Lacandon Jungle - The Reserve and The Zapatistas

The Reserve and The Zapatistas

EZLN, commonly known as the Zapatistas, came to the forefront of Chiapas politics in the mid 1990s. Since then, their bases of support have mostly come from indigenous communities in the settled areas of the Lacandon Jungle and the areas around San Cristobal de las Casas. While migration to the Lacandon had been occurring earlier in the 20th century, it accelerated even more in the 1990s, with the Zapatistas encouraging people to seize “unoccupied jungle.” For this reason, the Zapatistas do not have the support of the Lacandon Mayas, who have also feared for their villages’ and people’s safety when confronted by the EZLN.

The Zapatistas claim that as indigenous farmers, they are the best protectors of the rainforest, and that they want to turn Montes Azules into an “Indian Farmers’ Reserve”, a patchwork of farms and jungle.

This pits them against the Lacandon Maya and environmentalist groups who state that the jungle cannot take any more farming. They also state that the agricultural methods do not help alleviate the migrants’ economic system as they can only farm a plot for a couple of harvests before the soil is depleted.

The Zapatistas have accused the environmentalists of siding with the government and corporate interests, and the Lacandons are too small in number to challenge the other groups, despite being the legal owners of much of the reserve. There were some attempts to evict settlers from the Reserve, especially from the thirty two undocumented settlements, but it was met by fierce resistance by the Zapatistas and their allies.

In 2005, some Zapatista allied communities decided to relocate on their own, while still opposing forced resettlement. These included the settlements of Primero de Enero, Santa Cruz, Ocho de Octubre and San Isidro, with all moved to areas outside the Reserve. Since then in a communiqué, EZLN leader Subcomandante Marcos warned against trying force the removal of any Zapatista allied community.

In 2008, Zapatistas and allied prohibited the entrance of federal police and army into ejidos such as La Garrucha, San Alejandro and Hermenegildo Galena to search for marijuana fields. It claims that these forces are outside their jurisdiction to do so. However, as late as 2010, illegal settlements, new and old, were being dislodged by police and military forces and moved to areas outside the conservation zones. In 2011, EZLN issued another warning that operations against these settlements pose a threat to indigenous people in the state. They and certain NGOs such as Maderas del Pueblo de Sureste oppose programs such as Reducing Emissions from Deforestation and Forest Degradation (REDD) as it “commodifies” indigenous culture, giving a commercial value to it vis-à-vis the environment. One aspect of the REDD program is to pay local ejido or other communal land owners to keep parts of their lands in a wild state and/or participate in reforestation of them.