TUXTLA GUTIÉRREZ - In January 2004, it will be ten years since the Zapatista Army of Liberation (EZLN) took up arms in the Mexican state of Chiapas. The rebels set themselves an unlikely mission: to declare war on neoliberalism.
In fact, it was an urgent demand for recognition and participation. For respect for Indian rights and culture, and for real democracy in a country where the same party had been in power since 1929. With the speed of the internet, the Indian peasants have won sympathy around the world. They had few weapons, but the creative way in which their legendary leader Subcomandante Marcos managed to shape resistance in the age of globalisation made them the forerunners of the alterglobalists.
Today, things have gone quiet around the zapatists. Not because their demand for recognition has lost importance. A dirty war is raging in Chiapas that seeks to stifle any form of participation. One of the centres of conflict, where today's showdown between the EZLN and the government is taking place, is Montes Azules, The Blue Mountains. That is a nature reserve in the Lacandon forest, inhabited by Indian communities, some of which are Zapatista supports. Some of those communities are now threatened with eviction. Officially, that action is motivated by ecological discourse. In reality, there are other interest groups that want to derive their (economic) benefit from the forest. However, their agenda is thwarted by indigenous resistance.
Meanwhile, the government is sparing no money or resources to break this resistance. For the Zapatistas, however, it is also a question of resisting a model of development that is imposed as the only possible one, whereas their struggle is a struggle for diversity. They themselves try to give shape and colour to this diversity in the autonomous communities, where the Indians practise self-government.
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- De ongewenste indianen van Chiapas, Mexico, MO*, 3/07/2003.
