By Peter Gellert
Mexico City — The Mexican government is waging a major political offensive on several fronts against the Zapatista rebels of Chiapas. At the same time, the situation in the southern Mexican state is marked by a growing polarisation and heightened instability: 27 different paramilitary bands are operating with impunity in as many municipalities.
Four years after the Zapatistas' armed insurrection, no end is in sight. While the Zapatista National Liberation Army (EZLN) has not engaged in military confrontations with the army, neither have the government or its army been able to push the rebels out of their rainforest strongholds. Peace negotiations and dialogue have been on hold for 17 months.
Since the new year, when the interior minister was replaced and a new peace commissioner appointed, the government has moved to resolve the Chiapas crisis in its favour, taking advantage of a certain war-weariness both in the state and nationally, and playing its cards rather intelligently.
In recent weeks, the government has moved on three fronts:
- It has sought to weaken, counteract and isolate foreign observers, a major thorn in the side of the government, which is very sensitive about its international isolation and criticisms from abroad. In addition to deporting foreigners — including respected clergymen — deemed openly sympathetic to the Zapatistas, the government has waged a non-stop campaign in the mass media and in social organisations such as official unions and peasant groups, charging non-government organisations with interfering in Mexican domestic affairs and calling for the expulsion of trouble-making foreigners.
Federal Attorney General Jorge Madrazo, for example, has publicly charged international human rights groups with seeking to intervene in Mexico for purely political reasons, unrelated to humanitarian concerns or considerations of social justice.
The government has hypocritically invoked Mexican nationalism to ward off criticism from abroad and attempt to rally popular support of the country's national sovereignty, supposedly under attack by leftists and NGOs that appeal for support from the international community.
- The government is attempting to weaken the Legislative Peace Commission, the Cocopa. The commission was a strong counterweight to the government due to its consensus agreements involving all political parties represented in parliament and its calls for scaling back the military presence in Chiapas and concretising the San Andres peace accords in legislation.
President Zedillo has announced that the executive branch will unilaterally send its own bill on indigenous rights to Congress. The proposal, which will have the support of the ruling Institutional Revolutionary Party and the conservative National Action Party, nullifies the original Cocopa proposal, which was satisfactory to the Zapatistas.
The government's plan has run into problems, however. The left-leaning Party of the Democratic Revolution, the PRD, opposes the president's bill as an affront to the peace process and has announced that it will not even participate in the congressional debate on the question.
- All week long interior minister Francisco Labastida and other ministry officials have publicly indicated that they are considering disqualifying the National Intermediation Commission, the Conai, headed by Catholic Bishop Samuel Ruiz, for its alleged partiality to the Zapatistas.
The Conai has long opposed government policy in Chiapas, and more recently placed ads in the national dailies criticising Zedillo's indigenous rights bill as contrary to the spirit and letter of the San Andres peace accords in seven areas, most related to divergent conceptions of autonomy. The Conai charged that the government's proposal subordinates Indian autonomy to higher government structures and limits it to a municipal and community level.
Backed by most of the country's press and the powerful television consortiums, the government's campaign has had a certain, if undetermined, impact on public opinion. The Catholic Church is reportedly split on the issue, while opposing the expulsion of foreign priests and defending Samuel Ruiz from the most despicable attacks.
Throughout all this, the Zapatistas themselves have been completely silent, including in response to calls from sympathetic observers such as PRD legislator and Cocopa member Carlos Payan to resume the dialogue with the government. On the other hand, the Zapatista National Liberation Front, universally considered the EZLN's political expression, has been denouncing the government moves and building protest actions with other forces.
Although much momentum has been lost compared to the groundswell of protests following the Acteal massacre last December 22, hundreds of non-governmental and social organisations, the PRD, the FZLN and the National Indigenous Congress held peace rallies on April 4 against government policy in Chiapas.
The National Indigenous Congress, a nationwide umbrella organisation, local Indian groups and independent peasant organisations announced a national march on Mexico City for April 10 — the anniversary of Zapata's assassination and traditional date of peasant mobilisations.