Becoming a “community in arms”

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Marcos argues rightly that whatever the previous political theories and inclinations of the FLN may have been, the real question is: What was the process that led to theof the newly established EZLNthe Indigenous community? The real issue, then, is their transformation from a guerrilla group to “a community in arms.”

The EZLN soon understood that none of the existing theories and strategies claimed by the different trends of the traditional Marxist guerrilla organizations would apply to the conditions they met in Chiapas. Indeed, the contact of the EZLN with the Indigenous communities led to a kind of conversion of the original group, a process that Marcos describes as follows:

We really suffered a process of re-education, of restyling. As if they had disarmed us. As if they had dismantled all we were made up of — Marxism, Leninism, socialism, urban culture, poetry, literature — all that formed part of us, and things we did not even know we had. They disarmed us and then armed us again, but in a different way. And that was the only way to survive… the work that the guerrilla nucleus of the FLN developed in Chiapas could only mature and become the EZLN through the cosmovision and tradition of resistance of different Indigenous groups.

Finding themselves lacking a political doctrine that could designate exact goals for their aspired “revolution,” lacking a plan for mobilizing the Indigenous communities to support them — all this increased the EZLN’s humility before the rich tradition of Indigenous resistance that was being conferred to them.

Marcos is quoted as saying “I think that our only virtue as theorists was to have the humility to recognize that our theoretical scheme did not work, that it was very limited, that we had to adapt ourselves to the reality that was being imposed on us.” With time, however, their “humility” developed into the central notions of the Zapatistas’ forms of social organization: “To lead by obeying” (mandar obedeciendo) and “We walk asking questions” (preguntando caminamos). By definition, these strategies exclude the possibility of pre-defining a path or point of arrival.

In a letter written in 1995, Marcos tells of the many changes the EZLN had gone through: “We did not propose it. The only thing that we proposed to do was to change the world; everything else has been improvisation.” However, as John Holloway quotes Marcos: “We had to adapt ourselves to the reality that was being imposed on us…But the result was not that reality imposed itself on theory, as some argue, but that the confrontation with reality gave rise to a whole new and immensely rich theorization of revolutionary practice.”

Following their first encampment, the newly-created EZLN gradually made contact with the local communities, initially through family contacts. Then, from about 1985 onwards, more and more of the communities sought out the Zapatistas to help them defend themselves from the police or the farmers’ armed “white guards”. Ever increasing numbers joined the military wing of the EZLN, on a full-time basis, or forming part of the part-time militia.

Meanwhile, the rest of the community was providing material support to the insurgents. The members of the EZLN received daily supplies of food, aid and information from their families and friends, who continued on with the daily activities of farming, hunting and gathering, artisanal and waged labor through which the communities survived and thus became Zapatista communities.

Inspired by Indigenous traditions of militancy

The Mexican Revolution (1910-1917), led by Emilio Zapata, had served as a powerful inspiration for the EZLN and the Indigenous communities in Mexico, as well as for other kindred social movements in Latin America: “We are the product of 500 years of struggle . . . but today we say Ya Basta! Enough is enough,” announced the first communiqué. It thus emphasized the continuities among interrelated struggles for the redistribution of lands, for communal ownership, and for a radical democratization of the political system.

The EZLN drew especially on the Chiapas communities’ traditions of self-organization, their continuous struggle against dispossession and oppression during the 20 years prior to the arrival of EZLN members in 1983.

Throughout the 1960s and 70s, peasant unions and other grassroots organizations received support from outreach activities of the Catholic diocese under the leadership of Bishop Samuel Ruíz and other Catholic catechists informed by the concepts of liberation theology. These extensive grassroots efforts culminated in 1974, with the First Indigenous Congress.

In accord with its community-based approach, the church saw the congress as a means of giving voice to Indigenous communities, encouraging them to select their own delegates and conceptualize the problems that confronted them. These concerns included the aggressive encroachment of the big cattle estates onto communal land, the corruption of government officials and their involvement with the big landowners, and the absence of labor rights for plantation workers, as well as scarcity regarding food, education and health.

The 1974 congress and resistance organizations, which appeared in Chiapas shortly afterwards, reflected the high level of political consciousness and militancy of the Indigenous communities before the Zapatistas’ arrival. As Judith Adler Hellman emphasizes, these organizations “demonstrated so clearly the capacity of Indigenous people to come together across ethnic and linguistic lines and to grasp and articulate their own grievances.”

It was the mass dislocation of whole communities that opened the way to the Chiapas communities’ support for the new EZLN. Facing continuing pressure for land reform, but unwilling to undercut the power of local rural elites, the government opened up uncultivated forests to colonization. As a result, immigrants from various parts of Chiapas and elsewhere in Mexico carved new farmlands and new communities out of the forests.

However these lands were unfit for farming. Hence, as H.M. Cleaver notes, “it was often in these new communities of land-starved campesinos, that peasant self-organization and sympathy for the Zapatista movement thrived in the late 1980s and early 1990s.”

The pre-’94 decade of Indigenous organizing

During the ten years prior to the uprising, a unique relationship between the EZLN and the Indigenous communities was gradually established. The slogan “to lead by obeying” portrayed the real nature of the relationship — one in which the communities played a leading role.

The Zapatistas rightly claimed that the EZLN differed in this respect from the classic guerrilla movements in which Indigenous people were militarized and organized by external groups who aimed to mobilize them to a military insurgence seizing state power. Cleaver, who already in 1994 knew Chiapas closely, emphasized that portraying the Indigenous as victims who have been monopolized is wrong: “This important distinction,” he adds,” has been reiterated again and again by the EZLN.”

The EZLN in their methods and politics have been entirely different from those of Che Guevara, whom they adored as a symbol of heroism and bravery shared among the majority of Latin America people: “Che went to Bolivia and remained isolated till he was killed. Marcos, on the other hand, went to Chiapas, was absorbed by the communities and remade as their spokesperson and intermediary to the world.”

The EZLN’s supreme command was composed of an elected membership that reflected the full spectrum of communities and ethnicities; it transformed into the indigenous communities’ military arm: “leading by obeying” (mandar obedeciendo).

Marcos rejects the idea that the EZLN began organizing for the armed struggle from the moment of their very first encampment in Chiapas. He emphasizes the fact that the community defined their role as one of “self-defense” — namely, the protection of the Mayans against the cattle ranchers’ armed security forces: “When we first came here, we talked about the issue of armed struggle. And the Indigenous people said, ‘Yes, we have to take up arms to defend ourselves.’ So we began to train in the mountains for self-defense, not for how to attack. That is how the Zapatista National Army was born. Our objective in training in the mountains has been to protect the villagers.” But at the same time, “we gathered our force in silence and prepared well military and politically for the right time to attack.”

This took place while both oppression and resistance had been escalating all across Mexico, but specifically in Chiapas. Between 1989 and 1990, the PRI (Institutional Revolutionary Party) governor of Chiapas embarked on a repressive campaign while simultaneously appropriating communal lands and small farms for absorption into the big agricultural estates.

It was the catastrophic cancellation of Article 27 that brought about the decision to take up arms. On November 7, 1991 President Carlos Salinas de Gortari formally proposed to Mexico’s federal legislature that Article 27 of the constitution would be erased. The final confirmation was due to take place on January 1, 1994. It spelled the official end of the promised program of land distribution and the right to communal ownership. It also guaranteed the removal of all tariff barriers and restrictions on foreign investment, even for state procurement.

Multinational corporations could thus encroach further and further onto lands previously given to subsistence agriculture food production, using them for the cultivation of export crops with advanced technologies. At the same time, the much cheaper food imports from the United States — maize in particular — undermined that area of agriculture. Now oil production was also opened to foreign companies. It aimed at paving the way for mass transfer of land from Indigenous communities to multinational corporations.

All this was part of a radical restructuring of the Mexican economy in order to attract foreign investment and secure the NAFTA trade deal.

The Zapatista communities themselves ordered their army to take action, as a last ditch effort to stave off what seemed like more or less imminent annihilation. As confirmed by Marcos, it was the Indigenous communities who pushed for the insurrection:

They the [Indigenous communities] told me to start the war because I was the one in charge of military planning. I said that we couldn’t, that we weren’t ready. I said that we needed time, because all of our training was for defense, while they now wanted to attack the cities. So I asked them for more time to organize. On January of 1993, they said they would give me one year to make the arrangements. ‘If you don’t do it in a year, we’ll do it without you,’ they said. They told me that the latest date was December 31,1993. It had to be some-time between January and December. So in 1993 we had to readjust our entirely military system to organize for the offensive.

The decision to take up arms remained almost entirely secret until January 1, 1994. But the three years leading up to 1991 had already been used by the community for increased organized resistance. In 1991, Mexican Indigenous communities joined the Latin American movement that had launched militant demonstrations to commemorate the 500 years of resistance since the landing of Christopher Columbus in the Americas.

On March 12 of that year, after a two-week-long march from their jungle hideout, the Zapatista rally drew around 100,000 supporters who filled the city square, where Subcomandante Marcos proclaimed, ”We are here to demand democracy, liberty and justice. The militant demonstrations and their harsh repressions continued up through 1992.

In March of that year, the violent repression of a meeting of Indigenous organizations provoked a six-week-long march by 400 people from Chiapas to Mexico City. In July, a group of women from Ecatepec, on the Western border of Chiapas, staged a sit-in protest in central Mexico City. On October 12, about 10,000 Indigenous people marched through San Cristobal. Other protests in Chiapas were broken up by armed gangs. Communal rights were ignored and the movement’s leaders snatched and imprisoned.

The proposal to start the uprising on January 1994 “was passed to all the communities,” says Marcos. “Everyone was asked what they thought. Then there was a direct vote. It was the same when the government proposed the ceasefire and started the peace talks. You have to go to every one of these communities because those who decided the war have to decide if it will stop. All military orders,” he added, “emerge from this.”

The Zapatista uprising in Chiapas took place amidst a militant resistance throughout the rest of Mexico. The Saturday following the uprising saw a crowd of 50,000 demonstrators in Mexico City’s main square. On the anniversary of the assassination of revolutionary hero Emiliano Zapata even larger crowds marched through the city, attracting peasant and Indigenous organizations from all over the country.