Zapatistturne och folkomröstning i Mexiko

BASTA! "They are going to have to kill off all of us, and even so, the trees will continue to be Zapatistas, as will the rocks and dogs." While the Mexican rich toasting 1994 celebrated their new status as a "First World" country, thousands of Zapatista freedom-fighters came out of the jungle and highlands in the previously forgotten state of Chiapas. Timing their uprising with the first day of NAFTA, the rebels quickly stripped away the official mask of economic well-being and exposed the reality of worsening hunger, malnutrition and repression. With agricultura= l production shifted to export and animal feeds, the Zapatista army called the treaty a "death sentence" for the indigenous population. Hundreds of Zapatista communities have organised themselves into 38 "autonomous municipalities" to regain control from big business, landowner= s and the 70-year dictatorship of the rulingparty. In these liberated zones= , villages elect their own community representatives, teachers, and indigenous councils - creating political and social structures firmly rooted in their Mayan past. The Mexican government continues to wage an intensive propaganda andmilitary campaign to undermine the Zapatistas and destroy the autonomous municipalities, failing to comply with the peace accords it signed in 1996. On March 21st this year, 5000 Zapatista women and men will travel throughout Mexico as part of a national consultation on the recognition of the rights of Indian peoples and for an end to the war of extermination. According to recent communiques, resistance is stronge= r than ever. For more info: http://www.ezln.org/ and http://www.flag.blackened.net/revolt/zapatista.html. Recommended reading: "First World, Ha! Ha! Ha!", E Katzenberger, City Lights San Francisco, 1995.