In the early hours of 1994, the collective mass of an indigenous army descended from the mountains of Chiapas Mexico and into the cities and world consciousness. The Declaration of the Lacandona Jungle, Subcomandante Insurgente Marcos, short dark sickly Indians carrying AK-47's, .22 calibre pigeon rifles, and wooden sticks, declared war on Mexico's ``illegitimate government'', and said ``That's Enough!''. Their audacity seemed surreal. After 12 days of bombardment by the Mexican Federal Army, national and international opinion forced the image conscious Mexican government and ruling Institutional Revolutionary Party (PRI), to call a cease fire and negotiate with the Zapatista rebels, members of the Zapatista Army of National Liberation (EZLN).
The rebel leaders took the accord reached with the government in San Cristobal de las Casas that February to its base of support for approval. In June of that same year, in the Second Declaration of the Lacandona Jungle, the Zapatistas announced the overwhelming rejection of the accord by their communities, and called for a National Democratic Convention (CND) whose plenary session would be held in rebel territory in a convention center that they would construct and christen Aguascalientes, in honor of the 1914 site of the constitutional convention during the Mexican revolution.
With the CND, the Zapatistas were attempting to construct together with Mexican civil society what the government was refusing to discuss or negotiate; a fundamental reform to the Mexican state that would ensure democracy, justice, and a peace with dignity and social justice. The failure to address those issues had been the reason for the rejection of the accord by the Zapatista base. The government had offered them more schools, hospitals, and money, insisting that Chiapas was a problem local in time and in place, not a profound national problem. The Chiapan Indians looked to history and to their dead to argue that was not the case.
The August 6-8 CND was a euphoric, albeit difficult, meeting. People left feeling that their wills would transform the stubborn political bulldozer. Some thought it would happen at the August 21st elections. Others in the civil disobedience and protests that would be organized afterwards. But outside Chiapas little happened. The PRI won and despite many election irregularities, international opinion was satisfied. Much of Mexico's movement for social change behaved as it was in a hangover.
But in Chiapas, the non-Zapatistas became more rebellious. Everyone was convinced that the opposition candidate Amado Avendaño had won the governorship, yet the PRI candidate Eduardo Robledo Rincon was declared the winner. Many municipalities outside of Zapatista territory declared their autonomy, kicked out the local PRI representative and police chief and recognized Amado Avendaño as their future governor. The Democratic State Assembly of the Chiapan People (AEDEPCH) was formed. On December 8, 1994, the PRI inaugurated Robledo Rincon in the state's capital, Tuxtla Gutierrez, under heavy military guard. Three hours later in a ceremony held in the central park of the same city and under the protection of 7000 Indians and peasants, Avendaño was inaugurated as the transitional governor in rebellion. AEDEPCH became his cabinet.
For the EZLN, the worst thing that could happen was that nothing would happen. They had long warned that the PRI was placing its bets on the fact that people would grow tired, bored, and forget about the Zapatistas and why they had risen up in arms. After the August elections, the governments strategy seemed to be paying off everywhere except in Chiapas. It only seemed a matter of time.
The Zapatistas had also often warned that they would view the forced inauguration of Robledo Rincon as a breaking of the cease fire agreement. On December 19 the Zapatistas announced that they had broken through government lines without firing a single shot and took over towns in 38 municipalities all over the state of Chiapas. Within days the peso fell. Mexico economic system was in turmoil as the country seemed to be at the border of another war.
Just as it had happened almost a year ago, nationals and internationals came to Chiapas, to stay, observe, and prevent the fighting. Not a shot was fired between the two armies, although the abductions, human rights violations, and torture by landlord's paramilitary forces continued, as it always has in Chiapas. The government and the EZLN were once agained forced to the bargaining table by public opinion and action and the Zapatistas presented their Third Declaration of the Lacandona Jungle. Their they reiterated what they were fighting for and called for a National Liberation Movment composed of all groups struggling for democracy in Mexico and a transitional government based on the original 1917 Mexican constitution.
Then on February 9th, in the midst of negotiating with the EZLN, President Zedillo came on television and announced that it had uncovered arms caches belonging to the EZLN, that it had identified Subcomandante Marcos as Rafael Sebastian Vicente Guillen, that arrest warrants had been issued for the Zapatista leadership, and that the Federal army had already been ordered to advance into Zapatista territory to carry out these arrests. It was a move that caught the whole country by surprise. Marcos and the Zapatista leadership in Guadalupe Tepeyac, managed to leave ten minutes before the arrival of army tanks. The entire town, like many others, fled with the Zapatistas into the mountains. 1000 soldiers were stationed in towns with 100 families. Food, seeds, water, animals, tools were destroyed as the government deemed it politically easier and safer to starve and infect the population. What killing did take place were usually carried out by paramilitary groups tied to the landed elite instead of directly to the government.
For an incredible third time, civilian mobilizations, along with an elusive enemy and a crumbling economy, force the PRI back to the negotiating table with the Zapatistas. And for an incredible third time the Zapatistas used the opportunity to continue their dialogue with civil society via their national and international plebicite, the ``Consulta Nacional e Internacional''. In a country where the ruling PRI's own plebicite on its economic plan only managed to achieve a voter participation of 600,000 voters in the spring of 1995, the Zapatistas August 1995 referendum drew 1,100,000 voters nationally and 80,000 voters internationally on questions relating to what the Zapatistas were struggling for and how they should be struggling.
The unexpected success of the referendum led to a very productive negotiating session in September 1995 in the town of San Andrés Sacam Ch'en de los Pobres which in turn led to the workshops on Indigenous rights that autum and to the Indigenous Forum convoqued by the EZLN from January 3 to 9 1996. During this forum the EZLN demonstrated it capacity of convocation by bringing together 250 representatives from over thirty indigenous Mexican ethnicities and 150 non- indigenous Mexicans. On the other hand while the EZLN's reputation and capacity to convoque was shown to be national and even international, it remained clear that its capacity to organize was limited to Chiapas.
But as the construction of the Aguascalientes II showed, this organization in Chiapas, was extensive, creative, and profoundly commited. Aguascalientes II were the four cultural and conventions centers that the Zapatistas constructed at the end of 1995, the Phoenix of the CND Aguascalientes destroyed by the Federal Army after February's offensive. Three of them were located in the jungle communites of La Realidad, La Garrucha, and Morelia.
The fourth and largest of the Aguascalientes was in the highland community of Oventic, a two hour drive from San Cristobal de las Casas, one kilometer away from a Federal Army military cuartel and a half hour drive from the site of the negotiations. The existence of the newly constructed Aguascalientes II became known around the 20th of December. They were to be part of the 2nd year anniversary celebrations. This was taken as a serious threat by the Mexican government whose intelligence organization had not noticed that for the last two months the Zapatista insurgents had been constructing a convention center including stage, stands, living quarters, and latrines, right under their nose. Tanks were immediately sent in to Oventic and a tense confrontation began when the town's people blocked the road, prevented the tanks from passing and began verbally insulting the soldiers. A last minute accord which prevented the reinitiation of hostilities was reached between the EZLN and the government, thanks to the help of bishop Samuel Ruiz's National Commision of Intermidation (CONAI) and a small group of legislatures from a group called the Commision for Concorida and Peace (COCOPA).
During the first hours of 1996, in all four Aguascalientes, the Zapatista Army of National Liberation read their Fourth Declaration of the Lacandona Jungle where they announced the formation of the Zapatista Front of National Liberation (FZLN), ``a civil and nonviolent organization, independent and democratic, mexican and national...A political force which does not struggle to take political power but for a democracy where those who govern, govern by obeying...Our word, our song and our cry, is so that the dead will no longer die. So that they may live we struggle, so that they live we sing.'' The EZLN would keep its arms, but the major part of its effort would be channeled into organizing with other groups in the FZLN.
The other major announcement in the Fourth Declaration was the intercontinental convention against neoliberalism. A meetings of all peoples from the Americas, Europe, Asia, Africa, and Oceana in five seperate conventions in April and one final meetings in the summer of 1996 to take place in the Aguascalientes II to discuss the economic, political, social, and cultural, consequences of neoliberism and how to resist it and struggle for humanity. Is that the sort of crazy dreaming and surrealism necessary to make us believe in the possibility of change?
Oscar Hernández
visitors since 13 Feb 1999