A Day In Zapatista Land

by Mark Lucey

As Chris and I walked along the dirt road leading out of the village of Morelia in Chiapas, the Mexican sun was blazing down on our necks. I was squinting despite the best efforts of my baseball cap and holding the plastic cup of morning java that I had forgotten to put down in the sudden rush out of the cement building where we Peace Campers stay. A man from the village had shown up at the door, out of breath, and said, "El ejercito viene!" (The army is coming!) I shook Chris from his slumber in his hammock and, the ten of us Peace Campers grabbed our cameras and raced out the door to join the community in blocking the army from entering the town.

The evening before we had attended a memorial service for three people who died during the January 1994 offensive when members of the Zapatista National Liberation Army (EZLN) took over the local governments of several larger cities in Chiapas. Before the fighting gave over to peace talks between the EZLN and the Mexican government, numerous soldiers had died, including three from Morelia. Toward the end of the service, several men rushed into the building and announced that they had received word that the army was coming. I followed the running crowd of people out the door and down the road to the village entrance, when I suddenly realized the men had all disappeared. Only women and children were blockading the army!

A few of the women went into the woods by the side of the road with machetes and cut branches off of trees to arm the other women. The children collected little piles of rocks. Chris and I volunteered to go up the road a bit to be lookouts.

As we walked up the road in the increasing darkness, I wondered if I really wanted to be the first to encounter the military. A young boy and his even younger brother came running up to us.

"Tienes miedo?" (Are you afraid?), the boy asked excitedly.

"No!," Chris said as emphatically as he could muster. "Are you afraid?"

"No!," he echoed, looking as brave as a four year old can.

We waited there as the sky grew black and the view of the 60 women waiting in the road behind us faded into the darkness. Eventually a man came to tell us the army had turned around and we could go back to the village.

This morning, the same call had come. We marched down the road and reviewed what we, as Peace Campers, were supposed to do. We were not to become involved in the confrontation in any way. We are witnesses, photographers and an international presence to deter the military from violence. Our job is to just be there.

It seemed another false alarm. The people from the village soon left to go back to their chores, and I stayed at the lookout spot with several Peace Campers and children. I lay down in the rubble, pulled my cap over my eyes and dozed off to sleep.

"The army's here!" I sat up and looked around. Was it true? Indeed, up the road another 100 meters was a line of military trucks filled with soldiers. I jumped to my feet and saw two of the children running toward the village, yelling at the top of their lungs. I turned back toward the military convoy and saw that they had stopped. A man from the front vehicle was checking us out through a pair of binoculars.

Out of thin air, the women appeared. I can think of no better way to describe them than as Angry Moms. If you've ever seen a mother react to the unjust treatment of her child, multiply that by 100. A mother's rage is incomparable. They came up the road wielding sticks and clubs and shouting with a ferocity that I was completely unprepared for. A crowd of children were at their feet, carrying sticks and rocks.

"Killers! Assassins!"

"Sons of whores! We don't need your army here!"

"Go back to your barracks! Morelia is not your barracks!"

As they arrived at the crest of the hill where we waited, they came to a stop and collected themselves, waiting for others to catch up. I looked toward the army and saw, to my surprise, that they were turning their trucks around and starting to drive off! When the women saw this they surged forward and charged ahead.

All I could do was stay with them. That was my job. My mind told me it was probably not the safest idea to go running at the military with sticks and rocks, but my pale face might deter the soldiers from opening fire or beating anybody up.

As we came upon the trucks the shouting grew louder and rocks began to fly. The soldiers in the tail of the convoy had to shield themselves as rocks bounced off their helmets.

"This is it," I thought. "One of those soldiers is gonna start mowing people down with his AK-47." As I ran, I scanned the sides of the road, thinking about where I would dive if anybody started shooting.

I had assumed that the women and children were going to run up to the trucks to let them know they weren't afraid and then let the trucks go. But they kept right on a-running after the convoy, in the cloud of dust kicked up by the trucks.

"Stay with us, campamentista!," one of the women yelled to me. "We need you to stay with us!" I looked at these women, 4'5" tall, with babies on their backs, little plastic shoes on their feet and sticks in their hands and said to myself, "If I can't stay up with them, I'm a sad excuse..."

After about two kilometers, the convoy came to a stop again. The women yelled for everyone to catch up and then surged upon the army like a flood. The children launched rocks, many bigger than a baseball, with amazing accuracy, and the women beat against the trucks with their sticks.

"You should be ashamed of yourself," one woman yelled at a timid looking soldier. "Your army killed my brother! How can you be an assassin and kill your own people?." Soon there were about 100 people yelling and screaming at about 100 soldiers in 10 trucks.

Several high-official looking men climbed out of the trucks and came toward the Peace Campers. A guy named Pedro from Mexico City approached them and they began to exchange words that I could not hear above the noise. I stood off to the side while Chris frantically snapped photos.

A man stepped toward us. He looked straight out of a Tommy Lee Jones movie with mirrored sunglasses, a big mustache, a baseball hat and a coat that said Narcotico. He called over to Chris, "Where are you from?"

"The United States," Chris called back.

"Let me see your papers."

"Are you Migra?" (Migra is the Immigration Police whose main duty is to kick pesky international solidarity activists out of the country so that the military can go about its business of terrorizing the indigenous population.)

"Yes."

"Let me see," Chris challenged him. The man pulled out a badge from his pocket and flashed it quickly, but not quickly enough.

"You're not Migra," said Chris. The man smiled, put his badge away, got back in his truck with the others and pulled away again.

"Maybe this time they'll let them go," I thought to myself. But no such luck. The villagers ran after the trucks, continuing to hurl insults and rocks. Another kilometer further, the military trucks stopped again, and the familiar scene ensued. By now, men from Morelia had decided it was safe and had joined us.

I looked over and saw Chris beside one of the trucks taking a close-up photo of one of the soldiers. Then they exchanged some words. Later I asked Chris, "What did you say to him?"

"I pointed at his gun and said, 'That's your gringo aid,' and then I pointed to my camera and said, 'And this is their gringo aid.'"

I sat down with the other Peace Campers in a group by the side of the road and waited to see what would happen. The Narcotico guy came over to us and said, "This is your fault! You foreigners organized this. You are putting these crazy ideas in the Indians' heads."

The presence of foreigners in the EZLN villages has created a major impediment to the military's desires to control the indigenous population. Dead foreigners are very bad press.

Finally, the men climbed back into their trucks, and the army drove off in a cloud of dust. This time the people from Morelia did not follow. They clapped and yelled a few final insults and then we all turned to walk back to town. A woman came up beside me and said, "So now you've gotten a taste of what life is like for us in the EZLN. We live in constant tension and fear of the military when all we ask for is the right to be treated with dignity."

"Thank you for being here with us today," a man said.

The victory of having chased off the military was colored by a sense of foreboding. "The military will be back," I thought to myself.

What I saw that day showed me clearly that the EZLN struggle is a struggle of life or death for the indigenous Maya. Those women don't fear death; they fear that their children and their children's children will have to live in the same poverty and cruel, undignified social conditions that they have.

Additional Information:

Against the history of dual exploitation of people and the land, the Zapatistas rose in rebellion on the day the North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA) was implemented. By calling for the elimination of communally held land and opening the land in Chiapas and throughout Mexico to the exploitation of multinational corporations, NAFTA signed a death sentence against the autonomy and cultural identity of the indigenous people of Mexico.

Evidence has shown that the military repression of the Zapatista rebellion is as much an economic as a political struggle. International Paper wants rights to the trees in the Lacandon jungle, and Hydro Quebec wants the natural gas (see EF!J Eostar, 1997). This compels environmentalists to develop an analysis of the war of neoliberalism and NAFTA against the indigenous peoples, ancient forests and wild areas of the Earth.

The attempt by the Mexican Army to enter Morelia on January 8 is part of an intensifying campaign of military harassment of Zapatista communities that began in January. On December 22, members of a paramilitary group backed by the ruling party killed 45 people in Acteal village. In a characteristic response, President Zedillo appeared on national television appealing to the Zapatistas to return to the peace talks. Then he sent 5,00 additional troops to the warzone.

The army has entered many Zapatista communities in blatant violation of the peace process. These actions seem designed to provoke a military response from the Zapatistas and to serve as a pretext for even more aggressive military action.

International human rights observers are also being targeted by these actions. On January 7, the army entered the community of La Union and attempted to take two human rights observers into custody. They were prevented from doing so when community members came out with sticks, stones and machetes and expressed their determination to fight to keep the observers in their community.

The presence of an officer wearing a Narcotico jacket in Morelia signifies that the government wants to define its actions against the Zapatistas as anti-narcotics actions. Since much of the new weaponry, vehicles and other equipment used in these actions is from the US and may have been provided exclusively for use in "anti-drug operations," the presence of Mexican narcotics agents in these actions serves propaganda purposes. In addition to demanding an end to all US military assistance to Mexico, activists in the US should demand an investigation into the use of equipment for anti-drug operations against the Zapatistas. Please send letters, faxes and communications expressing concern at the growing climate of violence and insecurity in the State of Chiapas, the impunity enjoyed by paramilitary groups, and the recent troop movements into civilian Zapatista communities in the conflict zone.

Out of fear of further violence, 8,000 people fled Acteal and the adjoining communities. Even those taken in by nearby communities live with little food and inadequate shelter. There is a great need for emergency medical assistance.

For more information and to send donations, contact the National Commission for Democracy in Mexico, 2001 Montana, Suite B, El Paso, TX 79903; (213) 254-9550.

Send your communications to Dr. Ernesto Zedillo Ponce de León, Presidente de la República, Palacio Nacional, 06067, México, D.F., Mexico; fax (+52 5) 515 17 94/542 1648.