by Inter Press Service
The Zapatista National Liberation Army (EZLN) made its first public appearance on Jan. 1, 1994 -- the same day the North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA) went into effect, linking Mexico, Canada and the United States in a free trade area.
Analysts and critics have pointed to the decline of the group`s charismatic leader, `Subcomandante Marcos`, who apparently no longer controls the insurgent organisation that in the mid to late 1990s staged a number of events that drew wide international attention.
After the peace talks with the government stalled in 1996, the Zapatista demands for autonomy and recognition of the rights of indigenous people -- who form a large part of the population of the impoverished state of Chiapas -- dissolved into silence.
But last August, the EZLN took a new step, and modified the local governing structures that functioned since 1994 in areas under its influence, creating the `Caracoles` -- a new geographic division and form of de facto autonomy in the 33 Chiapas municipalities under Zapatista control.
Thus began a new stage of political struggle for `democracy, freedom and justice` -- goals proclaimed by the EZLN when, in the first minute of 1991, the poorly-armed group declared war on the government of then-president Carlos Salinas (1988-1994).
Although Chiapas is the poorest state in this country of 100 million, it possesses large reserves of oil and gas.
The main lesson provided by the Zapatistas has been one of continuity and survival of a unique movement, said historian Carlos Montemayor, a respected scholar of Mexican armed movements and the author of `War in Paradise`, a novel that narrates the extermination of an earlier insurgent group, headed by rural schoolteacher Lucio Cabaqas, in the 1970s.
The EZLN`s ability to survive helped give a new shape to the national debate, catapulting the question of the marginalisation and dire poverty plaguing a majority of Mexico`s estimated 10 million ethnic Indians onto the national agenda.
The continued existence of the group, which engaged in less than two weeks of fighting with the army in January 1994 before agreeing to an armed truce, also gave a boost to participation by civil society in political and social policy- and decision-making, Montemayor told IPS.
The peace talks that had been going on for a year and a half broke down in September 1996, after Congress modified a draft law on indigenous rights that emerged from the San Andres accords on indigenous rights and culture, signed with the government in February 1996.
The creation of the Caracoles, one of the EZLN`s most ambitious moves, was the group`s peaceful response to the failure to live up to the San Andres accords.
The Caracoles involved the proclamation of autonomy and self-government in 33 Zapatista-controlled municipalities in Chiapas, where the EZLN`s own health and education programmes are being implemented.
The creation of alternative local power structures in the form of `good government councils` arose from the traditions of indigenous communities in Mexico and other Latin American countries, like Ecuador or Colombia.
The councils are a modern-day version of an ancient form of government, said Montemayor.
But some political sectors have interpreted the creation of the Caracoles as a challenge to the government of President Vicente Fox and a mockery of the state of law.
Montemayor noted that International Labour Organisation convention 169, which has been signed and ratified by Mexico, stipulates that the social, cultural, religious and spiritual customs and practices of indigenous peoples must be respected.
That requires the preservation of traditional native institutions that for centuries enabled indigenous communities to conserve their identities and survive in adverse conditions, he said.
In 10 years, the EZLN has gone beyond armed struggle and developed its own forms of self-government, said the writer.
However, there is no sign that peace talks will be resumed with the government in the immediate future, Montemayor added.
After walking out of the peace talks in 1996, the EZLN announced in 1997 that it would not return to the negotiating table until the terms of the San Andres accords were fully met.
After Fox, the first president from outside the Institutional Revolutionary Party in 71 years, took office in December 2000, the parliamentary passage of a modified version of the law on indigenous rights in 2001 became one of the main obstacles to the resumption of peace talks.
Montemayor said the new law did not reflect the spirit of the San Andres accords and only partially incorporated, in a distorted manner, some of the concepts and rights recognised by ILO convention 169.
The law as modified by Congress establishes that it is up to state governments and laws, not federal legislation, to recognise indigenous peoples and communities.
In 1996 and 1997, the EZLN held `anti-neoliberalism` international meetings in the jungles of Chiapas, which were attended by prominent global figures like U.S. filmmaker Oliver Stone. According to analysts, the meetings made the Zapatistas the first organisers of the international anti-globalisation movement.
The pompously named `inter-galactic conferences` were the direct forerunners of the global wave of protests that began in 1999 with the demonstrationsthat stood in the way of success at the World Trade Organisation (WTO) ministerial conference in Seattle, Washington.
Although the military maintains a heavy presence in Zapatista areas, paramilitary groups remain active, and there are continued threats of forcing people out of EZLN strongholds like the Montes Azules biosphere reserve, the insurgents are loudly celebrating the 10th anniversary of their first public appearance.
The festivities began in November, with the launch of a nationwide campaign to explain the EZLN`s thinking and the motives behind the armed uprising.
The group was actually founded more than 20 years ago, in November 1983, by five men and one woman in the heart of the Lacandona jungle in Chiapas.
The central event in the celebrations was the presentation of the book `20 and 10, Fire and the Word`, by Mexican journalist Gloria Muqoz, who describes life in the Zapatista communities and narrates the origins of the movement.
Subcomandante Marcos, who from behind his trademark black face mask seduced much of Mexican society and the international leftist `intelligentsia`, has said he regrets the attention he received, and has taken a low-profile stance and faded into the background.
In fact, he did not even appear in the ceremony for the launch of the Caracoles, and analysts say it is clear that he no longer controls the movement.
But the EZLN`s continued survival has failed to bring about any change in the situation of Mexico`s indigenous people. The difference, according to the leaders of the rebel group, is that they now have hope and dignity.
Official statistics indicate that Chiapas is the state with the third-largest proportion of indigenous people over 15 with no primary school education (39.8 percent), after the northern Chihuahua (40.8) and Guerrero, in the south (45.4).
President Fox, who prior to taking office promised to resolve the conflict in Chiapas in `15 minutes`, is now trying hard to ignore the whole issue, and says that in Chiapas, `there is peace, and everyone is working, fortunately.`
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