Harassment of Zapatista Communities

Originally Published in Spanish by La Jornada   Tuesday, February 10, 2009

by Luis Hernández Navarro

In Chiapas, the harassment of Zapatista communities follows a precise route. As if they were in a relay race, campesino groups linked to the state government take turns in the different regions in trying to wear out the indigenous resistance. Throughout the length and breadth of the rebel territories, an army of initials, that speaks in the name of workers, regularly and systematically provokes the support bases who reject any dealings with the government.

There is no truce in this provocation. It is a case of not giving one moment of rest to those who have dared to construct autonomy without asking permission. One day they occupy their lands, another day they steal their coffee or their cattle, another day they break fences, the next they destroy the small fields on which they grow their coffee. They are waiting for the best moment to ambush the rebels, to brandish their machetes or shoot their slingshots. 

A cloak of impunity shields the aggressors. The law is not for them. Confronting campesinos against campesinos and indigenous against indigenous has been a common practice of power. These are the tools for making money. They collect for their services, sucking resources from the budget destined for combating poverty or for farming development and, if they have even more luck, occupying some government job.

During the years before the armed uprising, the majority of the mercenary organizations belonged to the ranks of the Institutional Revolutionary Party (PRI). Nomads of politics, they have, since 2000, changed their home  to the headquarters of the Party of the Democratic Revolution (PRD). The Aztec sun [the PRD's party symbol] in Chiapas is not only the vehicle for committing fraud against their own and for anointing Jesus Ortega as their leader, but is also the lair of the paramilitaries.

The Regional Organization of Ocosingo Coffee Growers (Orcao) was responsible for one of the latest episodes of the unspoken war against the Zapatistas. While the EZLN were celebrating the Festival of Dignified Rage in the city of San Cristóbal de las Casas, members of this organization attempted to steal from the Zapatistas 500 hectares of land in Bosque Bonito, Che Guevara autonomous municipality.

It was a gamble with high stakes. If what they wanted to do was delegitimize the Zapatistas, they could not have chosen a better moment for this theatrical spectacle than during a high level international meeting, before hundreds of invitees from different countries, with the media spotlight on them. The coffee growers’ organization presented themselves as the victim, and “exhibited” the rebels as a force “questioned” by a group of indigenous. The provocation was not accidental, nor an act that “got out of control.” It was planned.

The Orcao wasn't always like this. For several years it had a close relationship with Zapatismo. Nevertheless, it broke this link between 1997 and 1999, and its leadership then began to argue with the rebel social base, gaining government supports [economic aid] and elected positions for its leaders. With the arrival of Pablo Salazar to the state government, the break became a growing conflict. In 2002 the aggressions of the organization of coffee growers against the Zapatista bases increased dramatically. 

The Orcao was formed in 1988, in 12 communities of Sibacjá, in the municipality  of Ocosingo. In a little while other villages added themselves to it, reaching almost 90. Their original demands consisted as much in the search for better prices for coffee (they plummeted drastically in 1989)  as in the solution of the agrarian backlog. In 1992, in the context of the commemoration of 500 years of indigenous, black and popular resistance, it [Orcao] claimed the right of indigenous self-determination, opposed the reform of Article 27 of the constitution, and demanded liberty, justice and democracy.

Orcao forms part of the National Union of Autonomous Regional Campesino Organizations (Unorca) in Chiapas. As has happened to almost all the campesino organizations in the state, national and local, those that make up Unorca are suffering from an unstoppable process of decomposition, dispersion and internal division. Orcao directs Unorca in the state. Juan Vazquez, one of its principal leaders, is commissioner for reconciliation in the government of Juan Sabines. The organization has close links with his administration. The majority of its leaders form part of the PRD.

In December 2007, the EZLN started an agrarian distribution from below, endorsed by the Zapatista Agrarian Law. The measure responded, in part, to the government’s decision to recognise the rights of land occupied by the rebels in favour of other campesino groups. With this, the federal and state public administration sowed the seeds of discord among thepoor. On May 15, 2008, the Zapatistas informed the Orcao that they would demarcate the lands recuperated in 1994 in order to measure them in hectares and distribute them. The response from the organization of coffee growers was immediate: it rented out and sold its lands, invaded the lands of Zapatista bases, stole and injured their animals, and violently attacked the communities in rebellion. 

The rebels are not the only association that has serious conflicts with the Orcao. The Emiliano Zapata Campesino Organization (OCEZ), which has nothing to do with the EZLN, complained publicly to Juan Sabines that “different officials of the government you head have concealed abuses, tricks, failures to fulfil agreements, and constant provocations committed by the former Ocosingo council member Jose Perez Gomez and the paramilitary group inside the Orcao which he directs, who seek to commit the shameful injustice of depriving 10 indigenous Tzeltals, who are our compañeros of the OCEZ-FNLS, of their legitimate ejidal rights ,.”

What happened in Bosque Bonito was not a confrontation, but an aggression by the Orcao against the Zapatistas, a provocation that, thanks to the prudence of the rebels, did not get out of control.