REFUSE TO LOOK AWAY
NORTH AMERICAN ACITIVISM
AND THE REBELLION IN CHIAPAS
Justin Podur
[Justin Podur covers Chiapas and South Asia for ZNet's at: http://www.zmag.org/chiapas1/index.htm].
At the end of the day, all anyone wants is to live with dignity. To eat three times a day, to have some say in what happens to you, to watch children grow, to teach them and learn from them. To know you'll be taken care of when you're sick. To know you'll have a chance to learn and do things. Maybe to be able to walk out in the air, to be able to breathe that air. To sing songs in your language, to learn songs from your elders and teach them to your children. These aren't culturally specific desires. They aren't western norms or middle class aspirations.
Maybe these aren't aspirations but roles people want to play. But the script says that there aren't enough roles like this. The script calls for millions and millions of people who don't get to eat three times a day. For people who have to watch their children starve. Who have to work all day and never see what they worked for.
This script-called capitalism, colonialism, white supremacy, patriarchy, authoritarianism, militarism-divides the world into worlds. A first world here, a first world there, a third world here, a third world there. The first worlds talk -- get all the best lines. The third and fourth worlds listen. Obey. They aren't permitted to speak unless spoken to. They aren't permitted to rage, except against each other.
The script is not like that of a neighborhood play. The actors can't quit if they don't like it. It is enforced by guns and bombs, by fire and hunger and hatred. It reaches into every corner of the world and assigns roles to every person in it, from birth. From birth you know if you're to be white or brown, rich or poor, man or woman, fourth world or third or first.
The lines are quite familiar, to anyone who has lived in the world a while. So is the fate of those who try to rewrite, to improvise. First world would-be rewriters face ridicule, charges of insanity, discomfort, even prison. Third and fourth worlders face torture and death. And yet we have a moral responsibility to try to rewrite the script. To write out the roles of biopirate, CEO, paramilitary commando, bomber, state propagandist. To write in the things we like.
Isolation is the enemy of the rewriter. In a corner of this continent, a group of people are trying to rewrite the script. They are trying to write in intercommunalism, democracy, respect for women, food, land, education, health care, human rights, leaders who take orders rather than give them. The script would like to see them isolated. Seeing them isolated, it would see them quieted. Seeing them quieted, it would see them dead, or returned to their former roles as takers of orders, as eaters of scraps, as workers who are not rewarded.
As long as there is an on-going project trying to change the script, anyone who would rewrite it is invited. The price of failure is more of the same. But success would mean food and dignity and democracy, for everyone.
* * * * * * * *
How does the script play itself out in Chiapas? What does the order require there?
The order requires inequality, poverty, and non-development. Chiapas is a state of people who do not get their fair share in a country of people who do not get their fair share. Mexico's literacy rate is 87%. Chiapas' is 69%. In Mexico, 79% of households have running water. In Chiapas, 58%. In Mexico, 88% of households have access to electricity. In Chiapas, 67%. 72% of children do not complete the 1st grade. Of 3.5 million people in the state, 1.5 million lack access to medical care. 54% of the population are malnourished. The RAND corporation, a right-wing think-tank, says that "In nearly 15 percent of the Chiapas' 111 municipalities, over 70% of the population lack electricity, drainage, or toilets. One index of marginalization shows that 85% of the population lives in a desperate condition."
Indigenous people build their communities on communally held land, their right to which was protected by the Mexican constitution. But when the constitution conflicts with the script, screw the constitution. Mexico under Salinas revoked the protection of communally held lands. And price supports for farmers. And agricultural subsidies and credits. The script requires poor, desperate, hopeless people. The state and the market deliver.
The order requires racism. In North America, indigenous people are moved around whenever resources are found, their lands are 'developed' without consulting them, they are dispossessed and made refugees. In the United States, the absolute majority of males between 18 and 35 have been (mis)handled by the criminal justice system in some way. These are not the victims of progress. They are not obstacles who had to be swept aside for progress to occur. They are suffering people whose roles as sufferers are written into the script. How else to take a person's rights away, to make a victim of a person, except by pretending that they are something other than you? How else to extract petroleum, gas, coffee, cattle, hydroelectric power, wood, and corn, and leave nothing in return but poverty?
The order requires violence. Most of us (people, I mean) believe that humans are not made to suffer endless indignity and poverty. We do not face these things quietly, but we can be made to suffer them only through fear. There are now 70 000 soldiers in Chiapas. The presence of the army is characterized by "constant threats, thefts, rapes, unauthorized detentions, and constant intimidation through incursions into territories and regions, which place many indigenous communities in a permanent situation of insecurity and terror.” Zapatista leaders are jailed. Paramilitaries linked to the army are active, and commit human rights violations in a "situation of generalized impunity."
The order requires ecological destruction. A modern agriculture, which is an agriculture for export, which means people growing things that they do not get to eat, is ecologically expensive. It requires the destruction of forests. The use of chemical fertilizers and herbicides and pesticides, in large quantities. It means erosion and degradation of the soil. This says nothing about the mining of petroleum or hydroelectric power generation. But that's just business as usual. What about when the army is trying to put down an insurgency? One tactic, favored in Vietnam, Colombia, Indonesia, and Cambodia, for example, is the forest fire. Unprecedented amounts of forest have been burning, 46 thousand hectares as of May 1998. These are neither the normal burnings of the agricultural cycle nor are they caused by epidemic bad weather. Rather, they are one of many consequences of disobedience.
The surprise rebellion of January 1, 1994 won some initial successes, but the EZLN was forced to retreat into the Lacondon jungle as 70,000 troops came to occupy the state. The EZLN has honored a cease fire agreement with the Mexican government. It has concentrated not on building a force with many weapons, and advanced training, but on organizing and reaching out-to villagers, to Mexicans outside of Chiapas, to the rest of the world. One Zapatista statement says: "We do not wish to seize power but to exercise it."
The Zapatistas have created a system of autonomous municipalities, based on village assemblies. The principles of local autonomy, of community and communal land-holding, and leadership whose primary responsibility is to obey the community, have enabled the communities to withstand years of occupation by the army. Indigenous women have organized militant nonviolent resistance to military occupation, and in some places have succeeded in curtailing army violence.
But
while communities without any resources can organize, they cannot develop
without property. If they can be thrown off of their land, if they can be
made refugees of, if their fields can be burned, if they can be made dependent
on the government for food, then their efforts will have failed. And the script
has many recourses available.
How presumptuous it is to believe that one can change the script. Who are these poor indigenous people, to believe they can administer their own affairs without the state? Who are they to believe they can seize the property of their betters and get away with it? Who are these unarmed women, or poorly armed soldiers, who believe they can stand against the army? If those who would change the world- system can adapt to circumstances, so can the world-system adapt.
The Mexican army has made numerous innovations for undermining those who would fight poverty and hopelessness. It has engaged in a 'blanketing strategy' or 'saturation strategy', occupying the state with a large number of troops. It has succeeded in this because of "much-enhanced communications and mobility, thanks in part to US aid." Add to this the paramilitaries, many openly linked to the state, to Mexico's leading political party, or the army, and you have a recipe for human rights violations, economic and social disruption, creation of refugees, and a climate of fear and intimidation. In 1997, at Acteal, 45 people were murdered in a church by paramilitaries, with soldiers nearby. The message is fairly clear: The Zapatistas cannot protect you. The army will not protect you. Accept your role. Know your place.
One of the threats to the 'situation of generalized impunity' is the presence of human rights observers, foreign or otherwise. Witnesses complicate crimes. These observers have been able to constrain the Mexican government's violence, even when the US government wanted to see the Zapatistas destroyed. What's a repressive state to do? Keep the observers out. To that end, "government agents began stepped up efforts to videotape, warn, and question foreign activists, especially those who were traveling on tourist visas but seemed engaged in activism, not tourism; some were deported." Over 200 activists have been deported since 1997. In April 1998, 12 foreigners were interrogated before being deported.
So the script adapts, the rewriters adapt, and the script adapts again. What now? What are would-be rewriters to do?
Find out what the script requires of you, and don't do it. Refuse your role. You are required to not watch, to not be a witness, to not know, to not tell others. You are required to participate in the dispossession of indigenous people here, and there, to be quiet and not speak up when it happens, or to actively support it.
Are you a member of the elite? The script requires you to be happy with your privileges. Are you a man? You are asked to oppress women and homosexuals, to keep women out of work and dependent on you, to not share the work of your house and your children. Are you at the top of the racial caste system? You are required to oppose those below you and resent them when they ask for what is theirs. You are required to acquiesce as they are locked up, harassed, lied about and lied to. Do you have land, wealth? You are required to believe it is yours by right, not theirs who worked to create it, nor theirs from whom it was stolen. You are required to defend what you have with all the vast resources available to you.
Are you not a member of the elite? The system cannot function without your obedience. You are asked to not realize that your work creates the wealth. To not realize that your discomfort bolsters the system. To not realize that leaders should take, not give orders. To not realize that there are better ways to organize society. And most importantly, to not talk to others about any of this.
In the short term, there are North Americans who are helping the Zapatistas financially-directly or by allowing them to market their coffee at a just price. There are people who are organizing delegations of human rights observers. There are people who are pressuring the North American governments to stop their key role in the repression. There are people who do media work, education, demonstrations, letter-writing. All these efforts could use more rewriters.
In the longer term, there are North Americans who have made proposals for a just economy, for just treatment of indigenous peoples, for an antiracist society, for a sane foreign policy. Any takers? Any other proposal-makers?
THE END