The People's Record

Israel & Mexico swap notes on abusing rights
May 22, 2013

Earlier this month, Jorge Luis Llaven Abarca, Mexico’s newly-appointed secretary of public security in Chiapas, announced that discussions had taken place between his office and the Israeli defense ministry. The two countries talked about security coordination at the level of police, prisons and effective use of technology (“Israeli military will train Chiapas police,” Excelsior, 8 May [Spanish]).

Chiapas is home to the Zapatistas (Ejército Zapatista de Liberación Nacional), a mostly indigenous Maya liberation movement that has enjoyed global grassroots support since it rose up against the Mexican government in 1994. The Zapatistas took back large tracts of land on which they have since built subsistence cooperatives, autonomous schools, collectivized clinics and other democratic community structures.

In the twenty years since the uprising, the Mexican government has not ceased its counterinsurgency programs in Chiapas. When Llaven Abarca was announced as security head in December, human rights organizations voiced concerns that the violence would escalate, pointing to his history of arbitrary detentions, use of public force, criminal preventive detentions, death threats and torture (“Concern about the appointment of Jorge Luis Llaven Abarca as Secretary of Public Security in Chiapas,” Fray Bartolomé de Las Casas (Frayba) Center for Human Rights,14 December 2012 [PDF, Spanish]).

Aptly, his recent contacts with Israeli personnel were “aimed at sharing experiences,” Abarca has claimed. This may be the first time the Mexican government has gone public about military coordination with Israelis in Chiapas. Yet the agreement is only the latest in Israel’s longer history of military exports to the region, an industry spawned from experiences in the conquest and pacification of Palestine.

Weapons sales escalate

The first Zionist militias (Bar Giora and HaShomer) were formed to advance the settlement of Palestinian land. Another Zionist militia, the Haganah — the precursor to the Israeli army and the successor of HaShomer — began importing and producing arms in 1920.

Israeli firms began exporting weapons in the 1950s to Latin America, including to Nicaragua and the Dominican Republic under the Somoza and Trujillo dictatorships. Massive government investment in the arms industry followed the 1967 War and the ensuing French arms embargo. Israeli arms, police, military training and equipment have now been sent to at least 140 countries, including to Guatemala in the 1980s under Efraín Ríos Montt, the former dictator recently convicted of genocide against the Maya.

Mexico began receiving Israeli weaponry in 1973 with the sale of five Arava planes fromIsrael Aerospace Industries. Throughout the 1970s and ’80s, infrequent exports continued to the country in the form of small arms, mortars and electronic fences. Sales escalated in the early 2000s, according to research that we have undertaken.

In 2003, Mexico bought helicopters formerly belonging to the Israeli army and Israel Aerospace Industries’ Gabriel missiles. Another Israeli security firm, Magal Security Systems, received one of several contracts for surveillance systems “to protect sensitive installations in Mexico” that same year, The Jerusalem Post reported.

In 2004, Israel Shipyards sold missile boats, and later both Aeronautics Defense Systems and Elbit Systems won contracts from the federal police and armed forces for drones for border and domestic surveillance (“UAV maker Aeronautics to supply Mexican police,”Globes, 15 February 2009). Verint Systems, a technology firm founded by former Israeli army personnel, has won several US-sponsored contracts since 2006 for the mass wiretapping of Mexican telecommunications, according to Jane’s Defence Weekly.

Trained by Israel

According to declassified Defense Intelligence Agency documents [PDF] obtained via a freedom of information request, Israeli personnel were discreetly sent into Chiapas in response to the 1994 Zapatista uprising for the purpose of “providing training to Mexican military and police forces.”

The Mexican government also made use of the Arava aircraft to deploy its Airborne Special Forces Group (Grupo Aeromóvil de Fuerzas Especiales, or GAFE). GAFE commandos were themselves trained by Israel and the US. Several would later desert the GAFE and go on to create “Los Zetas,” currently Mexico’s most powerful and violent drug cartel (“Los Zetas and Mexico’s Transnational Drug War,” World Politics Review, 25 December 2009).

Mexico was surprised by the Zapatistas, who rose up the day the North American Free Trade Agreement went into effect. The Mexican government found itself needing to respond to the dictates of foreign investors, as a famously-leaked Chase-Manhattan Bank memo revealed: “While Chiapas, in our opinion, does not pose a fundamental threat to Mexican political stability, it is perceived to be so by many in the investment community. The government will need to eliminate the Zapatistas to demonstrate their effective control of the national territory and of security policy.”

Full article

Mexico: Ground Zero in the fight against Monsanto for the future of maize
May 13, 2013

In the 2011 action-thriller “Unknown”, scientists are persecuted by the biotech industry because they plan the open release of a drought- and pest-resistant strain of maize that could help eradicate world hunger.

There are certain parallels with the situation today in Mexico, the birthplace of maize, which is at the centre of the global fight to protect the crop’s diversity from the onslaught of genetically modified varieties.

“It’s the first time in history that one of the most important harvests in the world is threatened in its centre of diversity,” Pat Mooney, the head of the Action Group on Erosion, Technology and Concentration (ETC Group), an international NGO, told IPS.

“If we let the companies win, there will be no chance to defend them in other parts. What is happening here is of key importance for the rest of the world.”

Civil society organisations are raising their guard against the possibility that the government of conservative President Enrique Peña Nieto of the Institutional Revolutionary Party (PRI) may approve commercial cultivation of transgenic maize, a move widely condemned by environmentalists and other activists, academics, and small and medium producers due to the risks it poses.

In September, the U.S. corporations Monsanto, Pioneer and Dow Agrosciences presented six applications for commercial plantations of transgenic maize on more than two million hectares in the northwestern state of Sinaloa and the northeastern state of Tamaulipas.

Moreover, in January these companies and Syngenta presented 11 applications for pilot and experimental plots to grow transgenic corn on 622 hectares in the northern states of Chihuahua, Coahuila, Durango, Sinaloa and Baja California. And Monsanto has applied for an additional plantation in an unspecified area in the north of the country.

Since 2009, the Mexican government has issued 177 permits for experimental plots of transgenic maize covering an area of 2,664 hectares, according to the latest figures provided by the authorities.

But large-scale commercial release of GM maize has not yet been authorised.

“They are going to serve up transgenic maize on every table in spite of the fact that food sovereignty depends on growing native corn,” said Evangelina Robles, a member of Red en Defensa del Maíz (Maize Defence Network) which campaigns against GM corn. “As a result, we have to demand its prohibition by the state,” she told IPS.

Mexico produces 22 million tonnes of maize a year, and imports 10 million tonnes, according to the agriculture ministry. The country purchased about two million tonnes of GM maize from South Africa over the last two years, and is set to import another 150,000 tonnes.

Three million maize farmers cultivate about eight million hectares in Mexico, two million of which are devoted to family farming. White maize is the main crop for human consumption, while yellow maize, for animal feed, is largely imported.

The National Council for the Evaluation of Social Policy (CONEVAL) estimates the country’s annual consumption of maize at 123 kg per person, compared to a world average of 16.8 kg.

The historical link with pre-Columbian indigenous cultures gives maize a strong symbolic and cultural significance throughout Mesoamerica, the area comprising southern Mexico and Central America, where it was domesticated, producing 59 landraces or native strains and 209 varieties.

In the state of Mexico, adjacent to the capital city’s Federal District, small farmers have found their native maize to be contaminated with GM maize, according to tests carried out by students at the state Autonomous Metropolitan University.

“We swapped seeds and decided to do some tests. Now we are more careful when exchanging, and over who participates in the fair, although we still have to carry out confirmation tests,” activist Sara López, of the Red Origen Volcanes (Volcanoes Origins Network), an association of small farmers that has been organising producers’ fairs since 2010, told IPS.

Environmental, scientific and small farmers’ organisations have discovered GM contamination of native maize in Chihuahua, Hidalgo, Puebla and Oaxaca.

Contamination is “a carefully and perversely planned strategy,” according to Camila Montecinos, from the Chile office of GRAIN, an international NGO that works to support small farmers and social movements in their struggles for community-controlled and biodiversity-based food systems.

Transnational food companies “chose maize, soy and canola because of their enormous potential for contamination (by wind-pollination),” said Montecinos, one of the experts participating in the preliminary hearing on transgenic contamination of native maize at the Permanent Peoples’ Tribunal, an international opinion tribunal which opened its Mexican chapter in 2012 and will conclude with a non-binding ruling in 2014.

“When contamination spreads, the companies claim that the presence of transgenic crops must be recognised and legalised,” in order to pave the way for marketing the GM seeds, to which they own the patents, she said.

Mexico’s environment minister, Juan Guerra, has said that all available scientific information will be examined before a decision is made.

But that will not be easy. The National Confederation of Campesinos (Small Farmers), one of the main internal movements in the ruling PRI, has had an agreement with Monsanto since 2007 under which the company is to “conserve” native varieties.

Meanwhile, the Peña Nieto government still has not approved regulations for the format and contents of reports on the results of releasing GM organisms, and the possible threats to the environment, biodiversity, and the health of animals, plants and fish.

“For 18 years, corporations have been unsuccessful in convincing the people that their products are good. Maize is being used as a means of political and economic control. People need maize to be alive,” the ETC Group’s Mooney said.

The transgenic seeds on the market are herbicide-resistant Roundup Ready and Bt (for the Bacillus thuringiensis gene they carry for pest resistance) versions of cotton, maize, soy and canola. While they are legally grown in Canada, the United States, Argentina, Brazil and Spain, they are banned for example in China, Russia and the majority of the EU countries.

Recent studies published in the United States show that transgenic crops do not significantly increase yield per hectare, do not reduce herbicide use, and do not increase resistance to pests, in contrast to biotech industry claims.

“We are analysing what legal action to take against the new applications (to plant GM maize),” said Robles, of the Maize Defence Network.

On this day in 1972, 4,000 garment workers (mostly Chicana workers) go on strike at Farah Manufacturing Co. in El Paso, Texas. They demanded union recognition and better working conditions. At the time they were making $1.70/hour starting pay with no maternity benefits. 

Read more on the strike here.

I recently began an working with a few EP social justice orgs, such as La Mujer Obrera, Sin Fronteras, SURCO community farms & El Centro de los Trabajadores Fronterizos, which all have involvement from Farah strikers, who are have continued to organize workers along the borderland. They’ve created crucial organizations that have come to be the backbone of a lot of neighborhoods in south El Paso, as they have produced quality jobs, community resource centers, cultural libraries & workers cooperatives, along with a network of community farms that are working to provide food sovereignty for the area. 

+ fun fact: The city is opening the Fountains at Farah, a luxury shopping area where the factory used to be this October. 

A gas tanker has exploded on a motorway in a suburb of Mexico City, killing at least 19 people and injuring 36, officials say.
May 7, 2013

Television images showed damaged buildings and cars in the area of Ecatepec on Tuesday morning.The explosion happened at about 05:00 local time (10:00 GMT) on the highway between Mexico City and Pachuca. The driver of the truck is under arrest in hospital, where he was being treated, officials say.

A giant plume of smoke rose over the area, about 14km (8.6 miles) north-east of the Mexican capital.

The gas tanker was thought to be traveling north when it crashed into another vehicle, BBC Mexico correspondent Will Grant reports. At least 30 homes and 20 cars were damaged, according to local media.

Salvador Neme Sastre, secretary for citizen security in Mexico State, confirmed the casualty figures on Twitter but officials fear the number of dead could still rise. Some of the casualties were asleep in homes in poor areas along the edge of the road.

Television images showed firefighters and rescue workers sifting through the wreckage, but there was no initial explanation as to what caused the crash.

The Mexican government announced measures in 2012 to lower the maximum allowed weight of freight vehicles after a series of crashes involving overloaded trucks.

However such accidents are still very common, as capitalist oligarchs refuse to enact measures to obey the law and are beholden only to profit, not the public interest.

Mexican media said the area resembled a “war zone,” with nearby homes and cars completely burned out. Dozens of ambulances were at the scene.

Source

350,000 to 500,000 people take to the streets of Dallas, Texas & demand immigration reform & a more just life in the United States
May 6, 2013

Thousands gathered Sunday in downtown Dallas to call for an immigration system overhaul as the Senate considers a proposal to legalize some of the estimated 11 million people who are in the U.S. unlawfully.

At the front of a march that began at the Cathedral Shrine of Our Virgin of Guadalupe were Catholic Bishop Kevin J. Farrell, an immigrant from Ireland, and Domingo García, a Dallas lawyer and one of the demonstration’s organizers.

“This nation was founded and built on immigrants, and we must continue to always welcome the immigrant in our midst,” Bishop Farrell said as the crowd clapped. The bishop drew more applause when he switched to Spanish and said he prayed that the nation’s leaders “accept and treat every person with justice.”

The march stretched for several blocks, bringing out families, college students and other supporters of the cause. A crowd estimate wasn’t available from police, but the turnout was a fraction of a similar march in 2006 that police said drew 350,000 to 500,000 people.

When the marchers arrived at Dallas City Hall, a Cinco de Mayo festival paused as the Pledge of Allegiance was recited and “The Star-Spangled Banner” was sung.

Dallas County Commissioner Elba García told the crowd: “We want immigration reform now. No more excuses!” Her husband, Domingo García, added, “The march is not over until President Obama signs an immigration bill.”

Angel Mondragon, an immigrant from Mexico City, carried a handmade placard that read, “Gays also want an immigration reform.” Mondragon said he loves the U.S. “I am gay and I have more opportunity here. People give me more respect here.” But the Senate measure doesn’t provide a provision that recognizes same-sex bi-national couples — a fact highlighted by various gay advocacy groups on the national level.

Some marchers and speakers noted the recent record deportations in the U.S. of about 400,000 a year. Hector Flores, a past national president of the League of United Latin American Citizens, and Roberto Corona, an immigrant leader demanded that deportations should end. Through hard work within the United States, Corona said, “we have earned this immigration reform.”

Source

thinkmexican:

#OcupaTelevisa: Mexican Youth Protest Televisa’s Monopoly, Corrupt Political Ties

Several hundred students and young people marched to the studios of media giant Televisa this Tuesday in protest of what many see as the network’s negative social influence and corrupt political ties in Mexico.

About 20 self-identified Anarchists arrived late in the afternoon and quarreled with police. Reports indicate a few of the Anarchists threw eggs and paint-filled balloons on studio walls; the photo above shows a television set being thrown on officers guarding the entrance to Televisa.

“We want schools, not telenovelas!” was chanted by protesters late into the evening. #YoSoy132 and others have insisted in previous protests that Televisa’s near monopoly be broken up by Mexico’s anti-competitive commission.

Photos via Twitter users YoSoyRed_, masde131, Poetwitera, scatnu, _franzk, la_tutifruti.

#OcupaTelevisa

(via sinidentidades)

“We are all Guerrero”: Mexico’s new popular education revolt, led by educators, takes on the state
April 26, 2013

Catalyzed by a teachers’ strike against federal education reform, a new popular movement is gaining momentum in Mexico. And in expanding its agenda to encompass long-standing grievances ranging from environmental destruction to insecurity and indigenous rights, the movement is posing a serious challenge to not only the policies of new President Enrique Pena Nieto, but the broader economic and political direction of a country ravaged by three decades of neo-liberalism as well.

In the southern state of Guerrero, two mass demonstrations this month (which drew between 50,000 and 120,000 people each, according to different press accounts) exhibited the growing strength and future potential of the popular uprising. In both instances, teachers, students, small farmers, labor union members and housewives, Mestizo and indigenous alike, jammed the streets of the state capital of Chilpancingo in a show of unity by the newly formed Guerrero Popular Movement (MPG).

Declaring the defense of public education as its first priority, the MPG has also taken stands against new mining projects, privatization of the national oil company PEMEX and increasing the 16 percent national sales tax.

In addition to the Guerrero State Coordinator of Education Workers (CETEG)- a large dissident organization within the National Union of Education Workers- the MPG’s adherents include the Popular Assembly of the Peoples of Guerrero, #YoSoy 132, the Mexican Electrical Workers Union and the Emiliano Zapata Campesino Organization, among others.

Significantly, the indigenous Regional Coordinator of Community Authorities (CRAC) forms part of the MPG’s backbone. Representing more than 120 indigenous communities (with another 50 communities reportedly on the road to membership) in the Costa Chica and La Montaña sections of Guerrero, the CRAC is the leadership body of the highly-popular community policing and justice system in indigenous regions of the state, which stands as an alternative to the top-down, centralized policing system being implemented by the Pena Nieto administration and the nation’s governors.

In an analysis of the first mass protest organized by the MPG in Chilpancingo on

April 10, the anniversary of Emiliano Zapata’s assassination, Guerrero’s Tlachinollan Human Rights Center observed that the teachers’ movement and the MPG have given broad sectors of society their “own channel” to make a deep disaffection known.

“The citizens who’ve suffered grave injuries caused by unemployment, hunger, violence and theft are in the majority,” Tlachinollan wrote. “They are pushing from below in a novel movement that’s struggling against torn-up structures nourished by corruption and which allow the co-governance of delinquency.”

Guerrero’s movement is reminiscent of the 2006 teacher’s strike in Oaxaca that transformed into a popular rebellion and occupation of the state capital before it was repressed by the administration of former Gov. Ulises Ruiz with the backing of the federal government under President Vicente Fox.

Full article

After reading numerous PRI-biased MSM sources about the Mexican teachers revolt, I’m glad I finally found this one that gives real perspective about the threat of a government-controlled & -evaluated education system.

Yesterday, teachers set fire to the PRI headquarters in Guerrero & spraypainted anti-government slogans on the outside of the building. Teachers have also blocked major highways in Mexico City since their strike began two months ago.

In April, education movements are gaining full steam
April 20, 2013

Fighting against austerity measures and racist educational policies, the political pushback led by students and teachers has reached new levels of resistance this April. Global student movements are in full bloom, from Indiana University to the streets of Santiago, Chile, where students are exerting their power against the barriers that stand between them and their future.

Thousands flood Chile for free education

As many as 100,000 protesters filled Santiago, Chile last week demanding fair and free education for all, in what was the first nationwide protest of the year. Police officers responded with water cannons and tear gas as they detained more than 100 protesters.

Under-funded schools have forced poor and working class students into shanty schools after massive privatization efforts. Students who are fortunate enough to attend private universities are fighting against tuition hikes and the poor quality of education they receive. Chile’s education system is known to be one of the best in Latin America, but it is also among the most expensive, making it available to only a select percentage of students.

“Education should be equal for everyone, it should be free — we all have the same rights,” said Valentina Ibañez, a first-year student at Universidad Alberto Hurtado. The two-year struggle for education reform has gained momentum in recent weeks with revitalized protests and even larger turnouts than previous years.

Indiana students and teachers go on strike

Students at Indiana University launched a university-wide strike on April 11. Their demands include eliminating fees, reducing tuition, ending privatization and prioritizing raising enrollment of black students to at least 8 percent. The collective strike began at the Board of Trustees meeting where students presented their demands. The protest has also recently extended into an energy strike as students rally against the university’s dependence on natural gas and fossil fuels.

Students are currently holding weekly assemblies to gather more support and participants, as well as to create an open forum for ideas to further the student movement. Other students from Wisconsin to Michigan have hung banners in solidarity with the Indiana University strike.

Campaign to save ethnic studies takes off in Texas

A resistance movement to preserve Latino and African American studies in Texas is growing in opposition to the legislation SB1128 and twin bill 1938, proposed by State Representative Giovanni Capriglione and Senator Dan Patrick.

The bill is in response to a study on two Texas universities, Texas A&M University and University of Texas at Austin, done by the National Association of Scholars, which concluded “all too often the course readings gave strong emphasis to race, class or gender.” The bill would prevent credits from ethnic studies classes from transferring to other universities and from counting toward advanced credits.

State-wide actions are already planned for the week of April 26, from El Paso, San Antonio, Austin, Houston and the Rio Grande Valley. Librotraficantes, a group of activists that emerged with the ethnic studies ban in Arizona to smuggle Latino history and literature books back into the state, has also planned to travel to Austin to protest the bill.

Mexican educators rally for free public education

Mexican teachers marched throughout Guerrero and Oaxaca on April 4 to oppose educational reforms by President Enrique Pena Nieto. Educators say the new provisions leave no guarantees for free public education and that privatization will soon threaten availability of schools in many areas.

The National Union of Education Workers in Oaxaca blocked entrances to shopping malls as tens of thousands of protesters declared that the reforms were a privatization attack on education, as control over the school system was shifted from teachers’ unions to the federal government. Teachers are currently planning to occupy several public spaces and universities to continue the protest.

The movement is also in an effort to expand higher educational opportunities to students in a country where only 13 percent of students earn a degree and only 2 percent earn their Master’s degree.

Chicago Teachers Union declare political fight against school closures

Chicago Teachers Union president Karen Lewis vowed to begin a “comprehensive and aggressive political action campaign” to defeat Mayor Rahm Emanuel and other city officials who are leading the way to 54 school closures.

One initiative the union will begin working on involves getting more than 100,000 new voters to the polls before the May 22 vote. Union members will go door to door in areas most affected by the school closures, in an attempt to oust officials who are supportive of the plan.

The closure initiative will shut down schools in predominantly black and Latino neighborhoods and most likely overcrowd existing schools where students will transfer. Parents and educators are also worried that if students are forced to travel longer distances to schools in unknown neighborhoods, violence and crime rates could rise.

- Graciela

I just love these photos, too: “Another Chile is possible”, awesome IU strike banners, Librotraficantes (book smugglers) in Austin, masked educators in Chilpancingo, Mexico, & Karen Lewis at a rally for schools last year.

Taking a cue from IU striking students:

Raise hell, not tuition!

fuckyeahmarxismleninism:

Today in history: April 10, 1919 – Mexican revolutionary leader Emiliano Zapata is ambushed and killed by a Mexican military colonel who tricked Zapata into meeting with him to supposedly arrange for the colonel’s defection to Zapata’s side. Zapata was a leading figure in the Mexican Revolution which broke out in 1910. He formed and commanded the Liberation Army of the South. He wrote the Plan of Ayala which raised the cry of “Tierra y Libertad!” (Land and freedom!). Zapata is still revered today. At marches the chant can often be heard, “Zapata vive - la lucha sigue!” (Zapata lives - the struggle continues!)

Via Freedom Road Socialist Organization (Fight Back!)

Tierra y Libertad! 

(via weather-underground)

Undocumented children are crossing the US border alone in increasing numbers
March 26, 2013

They miss their parents, whom they haven’t seen in years. Or they’re escaping poverty and neglect, or violence. So the kids come across the border by themselves—and their numbers are increasing, even as illegal immigration trends down or stays flat.

silverdisaster:

Madres de jóvenes desaparecidas y asesinadas en México salieron a las calles este 8 de marzo en el Día Internacional de la Mujer para recordarle al país su dolor y su firmeza en exigir justicia para sus hijas.

“De 1993 a 2012, un total de 1.432 mujeres han sido víctimas de asesinato en Juárez”, denunció en la manifestación Itzel González, coordinadora de Monitoreo de Feminicidio de la Red Mesa de Mujeres de Ciudad Juárez, fronteriza con Texas (Estados Unidos).

Mothers of young women who have disappeared or who have been murdered in Mexico went out to the streets on March 8 on International Women’s Day to remind the country of their pain & their determination in demanding justice for their daughters.

“From 1993 to 2012 a total of 1,432 women have been victims of murder in Juárez,” denounced at the protest by Itzel González, the coordinator of monitoring of femicide at the Red Mesa de Mujeres from Ciudad Juárez, which borders Texas in the United States. 

(via fuckyeahmexico)

Zapatistas break silence to slam Mexican elite
February 15, 2013

After years of silence, secluded in their base communities in Mexico’s impoverished south, indigenous Zapatista rebels have re-emerged with a series of public statements in recent weeks, attempting to reignite passions for their demands of “land, liberty, work and peace”.

In December, 40,000 Zapatista supporters marched through villages in Chiapas, re-asserting their presence. In January and February, Subcomandate Marcos - the Zapatistas’ pipe-smoking, non-indigenous spokesman and an international media darling - issued a series of communiques slamming the government of Mexican President Enrique Pena Nieto, a member of the Institutional Revolutionary Party (PRI) which assumed power in December.

“Our pains won’t be lessened by opening ourselves up to those that hurt all over the world,” Marcos wrote in late January, rallying supporters. “We will resist. We will struggle. Maybe we’ll die. But one, ten, one hundred times, we’ll always win.”

The group first made international headlines on January 1, 1994, when they captured six towns in Chiapas, Mexico’s southernmost state and one of the country’s poorest regions.

The Rand Corporation, a research group with links to the US military, said Chiapas is “characterised by tremendous age-old gaps between the wealthy and impoverished - kept wide by privileged landowners who ran feudal fiefdoms with private armies”. (TPR note: Rand is a federally funded conservative think tank & in my opinion, shouldn’t have been quoted)

For nearly two decades, the Zapatistas have attempted to build a system of autonomous governance, emphasising indigenous dignity and collective agriculture. Indigenous members of the group could not be reached by Al Jazeera for comment, due in part to a lack of easy phone access.

‘Community building’

The group had been quiet in recent years before the December rally and subsequent communiques. “They have been busy, building up their base as a social movement at the community level, even if they hadn’t been in the media,” Mark Berger, visiting professor of defence analysis at the US Naval Postgraduate School, told Al Jazeera. There are between 100,000 and 200,000 people living in communities which support the Zapatistas, he said.

In recent communiques, Marcos has described Mexico’s government as a “zombie state” controlled by the elite, a statement which likely resonates among some sectors of the population in a country plagued by pervasive inequality and corruption. 

Previous attempts to unify Mexico’s social movements, from independent trade unionists, to feminists, students, punks and other indigenous people, have been met with mixed results. The “Other Campaign”, the last major outreach drive launched by the Zapatistas in 2006, was largely unsuccessful in building a national movement.

“The Other Campaign was very critical of electoral politics and it marked a fracture among the Mexican left,” Alán Arias Marín, a political scientist at the National Autonomous University of Mexico, told Al Jazeera. “Locally [in Chiapas] the movement still has support.”

Return of the PRI

Meanwhile, though, Mexico has been consumed with other problems, especially drug-related violence. For the last 12 years, Mexico had been governed by the conservative National Action Party (PAN), led by Vicente Fox and later Felipe Calderon. The PAN had little interest in dealing with the Zapatistas or the broader issues faced by indigenous Mexicans. Today, the PAN is out of office in a development that could change dynamics for the Zapatistas.

The PRI, which ruled Mexico for 71 uninterrupted years before 2000, was in power when the Zapatistas first rebelled. The return of what Peruvian author Mario Vargas Llosa called the “perfect dictatorship” in an election last year marred by allegations of fraud could benefit the Zapatistas as they seek to rebuild alliances with social movements outside of Chiapas and reinvigorate their national presence.

“The same people who poured into the Zocalo [Mexico City’s main square] to stop the government from imposing a strict military response to the rebellion [in 1994] are still there,” Richard Stahler-Sholk, an author of the book Latin American Social Movements in the Twenty-First Century, told Al Jazeera. “The Mexican government has unleashed militarisation on the country, with the encouragement of the US government, in response to drug violence.”

More than 70,000 people have died in drug-related mayhem since 2006 and the US has pledged more than $1.4 billion in military aid to Mexico under the auspices of fighting criminal cartels. 

With carnage raging in parts of Mexico, activists calling for a new approach to the “War on Drugs”, and an increasingly powerful student movement confronting the PRI, the Zapatistas have plenty of possible allies.

“I think there is a possibility that the Zapatistas and the student movement could well gain a lot more traction under a PRI-dominated political system,” Berger said.

Pena Nieto could become a lightning rod for protests, reacquainting the Zapatistas with their historic foe, the PRI. During his tenure as governor of Mexico State, Nieto oversaw the violent police crackdown against demonstrators in the city of San Salvador Atenco in 2006. Two demonstrators were killed and a group of women say they were sexually terrorised by security forces as they protested the extension of an airport.

The student movement #yosoy132 formed after a group of undergraduates questioned Nieto about the attacks during his presidential campaign in 2012. Angered by reports of electoral fraud and the PRI’s history of corruption, many students have been challenging the government.

‘Net war’

Mexico’s youth are not alone in opposing the status quo. 

“What began as a violent insurgency in an isolated region mutated into a nonviolent though no less disruptive social netwar that engaged the attention of activists from far and wide,” the Rand Corporation noted in an analysis of the Zapatistas and the internet. 

In mid-January, Anonymous, the diffuse internet activist movement, apparently launched a cyber-attack crashing the website of Mexico’s defence ministry, claiming to be in solidarity with the Zapatistas.

According to some analysts, the Zapatistas - and their early use of the internet to draw support - were the precursor of a new type of diffuse social movement such as Occupy Wall Street, #yosoy132, and anti-globalisation protests.

But the tangible benefits of internet activism and the outside support it garners can be fleeting. “The Zapatistas were trendy, and numerous international initiatives supported them,” Marín, the professor in Mexico City, said. But with the onset of the US-led war in Iraq, most NGOs started to have different concerns, he said, describing non-government organisations as “very fussy”.

In recent communiques, Marcos said the Zapatistas would reappraise their relationships with various foreign and domestic partners. Aid groups, particularly some charities, have been criticised by the masked revolutionaries.

Revolutionary ideas

If the drug war and the thousands of corpses left in its wake helped push the Zapatistas off the international agenda, the return of the PRI might make it easier for them to reclaim a place in national debates.

In the past, the PRI was widely believed to broker deals between the cartels to ensure stability. “The government will stop trying to go to war with organised crime so much,” Berger predicted of the new PRI administration. “That will allow more attention to other forms of politics.”

It remains unclear if the Zapatistas will be able to capitalise on these potential changes, but their re-emergence in the public eye is being met with interest across Mexico and beyond.

“Recent communications are specifically directed at re-activating their national and international base,” said one long-time supporter, who spoke on the condition of anonymity from Chiapas due to security concerns. “The Zapatistas are hoping, I think, that people will create the conditions of autonomy and self-sufficiency in their local areas; they want supporters to bring the ideas of the revolution home.”

Source

sadburro:

Zapatistas

Mexico, December 21, 2012

(via ragemovement)