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TechnoratiZapatista Code Red
-San Cristóbal de las Casas, Chiapas
Nativity scenes are plentiful in San Cristóbal de las Casas, a colonial city in the highlands of Chiapas, Mexico. But the one that greets visitors at the entrance to the TierrAdentro cultural center has a local twist: figurines on donkeys wear miniature ski masks and carry wooden guns.
It is high season for "Zapatourism," the industry of international travelers that has sprung up around the indigenous uprising here, and TierrAdentro is ground zero. Zapatista-made weavings, posters and jewelry are selling briskly. In the courtyard restaurant, where the mood at 10 pm is festive verging on fuzzy, college students drink Sol beer. A young man holds up a photograph of Subcomandante Marcos, as always in mask with pipe, and kisses it. His friends snap yet another picture of this most documented of movements.
I am taken through the revelers to a room in the back of the center, closed to the public. The somber mood here seems a world away. Ernesto Ledesma Arronte, a 40-year-old ponytailed researcher, is hunched over military maps and human rights incident reports. "Did you understand what Marcos said?" he asks me. "It was very strong. He hasn't said anything like that in many years."
Arronte is referring to a speech Marcos made the night before at a conference outside San Cristóbal. The speech was titled "Feeling Red: The Calendar and the Geography of War." Because it was Marcos, it was poetic and slightly elliptical. But to Arronte's ears, it was a code-red alert. "Those of us who have made war know how to recognize the paths by which it is prepared and brought near," Marcos said. "The signs of war on the horizon are clear. War, like fear, also has a smell. And now we are starting to breathe its fetid odor in our lands."
Marcos's assessment supports what Arronte and his fellow researchers at the Center of Political Analysis and Social and Economic Investigations have been tracking with their maps and charts. On the fifty-six permanent military bases that the Mexican state runs on indigenous land in Chiapas, there has been a marked increase in activity. Weapons and equipment are being dramatically upgraded, new battalions are moving in, including special forces--all signs of escalation.
As the Zapatistas became a global symbol for a new model of resistance, it was possible to forget that the war in Chiapas never actually ended. For his part, Marcos--despite his clandestine identity--has been playing a defiantly open role in Mexican politics, most notably during the fiercely contested 2006 presidential elections. Rather than endorsing the center-left candidate, Andrés Manuel López Obrador, he spearheaded a parallel "Other Campaign," holding rallies that called attention to issues ignored by the major candidates.
In this period, Marcos's role as military leader of the Zapatista Army of National Liberation (EZLN) seemed to fade into the background. He was Delegate Zero--the anti-candidate. Last night, Marcos had announced that the conference would be his last such appearance for some time. "Look, the EZLN is an army," he reminded his audience, and he is its "military chief."
That army faces a grave new threat--one that cuts to the heart of the Zapatistas' struggle. During the 1994 uprising, the EZLN claimed large stretches of land and collectivized them, its most tangible victory. In the San Andrés Accords, the right to territory was recognized, but the Mexican government has refused to fully ratify the accords. After failing to enshrine these rights, the Zapatistas decided to turn them into facts on the ground. They formed their own government structures--called good-government councils--and stepped up the building of autonomous schools and clinics. As the Zapatistas expand their role as the de facto government in large areas of Chiapas, the federal and state governments' determination to undermine them is intensifying.
"Now," says Arronte, "they have their method." The method is to use the deep desire for land among all peasants in Chiapas against the Zapatistas. Arronte's organization has documented that, in just one region, the government has spent approximately $16 million expropriating land and giving it to many families linked to the notoriously corrupt Institutional Revolutionary Party. Often, the land is already occupied by Zapatista families. Most ominously, many of the new "owners" are linked to thuggish paramilitary groups, which are trying to force the Zapatistas from the newly titled land. Since September there has been a marked escalation of violence: shots fired into the air, brutal beatings, Zapatista families reporting being threatened with death, rape and dismemberment. Soon the soldiers in their barracks may well have the excuse they need to descend: restoring "peace" among feuding indigenous groups. For months the Zapatistas have been resisting violence and trying to expose these provocations. But by choosing not to line up behind Obrador in the 2006 election, the movement made powerful enemies. And now, says Marcos, their calls for help are being met with a deafening silence.
Exactly ten years ago, on December 22, 1997, the Acteal massacre took place. As part of the anti-Zapatista campaign, a paramilitary gang opened fire in a small church in the village of Acteal, killing forty-five indigenous people, sixteen of them children and adolescents. Some bodies were hacked with machetes. The state police heard the gunfire and did nothing. For weeks now, Mexico's newspapers have been filled with articles marking the tragic ten-year anniversary of the massacre.
In Chiapas, however, many people point out that conditions today feel eerily familiar: the paramilitaries, the rising tensions, the mysterious activities of the soldiers, the renewed isolation from the rest of the country. And they have a plea to those who supported them in the past: don't just look back. Look forward, and prevent another Acteal massacre before it happens.
* * *
Please visit www.naomiklein.org to see photos from Naomi's visit to Chiapas.
* * *
Naomi Klein is the author of many books, including her most recent, The Shock Doctrine: The Rise of Disaster Capitalism, which will be published in September.Visit Naomi's website at www.naomiklein.org, or to learn more about her new book, visit www.shockdoctrine.com .
© 2007 The Nation
43 Comments so far
Show AllI believe you know what you can do with those tinfoil hats, troll.
Moonraven, I know a place where you can get real great deals on tinfoil hats and other devices that will assuage your paranonia...
You can be a target if you DON'T live in the US, too.
I have had the CIA follow me around the planet, take photos, jam my e-box and plant listening devices in my living quarters since April of 2003--when I first visited Venezuela for a solidarity event with the Bolivarian Revolution.
This has been a bad year for flooding--esecially in Tabasco and Veracruz and Chiapas. It wasn't helped any by the idiots who opened the dams when the heavy rains started--which to my mind was absolutely criminal!
Almost a million folks flooded out--and when one considers that many people in Chiapas still had not recovered or received anything but false promises from the government from Hurricane Stan 2 years ago, the situation is even more grim.
What happened in New Orleans basically happens every year in Southern Mexico. And the government could not possibly give a shit about the poor victims--only the high rollers in Cancun (mostly gringos and Spanish corporations) who owned damaged 5 star hotels got any response from the government--on the basis that the rebuilding would provide jobs for locals. Right. The construction jobs in Quintano Roo pay all of 50 pesos (less than 5 dollars) a day.
Off now to join the dancing/jumping Chinelos outside the internet cafe in my village....
MOON RAVEN -- Your story is moving, but is even more impactful to me, as I have traveled in Mexico long before this occurred (1969) and know that road between Vera Cruz and Salina Cruz, because my family was blocked near S.C. by a terrible flood that washed the road out. There was just a small bullock cart that connected across the flood waters between the two banks of the now river.
That day I saw another image that was burned into my memory, that pales compared to 45 dead, but for an impressionable young teen lives on in me: we passed many farms devastated by the flood, and one was only evident by the circular ring of bricks left, just barely rising above water level, of the now useless well.
The circle of life emergent from disaster.
Gee, I hate to bring a note of sadness into this, BUT:
Today is the 10th anniversary of the massacre of Las Abejas in Acteal--with few of the material authors of the crime against humanity in jail and NONE of the intellectual authors.
Happily, there is a movement starting to demand that former president Zedillo be booted out of his professorship of GLOBALIZATION (this is the smartass who said that anyone who was against him was a globalaphobe, and who told an indigenous woman selling handcrafts in the village of Tepoztlan that he couldn't buy from her because "No traigo CASH") at Yale, since clearly all levels of government from president to state governor (who WAS booted out of his post) to local police and the army (who armed and trained the assassins) were complicit.
When Acteal took place I was in a small indigneous village in the Isthmus of Tehuantepec spending the holidays with the parents and siblings of my compañero. The village has not changed since a French priest described it in 1860 when he made a trip through the Isnthmus--except for a few electric lights here and there. The population is the same, and almost nobody has water inside their houses unless it's in a bucket. There is no mercado--when someone has produce for sale or has slaughtered an animal it is announced over the PA system which operates from 6 a.m. in the village. There are a few radios and old black and white tvs--mostly they don't work, or the power is out anyway. There are nbo newspapers available. Transportation is by old microbus or collective taxi--and is spotty. On Christmas and New Year's there is no public transportation available--unless you consider walking to be public transportation.
BUT in the one tiny store there is Bimbo bread (a Mexican version of Wonder which makes really shitty stuffing for a turkey--even after being toasted on a comal outside) and Pepsi Cola. And potato chips. And the Mexican equivalent of Twinkies. Plus a few canned goods.
My compañero managed a ride with someone down to the main highway to Juchitan and left the village on Christmas Day to visit some friends in Chiapas. I was under the weather so stayed to make the Bimbo turkey in the outside wood-fired oven (pizza would have been a much better idea).
When he returned a few days later he told me that he had heard something about a massacre in Acteal on a radio en route coming back. We got to a radio in the village, but it was only government propaganda, so I said that we were going to have to go to Juchitan or Salina Cruz and get La Jornada--the only reliable newspaper.
So off we went on a series of open trucks with metal rail sides and wooden benches--which let me tell you is no walk in the park when you are suffering from a massive kidney infection with its accompanying severe lower back pain!
A few hours later we tumbled out of the rattletrap bus we had taken from Juchitan (no newspaper) to Salina Cruz--a town which is basically an oil refinery on the Pacific coast--where after a lot of running around from street to street we tracked down the newspaper--this was 5 days after the massacre had occurred and the paper burned with outrage.
That outrage is still there in cinder form: 45 people murdered in cold blood--shot in the back in the church where they were praying for peace, or hunted down like rabbits as they tried to escape--leaves a bad taste in the psyche of the culture. Five preganant women were in the group--and their bellies had been opened with machetes and or bayonets and the fetuses taken out and chopped to bits.
British writer John Berger said in a statement yesterday in Mexico City--where he presented a new book after attending the same conference that the writer of the article, Naomi Klein, attended--that protecting against the elimination of the zapatistas should be at the top of the list of civil society priorities here--and everywhere else on the planet.
He will not be arrested and deported for violating Article 33--anymore than 1998 NObel Prize for Literature Jose Saramago was--those old guys are high-profile patriarchs in the cultural world. But I am sure that Calderon would LIKE to have him arrested and deported.
Anyway, to wrap this up: I concur with Berger that if the EZLN is eliminated, we can pretty much kiss any hope for a future of our species on this planet adios.
Even in such times of advercity, you folks are a wonder and a joy. Glad to be in your company.
Thanks
MOON RAVEN -- May your holiday blessings bring healing energy and joyful peace for your tireless contributions, allowing you to see « with the support of others » the vast difference that you make every day.
I also live attempting to balance my own autoimmune disease, and your acknowledgment of this, has allowed me to better see own true self. As Jack learned in Moon Over Morocco,
to stop standing in the way of his own light.
We are all as those gregarious penguins in the Antarctic, huddling together protecting each other's backs
from the fierce cutting winds,
warmly sharing the cold's fury, and
each taking our turn on the front line of merciless assault,
before returning to the fold of our brethren and kindred
"HOW do we stop this? Petitioning doesn't work. I would like something concrete I can do to support the Zapatistas."
Find that 'something concrete', and you'll promptly find yourself targeted as a "terrorist supporter" (if you are in today's-USA, that is?).
[Don't 'stand under the hammer' while trying to 'help'...]
I hope both the Lakota (and David Daniels!) note the EZLN's resistance to backing Obrador...there IS a sound-reason for that (and Russell Means needs to consider the effectiveness, himself, of 'peasants yearning for their-own Land' -- such could help his-Cause, here)
Moon Raven: Got your back. I also suggest that you, and everyone else, be aware that you shouldn't feed the trolls. Or anyone else that tries to divert any thread with baseless information or uncivil comments. Just identify that they are a troll and do not engage them.
Thanks, nspire.
I have a strong sense of urgency about the critical mass of new consciousness needed to make needed changes on our planet.
I have two reasons for that:
1. I have been living with systemic lupus since infancy--that's more than 60 years on borrowed time, which is bound to be running out soon, and
2. The Mayan/Hopi prophecies--if correct--give us only 5 more years to assemble that critical mass. (Hugo Chavez says we can do it--but only if EVERYBODY without malignant intent tightens his/her belt and ties his/her shoes up tighly and GETS MOVING. Unfortunately, I do NOT see that happening.)
Best Christmas wishes.
MOON RAVEN -- Thank you. And for myself, I have only read thought provoking and empowering comments from you, although your screen name did have me imagining your hair to be raven colored.
If I gave (any) the impression of encouraging homogeneity as healthy, I want to clarify that we agree that (as you say) "making meaningful changes inevitably means conflict."
What do I mean with my comments (above and elsewhere) about regaining common ground, alignment, coherency, and congruence?
I believe that everybody has unique contributions to make to solve our current (and future) turmoil, and empowering and consensus building are social skills that are clearly lacking.
This is no more evident in the disproportionate size and funding between gov't Dept. State vs. War in DC - negotiation and diplomacy are hardly mentioned nor considered as viable methods of state influence nor power.
I imagine a time when the ground swell of support does align together (mostly) to encourage and drive the needed changes, through a concerted although distributed (de-centralized) collectivization of shared needs and visions that are congruent with decent values, tolerance, and appreciation of all life.
I do not see coherency (nor alignment) as homogeneity (of thought), but independent actors coming together to create the possibility of their unprecedented COMMON DREAMS - stitched together as a tapestry reflecting the beauty and truth of the natural world.
Namaste … … … … … … … … … … … … … … … … … Mahatma Gandhi … … … … … … … … … …
« We must be the change we wish to see in the world »
« There is a sufficiency in the world for man's need but not for man's greed »
Greaseman:
Oh?
How about this, directed at me, on the Muslim Women, Damsels in Distress? thread:
"colleen December 21st, 2007 9:12 pm
How good is your spanish?
pinche gringa punetera triple hijueputa"
Now, on the OFFCHANCE that you are not a troll--which I find to be very remote--All I have to say about the 800,000 dollars in the suitcase that the former CIA agent flagrantly got caught for, and whom the US refuses to extradite to Argentina (a la Posada Favorite US Terrorist),
has already been said by both the government of Argentina and that of Venezuela.
If you read Spanish--which is a non-negotiable requirement for anyone even remotely interested in the region where I live--you can check those statements out in Internet. In fact, I believe there is even an English-language non-Bush version of the incident on venezuelanalysis.com.
You trolls are very big on bogeymen: AMLO, Chavez, Castro, MOraels, now Christina Fernandez.
Yet Biggie Bogey, aka The Decider, sits impunely in the Oval Office--cheered by you.
moonraven: ¨AMLO had nothing to do with attacking ANYONE in the cathedral.¨ Nah, it was the boogeyman.
Since this site claims to oppose foreign ¨intervention¨ in other country´s politics, I wonder when we will get some news about the valija full of $800,000 that Hugo Chavez sent to Cristina Kirchner. CFK will not last out 2008, you heard the prediction here first.
fat alcoholic nymphomaniac gringa who sleeps with her gardener.
Do you have a persecution complex? Someone who said that about you here would get banned in about 3 minutes.
I don't think we need to add to the paranoia already rampant on other sites (I posted for awhile on one where I was attacked from day one because I actually provided facts and information instead of rightwing opinion--and accused of being an agent of the Chinese government, on the payroll of the governments of both Venezuela and Bolivia, as well as numerous personal insults because I live in Mexico).
However, I have noticed that whenever there is an article that produces a thread on Latin America, the same trolls emerge spouting their Fox News jargon and insults. Sometimes they post under slightly different "names", but the style is the same.
I do know that there are rightwing groups that are aware of the media clout potentially usable of the Internet, and which do pay folks to post rightwing propaganda and attack folks who have firsthand experience that contradicts the Bush administration's disinformation.
I think I see more of this activity as, given that the areas in which I live and work (Latin America and the Middle East) are the ones where the Bushies are putting the most money for dirty tricks/destabilization activities and negative propaganda because they want to grab the control of the natural resources in those areas, and are also the areas which logically interest me, I see a lot of obvious attacks and trolling--especially against ME, since I am not only posting opinion--but also facts and information from an on-the-ground perspective.
I am used to it by now. But it would be a lot more productive--and much more interesting--to have LEGITIMATE opposition on the threads and sites on which I post.
I don't think homogeneity is any healthier than hegemony, and I also believe that making meaningful changes inevitably means conflict.
But there's a difference between a conflict of reasoned ideas and opinion--and that of receiving a lot of infantile and vicious flak on the order of accusing me of being a fat alcoholic nymphomaniac gringa who sleeps with her gardener.
We also need to be aware that there are some folks who come on these sites because they are lonely and would like attention. And that is a reflection of the autistic aspect of gringo culture.
GEOFF 29 -- I agree completely when you state that you've been "picking up bad vibes in these discussions starting shortly after the last holiday? Just seemed to lose some congeniality for a while?"
I cannot prove that we're being assaulted, but that is my guess. It is only more ominous in that we had been gaining consensus and coherency, and that can be viewed as a higher level of threat against the FASCIST beast.
I know that we can regain the common ground through compassion, connection, abundance and POWERFUL shared vision, as we all understand the urgency.
I believe that the propagandist strategists know full well that fragmenting an already diverse group, is like toppling an unstable pile of dishes. It would not surprise me in the least that there is plenty of funding for exactly these types of targeted attacks, which propel us further and deeper into thoughts of ill-will, protectiveness, separation, scarcity, and fractured discombobulated insane POWERLESS thinking.
Namaste … … … … … … … … … … … … … … … … … Mahatma Gandhi … … … … … … … … … …
« We must be the change we wish to see in the world »
« There is a sufficiency in the world for man's need but not for man's greed »
Give them the fucking oil. Let them burn the planet down. Then see how they cope....
One thing that Naomi Klein doesn't mention in her article is that the non-violent indigenous rights group in Acteal (called Las Abejas - in English, the Bees) who were massacred were not themselves part of the Zapatista movement. However, it is likely true that the massacre was a result of backlash against the Zapatista movement. I visited this village last Spring and just felt like I owed them this clarification. I wouldn't say they are against the Zapatistas but they most definitely would not want to be identified as Zapatistas. I am not saying Naomi said this, but for those who don't know, they might get that impression by the article. They are non-violent and unarmed (whereas the Zapatistas have the EZLN -- not that they use armed force, but they are prepared to if needed). The fact that Las Abejas is a pacifist group made it all the more sickening that they were the target of such a brutal, horrendous massacre.
This situation is very worrisome to me, also. My delegation met with members of the Zapatista movement and Autonomous Municipalities, and they talked about how the military intimidation has been growing for some time. We drove by several military camps in the area.
It is important to note that Chiapas is rich in natural resources (forest, water, probably oil and natural gas, also). American corporations use paramilitary groups (called "security" personnel) to keep the locals from causing trouble, and our military trains Latin American military personnel (through the SOA) to oppress those who might object to being forced into servitude to the almighty capitalists to the north. For those who are asking what they can do, on some level making it known that the international community is watching what is happening and cares about what is happening can have an impact. For this reason, the Council allowed our delegation to stay in an autonomous community that had been experiencing such intimidation. Use your local organizations to send messages to the Mexican embassies/consulates in your area. I doubt we will get anything out of our government -- this country is not exactly a model of support for indigenous rights.
I know this is a bit off the topic, but, yeah I don't know if any of the regular common dreams posters started picking up bad vibes in these discussions starting shortly after the last holiday? Just seemed to lose some congeniality for a while?
You can disagree and have an educated discussion without being demeaning. So those of us can learn something from it hopefully.
HOPING TO REFORM CAPITALISM MAKES YOU COMPLICIT IN ITS INIQUITIES/4 Books
by Jay Janson, published December 2, 2007
http://www.opednews.com/articles/genera_jay_jans_071201_hoping_to_reform_cap.htm
Whatever one wants to call whatever takes its place, it is the inhumanity, even murderous criminal insanity of the totally materialist and mindless capitalist system that we are living through right now. Those of us who merely try to make it a bit less monstrous, are more acquiescent to its continuance, than its being replaced with something more intelligently human.
Recommend for clear and simple analysis of the basics of capital function and its dire need to be all-engulfing and all-overwhelming:
"THE ENEMY OF NATURE - THE END OF CAPITALISM OR THE END OF THE WORLD", by JOEL KOVEL, 2002.
For capitalism's post-WWII human destruction techniques:
"CONFESSIONS OF AN ECONOMIC HIT MAN - HOW THE U.S. USES GLOBALIZATION TO CHEAT POOR COUNTRIES OUT OF TRILLIONS", by JOHN PERKINS, 2004
For recent perfidy in the world of mega (Capitalist) finance taking homicidal advantage of defenseless small nations even during natural disasters:
"THE SHOCK DOCTRINE – THE RISE OF DISASTER CAPITALISM" by NAOMI KLEIN, 2007
For understanding what is fomenting within impoverished "majority society" and not just as we in the affluent "minority society" perceive the masses of our trashed brothers and sisters: "GRASSROOTS POSTMODERNISM - REMAKING THE SOIL OF CULTURES" by GUSTAVO ESTEVA and MADHU SURI PRAKASH, though published in 1998 - largely unnoticed in our 'minority society'.
(Don't be but off by the academic sounding titles of these four works - they are each poignantly penetrating and heartfelt in tone and text relating to real human experience.)
This is then your journalist-historian's offering:
A Four Book Course For Extricating Oneself From Complicity In Capitalist Crimes.
A particular tacking of the sails within today's oceans of despair?
The United States, already controlling half the resources of the planet, is compelled to continuing machinations and murderous violence to increase that present ownership under the mindless drive of accumulated capital growth for immediate highest
returns on 'investment', and as an sociopolitical entity out of any sane control, is quite simply unable to reflect accountable consideration of human cost and ecological consequences.
There is however hope!
Read John Maynard Keynes describing our coming era in
"The Economic Possibilities of Our Grandchildren":
"In this millennium, wealth will no longer be of social import, morals will change, and we shall be able to rid ourselves of the pseudo-moral principles which have hag-ridden us for two hundred years, by which we have exalted some of the most distasteful of human qualities into the position of the highest virtues. We will be able to dare to assess the money motive at its true value.
The love of money as a possession - as distinguished from love of money as a means to the enjoyments and realities of life - will be recognized for what it is, a somewhat disgusting morbidity, one of those semi-criminal, semi-pathological propensities, which one hands over with a shudder to the specialists in MENTAL DISEASE."
Demand sanity! Ask that private ownership of the globe be recognized as a delusion.
Your reader appreciative,
Jay Janson, servidor
P.S. When this writer was a child, the word 'capitalist' was used exclusively in a pejoritive, selfish and advantage taking, sense. Today our capitlaist owned media has cleaned up the term to mean someone enterprizing in very helpful and very necessary ways. But during WWII, the cold war and even today media commentators when rarely dare to that 'capitalism' is the better alternative 'communism' and 'socialism' with the term 'capitalism', but instead with 'freedom' and 'democracy.
Moon Raven: Thanks for the "headzup". And all the info you provide. I trust your perspective.
Rebel, I have noticed that suddenly there are right wing trolls on this site whenever there is a thread on Latin America.
Some of them are paid by the post.
I don't know about Greaseman, but I can certainly say that he is not telling the truth about his alleged "observations" in the Cathedral.
AMLO had nothing to do with attacking ANYONE in the cathedral.
Archbishop Rivera actually set up that whole caper to divert attention from the court case against him for protecting the pederasts.
The rule of thumb here is: ALWAYS look for what's being covered up by a bizarre bit of violence. Bombs and bomb threats are also common here when there's something being covered up.
Greaseman: You're not banned as far as I know. But I will say that after reading some of your other posts on other articles today, you sure look like a troll to me.
P.S. Moon Raven has been posting here for a long time and is very informed. I do not appreciate you calling her stupid.
I guess not. I will be, though, as I do not follow the party line here.
Moonraven: ¨The best that Mexico can do is take back, person by person, the territory the US ripped off in the invasion of 1847 and the Threaty of Guadalupe HIdalgo.¨
You are really deluded. Mexican illegals are, person by person, ESCAPING the failed policies of the Mexican government. And don´t blame it on the PAN, AMLO´s former party, the PRI, ran Mexico into the ground for 70 years before the PAN, democratically, threw them out in 2000. The last thing most Mexicans, outside of the limosuine liberals of the public university campuses, want to do is ¨take back¨ California or Texas. If they did, they would have to sneak all the way into Canada to find jobs. The average Mexican worker in the US does not want to make the US more like Mexico, he wishes Mexico were more like the US, because if it was, he would be able to stay home and work.
Walmart, unlike so many Mexican businesses, pays it taxes, and pays its Mexican employees better than the mom and pop stores or the Gigante or Ley supermarket chains it is competing with.
Finally, calling the PAN ¨fascist¨ is just stupid. It was the PAN, and not the PRD, that ended the PRI´s misrule. PAN members, including Calderon´s father were being jailed generations ago for defying the PRI, while AMLO and all his PRD brethren were happily ensconced in the PRI. Where the PAN is in power too long (like Baja California, where the PRI won Tijuana back in 2004), they go corrupt too. But fascist? I think you are just jealous that the Mexican people, or at least a plurality of them (because neither AMLO nor Calderon came close to winning 50% of the vote; AMLO should have called for a runoff, but did not because he knew he would have lost.) choose the PAN. And, having observed AMLO and his thugs doing things like attacking churchgoers in the Cathedral, there is not doubt they will continue to do so.
am I banned yet?
If Plan Mexico--now being called Plan Merida I believe--goes through, arms will be sent directly, as well as soldiers. Just like in Colombia.
A lot is done by simple bullying--from the base in the embassy.
Moon Raven: So, besides NAFTA, how does U.S. political influence Mexico's politics? How does it fund para military groups? Do we directly send arms to the Mexican government?
Rebel,
Mexico's blood is being shed in Iraq, even as I type this, for US corporate interests.
The US provided the dirty war consultant for last year's presidential campaign. They were not taking any chances with their oil that is under Mexico's soil and water.
Plan Mexico--which the US Congress may well reject--is all about grabbing Mexico's oil.
WalMart has one of its stores next to the pyramids of Teotihuacan.
Costco bought for a plate of lentils the famous Casino de la Selva property in Cuernavaca--tore it down, detroyed the murals and one of a kind monuments, paved over the prehispanic ruins and chopped down all the more than a hundred year old trees, destroying the last green area in Cuernavaca.
The federal, state and local governments here are all bought and paid for by transnationals--including the ones that transport and sell drugs.
I am not at all convinced that what you call a "mainstream left" in Mexico exists.
If you are referring to the PRD, it is essentially a loose coalition of political "tribes", each with its own cacique, fighting each other for a share of the public trough.
The problem with MALO is that he is part of an incrementalist project that believes that the structures of the status quo can used to somehow 'reform' the system. this is illusion and the project of the mainstream left in Mexico continues to buy into it. What was MALO's position on the devolution of the power of the office of the presidency? On the right of autonomy and the return of indigenous lands? MALO is Hilary Clinton in pants.
The EZLN and the Caracoles in La Libertad have left these power structures behind long ago, drawing instead on 2500 years of political tradition in the Tzotzil pueblos. This has little to nothing to do with Marcos, who has become almost a caricature of himself. But in the speeches and in the writings, in the late night committee meetings it has become consensus. the new equation of power has nothing to do with grasping at the structures of its current incarnation. thats what the traditional left will never understand.
The struggle is opened now on many fronts, and will continue to be...including in the blockades here in the north, where Six Nations are refusing to reliquish their right to land in the Grand Valley, Great Turtle Island, land so- called Canada stole and then sold to developers and real estate vultures. There the warrior societies and the grandmothers have been facing citizens paramilitaries and local and provincial police for the last 18 months. its nothing new.
this is truly a global struggle, the last battle against transnational capital and its national subsidiaries no longer belongs within so- called national boundaries. So when the paramilitaries come to the Caracoles, i hope they will be met by the EZLN and the brigades of internationals who support them.
it has now become the struggle of the conscious, of the peasants and indigenous people across the globe. The beauty and the horror of the struggle in Mexico and in all places is that it is now all of ours, we who would spill our own blood to see a new world born.
Greaseman:
You are fucking RUDE, man.
I PERSONALLY (and I DO have a right to an opinion here since it is based on a lot of on the ground experience and analysis) do not believe for a nanosecond that Marcos cost AMLO the presidency. He doesn't have that much influence in the mainstream voting public--and the EZLN folks have a policy of not voting. So you are WRONG.
What cost AMLO the presidency was the total of a whole of factors, including: MASSIVE VOTE BUYING by the PAN especially in rural areas served by social programs (in my village the going rate was 100 pesos, but folks who asked for 200 usually received it), the dirty war against him by the PAN, the PRI, Televisa and TV Azteca, Elba Esther Gordillo and her SNTE thugs, the Catholic hierarchy and the Chamber of Commerce (I may have inadvertently left someone out) and ELECTION FRAUD.
I didn't think much of him as a candidate, but I don't vote here, so that's moot.
He was clearly the lesser of evils, though--and would not have turned the army loose to rape and pillage all over Mexico in the name of the War on Narcotrafficking, nor would he have made deals in the dark with the multinational petroleum companies, nor would he have asked for the US military to invade Mexico (which it had not done since Pershing invaded Mexico in 1916 in "reprisal" for Pancho Vill's raid on Columbus, New Mexico).
I have never "waxed poetical" about any articles of the Mexican Constitution.
In regard to Article 33, however, since I have lived here (15 years) a fairly large number of folks have been arrested and deported in Chiapas for venturing into Zapatista territory on TOURIST VISAS--as even the "appearance" of political involvement is prohibited to tourists.
In addition, folks with FM-3 visas from NGOs even with specific permission to perform observations or service in the Zapatista zone have also had the terms of their visas violated, have been arrested and deported--including some Catholic priests who were there for many years on FM2 and FM3 visas were given the boot.
So, it seems that the government can arbitrarily decide when it will uphold article 33--even in violation of folks' rights--and when it won't (when it suits its governing party's political interests).
Was there a point you were trying to make, or were you just wanting to insult me?
Greaseman,
No need to condescend to me OR insult me. Not only am I intelligent, but I regularly give presentations about Latin America here on the ground, in the US and in the Middle East--so I am also pretty damn well-informed.
I live in the state of Morelos, in Central Mexico--where we are in our second PAN-controlled government. It may no longer be the Kidnapping Capital of Mexico like it was under the PRI, but it is far from being unproblematic.
When I referred to the going price for votes in my village, I was referring to the PAN buying votes there.
The best that Mexico can do is take back, person by person, the territory the US ripped off in the invasion of 1847 and the Threaty of Guadalupe HIdalgo.
As for joining the First World--you are preaching to the wrong woman--as I chose to LEAVE it.
Incidentally, Salinas sold NAFTA here in Mexico on the premise that Mexico would join the first world by ratifying it. On January 1, 1994 the end of Mexico's agriculture--read alimentary sovereignty--began.
I am not in favor of any political parties.
But I especially am not in favor of FASCIST political parties like the PAN.
Moonraven, be a little more specific. Marcos COST AMLO the presidency. It is that simple. (Of course, refusing to debate could also be said to have cost him the presidency, as could allegations of Venezuelan meddling.)
And, seeing AMLO in action over the last year, I think Mexico owes Marcos a debt of gratitude.
By the way, in another thread, you (moonraven) waxed poetical about Article 33 which prohibits foreigners from being involved in Mexican politics. At the time, you were referring to Aznar. In your studied opinion, does Article 33 also apply to all the European supporters of the Zapatistas who come to Chiapas, or is it only applicable to ¨fascists¨?
One of the problems here in Mexico with the EZLN is that they dropped out of the publi/media eye for awhile after the betrayal of the San Andrés Agreements by both house of the lefislature in 2001.
And when Marcos reappeared he got into some media bullshit with the ETA that brought him negative publicity.
Last year he began The Other Campaign, and was particularly virulent against the leftist presidential candidate, Andrés Manuel López Obrador. By doing so he joined the dirty war of the extreme right wing here.
The EZLN has said that the ballor box is not the answer for Mexico's infantile democratic process. Fine.
But his attacks on AMLO made him look like he was envious, and I believe it hurt the cause of indigenous folks here.
The EZLN lost a lot of its Italian support--and that meant it lost a lot of international media space.
I think Marcos should probably just back out of the limelight as a personality, and simply ensure that the indigenous comandantes get the message out.
With the amount of natural resources that have been identified in Zapatista territory, the movement must go forward or face extermination at the hands of the multinationals/Mexican government.
HOW do we stop this? Petitioning doesn't work. I would like something concrete I can do to support the Zapatistas.
What is so courageous about the EZLN is that they know what lies ahead in any confrontation with the State. And it is exactly this that seems to escape the liberal and so- called progressive communities of the north. that the kind of continuing and future struggle necessary to fundamentally alter the dehumanizing system underwhich we now currently live, will result in stacks of bodies perhaps not seen in the bloody history of so- called western civilization. these bodies will be of those who have sacrificed in the name of the liberation of our children and grandchildren and theirs again. The system of Moloc and Mamon will not be changed through legal or reasonable means. The question remains, who will be the vanguard to rise up in arms and when needed, lay down their lives in the coming wars of liberation? Those at Acteal and in the Caracoles have already done so and will do so again, with dignity and courage. When will we here in the north, in our material comfort and consumerist isolation join them and move forward into the lines of the capitalists? When, indeed. Siempre adelante!
I think the Mexican government needs to be pressured by the international community to recognize the Indigenous Peoples rights. After all Mexico signed it.
Moon Raven and other posters here: You all seem to be extremely well informed! Thanks for all your input. A question I have is what is America's role/influence in all of this? And how does Mexico's oil figure into the equation? I am very concerned that Mexican blood is going to be shed for U.S. and corporate interests, not for the freedom of the Mexican people. Any thoughts?
Incidentally, your comment about the PRD is spot on. All they are is a bunch of PRIista thieves who, for whatever reason, cannot get a position of power or nomination in the PRI.
The PAN, at least (with the disgusting exception of Elba Ester Gordillo) is still largely unpolluted with ex PRIistas.
Come on Moonraven, your posts are written in such a way that it is obvious you are intelligent. Fraud? Vote buying? I guess AMLO would know, since his closest advisors, Manuel Camacho Solis and Porfirio Munoz Ledo were DIRECTLY involved in the 1988 fraud that stole the presidency from Cardenas.
Vote buying? The PRD state government in Chiapas matched and exceeded anything the PAN could have done. Fraud? If you call 3% PAN in PRD controlled Tabasco fraud, I might agree with you. That number is so low it is statistically impossible.
I do not know what State you are living in, and you may well not want to share it. However, I am going to go out on a limb and bet it is in the South of Mexico. I will bet that almost EVERYBODY you know in your village did indeed vote for AMLO. The trouble is, in the northern states they want no part of him. Take a trip to Monterrey, Chihuahua, Tijuana, Hermosillo, Juarez, etc and ask the first ten people you see who they voted for. I doubt you will find more than one AMLO voter. And, frankly, the north outnumbers the south. And, the north wants to join the first world, not Central America.
Demand help from a government that mobilizes it's entire military to smuggle drugs but can't seem to finish a construction project because of nepotistic corruption...yeah, I'd hold my breath for them to give me justice....
The military makes MONEY transporting drugs and protecting drug traffickers.
They don't make money protecting the people.