Socialist Action /March 2001
Zapatistas March on Mexico City
BY OUR CORRESPONDENT
MEXICO CITY-On Feb. 25, the leaders of the insurgent Indian people of
Chiapas launched a two-week mass march on Mexico City to remobilize and
extend mass support for the demands of those sections of the Mexican population
who have suffered most from the world capitalist offensive-the indigenous
peoples.
At the beginning of 1994, the uprising of the indigenous people in Chiapas
led by the Zapatista National Liberation Army shattered the pretense of
a "democratic" and developing Mexico. Mass support for the Zapatistas,
not only in Chiapas but throughout Mexico, forced the regime to negotiate
and to maneuver.
The government accepted a compromise known as the "San Andres Accords."
But then the ruling president, Carlos Zedillo, reneged on the accords, launched
a political operation designed to portray the Zapatistas as "die-hards,"
and mounted repressive raids against them. Mass protests forced the regime
to back off. But it continued its propaganda campaign and harassment of
the Zapatistas.
Now Mexico has a new president, Vicente Fox, who has offered new negotiations
with the Zapatistas. He has promised to dismantle four of the new military
bases set up to threaten the Zapatistas, released 20 out of a hundred Zapatista
political prisoners, and proposed resubmitting the San Andres Accords to
the Chamber of Deputies.
The Zapatistas' conditions for renewing dialogue, however, have been
and remain dismantling seven military bases, freeing all the Zapatista political
prisoners, and compliance with the San Andres Accords.
Fox has adopted two plans for dealing with the Chiapas crisis. One, the
Plan Chiapas 2000, represents a continuation of the low-intensity warfare
waged by the former government against the Zapatistas.
The other, the Plan Panama, calls for extending throughout Mexico the
low-wage assembly plants previously established mainly among the U.S-Mexico
border. The objective is to offer the destitute population an "alternative"
of miserably paid precarious jobs. The Zapatista-organized march on Mexico
City is a response to Fox's maneuvers.
The march stopped first in the state of Oaxaca, which has the second
largest concentration of indigenous people in Mexico. In this state, many
Indian communities have adopted the forms of self-government offered by
the San Andres Accords, that is, local direct democracy in accordance with
the indigenous tradition. Their struggle and their forms of organization,
however, considerably predate the rise of the Zapatista movement.
The Zapatista movement has had a major international impact and caught
the eye of world public opinion. But it has also overshadowed other important
developments, such as the rise of the National Indigenous Congress and the
march of the Guerrero state Indian people on Mexico City, which is taking
place parallel to the Zapatista march.
The Zapatistas, thus, are not the only force in the indigenous movement.
Moreover, the organization they sponsor in the cities, the Frente Zapatista,
is ineffective. Nonetheless, the impact they have made makes them the axis
of the present struggles.
Fox, with the help of the bourgeois media, has distorted the character
of the Zapatista march, presenting it as a march "for peace,"
which will end with the Zapatista leaders signing a peace agreement in the
capital.
However, the Zapatistas have responded in a courageous and clear way,
repeating their three conditions for peace, none of which has been fully
met.
The Zapatista movement today, together with the struggle of the electrical
and oil workers against privatization, is one of the most important fronts
of the struggle of Mexican working people against the worldwide capitalist
offensive.
Mexican Socialists, including the Coalicion Socialista (to which Socialist
Action's cothinkers in Mexico belong), have been calling on the Zapatista
leaders to adopt strategies and tactics better able to unify the working
and exploited people throughout the country in struggle.
To this end, in particular, we have been calling on them to abandon
their alliance with the bourgeois Party of the Democratic Revolution, led
by Cuauhtemoc Cardenas.
Socialist Action /March 2001 |