No God Nor King: Chiapans Seek Libertyby Ross Mullin
-Subcomandante Marcos, Ejército Zapatista de Liberación Nacional [EZLN], Chiapas.1 "Now there is no God nor king," chanted Chiapas rebels in 1712, aiming to overthrow Spanish rule, and to worship Mary instead of Jehovah. Their rebellion, the biggest and most radical in colonial Mexico, was soon crushed. Politically powerless, the Maya resisted culturally, preserving their languages and customs. Along with Roman Catholicism, many also cherish pagan practices and beliefs-including the idea that each human has a guardian spirit, a nagual, usually in animal form.2 In touristy San Cristóbal de Las Casas, center of the Mayan highlands, many mestizos "still scorn them as dirty primitives."3 Some oppose equality and education for Indios, saying "When given the hands, he wants the feet."4 The "social revolution" of 1910-1920 lessened the isolation of rural Chiapas. Peasants and workers organized, economically and politically. In 1934-1940, Presidente Lázaro Cárdenas co-opted and controlled the masses, strengthening national government while "preserving private economic power." In Chiapas, land-reform was allowed, but limited. "Only eight municipalities remained untouched by agrarian reform" there; and "all eight were highland indigenous municipalities."5 Large landowners controlled the process of land distribution. So "Chiapas alone has over 30 percent of Mexico's unresolved petitions for land."6 Instead of fertile farm land, the landless were often given plots in the tropical rain-forest, where the soil can't support farming. As decades of "institutional revolution" rolled on, life became ever less revolutionary and more institutionalized, despite student protests in 1968. Radical slogans were mouthed by a conservative system of allied interests, validating the insights of George Orwell and Milovan Djilas. The church regained much of its former powers, mocking the official secularism of government. Seeking land and democracy, Chiapas peasants and Indios have been organizing since the early 1970's. Most Mexicans learned of their struggles around 1992. Members of the Comité de Defensa de la Libertad Indígena, demanding "native liberty," had gathered at Palenque in December 1991. More than a hundred people were arrested; several were beaten and tortured. Soon four hundred Indios responded by marching from Palenque on March 7, 1992, arriving six weeks later in Mexico City. They called themselves Xi' Nich-"ants"-since the authorities, by stomping on protesters, had stirred up an ants' nest. And on "Columbus Day" (October 12, 1992), ten thousand marched in San Cristóbal. Soon Zapatistas faded into the forest, clashing with soldiers as early as May 1993, though the state government publicly claimed there were no guerrillas in Chiapas.7 [The politicians' wish-ful cover- up sounded about as convincing as Pyongyang's claim that there are no lesbians in North Korea.] On January 1, 1994, some fourteen generations after the Mayan Marian revolt, Chiapas indígenas rose again, with help from allies. Political scholar Jorge Castañeda saw their rebellion as a warning that Mexico "faces the threat of violence" unless honest elections can be held. Guerrilla warfare won't achieve revolution, but it has shaken the "national consensus." Castañeda scorns the claim that poor ignorant Indios are "being manipulated by people from outside, white college graduates." The Zapatista movement "is a Mexican organization, although it may include some foreigners, or Mexicans who worked with Central American guerrillas." Chiapas needs justice and democracy, not just aid: "The problems of poverty cannot be solved through money; because the problems are related to structures, not spending. It is a matter of the organization of community decision-making, jobs, decent treatment by officials, restitution of lands, and so on."8 This time, rulers had to listen. First, because the "Zapatistas" were merely voicing ideals which Mexican governments themselves had been preaching. Second, because Yanks and Canadians had accepted NAFTA reluctantly, on the (implied?) condition that Mexico would democratize. Third, because peasant rebels couldn't be dismissed, any longer, as agents of the former Soviet Union. And so, after the usual war crimes, the national government made peace, or cease-fire. They proposed limited autonomy for indígena communities, Mexico's first anti-discrimination law, teachers, clinics, and so forth. Will promises be kept? Remember treaties between our government and Amerind tribes. After peace talks ended March 2, Marcos returned to his base "somewhere in the Lacandon forest," warning that "The government will only honor its commitments if it is forced to."9 After lengthy discussions, the native communities rejected the government's offer in June. Who is this masked Marcos, anyway? He says he carries out "the policies of a committee of indigenous campesinos; he is only a subcomandante; and he warns that the name 'Marcos' is interchangeable-anyone can put on a ski mask and say 'I am Marcos.' He invites people to do so."10 Have masks, will multiply. Meanwhile, Chiapas peasants seized more than 14,000 acres of land.11 Landowners were "recruiting death squads. Savage land wars will rage, no matter what is decreed in Mexico City . . . ."12 What is the meaning of the Chiapas rebellion, if "meaning" may be ascribed? For most Mexicans, it seems to be: If they can stand up for liberty, so can we. From right to left, from village to university, from PAN to PRI to PRD, people are deciding that this first year of NAFTA will be the last year of dictatorship. "If the election process is not considered fair, then many people will go out into the streets to protest."13 Mexicans hope to achieve democracy electorally in August-or by some other means, perhaps a general strike, soon afterwards. "We are not begging for democracy," says Marcos. "We are demanding democracy."14 Within backward Chiapas, the meanings are less clear. Peasants want land, yet they use what they have inefficiently. "Urged by advisers to alter their methods, farmers instead ask for more land. As for new crops, the standard reply . . . is 'What will I eat if I do not grow maize and beans?'"15 Ethics argues for giving land to the indígenas, since two continents were stolen from their ancestors. In most of Mexico, the "Indian population . . . has always disputed the usurpations of the invaders' government, from the days of the early conquest . . . and will undoubtedly continue to dispute them as long as there is an Indian left; or until their right to use the soil . . . without paying tribute in any shape, is freely recognized."16 Grim realism shows the present number of peasants already exceeding the supply of arable land, even if redistribution of farmland were politically possible. And peasants will increase, while useful land stays the same, or shrinks. Much-mocked Malthus wins. Rural peasants often have rational economic motives (in addition to religious or cultural beliefs) for over-breeding: each new baby means more helping hands in a few years, not just another mouth. The child can be housed and fed cheaply, won't expect expensive education or medical care, and might even be able to help an aged parent in future years. I don't mean to suggest that illiterate peasants consciously think of their children in such cold pragmatic terms. Rather I assert that ordinary dull "normal" people, most of the time, in most cultures, usually find convenient "religious" or "spiritual" or "emotional" or "psychological" rationalizations for acting in harmony (or non-conflict) with their short-term interests. Individuals who don't, including me, are deviant. Such crude banality has been routinely overlooked because (a) it insults the average person; (b) most published writing has been done by intellectuals, who are deviant per se; (c) base reality contradicts lofty official ideals; and (d) religious and political ideologies are often created by deviants-saints or rebels-though later embalmed and half-ignored by bureaucrats. But when those peasants move to a city, a child becomes a burden instead of a crutch. Yet they will, for a while, continue to breed at a rural rate, especially as rural values (pro-marriage and pro- birth) are preached by most churches. A few generations of city life would convince peasants, pious or not, to practice contraception. But by the time this slow change could evolve, Mexico City would engulf San Diego. As if this weren't bad enough, the Pope chooses to make matters worse, by forbidding effective contraceptive methods as sinful. In Catholic countries, his dogma makes politicians afraid to promote birth control-or even condoms for AIDS prevention, as these might (God forbid!) prevent impregnation. The Pope's policy makes no sense in terms of our mortal planet Earth. It only suits a megalo-fantasy in which "this world" is merely a brief and insignificant prelude to an after-life, where one may be tortured eternally for using a condom, or for embracing the wrong theology-a cruel dystopia which makes Iran seem comparatively enlightened. How does overbreeding relate to liberty? Ideally, individuals should have the freedom to breed if they really want to; in practice, today, that's like each person having a right to build a camp-fire in an overcrowded wooden life-boat. Neither liberty nor life exist purely in the abstract; humans inhabit a biosphere, and we're quite capable of damaging it so severely that neither liberty, nor democracy, nor science would be sustainable. Liberty dies first; when people fear famine, war, or plague, they'll accept a "temporary" dictator who promises survival. Liberty rests on democracy, which rests on a functioning economy (just livable, not prosperous), which rests on a sustainable and renewable environment. Unfair? Just which deity promised you that life would be fair? Is environmentalism a-gainst liberty? Try practicing liberty in the Sahara-a desert which was vastly enlarged, if not created, by short-sighted human actions. I have strayed from Chiapas, to show why "land-reform" isn't enough. Nor does Chiapas need "aid" from outside donors-just let Chiapans keep the profits from their own oil, gas, and hydro- electric resources, now stolen. And to debate economic and ecological issues, the first step is political freedom, on the state and national levels. Marcos looks wild, but the demands he voices are moderate. Few Texas Republicans would settle for less. Chiapas doesn't stop at its borders, nor does Mexico. If the Mexican nation fails to achieve democracy, fails to improve its economy, or fails to limit its population, then eventually the people will despair, and blame their miseries on the norte- americanos. So the US, for its own national security, needs "to create favorable conditions for Mexico's transition . . . to a true democracy . . ."17 How can we help Mexico? First, by quietly but firmly insisting on fair elections. If the ruling Institutional Revolutionary Party (PRI) engages in massive fraud again, then we must refuse to honor false results. We should stand by, on alert, while Mexicans try to overthrow their rulers. Invasion wouldn't help at all; but neither can we extend another six-year license to one-man statism. Libertarian isolationists may object to such international meddling. I say the U.S. can choose to isolate itself from Somalia or Tibet, but has no real option of isolating itself from Mexico. Second, we could help by encouraging invention of cheaper and easier methods of contraception, and by making these available, despite Church opposition. Third, for our sake as well as theirs, we must learn to take long- range views of the interlinked ecologies and economies of the USA, Mexico, and Canada/Quebec. We cripple ourselves by making economic, financial, and political decisions as though each election were the end of history. Ross Mullin, a "green libertarian" writer, now compiling México Nudista. Ross recommends reading : The Nine Guardians; The Last Lords of Palenque; A Rich Land, A Poor People; Utopia Unarmed; The Politics of Food in Mexico, and The Great Divide. References: 1. 1992 essay, in March/April l994 issue of Love & Rage, POB 853, NY 10009 2. K. Gosner, Soldiers of the Virgin, 1992 3. R. Bruns, Travel &Leisure, April 1991 4. B. N. Colby, Ethnic Relations in the Chiapas Highlands of Mexico, 1966 5. T. L. Benjamin, Passages To Leviathan: Chiapas and the Mexican State, 1891-1947, dissertation, 1981 6. L. Hernández Navarro, "The Chiapas Uprising," Transformation of Rural Mexico #5, UCSD, 1994 7. L. Hernández Navarro, "The Chiapas Uprising," Transformation of Rural Mexico #5, UCSD, 1994 8. Proceso; World Press Review, 3/94 9. Latin American Weekly Report, 17 March 1994 10. P. Ignacio Taibo II, Nation, 28 March 1994 11. S.L. Walker, San Diego Union-Tribune, 16 April 1994 12. A. Cockburn, Nation, 28 March 1994 13. P. Rodríguez; San Diego Union-Tribune, 29 April 1994 14. J. Darling, L.A. Times, 17 May 1994 15. The Economist, 14 May 1994 16. V. de Cleyre, "The Mexican Revolution," Mother Earth, circa 1911-1912 17. Jornal da Tarde, São Paulo, Brazil; World Press Review, May 1994
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