have occurred in Chiapas in 1998 so that our readers can judge for
themselves the depth of the mobilization of the indigenous peoples to defend
their cultures and build their own forms of administration and government.
On April 11, 1998, an operation by the police, army, and immigration
agents wrecked the seat of the Ricardo Flores Magon autonomous county government
in Taniperlas, in the eastern region of Chiapas. Seven Indians and two professors
were arrested and remain in prison, charged with political crimes. Twelve
foreigners who were in Taniperlas at the time were deported and banned from
returning to Mexico.
An army camp and police barrier were set up in the center of Taniperlas.
The men of the community fled into the mountains, and more than a hundred
women with their children remained in the town in very precarious conditions.
Under the protection of federal and state forces, the PRI paramilitary
group, the Movimiento Indigena Revolucionaria Anti-Zapatista (Anti-Zapatista
Revolutionary Indigenous Movement) has built up its organization.
On May 1, another operation involving more than a thousand men wrecked
the seat of the Land and Freedom autonomous county government in Ampara
Aguatinta.
More than 63 persons were arrested. Three persons were wounded. Three
women were raped. and 140 were driven from their homes. The membership of
the autonomous county council was jailed.
On June 3, at 6:00 in the morning, more than 2000 police and soldiers
surrounded the town of Nicolas Ruiz in the county of the same name. This
county is known for its opposition to the PRI and its sympathy with the
Zapatista National Liberation Army (EZLN).
Men, women, and children formed a human wall around the town in order
to keep out the invaders. But the government forces fired teargas and charged
into the center of the town.
Dozens of people, including children were wounded and gassed. The houses
were raided without any warrant, and all money and valuable personal effects
in them were stolen.
On June 10, another operation took place, this time to destroy the autonomous
county government of San Juan de Libertad. Thousands of soldiers broke into
the communities of Chavejeval and Union Progreso. They opened fire on the
peasants, killing several of them. Two policemen lost their lives.
More than a thousand people were driven from their homes. The repressive
forces plundered homes, churches, and chapels. Cattle were killed or stolen.
Crops were destroyed. All the voting cards in the peasants' homes disappeared.
On June 13, the bodies of eight people killed in this operation were
produced. The local people are raising an outcry that some of these persons
were alive when they were taken away in state police vans.
They are accusing the army of murdering them in cold blood. The bodies
produced were in a state of decomposition and had been mutilated.
According to expectations of the Mexican government, the movement for
indigenous autonomy should long ago have been beaten to its knees.
President Zedillo keeps wondering how the indigenous people can still
be defying them when he has sent tens of thousands of troops to surround
them, after the paramilitary forces have sown terror by murders and massacres,
and thousands of indigenous people have been driven from their lands and
homes.
In spite of all the terror to which the government has subjected them,
the autonomous county governments continue to exist. The autonomous councils
have shifted their county seats, and the communities have elected new authorities
to replace those arrested.
In some cases, the county governments have not been attacked. For example,
in San Andres Sacamch'en de los Pobres in the Chiapas Highlands, the autonomous
council continues to occupy the official county building.
This is also true of the autonomous county governments in the area controlled
by the EZLN, which government troops cannot enter according to the dialogue
law passed in 1995.
A change in Mexican law
The Zapatista autonomous county governments arose in response to the
government's refusal to carry out the first agreements produced by the "dialogue,"
which were signed in San Andres on Feb. 16, 1996.
These agreements established a new type of relationship with the indigenous
peoples, based on pluralism, involvement, and self-determination by the
peoples.
The government, however, decided not to respect the accords.
Regardless of any immediate factors that may have influenced Zedillo's
decision, the accords represent a profound change in Mexican laws, to an
extent that could, from the rulers' point of view, prove dangerously favorable
to broad sections of the population.
The present laws are based on traditional U.S. and European concepts.
They deny, or greatly limit, the room for a diversity of cultures, languages,
and judicial forms.
Let us take an example from real life to demonstrate why it is so important
in Mexico to get a multilayered ("heterogeneous") legal system-to
use the expression coined by philologist and researcher Luis Villa-that
offers room for judicial and cultural diversity.
A little over a year ago, in the Mixteco-Tepaneca area of Guerrero, the
traditional indigenous authorities tried a peasant who had grown marijuana
and later sold the crop to high-school students in the area.
When he had to chose between being tried in the community or being handed
over to the state police, he did not hesitate to take the first option.
First of all, the trial would be held in his own language, and he would
be judged by persons with the same cultural values.
Secondly, if he had been handed over to the mestizo (white) authorities,
he would have had to serve his sentence in a prison far from his village.
His family, moreover, would have suffered all the well-known abuses of the
Mexican judicial system.
As it was, the accused was sentenced to community labor to make up for
the damage done to the community.
The system of laws currently in force in Mexico does not permit the coexistence
of community norms with state and federal laws.
In passing, we might say that the case we just described also shows the
error of those who claim that indigenous autonomy allows practices contrary
to human rights, or women's rights.
When persons think that the community's customs violate their rights,
they can chose to submit themselves to the alternative legal procedures,
either in federal or state courts.
For all these reasons, county autonomy is the major means that the indigenous
peoples in Mexico have chosen to advance their self-determination, the practice
of their culture, and the use of their own languages.
In accordance with the San Andres agreements, indigenous communities
and peoples can associate and form counties with a majority indigenous population.
And these counties in turn can form associations in order to coordinate
their activities.
In this way, they can develop special forms of social, cultural, political,
and economic organization, win recognition of their internal normative systems
(as long as they respect the constitutional guarantees and human rights),
as well as the freedom to elect their representatives in conformity with
the institutions and traditions belonging to the various peoples.
In the wake of the government's refusal to give constitutional status
to the agreements, the Zapatista communities decided, as a form of resistance
and to and repudiation of the government's attitude, to form 32 autonomous
county governments.
A form of direct democracy
Nine million people in Mexico live in communities where indigenous languages
and traditions predominate to one degree or another.
The indigenous movement for autonomy is at the present time the major
people's movement in this country. It has been marked by certain outstanding
features, regardless of the various states or regions in which it has arisen.
The first such feature is the emphasis on the community as the basic
entity for debating and solving problems. From this strong community character
have derived various degrees of direct democracy and voluntary labor.
Today, there are 38 autonomous Zapatista county governments, both inside
the area controlled militarily by the EZLN, as well as outside of it.
These governments are run by autonomous county councils, composed of
representatives elected in according with the customs of the communities
that make up the county.
Within the Zapatista area, these councils are not necessary composed
of the EZLN commanders. Many council members are civilians, such as those
who make up the councils of elders.
In the case of Mazatlan, in Oaxaca, the form of organization is based
on community assemblies. These assemblies elect their own traditional authorities,
and then together the community assemblies elect the county chair.
This form of electing the councils makes the indigenous movement a natural
ally of the workers in the cities. After all, the indigenous movement has
the same enemies:
1) the despotic government dominated by an all-powerful president that
fears any expression of the popular will that may get out of its control;
2) the capitalists, who are seeking to displace the indigenous communities
in order to get control of their natural resources and to destroy their
communal modes of living and working together in order to introduce market
mechanisms based on individual enrichment.
Another feature that should be stressed is the sense of solidarity embodied
in the indigenous struggle. In conclusion, let us quote a communiqué
signed by Marino, Isidro, and Miguel from the Ernesto Che Guevara Autonomous
County in the Chiapas Highlands:
"After years of struggle and resistance against the neglect of the
official government, the indigenous communities have decided to raise our
voices. The appeal we have launched is not only for ourselves or for our
peoples, but for all the abandoned peoples of the world."
Socialist Action /February 1999 |