Mexico wages war of 'negative peace' in Chiapas

Barbara and Fred Arnold — 3/12/2008 5:41 am

We wound our way two hours north of San Cristbal de las Casas, inching around treacherous curves where erosion had created huge chasms opening to the valley below.

Twisting and turning on the narrow road, we passed the site of the 1996 San Andreas Peace Accords between the Zapatistas and the Mexican government.

Deep in the central highlands of Chiapas, our delegation stopped in front of a closed iron gate leading to the community of Oventik. A ski-masked man approached and asked us to write down our full names and then requested our documents. He walked away with 24 American passports.

After an hour's wait, another masked man ushered us through the gate and into a small concrete building. It is there we met with the Zapatista regional Good Government Council.

What we learned in the next few days made us angry and sad. Subsequent conversations with independent observers and in other communities confirmed these impressions and strengthened our commitment to tell this story in the United States.

Fourteen years ago a small band of armed indigenous women and men took control of six communities in Chiapas, the southernmost state in Mexico, just north of the Guatemalan border. They were fighting for "land and freedom." Poor and indigenous Mexicans fought for these very issues in 1917 under Emiliano Zapata in a revolution that never reached Chiapas. The 1994 civil war lasted just 12 days before a cease-fire was reached.

Fourteen years later the Mexican government proclaims there is no war in Chiapas and that any fighting is between indigenous groups, not between the Mexican military and the indigenous people.

Both of these statements deserve our scrutiny. A struggle between indigenous groups exists, but what are the origins of that conflict?

The number of Mexican soldiers in Chiapas in 1998 was 70,000. In 2008 that number is estimated to be 40,000. The number of military camps and checkpoints is also down. Although there are few direct attacks against the indigenous people, more insidious violations of human rights are taking place. An international peace organization, SiPAZ, contends that a lack of direct violence is a "negative peace."

The military has built installations upstream from and adjacent to indigenous communities. The constant military presence itself intimidates. Soldiers throw garbage into the rivers where women wash clothes, bathe, and even get water for drinking. Soldiers urinate on the feet of men and women passing by. They threaten to rape young women, subtly showing their guns. They cut cornfields, kill animals, burn houses.

All these acts are meant to intimidate, to harass and to oppress.

Another tactic is to glorify military life for young indigenous men. These impressionable young men see handsome soldiers in uniform. Military personnel show movies in which soldiers are heroes, give money and gifts, provide opportunities to play basketball and soccer and see pornographic films.

Then, at the pivotal psychological moment, soldiers convince these men that the army is in their village to protect them. And from whom? The Zapatistas. These impressionable men start looking at their brothers and sisters with suspicion.

Similar to the military objective, government strategy is to divide loyalties within indigenous communities. The government provides aid to one part of the community. Those receiving assistance begin to depend on and like cash payments, schools, community buildings, medical clinics, new roads. Zapatistas refuse to accept such government help, but respect their neighbors' right to receive it.

However, the government soon changes policy and withholds aid unless the entire community accepts it. Because the Zapatistas continue to refuse, their neighbors suddenly look at them as enemies. A community formerly living in peace now erupts in conflict -- consciously imposed.

The government thus successfully creates a huge gulf between two groups of indigenous people who have previously lived together amicably and respectfully. According to Peter Rosset, a scholar of the conflict, "The growing gulf between rich and poor leads to the desperation and violence of neighbor against neighbor."

The low-intensity warfare continues. The Zapatistas refuse to fight; they understand that direct conflict is the objective. Why? They know that the government's goal is to reclaim and privatize land now held by indigenous communities.

As we prepared to end our haunting visit, the men with masks returned our passports. Zapatista communities live under constant threat from government and military forces. A member of the Good Government Council sighed, "They are trying to 'erase' us."

George Collier, an emeritus professor of anthropology at Stanford University, wrote in his 2005 book, "Basta! Land and the Zapatista Rebellion," that "low-intensity warfare and polarization make it difficult, even dangerous, for participants to talk frankly about their experiences and perspectives."

But these Zapatistas did trust us with their story, exclaiming, "You make us feel safer and not so alone."

National policy seeks to create access to resource-rich Chiapas -- with a view toward trade, profit, and the disintegration of indigenous populations. Opposing this injustice requires our standing in solidarity with these indigenous men and women, whose fundamental identities and very futures are at stake.

Barbara and Fred Arnold are longtime Madison residents, teachers and community leaders. In January they spent two weeks in Chiapas with a delegation of seminary students from United Theological Seminary in the Twin Cities. This was their seventh trip to Chiapas.