MORE FACTS ON THE STATE OF CHIAPAS

Chiapas differs from the rest of Mexico only in the degree of poverty afflicting the ejidatarios and the minifundistas. Poverty worsened due to the state development programmes introduced to exploit the natural resources of the state (timber, oil). On the other hand, since the mid-60’s, 150,000 landless Indians (Tzotzil, Tzeltal, Chol, Sekema and Tojolabal) were allowed to settle and they were given the right to cultivate land in the Lacandona jungle. These tracts of cleared forestland were later bought or forcetaken by the rich landlords and the ranchers, or abandonded by the Indians themselves because the soil was unsuitable for long term cultivation.

The expansion and intensification of cattle ranching, logging and oil exploration in the 70’s aggravated the competition for land and tens of thousands of peasants were pushed off their holdings and were turned into land-labourers. The situation worsened since the landlords hired temporary land-labourers from Guatemala, with even lower wages (especially in the mid-80’s with the arrival of 80,000 Guatemalan refugees).

Efforts at social organization and resistance have been made by the church, inspired by Liberation Theology, and by a broad, rank and file union movement of teachers, the hijos de campesinos , the children of the peasants. In 1989 a decree banned forest exploration and the government eliminated coffee subsidies -just two other causes that added to Chiapas’ increasing social tension. The implementation of PRONASOL didn’t really ease things, although Chiapas served as a model for this "poverty alleviation" programme.

NAFTA, GATT AND WTO: JUST WHAT’S BEHIND THESE JARRING ACRONYMS?

Perhaps nowadays we are closer to the verification of Marx’s theory about «the immiseration of the working class", «the universal competition among workers", "the expansion of the world market", «the mobility of the capacity to labour and the fluidity of capital", especially if we examine what the above-mentioned initials mean.

GATT and NAFTA’s declaration re the «liberalization of trade" allows in other words, capital’s unlimited liberty of movement and increased political control. Gatt, like the World Bank and the IMF is a Bretton Woods institution. Bretton Woods was the post second world war meeting place in 1994, of capital’s representatives from the US, Britain, France and the USSR. Its intention was to coordinate efforts to avoid crises like the one in 1929 and inter-imperialist wars. GATT, formalized in 1948, has been modified a lot since then and effectively functions in more than 100 countries. The 8th round of the Negotiations took place in Uruguay in 1986 adding to GATT provisions which were rather more than simple tariff reductions. They impose rules which override national laws that regulate domestic markets and labour (environmental restrictions, collective bargaining, agricultural products subsidies) considering them as «trade barriers". The multinational corporations enjoy even more favourable terms for investing in countries where labour costs are lower and the environmental laws less restrictive.

NAFTA eliminates state subsidies for agricultural products and it is estimated that in Mexico 2 to 12 million jobs in agriculture will be lost, which will add to the migratory flow northwards. NAFTA (now effective between Canada, US and Mexico and intended to include many Latin American and Asian countries in the future) is virtually completing the process of global capital integration. Side agreements were made to give NAFTA a democratic facade: there were formed trinational labour and environmental commissions of state bureaucrats, charged with the settlement of disputes regarding the implementation of NAFTA provisions. However, labour laws concerning collective bargaining, the right to strike and unionize are not subject to these commissions’ jurisdiction.

In this rock bottom race, capital will flow into Mexico as surely as the deindustrialization of America will continue (especially regarding car, textile and food industries). The PRI has already paved the way for capital’s welcoming reception through the dismantling of the welfare state, unemployment, flexible work relations and the recent devaluation of the peso.

This devaluation, that took place a few days after the deployment of the Zapatistas in 38 communities in Chiapas, cannot be explained irrespectively of the fear of class struggle spreading in other areas of Mexico, and above all it is essentially connected with the general crisis in the country as we have described it so far. Monetary issues are nothing but the mystified form of social issues regarding production and wages. Capital is cutting wages on a national scale by devaluating the currency. This move is at the same time defensive and offensive. Offensive, because wage reductions and the further privatizations demanded as precondition for new loans, plus a 40% increase in interest rates which will bring about the collapse of a 30% of small and medium-size businesses, aim at creating better conditions for future investments. At the same time, the myth is spreading that state coffers are empty and that "sacrifices are necessary" for the repayment of the new loans.

More than a year after the implementation of NAFTA in Mexico, the process of restructuring is intensifying. 99% of the strikes in 1994 were declared either non-existant or illegal and in many cases lay-offs followed, mostly in the car, textile, iron and coal industries and in the maquiladoras sector.

The World Trade Organization (WTO) is aiming at «achieving a greater coherence in global economic policy-making", according to its founding document (1986), along with the World Bank and the IMF. Having a "legal personality" the WTO will ensure the conformity and the integration of national economies within the global one according to the GATT rules.

Even talking about "national economic planning" is difficult since what is known as the Nation-State undergoes a serious crisis caused by the agreements and institutions of the Capitalist International. The expansion of the commodity economy -as a result of the defeat of class struggles over the previous decades- brings about decomposition of an intense kind for the Mexican and american proletariat and, in the future, (if it hasn’t already) could result in capitalism forcing the abolition of borders, undermining the Nation-State. However, this undermining is inevitably damaging the representative capacities of the political bureaucracies. For example the PRI has not remained in power for 66 years as an elected representative of capital, but as an elected representative of "Civil Society", of the "Mexican nation". While pretending to be powerless to oppose the IMF and the World Bank it is forced to deflate its own nationalist blustering, to undermine its own nationalist foundation, to repeal gradually the constitution, the very source of its legitimacy. As a guardian of the «achievements" of the Mexican Revolution (in reality, the defeat of the peasants and workers as they themselves found out later, at the same time as some rights and demands were statutorily secured) and the populist measures of Cardenas, the PRI should seek the consent of "Mexican citizens" posing as providing for the "common interest" (18). Yet being forced to do this in ways less and less persuasive -especially since the days of the «debt crisis" and now with NAFTA- it is causing increasing disaffection. Within the PRI, the dominant technocratic faction, oriented towards integrating Mexican with global capital, is already being attacked by those factions hesitant about innovation; those that are "traditional", "corrupt" and "backward". The assasination of Colosio, who was in charge of PRONASOL, was followed by the assasination of Massieu, the general secretary of PRI -both close associates of the former president, Salinas.

Amidst these "sordid family quarrels" as Marx described inter-capitalist antagonisms, an uprising that started more than a year ago is continuing, carrying with "the wind picking up from below", all its weaknesses.

THE ZAPATISTAS WITHOUT A MYTH

The difficulty of analysing a movement like the Zapatistas is not only due to the fluidity of the situation in Chiapas. The very meaning of their words and tactics was gradually unfolding before our eyes as we were trying to connect it with their strategy and Mexican reality in general.

As a national-liberation army, with their First Declaration from Lacandona Jungle in December 1993, they declared war on the Mexican government ready to advance to the capital claiming, as Indians and Mexicans at the same time, their historical continuity with all national and popular struggles since Colonialism. They published then the "Revolutionary Laws of the Liberated Territories", their social and political programme. After the truce agreed by them and the national army on the 12th of January 1994, they sat down at the "dialogue" table with the government presenting their 34-points-demands with an emphasis on political demands of a national character. In mid-March they walked out of the negotiations publishing their Second Declaration from the Lacandona Jungle, in which, addressing the "Mexican people", they proposed a National Democratic Convention for the submission of «propositions about a transitional government and a new constitution".

The PRI under the pressure of the EZLN and the class struggle it had sparked off, suspended the Minister of the Interior and the governor of Chiapas and made a kind of electoral reform allowing for the presence of foreign observers during the elections held on the 21st of August. According to the official electoral results the PRI received 48% of the vote, the PRD 16% and the right-wing PAN 26%. In Chiapas, Eduerdo Robledo Rincon of the PRI "won" with 51% of the vote and the PRD-supported Amando Avendano followed with 34% having adopted the EZLN’s 11-points. After the PRI’s electoral victory, the EZLN denounced the fraud and called on people to engage in civil disobedience and mobilize in peaceful protest. Avendano formed a parallel government in December supported by a large part of the peasants in Chiapas, the EZLN themselves and the majority of the National Democratic Convention, which at its second meeting in October, demanded the termination of the PRI government. Bishop Ruiz formed CONAI (National Commission for Mediation) in the same month to start new negotiations while land occupations in Chiapas by dozens of peasants’ organizations intensified. On the other hand, the police as well as the big landowners’ "white guards" violently evicted people from occupied areas. On the 19th of December, the EZLN advanced over a wide part of Chiapas occupying 38 municipalities only to return again to the jungle. The national army, after having already tightened the noose around the zone liberated by the Zapatistas since autumn 1994, invaded it in mid-February 1995 in order to arrest their leaders. After large solidarity demonstrations in Mexico City and lest class struggle should extend beyond Chiapas’ boundaries, the army curtailed its advance and the government announced it was withdrawing its proclamation, characterizing the EZLN’s leaders as «outlaws" and that it was ready to start negotiations. Despite opposition to the hardline policy and the army repression, the army’s presence remained suffocating and when it deployed terrorist tactics many peasants took refuge in the jungle. In the abandoned villages the government settled poor and landless peasants from other areas. Up till now the situation is still explosive and uncertain...

What we’re attempting here is a critical presentation and assessment of the movement avoiding the trap of radical journalism or being just another uncritical solidarity committee. To anyone hastening to accuse us of callousness because of the escalation of the Mexican governments’ violence, we will retort that our point of view leaves behind an over-emotional approach that forbids thought, as well as a temporary fascination with just another case, the Zapatistas this time, which will move us for a while to pass onto something else later. We want to approach class struggle from an internationalist angle. We try to analyse how it is mediated by abstract democratic politics and what are the obstacles the insurgents themselves put in their way. Precisely when class struggle becomes intense one must attempt a critique that leaves behind glorification and uncritical identification. This is the best contribution to a rebellion that simply cannot be confined within Chiapas’ or Mexico’s boundaries. So, let’s get down to the essentials:

The EZLN constitutes now the most organised political form of class struggle in Mexico and has helped in an explosion of land occupations in Chiapas and to resurgence of antagonism around the social question in this state. There is a great tradition of peasant movements in Mexico that’s led to this outburst and, of course, it’s not down to the intelligence of the EZLN’s much publicized leaders, Marcos or Tacho, who have become the idols of leftists, "progressive thinkers" and the mass media. Since Colonialism many Indian guerilla movements (Mayas in Yucatan, Yopes in Guerrero, Chichimeca in the north, Yaquis in Sonora, Mixtec in Oaxaca, Tzeltal in Chiapas, Huasteca in Veracruz, Hidalgo and San Luis Potosi) resisted land seizures, and thus becoming slaves or wage labourers, regionally rather than nationally. During the Mexican-american war resistance was conducted with guerilla tactics by agrarian and worker movements, whose aims ranged from social banditry, land takeovers to free peasant communities. After the Mexican Revolution, in the mid-40’s until 1962, Ruben Jaramillo’s movement in the state of Morelos -once Zapata’s co-fighter and member of the CP- propagated "Land and Liberty" by deed. In the early 60’s guevarist marxists, peasants, workers, intellectuals, artists and liberal politicians rallied around the agraristas, peasant militants demanding land reform, forming MLN (Movement for National Liberation) for the revitalization of the Mexican Revolution. Later, many peasants, ex-members of the MLN organized a guerilla army in Guerrero under the leadership of the teacher Vasquez. In the 70’s dozens of urban and peasant guerilla groups emerged, mainly of guevarist ideology (the "Party of the Poor" of Lucio Cabanas etc) and now several armed peasant movements are active in rural Mexico (in November 1993 a meeting of 52 armed groups took place in Guerrero under the auspices of the "Guerilla General Coordinate"!).

One of the basic reasons that the Zapatistas as a guerilla movement monopolize attention and sympathy, apart from the coverage they get by the media, is the re-adjustment of their former guevarist ideology and the adoption of the dominant, nowadays, democratic pluralistic ideology: "The EZLN was born having as points of reference the political military organizations of the guerilla movements in Latin America during the sixties and seventies...political-military structures with the central aim of overthrowing a regime and the taking of power by the people in general...(the indigenous people) needed military instruction, and we needed the support of a social base...", says Marcos in his interview by the Mexican anarchists Amor y Rabia and goes on «We are proposing a space, an equilibrium between the different political forces in order that each position has the same opportunity to influence the political direction of this country...This is why we propose democracy, freedom and justice -justice in order that certain material conditions are satisfied so that people have an opportunity to participate in the political life of the country...we are talking about a democratic space where the political parties, or groups that aren’t parties, can air and discuss their social proposals".

However, he adds enigmatically "...We are saying that yes, we do have our idea of how the country should be", something that is repeated in their Second declaration "...the EZLN has a vision about the country. The EZLN’s political maturity as the expression of the feelings of part of the nation lies in that it does not wish to impose its vision on the country". Trying to guess what this vision is, is quite pointless, so let’s see something more unequivocal by EZLN, a part from their "Revolutionary Laws of the Liberated Territories". According to their «Revolutionary Agrarian Law":

"...Third: All poor-quality land in excess of 100 hectares and all good-quality land in excess of 50 hectares will be subject to the revolutionary agricultural law. The landowners whose lands exceed the afore-mentioned limits will have the excess taken away from them and they will be left with the minimum permitted by this law. They may remain as small landholders or join the cooperative peasants’ movement, peasant societies, or communal lands.

Fourth: Communally-held land and the land of popular cooperatives will not be subject to agrarian reform, even though they exceed the limits mentioned in the third article of this law.

Fifth: The lands affected by this agrarian law will be distributed to the landless peasants and the agricultural labourers who thus request it as collective property for the formation of cooperatives, peasant societies or agricultural production/livestock collectives. The affected lands should be worked collectively.

Sixth: The collectives of poor, landless peasants and agricultural labourers, men, women, and children without land title, or who have land of poor quality, will have the right to be the first to request land.

Seventh: In order to better cultivate the land for the benefit of the poor peasants and the agricultural labourers, the expropriation of large estates and agricultural/livestock monopolies will include the expropriation of means of production such as machinery, fertilizer, stores, financial resources, chemical products and technical expertise. All of these means should pass into the hands of the poor peasants and agricultural labourers, with special attention given to groups organised in cooperatives, collectives and societies...

Tenth: ...When a region doesn’t produce some product, it will trade justly and equally (sic) with another region where it is produced. Excess production can be exported to other countries if there is no national demand for the product.

Eleventh: Large agricultural businesses will be expropriated and passed to the hands of the Mexican people, and will be administered collectively by the workers of those businesses...

Sixteenth: The peasants that work collectively will not be taxed. Nor will the ejidos, cooperatives or communal lands be taxed. From the moment that this revolutionary agrarian law is implemented, all debts...are forgiven".

Such an agrarian programme -the most radical piece EZLN has published until now- does not oppose private property nor market economy and put in the overall context of the «Revolutionary Laws" which provide for:

--respect for a «freely elected" representative government, --stocks to workers in proportion to the number of years they have worked,

--nationalizations of unproductive industries and businesses,

--dual power, with the Zapatistas as self-proclaimed supervisors of the revolutionary process, its participatory, social-democratic character appears more clearly.

In juxtaposition, we will remind the anarchists and libertarians who rushed into embracing EZLN uncritically, Magon’s anarcho-communist programme, and in particular some excerpts from PLM’s Manifest of 23rd of September 1911 about generalized expropriation (19):

"Thus humanity remains divided into two classes whose interests are diametrically opposed -the capitalist class and the working class...Between these two social classes there cannot exist any bond of friendship or fraternity, for the possessing class always seeks to perpetuate the existing economic, political and social system which guarantees it tranquil enjoyment of the fruits of its robberies, while the working class exerts itself to destroy the iniquitous system and institute one in which the land, the houses, the machinery of production and the means of transportation shall be for the common use... Expropriation must be pursued to the end, at all costs, while this grand movement lasts...acts of expropriation must not be limited to taking possession of the land and the implements of agriculture alone. There must be a resolute taking possession, of all the industries by those working in them, who should bring it about similarly that the lands, the mines, the factories, the workshops, the foundries, the railroads, the shipping, the stores of all kinds and the houses shall be in the power of each and every one of the inhabitants, without distinction of sex... Everything produced will be sent to the community’s general store, from which all will have the right to take what their necessities require, on the exhibition proof that they are working at such and such an industry. The human being aspires to satisfy wants with the least possible expenditure of effort, and the best way to obtain that result is to work the land and the other industries in common. If the land is divided up and each family takes a piece there will be grave danger of falling anew into the capitalist system... Of course there will be enough for each to have his own house and a ground plot for his own pleasure... Let each, according to his temperament, tastes, and inclinations choose the kind of work that suits him best, provided he produces sufficient to cover his necessary wants and does not become a charge on the community... It is for you, then, to choose. Either a new governor -that is to say, a new yoke- or life-redeeming expropriation and the abolition of all imposition, be that imposition religious, political or of any other kind".

Despite its reformist, social-democratic character, the EZLN’s agrarian programme is opposed to Chiapas’ big landowners, as well as to the strategy of international capital, since communalism, small-scale ownership or nationalizations (especially giving NAFTA’s existence) are obstacles in its way. In this law, as well as in the EZLN’s other laws about women’s equality, labour, industry and commerce, the explosive potential of social revolution is inherent in an alienated form, and however limited to Chiapas and to the ejidatarios, this revolt expresses the universal demand of the uprooted individual separated from true community, human nature.

Deprived of human community by the Mexican state and international capital through the New Enclosures, the ejidatarios reaffirm community anew occupying land and expropriating the means of production -something they did before the EZLN’s existence and now with the help of the latter’s armed struggle, carry on doing so even more dynamically. If we consider that the New Enclosures constitute an attack against the communal control of the means of subsistence, then, they are not aimed only at Chiapas’ ejidatario or generally the peasants of the so-called "Third World". They affect the "First World" as well, intensifying the mobility of labour, fostering emigration and causing social-democracy to retreat almost to the point of capital’s total domination. In this respect, the rebellion in Chiapas, «the expropriation of the expropriators" has a universal dimension that transcends the local social uprising of the semi-proletarian peasants. However, at the same time, while the EZLN wishes to give to this rebellion a supposedly more general and wider character, it limits it, on the contrary, within national and political frames. In their First Declaration from the Lacandona Jungle they made clear that they struggled for the right to "...freely and democratically elect our political representatives..." and went on to mention that through their struggle they applied article 39 of the constitution which reads: «National Sovereignty essentially and originally resides in the people. All political power emanates from the people and its purpose is to help the people. The people have, at all times the inalienable right to alter or modify their form of government". This article, part of the constitution of every modern Democracy, inspires the EZLN who want to apply it to the very letter.

In their 34 points-demands addressed to the government they demanded inter alia: «Free and democratic elections with equal rights and obligations for all political organizations contending for power, true liberty to choose one or another proposal and respect for the will of the majority. Democracy is a fundamental right for all Indigenous and non-Indigenous people. Without democracy there can be no liberty, justice or dignity and without dignity there is nothing". In their Second Declaration from the Lacandona Jungle, the EZLN reject the government’s electoral reform because «...it perpetuates the seizing of the popular will", and they repeat their wish for «...a political solution which could lead to a peace with dignity and justice" and address an invitation to the «independent and progressive ones for a national dialogue, for a peace with democracy, liberty and justice", they talk about «...Civil society (which) assumed the responsibility to protect the country" and stress the fact that «(we should provide)...so that those who govern, govern obeying". So they address «Civil Society", proposing to «all the independent political parties to condemn the limitation and deprivation of people’s civil rights during the last 66 years and to demand the formation of a transitional democratic government". The EZLN’s pluralistic, national-democratic and populist ideology reaches a climax when they declare that «Within the framework of the new political relations, the different propositions about the system and the orientation (socialism, capitalism, social-democracy, liberalism, christian-democracy etc[!] ) should convince the majority of the people of the correctness of their programmes".

One would suppose that the EZLN’s language is completely outdated if the Mexican state, an authoritarian democracy, wasn’t patriarchical and populist and if, particularly in Chiapas, backward structures, longtime organized political and economic gangs didn’t still survive, which the dominant modernizing tendency within the PRI wants to get rid of, too. The Mexican state, even in its present form, seeks to win voters’ consent and as for the electoral fraud, its indisputable existance does not refute the success of the PRI’s cooptation politics (Allianza Civica, a coalition of non-gonernment organizations, which observed the electoral process, reported anomalies which didn’t however alter the outcome of the present elections).

However, what is of interest from the standpoint of social revolution is the context, the essence, the meaning of democracy (whether of the Mexican or european type) and of «Civil Society". Democracy, the democratic state is not a timeless idyllic state of things above history, but the political outcome of class struggles since the French Revolution. In Mexico, through the Revolution of 1910-20, the basis of the democratic state was laid, which resides in the «sovereign people" satisfying legally some of the peasants’ and workers’ demands after having trodden on their dead bodies.

The basis and the content of democratic «political society", this «spiritual, heavenly community" is none other than the society of private individuals, of real people with their private and competitive interests, of class society. This real competitive society called the «Mexican people" or the «Mexican nation" is unified abstractly in the Mexican state. «Man in his immediate reality, in civil society, is a profane being", says Marx in the Jewish Question. «Here, where he regards himself and is regarded by others as a real individual, he is an illusory phenomenon. In the state, on the other hand [in the «political society"], where he is considered to be a species-being, he is the imaginary member of a fictitious sovereignty, he is divested of his real individual life and filled with an unreal universality". Mexican «Civil Society", which includes ejidatarios, workers, businessmen etc, will probably be able to liberate itself politically, modernizing and liberalizing the political system and abolishing the one-party rule. However, it cannot abolish its immediate alienating reality. Because this battle is fought by the ejidatario repossessing communal land and by the proletarian against flexibility and immiseration, whereas the EZLN’s national-democratic ideology urges them to fight as «citizens", namely as members of an imaginary community.

No government, neither the one that «governs obeying" nor any other, will ever liberate human beings, since it will always re-unify them abstractly as citizens retaining simultaneously their class divisions, even by force. Because, naturally, no «people" in any democracy, even the most liberal was ever convinced by, or, has ever chosen to be governed by capitalism! With their persistence in pursuing «clean elections", the Zapatistas actually favoured the PRD and its leader, «citizen engineer Cardenas" -to use one of their expressions. And now many peasants in Chiapas recognize Avendano, the PRD’s candidate, as «their own man" who expresses their will. In their 17/12/94 communique, the EZLN state, among other things: «EZLN recognize the social forces rallied around engineer Cardenas and the CND, as an honest, civil and peaceful opposition against the government’s impositions; for this reason, the EZLN addresses themselves to citizen-engineer Cardenas and the National Council of Representatives of the CND to ask them, irrespective of their political affiliation and party commitment (sic), to convey the EZLN’s voice to Mexican society and to the personalities in the political life of the nation that they consider to be competent, presenting them the means which would render a stable truce possible:

1. Satisfactory solution for the conflicting parts after the elections in the states of Veracruz, Chiapas and Tabasco.

2. Recognition of the transitional democratic government in the state of Chiapas.

3. Recognition on the part of the federal government of CONAI as a neutral organ which can make possible the political solution to the conflict. The EZLN recognize the effort of citizen-engineer Cardenas and the CND for a peace with justice and dignity".

Generally, the EZLN’s relationship with the PRD and the CND (which consists mainly of PRD members and cadres) is one of partners-allies against the common enemy the PRI and the one-party state. A partnership wherein each part wants to retain its autonomy.

In an interview in La Jornada (7/12/94), Marcos made clear that the «return" to guns afetr the second meeting of the CND was the continuation of the EZLN’s democratic politics by other means. In fact, the Zapatistas never considerd the electoral process and the use of guns as two incompatible activities. In the same interview, Marcos was quite clear: «The guns ought to open up space again, spitting lead enables politics to be exerted again". For this very reason, we do not limit our attention in this text to the EZLN’s partial tactics but we try to point out the essential content of their politics on the whole.

Closely related to the EZLN’s national-democratic ideology is their social-patriotism. «We are the inheritors of the true builders of our nation. We, the dispossessed, are millions and we thereby call upon our brothers and sisters to join this struggle as the only path, so that we will not die of hunger due to the insatiable ambition of a 70-year dictatorship led by a clique of traitors who represent sell-out cliques and the most conservative elements", they said in their First Declaration from the Lacandona Jungle and in their communique of the 6th of January, they made clear that «...we try to unite the Mexican people and its independent organizations so that through all forms of struggle, a national liberation movement can be formed which will enable the presence of honest and patriotic social organizations for Mexico’s progress". In their Second Declaration, they refer to «the plunder of national wealth", to the «government’s persistence in implementing an economic plan that increases poverty in our country for the benefit of the foreigners" as a reply to the EZLN’s demand for a revision of NAFTA. Marcos, in the interview with Amor y Rabia explains the extent of the EZLN’s «internationalist" politics: «...as far as international politics is concerned, we have nothing more than our appeal for solidarity to the Mexican and latino community in the USA, to help us as a fraternal nation". This nationalism that traps class struggle within state borders or seeks out people of similar ethnic descent without regard to class, sabotages the modern dimension of the rebellion against NAFTA. Precisely now, when it’s pointless to refer to Mexicans in general when it’s Mexican as well as american proletarians (Chicanos or otherwise) who are being hit hard by capital’s world integration, precisely now, when the social question cannot be limited to Mexico’s borders, the Zapatistas intensify class struggle whilst holding the national flag as their banner against the «sell-out" government and «foreign capital". They foster the false vision of socialism in one country again and they (together with a fraction of the Mexican bourgeoisie threatened by capital’s integration) fill the ideological gap opened by capital’s internationalization in the Mexican government’s propaganda apparatus. Whereas the PRI in dismantling the welfare state is forced to tone down its nationalistic demagogy, now, it seems, social-patriotic and nationalistic slogans emerge on behalf of the proletariat -another fact indicating that what happens in Mexico is not soleley a Mexican affair. Do not the protestations of trade unions in several European countries calling privatizations of nationalized corporations «sell-outs" wrap up class struggle in a social-democratic, nationalist language? Or, don’t references to the «threat against our cultural heritage" from european integration signify the false identification of popular culture with the nation?

«Do not be misled into supposing that the quarrel between Madero and ourselves is a quarrel between Mexicans, which Mexicans should be left to settle for themselves. It is not. It is the old, inextinguishable quarrel between bourgeoisie and proletariat; between monopolists and disinherited; between those who wish to live peacefully under the existing system and those who know that under the present system there is no peace...This quarrel therefore, is yours. Without playing the traitor to the great international cause of the emancipation of labour you cannot ignore it... We do not appeal to you to help US. Our appeal is that you leave no stone unturned to help YOURSELVES by utilizing the magnificent opportunity of forwarding the common cause which the Mexican Revolution affords."

Regeneracion, PLM’s newspaper, from the «Appeal to members of the [american] Socialist Party" of 29/4/1911, later included in the article «Labour’s solidarity should know neither race nor colour".

The Zapatistas are therefore critisized in the context of international class antagonism which their nationalist ideology does not promote and not of course because they «do not make the revolution". The dimensions of the social question in Chiapas and Mexico in general transcend their ideology, even if they were the ones who escalated class struggle and are keeping it up to a great extent. The attacks against proletarians in Mexico and the States during the last decade have generated new struggles. In California, Proposition 187, which denies «illegal" immigrants access to health care, education and social care in general has become a law, after a referendum with 59% for and 41% against (20). On the other hand, they reduce the length of time on welfare benefit and lower the age at which children can be tried as adults from 16 to 14...among other things the «Republican Revolution" has accomplished. The first reaction last October was the largest demonstration (over 100,000) in L.A. for several decades. There were also student walk-outs, rallies and sit-ins and there are a lot of indications that maybe the outbreak in 1992 (the big L.A. riot) will happen again. Perhaps the hiring of 3,000 new cops was no coincidence.

As a reaction to NAFTA, transnational networks have already been formed linking activists in the USA, Mexico and Canada. Labour unions, women’s groups, farmers, environmental, religious and intellectual organisations -about sixty in all- have formed transnational coalitions demanding a «revision of NAFTA", «democratization of the IMF and the World Bank", «equitable, sustainable and participatory development", a new «global Keynesianism", redistribution of wealth between «poor and rich countries", «a civil society without borders...for a participatory and sustainable global village". This new social-democratic vision without borders, that brings together dissimilar social groups of limited class composition (from the petite-bourgeois to labour unions leaders, from feminists to academics) is forced by the internationalization of capital to get over any idea of exclusively national action. It is precisely this new strategy of capital which, although it precipitates the collapse of the social-democratic parties based on a Keynesian national development, generates a new social-democracy in the form of grass-roots movements of a transnational orientation. It is certainly a positive fact that in this transitional age, one of global restructuring of social relations, neo-Keynesianism recognizes the international character of capital’s attack and stresses global solidarity. However, it is not only that this multicultural reformism is undesirable; it is also questionable whether permanent reforms are possible any longer.

Not an unimportant role in the division between Mexican and american proletarians is played out in the ideologies of the «bad gringos" and the Mexican «traitors" who in migrating to the USA «forgot" the nation and the Raza. Against these so-called pochos, the old anti-imperialist hatred rages again vehemently, something that makes the identification of second and third generation immigrants with Chiapanecos or Mexican proletarians in general almost impossible. On the other side of the borders («al otro lado") racism against immigrants intensifies, especially after its legislative consolidation.

While the New Enclosures are imposed globally through the pillaging of communal land, privatizations, the war on rents, the decline in wages, the destructuration of the welfare state, immigration, «working in the black", developers destroying the countryside (construction of huge motorways, airports etc), the struggles everywhere against all of this, cannot as yet, go beyond their partiality. While the internationalist vision appears nowadays as an urgent necessity and not as a mere abstract principle, new barriers of nation, race and localism rise up to annul it.

If the Zapatistas, limiting the rebellion in Mexico to a political, national affair, assign us, at best, the tasks of just a solidarity committee, we can only feel for ourselves what is ours in this struggle. Contrary to the PRD which organizes solidarity campaigns for the Zapatistas in Europe gathering signatures from academics, artists and sympathizers in general, our practical solidarity to the ejidatarios and proletarians in Chiapas will be to continue squatting, to struggle against privatizations and the alienation of everyday life, aiming to develop these struggles into the creation of a world human community.

KATERINA, Athens -March 1995

NOTES

(1) Marxist-leninist organizations mostly, the so-called «extremists", arousing suspicion from many sides that they are PRI agents -such suspicions and accusations in Mexico are quite common, since the spectacle of terrorism and spying is perfectly organized and adds to confusion.

(2) It is the name the EZLN gave to the jungle meeting place where the convention met referring symbolically to the convention of representatives of Villa’s, Zapata’s and the Constitutionalists’ armies in 1914, in the vortex of the Mexican Revolution. However, comparing these two conventions the only resemblance seems to be the name.

(3) Cuauhtemoc Cardenas, the leader of the PRD, is the son of Lazaro Cardenas, the reformist ex-president. An ex-member of the PRI and ex-governor of the state of Michoacan, gathered round him the «democratic current" within the PRI. Now with the PRD he represents the nationalist, social-patriotic tendency. Gaining 31% in the elections in 1988 he was considered to be the actual winner, although the PRI came to power again through blatant fraud. It’s worth mentioning that the abstention then amounted to 50%.

4) The Plan de Ayala, a concise, fiery outline of the Zapatistas’ objectives was written by Zapata and his comrade and former school-teacher, Otilio Montano.

(5) «Zapata emphasized «land and liberty", that is, restitution of stolen lands, water and pasture rights and the restoration of village democracy. Not that the Zapatistas lacked a proletarian consciousness -on the contrary, they seized all the means of production; fields, mills, railway stations, and distilleries. They set up liberated zones, basing themselves on communal traditions of village self-government. Zapata’s was a classic «people’s war", fought in guerilla fashion, and his forces enjoyed great popular participation and support. First Diaz, then Madero, then Huerta, and eventually the Constitutionalists launched scorched-earth campaigns of terror against the Zapatistas, indiscriminately killing any civilians in their path, but so long as their charismatic leader lived, the Zapatistas resisted the demoralization that these barbarous attacks sought to provoke.

In the north, Villa’s forces were less homogeneous than those of Zapata. In addition to former bureaucrats of the Madero regime, who helped administer the immense expanses of territory liberated by Villa’s army, the top ranks of Villa’s followers included more cowboy caudillos * (vaqueros or charros), rancheros, and petty bourgois storekeepers than it did communal peasant farmers; the foot soldiers were usually miners, migrant farmworkers, railway workers, and the unemployed. The aims of the Villistas were thus more worker-orientated or petty bourgeois than they were pro-peasant: as foremen of large estates, vaqueros, or independent ranchers, cowboy caudillos had commanded peasants but had not experienced land hunger at first hand. Workers were more interested in gainful employment than in farming for themselves. Thus lands seized by Villa’s army were held by the state, not given to the peasants." J. Cockroft «Mexico. Class Formation, Capital Accumulation and the State". * strong regional (mostly military) leaders.

6) US intervention through the invasion of Veracruz not only gave the Constitutionalists a military advantage but also helped them claim credit for «throwing out the yankee invaders" and pose as «anti-imperialists".

(7) Founded in 1929 as the PNR: National Revolutionary Party it was renamed PMR: Party of the Mexican revolution in 1938; we are talking about the PRI, which is still in power.

(8) Nevertheless, foreign (mostly US) capital has always had a strong presence in Mexico, especially in industry. According to a study in 1970, of the 2,040 companies with the largest profits, foreign capital controlled 36% of the income of the largest 400 companies and participated in another 18%, while Mexican private capital and the Mexican government controlled 21% and 25% correspondingly. (

9) We are referring to politicians and army officers, who during the Revolution amassed vast quantities of land for themselves, which they kept later under state support.

(10) Walking the streets of Mexico City, one is immersed in Mexican history and especially the period of the Revolution: subway stations, streets, squares etc. bearing the names of militants assassinated by this very state that later declared them «national heroes". After the student uprising in 1968, even Magon was pronounced a «hero", although formerly he had been condemned as «anti-Mexican", due to his internationalism.

(11) Local bosses, more information in the chapter RURAL MEXICO AND THE NEW ENCLOSURES.

12) Both Mexican and foreign (mainly US), these labour-intensive assembly plants were first established in 1964 along the borderline by the Mexican government. The maquiladoras run under extremely favourable terms for capital accumulation (no duties are imposed on parts imported from US and similarly there are no duties on the assembled products exported to the US). The workers are mostly landless peasants (especially very young women) from the same region, so that the management (Mexican or not) can better exploit them through traditional, paternalistic methods such as donations to the village, being godparents (compadrazco) etc.

(13) See in «Midnight Notes" #9 H.Cleaver’s article: «The uses of an earthquake".

(14) See «Midnight Oil" by Midnight Notes, especially chapters «Oil, guns and money" and «Audit of the crisis".

(15) Ejido means exit since the communal land usually lay on the outer edges of the village.

16) It is highly interesting to examine the methodology followed in those programmes. The emphasis was laid on the «participation" of the peasants in their exploitation, which presupposed regional «information" about the peasants’ behaviour. Usually a spying network was set up to track down the leaders of agrarian movements and then followed the implementation of the programme and the death squads for those peasants disagreeing with development. Both the time -in the 70’s- and the place -Guerrero and Oaxaca, states with a tradition of agrarian movements and especially armed ones- were not selected accidentally for this exchange of funds for «information" necessary for disbanding agrarian organizations and the peasants’ subsequent subordination to capital (see Kaffentzis, «Let me speak of the end of the World Bank and IMF").

17) Already since the 60’s leasing ejidos, although prohibited according to the constitution, was allowed after certain amendments were made. Ejidal Bank and Banco Rural, both in the interests of big landowners, acted as collective owners and controllers of the ejidos.

18) However often it resorts to electoral fraud, repression and violence, the Mexican state has also promoted and refined its recuperational practice. As we have already shown, it knows how to use both the rifle and money; to give away scholarships amply or publish Bakunin’s collected works and assassinate political opponents. We may then speak of an authoritarian but democratic state.

19) References to Magon (here and below) serve two purposes: first, to show to what extent the anarcho-communist movement during the Mexican Revolution and the existing Zapatista movement differ, as a response to an attempt by Greek anarchists to present the latter as a direct continuance of the former; second, to highlight the content and perspectives of that defeated movement at the turn of the century which can be very inspiring today, even though the historical context is quite different. Namely, the communist, internationalist perspective and the rejection of all political party manipulations.

(20) The case was brought to court by the L.A. School Board, immigrant rights groups and civil liberties advocates disputing Proposition’s 187 constitutionality. As for the referendum, the white/Anglo electorate voted for Prop. 187 by a 63% to 37%, Blacks against, 53% to 47%, and although the Latinos also voted against by 77%, 23% voted for it. Among the latter two communities those in favour of the Prop. thought that they protected themselves against the threat of the undocumented workers depressing wages and monopolizing unskilled jobs (info from «News and Letters, vol. 39, no 10).

Excerpts from EZLN’s declarations and communiques were mainly taken from «Love and Rage", vol. 5, issues no 1, 2, 3.

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