Zapatista Army of National Liberation - History

History

Main article: History of the Zapatista Army of National Liberation See also: Chiapas conflict We don’t want to impose our solutions by force, we want to create a democratic space. We don’t see armed struggle in the classic sense of previous guerrilla wars, that is as the only way and the only all-powerful truth around which everything is organized. In a war, the decisive thing is not the military confrontation but the politics at stake in the confrontation. We didn't go to war to kill or be killed. We went to war in order to be heard. —Subcomandante Marcos

The Zapatistas went public on January 1, 1994, the day when the North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA) came into effect. On that day, they issued their First Declaration from the Lacandon Jungle and their Revolutionary Laws. The declaration amounted to a declaration of war on the Mexican government, which they considered so out of touch with the will of the people as to make it completely illegitimate.

Their initial goal was to instigate a revolution in all of Mexico, but as this did not happen, they used their uprising as a platform to call the world's attention to their movement to protest the signing of NAFTA, which the EZLN believed would increase the gap between rich and poor people in Chiapas. The EZLN also called for greater democratization of the Mexican government which had been controlled by the Institutional Revolutionary Party (PRI) for 65 years and for land reform mandated by the 1917 Constitution of Mexico but largely ignored by the PRI. The EZLN did not demand independence from Mexico, but rather autonomy, and (among other things) that the natural resources that are extracted from Chiapas benefit more directly the people of Chiapas.

On the morning of January 1, 1994, an estimated 3,000 armed Zapatista insurgents seized towns and cities in Chiapas, including Ocosingo, Las Margaritas, Huixtán, Oxchuc, Rancho Nuevo, Altamirano, and Chanal. They freed the prisoners in the jail of San Cristóbal de las Casas, and set fire to several police buildings and military barracks in the area. The guerrillas enjoyed brief success, but the next day Mexican army forces counter-attacked and fierce fighting broke out in and around the market of Ocosingo. The Zapatista forces took heavy casualties, and retreated from the city into the surrounding jungle.

Armed clashes in Chiapas ended on January 12, 1994, with a ceasefire brokered by the Catholic diocese in San Cristóbal de las Casas under Bishop Samuel Ruiz, a well known liberation theologian. Some of the land taken over by the Zapatistas in 1994 was retained, but the territory they held militarily for a little more than a year was overrun by the Mexican army in a surprise ceasefire breach in February 1995. The Zapatista villages were mostly abandoned following the offensive, and the rebels fled into the mountains after breaking out of the Mexican army perimeter.

The extraordinarily complex and rich history of political discussion and organizing in Chiapas from the 1970s to the 1990s produced something genuinely original, a new leftist language and vision. This includes negotiation about what it means to be Indian within a larger Mexican nation. It includes discussion about new forms of democracy and an inventiveness regarding civil society - exemplified by the convention in the jungle; by the Zapatistas’ national consulta, in which they asked people around the nation to comment and vote; by Marcos’s communiqués; and by the accords on Indian autonomy hammered out with government negotiators in 1996. The new leftist vision also includes a communication and public debate deeply rooted in popular cultural idioms - indeed, in the language of rock and roll and its progeny. —Dissent magazine

Although army camps were set up along all major thoroughfares, the army failed to capture the guerrilla movement's commanders. Instead, the Mexican government pursued a policy of negotiation, while the Zapatistas developed a mobilization and media campaign through numerous newspaper comunicados and over time a Sixth Declaration of the Lacandon Jungle with no further military actions on their part. After the First Declaration from the Lacandon Jungle, subsequent declarations have focused on non-violent solutions, both through political channels and through the assumption of many of the functions of government in the Chiapas state of southeastern Mexico. Other groups within Chiapas, such as the pacifist Las Abejas, support many of the goals of the Zapatista Revolution without condoning the use of violence to achieve those goals. A strong international internet presence prompted numerous left-wing international groups to support the Zapatista movement.

With the new government of President Vicente Fox (the first non-PRI president of Mexico in over 70 years) in 2001, the Zapatistas marched on Mexico City to present their case to the Mexican Congress. Although Fox had stated earlier that he could end the conflict "in fifteen minutes," the EZLN rejected watered-down agreements and created 32 "autonomous municipalities" in Chiapas, thus partially implementing their demands without government support but with some funding from international organizations.

On June 28, 2005, the Zapatistas presented the Sixth Declaration of the Lacandon Jungle, declaring their principles and vision for Mexico and the world. This declaration reiterates the support for the indigenous peoples, who comprise roughly one third of the population of the state of Chiapas, and extends the cause to include "all the exploited and dispossessed of Mexico". It also expresses the movement's sympathy to the international alter-globalization movement, and offers to provide material aid to those in Cuba, Bolivia, Ecuador and elsewhere, with whom they make common cause. The declaration ends with an exhortation for all who have more respect for humanity than for money to join with the Zapatistas in the struggle for social justice both in Mexico and abroad. The declaration called for an alternative national campaign (the "Other Campaign") as an alternative to the presidential campaign. In preparation for this alternative campaign, the Zapatistas invited to their territory over 600 national leftist organizations, indigenous groups and non-governmental organizations in order to listen to their claims for human rights in a series of biweekly meetings that culminated in a plenary meeting on September 16, the day Mexico celebrates its independence from Spain. In this meeting, Subcomandante Marcos requested official adherence of the organizations to the Sixth Declaration, and detailed a six-month tour of the Zapatistas through all 31 Mexican states that took place concurrently with the electoral campaign starting January 2006.