Chiapas Resistance - Unity without Uniformity

CHIAPAS RESISTANCE: Unity without Uniformity
“Marcos is gay in San Francisco, black in South Africa, an Asian in Europe, a Chicano in San Ysidro, an anarchist in Spain, a Palestinian in Israel, a Mayan Indian in the streets of San Cristobal, a Jew in Germany, a Gypsy in Poland, a Mohawk in Quebec, a pacifist in Bosnia, a single woman on the Metro at 10 p.m, a peasant without land, a gang member in the slums, an unemployed worker, an unhappy student and, of course, a Zapatista in the mountains.”
(Vodovnik, 2001).

—Subcomandante Marcos of the Zapatista Movement

This perplexing literary communiqué by subcomandante Marcos to the international media offers an interesting insight into his conception of “self”, which essentially discards any personification and instead embodies a universal identity. Formed in the Chiapas region of southern Mexico as an indigenous struggle for land rights, the Marcos led Zapatista movement has captured the imagination of intellectuals and activists around the world through its successful implementation of grassroots resistance. Today, “Marcos is at once here, there, and everywhere” with his renowned black balaclava mask acting as a mirror to all who face marginalisation and oppression – “We are you” (Russell, 2005: 1). Juana Ponce de Leon writes, “this non-self makes it possible for Marcos to become the spokesperson for indigenous communities [as] he is transparent and iconographic” (Vodovnik, 2001: 16). While the resistance has developed a respected, almost heroic status in western media, the road to peace and stability in the Chiapas region has been fraught with violence amongst differing religious sects, forced evictions, paramilitary oppression by government authorities, resource scarcity and numerous human rights abuses against indigenous Mayans. Conflict in the region is therefore a complex issue due to a number of interwoven factors. In recent years, peace negotiations between the Mexican government and the Zapatistas have broken-down and while outright war is not anticipated, the conflict still exists and continues to simmer. Therefore, in order to grasp an understanding of the multi-layered issues facing the Zapatista movement and the ways in which it can act as a catalyst for other social movements today, it is important to consider its historical context, together with pivotal events that have shaped it.

Suppression during Spanish Conquest

The recent history of indigenous resistance in Chiapas must be understood within the context of the Catholic Church’s spiritual conquest and the exploitation of indigenous workers during Spanish colonisation. From the onset of the Spanish Conquest in 1519, religion became a powerful social wielding tool that was intricately linked to ventures of domination. According to Dale Palfrey, indigenous Mexicans were naturally not inclined to resist being converted to Roman Catholicism, as “it was customary for Mesoamerican cultures to adopt the religion of conquering tribes” (Palfrey, 2007: 2). Assisting in the subjugation of the local population, widespread religious syncretism arose with Maya cosmology being integrated with the practices of Spanish Catholicism (Gosner, 1998: 21). However, for the indigenous communities, the ‘Discovery of the Americas’ by the Spanish meant not only religious adaptation, but also “genocide and slavery” (Ortega, 1997: 269). At the time of the Conquest, it is estimated that 9 million indigenous people inhabited Mexico's central plateau, with that number dramatically dropping to a scant 2.5 million by 1600 due to introduced diseases and poor working conditions (Palfrey, 2007: 3). This resource-rich yet desperately poor area suffered from exploitation of indigenous labour for mining and agriculture, resulting in frequent indigenous resistance (Lorentsen, 2001: 92). As in much of Latin America, the ownership of land and land-use rights have long been a central political, economic and social issue (Lorentsen, 2001: 92). However, left out of the equation were the Indians who all lost control of their land to the Spanish-speaking elites during the Conquest. At the turn of the 20th Century, the increasing wealth of the Spanish landowners and the Church became a target for expropriation and redistribution to the peasants during revolutionary violence.

Rene Girard - Mimetic Theory
At this point, it is useful to consider theorist and philosopher René Girard’s ‘mimetic theory’ (or mimetic desire), which offers an account of human relationships based upon the “imitative nature of human desire” (Girard, 1972: 149). As its name indicates, mimetic desire is “not the ordinary desire of particular objects but the imitation of other people’s desire” (Girard, 1972: 149). This kind of struggle or conflict relation does not pertain only to individuals but also “to relations between larger social configurations” (Nielsen, 2010). Poor regions, like Chiapas, often find their natural resources exploited and the exploitation of workers transformed into a cheap labour force so that the desires of the wealthy Spanish could be achieved. As Joerg Rieger explains, “the result is the extraordinarily intense competition,” leading to violent confrontation (Nielsen, 2010). Mimetic desire is a useful concept that can help explain why feelings of resentment and resistance occurred during the Spanish Conquest amongst the poor indigenous region of Chiapas. Therefore, to begin to understand violent conflict in Chiapas, it is essential to realise the importance of historical issues relating to land distribution and domination, together with the central role the Church play in fusing its religion into community life.

Religious Rivalry
Although nearly 90% of Mexico’s population declares itself Catholic, the growth of Protestantism in the rural towns of Chiapas, resulted in local tensions and hostilities between traditional Catholic populations and Protestant converts during the later half of the 20th Century. While the entire evangelical population in Mexico remains low at just over 5%, it is regionally concentrated in the southern indigenous areas (Berkley Centre, 2010). The integrationist policies of the post-revolutionary years had their main objective as the construction of a homogeneous Mexican national identity (Hernández, 2004: 48). The government’s ‘Mexicanization’ campaigns resulted in the imposition of the Spanish language, the prohibition of their traditional costumes, forced secularisation, and, for some women, even ‘justified’ rape (Jones, 2005 & Hernández, 2004: 48). Contrary to the some authors belief that ‘Protestantism’ undermines cultural traditions of indigenous populations (Perez and Robinson 1983; Stoll 1990), in the Chiapas region Presbyterianism promoted the preservation of indigenous culture (Hernández, 2004: 46). Author Katie Jones states that the Protestant religion appealed to some indigenous groups as it “reaffirmed the value of their native tongue [and] was a form of cultural defense mechanism” (Jones, 2005: 13). Conversely, many Catholics argued that Protestants represented “a threat to the country’s unity and national religious character” (Berkley Centre, 2010). This is because religious and social practices are so interlaced in Chiapas that the rejection of Catholicism by anyone meant not only the rejection of particular religious doctrines, but also the refusal to participate in local festivals like ‘saints day,’ which was seen as a rejection of the community, its culture and social norms (Collier & Quaratiello, 1999: 166). Religious vilification fuelled hostilities amongst indigenous communities. The result was a strong reaction on the part of traditional Catholic authorities to either “bring recalcitrant Protestants back into line or expel them from the community” (Berkley Centre, 2010). Between the 1960s and 1990s, the federal government “essentially turned a blind eye to religious persecution in this region” (Berkley Centre, 2010). In turn, disinterest on the part of the national government allowed the indigenous population and local authorities in the south to discriminate against Protestants, culminating in violence by both sides.

Chamula Evictions
The most extreme example of forced evictions in Chiapas was in the municipality of San Juan Chamula, whose local authority figures imposed incredibly strict and violent expulsions. From 1974, when open conflict began, and over the next two decades, hundreds of Protestant Chamulans were killed and as many as 30,000 were expelled from their homes (Berkley Centre, 2010). One Protestant of the Chamula area testified that his house had been “fired on nine different times over the course of five years, resulting in 75 bullet holes” (Berkley Centre, 2010). At the same time, Catholic residents claimed that, “we are just trying to defend our culture … the evangelicals want to wipe it out” (Berkley Centre, 2010). The conflict in Chamula was very similar to those of other communities in the region. In an unconnected incident, 24 families of the Seventh-Day Adventist Church were deprived of their access to government social programs, with local officials also fining them 3,000 pesos if they did not make financial contributions to the community’s Catholic festivals (Berkley Centre, 2010). According to the Evangelical Commission for the Defence of Human Rights (CEDEH), another example was in Justo Sierra, where local leaders expelled 150 Protestant Evangelicals from their homes and beat several men (Robinson, 2002). Over the course of three decades, tens of thousands of Protestants fled or were forcibly removed from “lands their ancestors had inhabited for centuries” (Berkley Centre, 2010). These expulsions resulted in the development of Protestant neighborhoods on the outskirts of the colonial city San Cristóbal de las Casas, segregating and fostering further mistrust and animosity between the Protestants and Catholics of the region (Jones, 2005: 13). In an area where eighty-five per cent of the population are already considered “highly marginalised”, these makeshift neighbourhoods offered even poorer living conditions (Lorentsen, 2001: 91). Residents also grew resentful of the persecution that had forced them into such an abject situation (Berkley Centre, 2010). Thus, the violence evolved and resulted in “tit-for-tat harassment and murders” by both Catholics and Protestants (Berkley Centre, 2010). The fact that religion is such an explosively divisive issue in Chiapas and the growth in religious refugees within indigenous communities, inadvertently helped lay the groundwork for the grassroots political organisation that came later.

Rene Girard - Scapegoating
A full explanation of the violence in Chiapas region is not possible without integrating Girard’s theory of ‘scapegoating mechanisms’. In its origin, this tradition utilizes a weak subject, i.e. a goat, however Girard investigates history’s other applications of the scapegoat mechanism, explaining that any abnormal existence or behaviour in society can face persecution (Girard, 1972). The more a person or group differs from the norm, the more likely they are to be persecuted (Blowers, 2006: 13). Of his three stereotypes of persecution, Girard’s third stereotype explains that the subject of persecution may be chosen because it is, in fact, guilty of committing some crime against the society, in comparison to when the scapegoat is singled out simply because that person or minority is easily established as the other, or ‘abnormal.’ (Blowers, 2006: 13). In the case of Chiapas, Protestant members of a community were not only in a minority, but also were believed to be breaking the law by not participating or contributing to the Catholic festivals that were considered social norms. As Hortencio Vazquez states, "in this region, religious customs and traditions are law to these people (Oliver, 2010: 1). This might help explain why violence was imminent amongst the indigenous communities.

Zapatista Uprising and Unifying
The emergence of an indigenous guerrilla rebellion in Chiapas in 1994 (the Zapatista Army, or EZLN), though not directly the result of religious tensions, brought new and intense state attention to the simmering grievances present in many communities. The composition of the EZLN was diverse in terms of religious, linguistic, and ethnic background (Lorentsen, 2001: 91). In some ways, the EZLN presented “a new unifying identity that cut across lines of religious affiliation, validating class and indigenous collective identities” (Collier and Quaratiello 1999: 166). The event that unified the indigenous community was the revision of Article 27, the section of Mexico’s 1917 constitution that established state ownership of all land and water resources, forests, and mineral deposits and empowered the state to limit private ownership and break up large estates (Gillis, 1999: 120). On 1 January 1994, a date picked to coincide with the implementation of the North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA), Marcos lead a guerrilla army of poorly armed, badly trained, malnourished Indians, to seize control of San Cristóbal de las Casas and five towns in the surrounding highlands (Gillis, 1999: 116). The Zapatistas believe the NAFTA agreement “disenfranchised indigenous farmers in favour of the neoliberal goals of the American, Canadian and Mexican governments” and were therefore seeking empowerment and restoration of their identity and land (Estey & Fuller, 2010). The Mexican military responded by using low-intensity warfare to contain the Zapatista uprising. According to author Chris Gilbreth, “the purpose of such a strategy [by the military] was to create an invisible war that uses fear and terror as an instrument for demobilization” (Gilbreth, 1997: 1).


Government Violence
On December 22, 1997, in the southernmost Mexican province of Chiapas, 45 indigenous residents of Acteal, who had taken refuge in a village church, were massacred by paramilitary troops (Higgins, 2008). Most of those killed were children and women - five of them pregnant (Higgins, 2008). The Acteal villagers were members of the pacifist group "Las Abejas" (The Bees), supporters of the then newly emergent EZLN. Although the murders of the defenceless peasants garnered worldwide news coverage, there was no serious government investigation (Higgins, 2008). The Zapatista movement thrives as a grassroots resistance "not only through its ‘humanistic ideology’ and decentralized structure", but also through networks of international support (Blowers, 2006: 13). As with most nations, Mexico's fragile economy is highly vulnerable to criticism (Gilbreth, 1997). International outrage toward humans rights abuses and any prolonged violent conflicts affect the country's economic well-being, meaning the Mexican government is likely to try and avoid any bad publicity (Gilbreth, 1997). In retaliation, and realising this weakness, the Zapatista Movement shifted its guerilla tactics into a non-violent, global networking strategy. The media, internet, and Non-Governmental Organizations (NGO’s) were utilized to spread the Zapatistas’ message and gather worldwide support “for this initially small and seemingly doomed movement” (Blowers, 2006: 13). It is this change in strategy that has not only given the movement a form of international protection against the Mexican government, but also enabled the Zapatistas to be come a collective force and use communication for real social change.

There is no denying that Mexico's current situation does not permit a conventional military solution to the Chiapas conflict. The context in which this violence is generated in the region is considerably more complex than it first appears. As shown above, it reflects a tangled interweaving of historical struggles for power, land rights and religious violence between different sects. What can be drawn from this is the importance of understanding how each one of these factors have played a role in the evolution of the current Zapatista resistance movement. The struggle for equal rights of indigenous communities in the south of Mexico is far from over, just as other grass roots resistance movements around the world are as well. The Zapatista is a good example of how an evolved movement can attempt to act as a unifying force and promote unity, not uniformity, within any indigenous community.


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