- by Graham Holton
- The Guardian
- Issue #2116
Zapatista embroidery. “We salute all the Women of Mexico and the World.” Photo: Lorena – flickr.com (CC BY-NC-SA 2.0)
The announcement of the NAFTA (North American Free Trade Agreement) agreement between Mexico, Canada and the USA came into force on 1 January 1994. That day, the Zapatista Army of National Liberation (EZLN), or Zapatistas, seized large landholdings and occupied towns across the state of Chiapas, which borders Guatemala. Armed with makeshift guns, the masked Mayan peasant guerrilla movement, with Marxist-Leninist elements, demanded land rights, self-governance and the democratisation of Mexico. The EZLN created 43 Zapatista Rebel Autonomous Municipalities (MAREZ) governed by communal boards within an autonomous political system.
The EZLN proclaimed that private property was the root cause of Mayan dispossession, state violence, and environmental destruction. Land must therefore be held “in common.” The EZLN called upon the Mexican people to support its struggle for “work, land, housing, food, healthcare, education, independence, freedom, democracy, justice, and peace.” The Zapatistas soon gained worldwide support for their stand against global capital and its support of indigenous sovereignty.
The ejido is an organisation of indigenous communal property owners whose land rights were established in the post-Mexican Revolution land reforms of the 1920s. The ejidatarios supported the Zapatistas’ re-appropriation of land and the establishment of an autonomous, communal system of government. To thwart the Zapatista revolution, they were attacked by the state and paramilitary forces. The government of Carlos Salinas de Gortari sent 17,000 paramilitaries against 5,000 poorly armed Zapatistas in rebel-held territories. The Zapatistas have not used arms since then – until now.
The Zapatistas accuse President Andrés Manuel López Obrador, elected in 2018 as a centre-left populist, of turning a blind eye to the military’s human rights abuses and armed attacks. Two Zapatistas were detained on fabricated charges. One was tortured and unlawfully held for three years. The government has encouraged both non-Zapatistas and former Zapatistas to lay claim to the territories recuperated by the EZLN in 1994, creating conflict within communities.
Under López Obrador, the military has been empowered, and the paramilitaries have reappeared. Thirteen new National Guard barracks have been built across Chiapas. Recent information leaks, from Mexico’s Ministry of National Defense (SEDENA), show that the Zapatistas are spied on continuously. The military is concerned that the EZLN will disrupt major infrastructure projects, which the movement has denounced for destroying local ecosystems and the ways of life of indigenous communities.
According to the 2023 Fray Bartolomé Human Rights Center report, Chiapas, a Disaster, between 2010 and 2022 at least 16,755 people in the state of Chiapas were forcibly displaced. In May 2024 eleven people were massacred, bringing the total killed in the conflicts since 1994 to nearly 1,000 deaths. According to one account, Chiapas is “on the brink of civil war.” The cities are in chaos, “with roadblocks, assaults, kidnappings, extortion, forced recruitment, [and] shootouts.”
Armed incursions by drug cartels threaten indigenous sovereignty. The Sinaloa and Jalisco New Generation cartels are fighting for control of the Guatemala border, affecting the daily life of the indigenous communities. The EZLN struggles to maintain order against the paramilitaries who employ cartel hitmen. A human rights worker told InSight Crime that criminal groups “use the civilian population as a shield.” Chiapas ranks twenty-sixth out of thirty-two states in terms of homicides per one hundred thousand inhabitants.
In November 2023, to create greater stability in the region, the EZLN announced it would dismantle the old organising structure by decentralising power and communalising indigenous land use. Tasks would now be handled by the communities and their autonomous structures. Rebrii writes: “For the Zapatistas, revolution is a trial-and-error process without an end.”
So far this year, 12,771 have fled from 5,000 armed troops in Yajalón and the Tila municipality in the Sierra Madre mountain range. The towns were left empty, creating the largest displacements in southern Mexico in years. In Tila, armed groups burnt homes and vehicles, murdered and raped villagers. The military later escorted the displaced people back to Tila.
In June, President Obrador said the conflict in Tila was “a confrontation between the people themselves, because they have not been able to harmonise.” On 22 June, a leader of a group opposed to the ejidatarios was found tortured and murdered. The Catholic Church is attempting to mediate the conflict, but some residents see it as compromised. According to one resident interviewed by Truthdig, the Catholic church and NGOs are “complicit, working with the municipality.”
President López Obrador will leave office in September 2024, leaving behind a militarised Chiapas fighting an internal, violent low-intensity conflict. Thirty years after the EZLN uprising, land continues to foster displacement, dispossession and division within communities. The military are still feared and the government continues to break its promises. The Zapatistas continue to influence the balance of power and social dynamics within Mexico.
