Chiapas City

national | miscellaneous | news report Saturday January 25, 2003 14:02 by Johnny - Anarchist Prisoner Support soberagain at imapunk dot com c/o Po Box 3355, Dublin 7. Ireland

Rebels

Retake

Rebels ‘Retake’ Chiapas City

On January 1 some 15,000–20,000 indigenous supporters of Mexico’s rebel Zapatista National Liberation Army (EZLN) marched in San Cristóbal de las Casas in the southeastern state of Chiapas to mark the ninth anniversary of their 1994 uprising. The huge nighttime march was a symbolic, peaceful “retaking” of the city, which the rebels seized with a surprise armed attack on January 1, 1994. Carrying machetes and torches, the demonstrators listened as seven masked EZLN commanders denounced Mexico’s main political parties, the government of President Vicente Fox Quesada and neoliberal “globalization,” and expressed support for the struggles of Mexican campesinos, “the political struggle of the Basque people,” self-determination for Venezuela and “the rebel Argentine people.” “No to the terrorism of [U.S. President George W.] Bush and [Saudi millionaire Osama] bin Laden,” chanted the crowd, which had come from indigenous communities through much of the state.

The mobilization was the EZLN’s largest since 2001, when the rebels mounted a large campaign for indigenous rights legislation, and it also marked the official end of the year and a half of silence the rebels maintained after Congress passed legislation that was unacceptable to the EZLN and most indigenous groups. (La Jornada (Mexico) 1/2/03; El Nuevo Herald (Miami) 1/3/03 from AP)

On December 30 the EZLN’s main spokesperson, “Insurgent Sub-Commander Marcos,” set a new, more aggressive tone with a letter published in the Mexican daily La Jornada. The letter dealt with the government’s efforts to remove indigenous communities set up over the past few years in the Montes Azules ecological reserve in southeastern Chiapas. The EZLN talked to representatives of the communities, who said they would not leave until all the EZLN’s demands had been met. “We told them we support them totally,” Marcos wrote. “So it is good for everyone to know this, and in time: in the case of Zapatista villages, there will be no `peaceful removals.’” (LJ 12/30/03)

Marcos was referring to the “peaceful removal” on December 19 of one community, Lucio Cabañas, named after a rebel leader in Guerrero in the 1970s. Faced with the Federal Preventive Police (PFP) and arrest orders for environmental crimes, the small community’s members agreed to accept the government’s offer to provide them with 20 hectares of land, medical care and temporary shelter, to pay for the corn they lost in moving and to drop the criminal charges. (LJ 12/20/02) On December 29 the army announced “overflights” of other communities in the Montes Azules region, suggesting that the military was planning operations for further removals. (LJ 12/31/02)

For more info, see: www.americas.org