среда, 1 октября 2008 г.

What is the Zapatista Solidarity Coalition?

The Zapatista Solidarity Coalition actively supports the Zapatista
communities in Chiapas.They continue to resist the Mexican
military and paramilitary efforts to divide and destroy those com-
munities.We raise money to fund creative economic development,
education and health projects.Thousands of dollars have been sent
to help people who have been displaced by the cruel para-military
groups sponsored by the uncaring Mexican Government.This
money has been spent to build schools and to develop cooperative
stores and health clinics.

Fund raisers are held to sell T-shirts,sweatshirts and other
items prodused locally,as well as arts and crafts from Chiapas such
as huipiles(dresses),purses,belts,bracelets,wall hangings.From
Mexico we also bring beautiful T-shirts whit messages of resistance.

The ZSC works to educate people in the U.S.about the
situation in Chiapas,Mexico by presentations employing
slides,videos and speakers.Presentations are made to schools,
universities,church and community groups.We also disseminate
information by making appearances on radio and television and by
writing articles for the print media.

We strive to put Zapatista principles into practice here in
our own community.This is done by sponsoring cultural programs
work with students and support the efforts of workers to organize.
We work in a collaborative,non-hierachial fashion.We invite you to join us!
The meeting is the first Sunday of each month at 10:00AM.

Zapatista Solidarity Coalition
909 12th St.#118
Sacramento,CA 95814
(916)443-3424 or zapa@zsc.org

U.S. and Canadian Chiapas Solidarity Groups and NGOsBikes for Chiapas

http://www.schoolsforchiapas.org/bikes/San Diego, CABuilding Bridges Chiapas Observer

Project
http://www.vcn.bc.ca/building/Vancouver, BC CanadaCarolina Interfaith Task Force


on Central America
http://www.citca.org/16 chapters across North and South

CarolinaCharlottesville Latin American Solidarity Committee (no website) Charlottesville,

VAChiapas Coalition 98
http://thedagger.com/chiapas/Los Angeles, CAChiapas Education

Project (no website) Durham, NCChiapas Media Project
http://www.chiapasmediaproject.org/or

http://www.promedios.org/Chicago, ILChiapas Peace House

http://www.chiapaspeacehouse.org/Chicago, ILChiapas Support Committee

http://www.chiapas-support.org/Oakland, CACloudforest Initiatives

http://www.hwpics.com/cloudforest-mexico/St. Paul, MNCommittee of Indigenous Solidarity

http://cis.mahost.org/Washington, D.CCommittee against Repression and for Democracy in

Mexico (no website) Seattle, WACommittee in Solidarity with Central American People

http://www.efn.org/~ciscap/Eugene, ORCommittee on US/Latin American Relations

http://www.rso.cornell.edu/cuslar/Ithaca, NYCommunity Action on Latin America

http://www.calamadison.org/Madison, WICoordinadora Internacional de Apoyo al Pueblo de

Mexico (no website) Chicago ILDenver Chiapas Coalition (no website) Denver, CODoctors for

Global Health
http://www.dghonline.org/Decatur, GAEstación Libre (no website) various cities

in U.S.Global Exchange
http://www.globalexchange.org/countries/mexico/San Francisco,

CAGrassroots Interconnect publishes a quarterly newsletter called Interconnect whose purpose

is to encourage dialogue on movement-building among 1750 US-Latin America solidarity groups

and to share resources. (no website) Pittsford, NYHoward County Friends of Latin America

http://members.home.com/howardrights/hocofola/chiapas.htmBaltimore, MDIllinois Maya

Ministry
http://www.illinoismayaministry.org/Westchester, ILInterReligious Task Force on

Central America (no website) Cleveland, OHKentucky Interfaith Task Force on Latin America

\and the Caribbean (no website) Louisville, KYMexico Solidarity Network

http://www.mexicosolidarity.org/Chicago, ILNew York Zapatistas (no website) New York, New

YorkOrganic Consumers Association
http://www.organicconsumers.org/chiapas/Little Marais,

MNPastors for Peace/Interreligious Fdtn. for Community Organization

http://www.ifconews.org/chiapas.htmlNew York, New YorkPeace Brigades International

http://www.peacebrigades.org/Washington, D.C.Pledge of Resistance

http://poetics.org/DaytonPOR/default.htmDayton, OHPortland Central American Solidarity

Committee (no website) Portland, ORPueblo por la Paz, Tucson

http://members.tripod.com/~PPLPTucson, AZRochester Committee on Latin America, a

project of Metro Justice
http://www.metrojustice.org/task_forces.htmRochester, NYSchools

for Chiapas
http://schoolsforchiapas.org/San Diego, CASIPAZ International Service for Peace

http://www.sipaz.org/Santa Cruz, CAStudents Taking Action in Chiapas (STAC)

http://www.stacmexico.com/Halifax, Montreal, and PetersboroughWitness for Peace

http://www.witnessforpeace.org/mexico/index.htmlWashington, D.C.Zapatista Block

http://www.geocities.com/zapatistablock/index1.htmWashington, D.C.Zapatista Solidarity

Coalition http://www.
zapata-revolt.blogspot.com Sacramento, CA

среда, 17 сентября 2008 г.


Victor Rivera of the Coalicion Zapatista of Sacramento demonstrated against the visit of Mexican President Ernesto Zedillo. Chronicle Photo by Carlos Avila Gonzalez.

Protesters in Sacramento shouted to Mexican President Ernesto Zedillo, who was speaking inside the Capitol. Chronicle Photo by Carlos Avila Gonzalez .

вторник, 16 сентября 2008 г.

US and Canada

Zapatista Network Call

April 8, 2006 - 5:20pm — Gary

To the compañeras in every corner of the so-called US and Canada,To all the peoples of the continent named America,To the struggling Peoples of the Global South and the world,To all the adherents of the Sixth Declaration, the Other Campaign, and the International Campaign,To the national and international alternative press

We, the Zapatista Network, are reaching out as a newly emerging “network of networks” to invite companer@s in the so-called U.S. and Canada to “walk together” as Zapatista grassroots and community-based groups who support the Zapatistas and are inspired by Zapatismo. Our intent has been to create spaces of encounter so that diverse groups can share ideas, resources and projects as part of a larger process to strengthen each collectives’ work, solidarity efforts, and rebellion. We also aim to promote and support the formation of new Zapatista inspired collectives. By saying “network of networks” we propose one of many overlapping webs of resistance taking place all over the world.

Since January 1, 1994 when the EZLN declared ¡Ya Basta! Mexican and International Civil Society have responded in solidarity creating a broad base of support. The Zapatistas’ commitment to encounter and dialogue has made it possible to collectively imagine “a world where many worlds fit.” Some communities working in solidarity with the Zapatistas have responded with aid, while others used direct action to help halt the military and state repression, drawing attention to the low intensity war directed against the Zapatistas. The response to the Zapatista rebellion has been unique not only in its diversity but its intensity. Solidarity efforts have served to keep people informed, provide material support, and protest the cruel excesses of military and state repression. More importantly, communities around the world and in the US have pursued their own resistance locally, attempting to imagine and realize a different way of doing politics.

In August 2004 the Committee of Indigenous Solidarity-DC-Zapatistas sent out a call to form a zapatista network in the U.S. and Canada that was initially referred to as red “Plan Morelia-Polo Norte” (in response to and in solidarity with the Plan La Realidad-Tijuana in Mexico). This call was made in order to construct one avenue of many for zapatista inspired groups in this region of America to dialogue and construct networks of support. Of the Zapatista related collectives and groups who responded to this initial call, we began talking together about encuentro, Zapatismo, Zapatista solidarity and how to reach out to others so that we all know that we are not alone.
Regarding the Zapatistas as offering profound new political strategies and alternatives whose relevance goes well beyond Chiapas, there have been two encuentros inspired by this effort to form a bi-national network and in response to the Zapatistas’ proposals in the Sixth Declaration of the Lacandon Jungle. One was in August 2005 in Oakland, California and the other in November 2005 in Los Angeles, California. Both were amazing successes and have lead to a stronger networking among the numerous Zapatista groups and individuals in California. As these encuentros have strengthened networks and community in California, we would like to see this spread in other parts of the U.S. and Canada alongside Mexico and the whole of the Americas.

Additionally, through sustained dialogue, the grassroots organizations and collectives involved thus far have come to eight “points of agreement” (preliminary and subject to change by the collective voice). These are: A commitment to horizontal, egalitarian, fully inclusive and transparent structures and processes in all aspects of our activities and interactions; reciprocal respect for the autonomy and independence of all member organizations; support for the Zapatistas’ “Other Campaign” in solidarity with the efforts of our Mexican Compañer@s to unify the struggle, and in recognition of the need to pursue a similar project north of the Rio Grande, throughout the U.S. and Canada; a commitment to carry out our solidarity support work for the autonomous Zapatista communities of Chiapas in full accordance with the protocols established by the Good Government Juntas and the autonomous rebel Zapatista municipalities (MAREZ); a commitment to advance Zapatismo as political thought and as a method for resistance in our local struggles; solidarity in principle with all global struggles being waged by the people of the world for humanity and against neoliberalism; support and respect for the choices of the autonomous Zapatista communities to struggle in defense of their lives, humanity and environment and against neoliberalism in any way they deem necessary; a commitment to participate to the best of our abilities in the operational processes and development of the Zapatista Network (“Zapared”).

As the “Other Campaign” advances, we see it as urgent that this network is available to support such initiatives. Consequently, we are publicly announcing the existence of this emergent network which we are calling the Zapatista Network and are reaching out to Companer@s in the U.S and Canada in the hope to encourage more connections and strengthen webs of resistance.
We invite you to join us, as we begin this dialogue to create a “world where many worlds fit.” As a medium to facilitate an ongoing encounter, there is an interactive website with a private blog for collectives and an open forum available for individuals. There will also be a resource archive. For more information about the network, visit our web site. If you’re interested in participating, feel free to contact the Zapatista Network at zaparedinfo@list.riseup.net, or contact any of our member organizations directly. Acción Zapatista de Humboldt (Arcata, CA) Manolo Callahan, mc92@humboldt.edu

Acción Zapatista of Santa Barbara (Santa Barbara, CA) Jordan Camp, jcamp@umail.ucsb.edu
Chiapas Support Committee (Oakland, CA) Mary Ann Tenuto-Sánchez, cezmat@igc.org
Committee of Indigenous Solidarity-DC Zapatistas (Washington, DC) Adrián Boutureira, cis-dcz@riseup.net
El Machete (Austin, TX) Simón, elpinchesimon@yahoo.com
Estación Libre (Los Angeles, CA) Pablo Gonzales, aztlan71@yahoo.com
Protesta y Apoyo Zapatista (Santa Barbara, CA) Jordan Camp, jcamp@umail.ucsb.edu
Zapatista Solidarity Coalition (Sacramento, CA) zapa@zsc.org
Colectivo Caracolero Chicagotra (Chicago, Il) Dora T. y Kora M., chicagotra@gmail.com
Rebel Imports (Maryland) Kristin Bricker, krisbricker@gmail.com

среда, 27 августа 2008 г.

! 1.Ivan Ignatesko and Mario Galvan 2.Our Zapatista Solidarity Coalition


1.Xico Gonzales,Ivan Ignatesko and Phil Goldvarg 2.Mariana Rivera and Ivan Ignatesko

1.Ivan Ignatesko and George A. Collier 2.Ramon Penate Diaz,Miguel Pickard and Ivan Ignatesko

Mario Galvan (right) of the Zapatista Solidarity Coalition in Sacramento poses with Al Giordano and Maria of NarcoNews, The Other Journalists for The Other Campaign.

An Interview with Two Anti-Minuteman Project Activists

November 09, 2005

By Seth Sandronsky

Scott Campbell lives in Oakland, California, and is an organizer with the San Francisco Bay Area Coalition to Fight the Minutemen. He and 600 others protested on October 29 at the state Capitol in Sacramento against the Minuteman Project, which turned out 200 supporters. Mario Galván lives in Sacramento, California. He has been working with the Zapatista Coalition for 12 years, and with Sacramento Area Peace Action for 10 years.

Seth: What else should people know about the Minuteman Project, and why?

Scott: People should know that the Minuteman Project is an armed, racist, anti-immigrant vigilante militia with documented ties to white supremacist groups. They have committed acts of violence against people trying to cross the U.S.-Mexican border. Their ideology represents the extreme jingoism and xenophobia of the U.S. right.
This is important to know because while the physical numbers of Minutemen are quite small, it is this ideology that is gaining currency. The Southern Poverty Law Center has documented over 40 Minutemen-imitator groups. Republican politicians such as California Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger and Senate Majority Leader Bill Frist have praised the Minuteman Project. In Arizona alone, since the Minutemen were there this April, at least 18 anti-immigrant bills have been introduced into the state Legislature. Currently, signatures are being gathered for the California Border Police Initiative. That would add 2,000-3,000 officers to basically harass immigrant workers, along with building yet another prison along on the California-Mexico border.
In general, the Minutemen have created an atmosphere where the scapegoating and attacking of immigrants and people of color is even more acceptable than it used to be.

Mario: Apart from taking the law into their own hands, and creating dangerous situations along the border by organizing armed patrols of untrained people, the Minutemen are only attacking the symptoms of the problem, and not the root. They seek to stop immigration by criminalizing it, and don't address the economic exploitation of Latin America carried out by the U.S. through "free trade" agreements such as the NAFTA and the proposed FTAA. So it's "legal" for U.S. corporations to enter Mexico, make outrageous profits by exploiting Mexican labor (most factory workers earn around $5.00 per day!), and then bringing the wealth they have created back across the border to the U.S. But when a hungry Mexican or Central American (over 70 million Mexicans live in poverty) tries to cross the same border into the U.S. to find a job and feed his family, that's supposed to be "illegal."

Seth: How did you get involved in this opposition movement?

Scott: Once I saw news about the Minutemen in Arizona in April, I thought, "if they come to California, we've got to stop them." And sure enough, they announced they were coming. So I called a meeting in June and the Bay Area Coalition came together out of that.

Mario: The Zapatista Coalition has been concerned for years about the rights, not only of immigrants, but also of all human beings. The demands of the Zapatista Army of National Liberation, from the beginning of their uprising in 1994 in Mexico, echo the United Nations Universal Declaration of Human Rights: the right of every person to work, health care, education, decent housing, and other basic human needs. In this particular case with the Minutemen, we were invited by the Bay Area Coalition to Fight the Minutemen to help them carry out the demonstration that they had already begun to organize for Oct. 29. Other local organizations joined with us, and were glad to be a part of it.

Seth: What is the political significance of Gov. Schwarzenegger's backing of the Minuteman Project in terms of his four ballot measures to "reform" state government on the Nov. 8 special

Scott: I'm not really sure. Elections aren't my thing. Polls show most Californians oppose an armed civilian militia on the border, so I would think Schwarzenegger's support would hurt him. At the same time, most people don't know the extent of his support for the Minutemen. To be sure, the Latino/a population is aware of it, so he's probably not too popular with them now.

Mario: I'm not really sure. We Zapatistas distrust the two-party political system in general, and are not inclined to take sides and worry about which of the two parties that are exploiting us will come out on top in any particular case. Even in that context, though, it seems obvious that the governor made a mistake when he publicly backed the Minutemen. Taking the turnout for the Oct. 29 events at the state Capitol as one isolated test sample of public opinion, the odds were 3 to 1 against the Minutemen and, by association, the governor as well.

Seth: What are you demanding that local and state officials do to address the Minuteman Project's relations with immigrant Latinos?

Scott: Our coalition isn't demanding anything from local or state officials. We figure if they really wanted to do something about the Minutemen, especially on the state level, then they'd find a way to do it. They don't, because at the end of the day, the Minutemen and the state are on the same side -- reinforcing and militarizing an illegitimate border in the interest of capitalism and the continued exploitation of workers from the global south.

Mario: As mentioned above, the Zapatista Coalition is a newcomer to this work. We have not made any demands of elected officials at this point, and still need to discuss this among ourselves before taking such a posture. Speaking for myself, though, and not for the ZSC, I am saddened (but somehow not surprised, considering U.S. history) to see that the government allows, and even encourages, citizens to take the law into their own hands. I am reminded of Dr. Lawrence Britt's "14 Defining Characteristics of Fascism," which include "constant use of patriotic mottos, slogans, symbols, songs, and other paraphernalia. Flags are seen everywhere. . . ," along with "disdain for the recognition of human rights" and "identification of scapegoats as a unifying cause." How far is it from Minuteman to Brown Shirt? I don't want to find out!

Seth: Who are these officials, and what have been their responses?

Scott: A group we work with, the Deporten a la Migra Coalition, has done some work with politicos. They protested at California Attorney General Bill Lockyer's office on Sept. 16, have done civil disobedience in Schwarzenegger's office, and have tried to set up a meeting with Fabian Núñez, speaker of the California State Assembly, to discuss the issue of the Minuteman Project. The responses of all three has been inaction.

Mario: Once again, the Zapatista Coalition is new to this issue, and has not been in touch with elected officials.

Seth: How can folks help to oppose the Minuteman Project?

Scott: If people are in the Bay Area and want to get involved, they can contact us at <stoptheminutemen@riseup.net>. Also, to get on our low volume events list, people can e-mail <stopthemm-announce-subscribe@lists.riseup.net>. If folks aren't from the Bay Area, we're in contact with groups around the state, country, and continent working on this issue, so we can try to help you contact some people to work with.

Mario: As a follow-up to the successful cooperation between local and Bay Area groups on the anti-Minuteman rally of Oct. 29, at least one meeting is being planned to reflect on and analyze our work together, and to discuss the desirability of creating an ongoing anti-Minuteman coalition. Interested people can contact the Zapatista Coalition office by phone at (916) 443-3424, or by e-mail at <zapa@zsc.org>. There are, of course, other groups already heavily involved in this work. A Google search for "Minutemen" will turn up a lot of material, both pro and con, on the issue.

Seth Sandronsky is a member of Sacramento Area Peace Action and a co-editor with Because People Matter, Sacramento's progressive paper. He can be reached at <ssandron@hotmail.com>.

The Zapatista Uprising

On New Year's Eve, 1993, the Mexican state of Chiapas was thrust upon the international scene as the Zapatista guerrilla army simultaneously seized control of the colonial city of San Cristуbal de las Casas and 5 towns in the surrounding Chiapas highlands. Though this immediately calls to mind the recent conflicts of neighboring Central America, the Zapatistas showed a much greater degree of organization and military strength in their first action than had the FSLN in Nicaragua, the FMLN in El Salvador, or the URNG in Guatemala. And unlike most of the Central American guerrilla organizations, their rank and file are composed almost exclusively of teenagers and young adults from the ethnic Mayan groups of the highlands.

What at second glance appears to be another ethnic conflict in a decade of ethnic strife around the world, is both that and more. The roots of the struggle do indeed spring from the history of marginalization and racism to which the Mayan Indians have been subject, but their Declaration of War and other statements clearly reach out to the poor of all ethnic groups across the length and breadth of greater Mexico. With a greater understanding of the cultural and social nuances of Chiapas this and other paradoxes begin to make sense.

"We have nothing to lose, absolutely nothing, no decent roof over our heads, no land, no work, poor health, no food, no education, no right to freely and democratically choose our leaders, no independence from foreign interests, and no justice for ourselves or our children. But we say enough is enough! We are the descendants of those who truly built this nation, we are the millions of dispossessed, and we call upon all of our brethren to join our crusade, the only option to avoid dying of starvation!"

Zapatista National Liberation Army (EZLN)
Declaration of the Lacandon Jungle, 1993
ROOTS OF THE CONFLICT: 500 YEARS SINCE THE CONQUEST
Geographically the state of Chiapas is part of Central America, the volcanic isthmus where we find the southernmost frontier of the indigenous cultures of North America. The central region is a high elevation plateau composed of steep rugged terrain, known as the Chiapas Highlands. To the Southwest are the fertile Pacific lowlands, to the East is the Lacandуn jungle, and to the Southeast lies Guatemala. Originally part of the Captaincy of Guatemala during the time of the Spanish Colony, Chiapas was annexed by Mexico following independence. Nevertheless the highlands can be thought of culturally as the Northern extension of the Altiplano of Guatemala, inhabited by closely related Mayan peoples. Today Chiapas is one of the two poorest states of Mexico.
The historical roots of today's conflict go back to the pre-conquest era when the Pacific lowland areas served as the breadbasket of the indigenous civilizations. The arrival of the Spanish, however, ushered in a period of 500 years during which indigenous people were progressively pushed off those lands by the expansion of plantations owned by Spanish-speaking Ladinos (people of mixed Spanish and Indian descent). By the turn of the century, the fertile lands of the region were mostly occupied by cattle ranching and sugar, coffee and cotton plantations, while the indigenous people of Chiapas were forced to farm the thin, rocky soils found on the steep slopes of the highlands. Not only did the original inhabitants of the region lose their lands, but they have also been subject to centuries of fierce racism and discrimination on the part of the dominant Ladino society, which continues virtually unabated to this day. Yet the last 40 years have probably contributed as much to the current situation as did the 500 years since the Conquest.

THE PAST 40 YEARS
In the 1950's the shrinking plots of land in the highlands could no longer support the Indian population and the poorest began to migrate toward the last frontier, the sparsely populated Lacandуn jungle area to the East. There these colonists cleared tracts of rainforest land and exposed red clay soils that lose their fertility within one to three crop cycles. They were soon joined by Spanish speaking peasants fleeing poverty in many other areas of Mexico, many of them with experiences in local peasant revolts.
Meanwhile those who remained behind in the Chiapas highlands saw a dramatic redrawing of social configurations within the indigenous villages during the 1970's and 80's. In the late seventies the oil boom in bordering states initiated a cycle of social polarization in the highlands that has accelerated by the debt crisis of the early eighties. Class lines were accentuated within the communities, with the increasing alignment of local, indigenous elites or caciques with the governing party, and the emergence of a burgeoning underclass of the newly dispossessed. These latter families once again initiated a cycle of migration and colonization of still unexploited lands in nearby lower elevation areas.
Together, with the indigenous peoples of the neighboring state of Oaxaca, the lowland colonists and the destitute in the highlands were the poorest, most desperate people in Mexico. As if that were not already enough, the conditions faced by most of them have worsened substantially during the past 10 years, as successive Mexican presidents have implemented structural adjustment and free trade policies that have eroded fully 40% of the purchasing power of the Mexican poor. Finally, Mexican President Carlos Salinas' controversial Solidarity anti-poverty program never reached the Lacandуn area to any significant extent. Thus it should come as no surprise that the lower elevation Lacandon settlements of highland colonists should be the incubators for armed rebellion.

BEYOND CONVENTIONAL WISDOM
What lessons should we be taking from the events in Chiapas? One answer is that you can't force a people to live under progressively more intolerable conditions for centuries and not expect a violent response. Beyond that, we can use these events to better understand the dynamics of rural indigenous communities.
Conventional wisdom among anthropologists and others has long assumed that such communities are relatively insular units, with little relationship or integration into the larger, non-indigenous or non-peasant society. According to such reasoning they engage primarily in farming activities, and only relate to the nation state through a defensive or reactive posture. If we believe this we are forced into a sort of black and white form of thinking: either we romanticize their lifestyle, imagining it to be pristine, unaffected by and better than modem life, or we assume that they are backward and inefficient, an obstacle to modernization. These polarized viewpoints have cut across the political spectrum, with indigenous rights activists and many traditional conservatives tending toward the first view, and socialist state planners and neo-liberals agreeing upon the latter. None of these positions have been translated into effective policy, however, witness rural development debacles across the world and it is clear that we are now in desperate need of a more nuanced understanding of peasant societies.

RECENT STUDY ON CHIAPAS
A recently completed study of Highland Chiapas by Stanford University anthropologist George Collier is a good first step toward such an understanding. By focusing on the oil boom and the subsequent debt crisis he has found a much more subtle and far reaching degree of connectedness than previously thought between apparently "insular" Mayan.
The boom in the nearby oil fields and the employment that was generated in related construction, transport and development activities, exerted a pull that drew able bodied men out of the highlands and into remunerated wage labor, in some cases quite well remunerated, for periods of up to several years. This labor exodus led to a collapse of highland agriculture. Conventional views of peasant societies would have predicted that once this process had occurred it would be irreversible - that peasant agriculture would never recover. Yet Collier found that when employment opportunities in the lowlands evaporated during Mexico's 1982 debt crisis, Mayans returned en masse to the highlands and in fact resumed their farming activities. This revitalized peasant agriculture was, however, very different from the traditional agriculture that existed before the oil boom. Farmers had not previously used chemical fertilizers and pesticides, instead growing corn with shifting cultivation in which the lengthy fallow period allowed the notoriously poor soils to recover some degree of fertility before being planted again. The key productive input was labor, for clearing and preparation of fields but especially, for weeding during the growing season.
When the men returned to their villages after the oil boom they brought with them two things, the money some of them had saved and a taste for modern technology. They capitalized their agricultural production via the introduction of fertilizers and herbicides, which are now ubiquitous in the highlands. This change in agricultural practices has contributed to two profound transformations, changing both the highland landscape and social relations within indigenous communities.

A LANDSCAPE OF POVERTY
Aerial photographs show quite dramatically the change in the landscape surrounding Apas, a highland community, for, which Collier has assembled three decades of data. The area in crops dropped substantially during the oil boom, but later rebounded to cover an area much greater than ever before - a consequence of the decline of shifting cultivation. Fertilizers are now used to provide soil fertility in place of the fallow cycle, and herbicides allow continuous use of land that would once have been left fallow for several years. From a landscape that was dominated by second growth and forest it has been transformed to one dominated by annual crops.
This has had an important environmental consequence: a dramatic increase in soil erosion as the heavy rains wash away the earth that is barely protected by annual crops. This degradation of the land and associated loss of soil fertility lowers the ability of the land to sustain human populations, contributing to the tendency toward outward migration.

CACIQUES AND THE NEWLY DESTITUTE
While land and family labor were once the essential production factors used in highland farming, the capital to purchase chemicals and to hire additional labor has now become the most important 'input.' The newly competitive, commercial nature of agriculture has meant that access to capital has become the axis around which farming activities have been reorganized. Those who accumulated more capital during the oil boom, particularly those who invested in trucks and other transport vehicles, now control highland agriculture through money lending, sharecropping, land rental, labor contracting, transport and other activities. These are the caciques. People at the other extreme have become the newly destitute referred to above, in some cases working as day laborers but in many cases emigrating from their communities, sometimes voluntarily and sometimes forcibly, as political, religious and community relations have fractured along the lines of the economic polarization wrought in agriculture. These people have founded new communities in the interstices between the older ones, or have migrated permanently in some cases to urban areas and in other cases to the agricultural frontier in the Lacandon lowlands, where they have joined the earlier colonists.

THE POOREST OF THE POOR
The earlier colonists were perhaps in even worse shape than the more recent arrivals, as the isolated nature of the area in which they live meant that few, if any of them participated in the oil boom employment, and because their soils are even worse than those of the highlands. It is this area of frontier settlements in jungle clearings that has produced the Zapatistas. This is where the poorest people in Mexico live, and while most of them speak indigenous languages of highland origin, the presence of Spanish-speaking migrants from elsewhere may have provided the final ingredient of insurgent peasant ideology. Worsening economic conditions of recent years and developments such as NAFTA, with it's provisions for lowering the price of the corn they produce, seem to have triggered events leading to the armed struggle that these poorest of the poor have now carried to the highlands from whence many of them came.
One factor that the Zapatistas have referred to repeatedly in their communiquйs is the reform of Article 27 of the Mexican constitution that President Salinas pushed through in preparation for NAFTA. This amendment ended the agrarian reform that has been carried out sporadically, since the Mexican resolution; thus effectively dashing the hopes of landless peasants of ever owning their own small farms.

MAKING SENSE OF THE PARADOXES
The nuances revealed by Collier's work explain two things in the news that at First seemed contradictory. First, why has there been a mixed reaction to the uprising in highland communities? Why were rebel prisoners beaten by townspeople in Ocosinao, while other local civilians expressed support for the guerrillas? This ceases to be a paradox once we grasp the non-homogeneity of these villages. Although all seem poor to the outside observer, there are in fact townspeople who are wealthy by local standards, who have hitched their fate to the dominant political party, and who thus have much to lose in an uprising which surely is at least in part against them.
The second apparent contradiction is found in the rhetoric used by the Zapatistas in their pronouncements. If this is an ethnic rebellion, and indeed the vast majority of the fighters barely speak Spanish, why do their press releases contain no statements of ethnic nationalism? Rather than rejecting the legitimacy of the Ladino Mexican state, they use the constitution to justify their actions. Their "Declaration of the Jungle" contains the following language, reminiscent of the U.S. declaration of Independence: "We call upon Article 39 of the Mexican Constitution which states 'the people have at all times the inalienable right to alter or change the nature of their government.' Therefore, in accordance with our Constitution, we issue this DECLARATION OF WAR... People of Mexico, we call for your total participation in this struggle for work, land, housing, food, health care, education independence, liberty, democracy, justice and peace."
This is no declaration of ethnic warfare. It is strikingly different from the words used by the Shining Path in Peru or the Bosnian Serbs. In fact, taken as a whole, the various press releases of the Zapatistas paint a picture of an uprising of the poor, regardless of ethnicity, calling for basic human rights. It is likely that the mixing in of Spanish speaking peasants in the Lacandon settlements contributed to the inclusionary, rather than exclusionary, nature of their rhetoric.
The broad appeal of the Zapatista message has led to a degree of David vs. Goliath sympathy among the general population of Mexico, provoking large solidarity, marches. And it has thrust the very nature of the neo-liberal economic model of the Salinas administration onto the national agenda for discussion, as urban elites wake up to the reality that there are now two Mexicos: the yuppie Mexico in the capital and Northern cities that has fed upon market liberalization and NAFTA-related investment, and the ever larger and ever more marginalized poor Mexico. The easy transition that President Salinas expected to his hand-picked successor suddenly doesn't look so easy. He has already had to make concessions on electoral reform that were unthinkable even last year, and topics that were taboo, such as the role of the military in Mexican society, are now openly debated. It would appear that the Zapatistas have let the genie of popular inconformity out of the bottle, and it remains to be seen if Salinas and the governing Institutional Revolutionary Party (PRI) will be able to get it back in.

OUTLINES OF AN ALTERNATIVE
What sort of changes would be necessary to provide a decent life to the indigenous people of Chiapas and poor peasants throughout Mexico? Is peasant farming an anachronism that must disappear if we are to eliminate rural poverty?
At Food First we believe that these questions are linked, and that in answering with a qualified no to the second we can approach a response to the First. As social relations and land tenure are currently configured in Chiapas, and indeed across Mexico, peasant agriculture is not viable. But that is not an intrinsic characteristic, but rather the product of trade policies and land concentration.
What is needed is both a new land distribution program and a favorable macroeconomic environment. Mayan communities must be given communal ejido holdings in fertile lowland areas, with guarantees of secure tenure. This is not so far-fetched as it seems, as previous Mexican land reforms have given some villages limited access to quality lowland farmland which they work on a seasonal basis. Fair credit must be made available too and crop prices should be supported sufficiently, to allow for a sustainable livelihood, much as is done in Japan, Taiwan and elsewhere. This is best achieved through barriers to cheap imports rather than subsidies, thereby avoiding deficit spending. Finally corrupt local authorities linked to the PRI must be thrown out, as has been demanded in the many peasant takeovers of towns that have taken place since the start of the Zapatista uprising.
Of course these changes would require democratization, some rollback of NAFTA and the restoration of Article 27 of the constitution, but these are just the sort of issues that the Zapatistas have thrust into the national debate in Mexico.
Peter Rosset is the Executive Director of Food First. In 1992-93 he was the Executive Director of the Stanford University Regional Center in San Crist6bal de Las Casas, Chiapas. He has a PhD. in Agricultural Ecology from the University of Michigan, Ann Arbor. Shea Cunningham is a research assistant at Food First.

MEXICAN HUMAN RIGHTS RECORD
Torture was frequently used by law enforcement agents, particularly the state and judicial police, throughout Mexico. Most of the victims were criminal suspects but some - including leaders of indigenous communities and human rights activists were apparently targeted solely for their peaceful political activities. -Amnesty International, 1993
Over the past four years, Human Rights Watch/Americas Watch and other human rights organizations have documented a consistent pattern of torture and due process abuses in a criminal justice system laced with corruption; electoral fraud and election - related violence; harassment, intimidation and even violence against independent journalists, human rights monitors, environmentalists, workers, peasants and indigenous peoples when they seek to exercise their rights to freedom of expression and assembly; and impunity for those who violate fundamental rights. -Americas Watch, 1993
As of February 1. 1994, the Secretariat for Human Rights of the Party of the Democratic Revolution (PRD), the principal left opposition party, reports that 263 of their members, activists and supporters have been assassinated since the beginning of the 1988 electoral campaign. I myself lived in San Cristуbal de Las Casas until December 15th, and while I was no longer there when the Zapatistas arrived, many of my friends were. Jenna and Michael work on an organic farming project nearby. This is from a fax that Jenna sent to stateside acquaintances:
Michael and I were at home on the first day of the new year of 1994, when they say this all began. Perhaps it really began 500 years ago. As I awoke, a familiar and dramatic nasal voice, punctuated with static, permeated my consciousness. I thought of the sounds of Nicaragua. It was the recognizable sound of a revolutionary broadcast. I rolled over. Within an hour we were in the plaza recording on film bright, young Indian men, women and even children, wearing clean and freshly pressed polyester khaki uniforms, sporting one-shot rifles, bayonets, homemade grenades, machetes, axes, and AK-47s. We talked with the masked leaders. The message was not new, not a surprise to anyone living here: we want land so we can grow food access to health care, free schools, a decent wage, an end to racism. Our lives are not worth living if things do not change. We would rather die fighting than watch our children die of malnutrition or curable diseases. The state of Chiapas is a world divided by racism and by rich and poor. A majority of the Mayan Indians here live in wood slat and mud houses with dirt floors. Eight to ten people sleep together in one room on three or four beds. Most have access only to dirty water from a nearby stream for cooking, cleaning and drinking, and for dumping their own waste. Children readily die of diarrhea and dehydration, of tuberculosis, or of some other preventable or curable disease that stalks their malnourished bodies. On the fifth day of the war we listened to the bombs drop all afternoon while we tended to the seedlings, tucking them into the soil, and gently watering them. All the while the army was at work with their bombs, destroying homes, killing civilians, and forcing others to flee from their communities. How strange to be caring for such fragile little plants, while the army was busy destroying...

Sixth Declaration of the Selva Lacandona (III)

Originally published in Spanish by the EZLN

Translated by irlandesa

What We Want To Do

We are now going to tell you what we want to do in the world and in Mexico, because we cannot watch everything that is happening o n our planet and just remain quiet, as if it were o nly we were where we are.What we want in the world is to tell all of those who are resisting and fighting in their own ways and in their own countries, that you are not alone, that we, the zapatistas, even though we are very small, are supporting you, and we are going to look at how to help you in your struggles and to speak to you in order to learn, because what we have, in fact, learned is to learn.And we want to tell the Latin American peoples that we are proud to be a part of you, even if it is a small part. We remember quite well how the continent was also illuminated some years ago, and a light was called Che Guevara, as it had previously been called Bolivar, because sometimes the people take up a name in order to say they are taking up a flag.And we want to tell the people of Cuba, who have now been o n their path of resistance for many years, that you are not alone, and we do not agree with the blockade they are imposing, and we are going to see how to send you something, even if it is maize, for your resistance. And we want to tell the North American people that we know that the bad governments which you have and which spread harm throughout the world is o ne thing - and those North Americans who struggle in their country, and who are in solidarity with the struggles of other countries, are a very different thing. And we want to tell the Mapuche brothers and sisters in Chile that we are watching and learning from your struggles. And to the Venezuelans, we see how well you are defending your sovereignty, your nation's right to decide where it is going. And to the indigenous brothers and sisters of Ecuador and Bolivia, we say you are giving a good lesson in history to all of Latin America, because now you are indeed putting a halt to neoliberal globalization. And to the piqueteros and to the young people of Argentina, we want to tell you that, that we love you. And to those in Uruguay who want a better country, we admire you. And to those who are sin tierra in Brazil, that we respect you. And to all the young people of Latin America, that what you are doing is good, and you give us great hope.And we want to tell the brothers and sisters of Social Europe, that which is dignified and rebel, that you are not alone. That your great movements against the neoliberal wars bring us joy. That we are attentively watching your forms of organization and your methods of struggle so that we can perhaps learn something. That we are considering how we can help you in your struggles, and we are not going to send euro because then they will be devalued because of the European Union mess. But perhaps we will send you crafts and coffee so you can market them and help you some in the tasks of your struggle. And perhaps we might also send you some pozol, which gives much strength in the resistance, but who knows if we will send it to you, because pozol is more our way, and what if it were to hurt your bellies and weaken your struggles and the neoliberals defeat you.And we want to tell the brothers and sisters of Africa, Asia and Oceania that we know that you are fighting also, and we want to learn more of your ideas and practices.And we want to tell the world that we want to make you large, so large that all those worlds will fit, those worlds which are resisting because they want to destroy the neoliberals and because they simply cannot stop fighting for humanity.Now then, what we want to do in Mexico is to make an agreement with persons and organizations just of the left, because we believe that it is in the political left where the idea of resisting neoliberal globalization is, and of making a country where there will be justice, democracy and liberty for everyone. Not as it is right now, where there is justice o nly for the rich, there is liberty o nly for their big businesses, and there is democracy o nly for painting walls with election propaganda. And because we believe that it is o nly from the left that a plan of struggle can emerge, so that our Patria, which is Mexico, does not die.And, then, what we think is that, with these persons and organizations of the left, we will make a plan for going to all those parts of Mexico where there are humble and simple people like ourselves.And we are not going to tell them what they should do or give them orders.Nor are we going to ask them to vote for a candidate, since we already know that the o nes who exist are neoliberals.Nor are we going to tell them to be like us, nor to rise up in arms.What we are going to do is to ask them what their lives are like, their struggle, their thoughts about our country and what we should do so they do not defeat us.What we are going to do is to take heed of the thoughts of the simple and humble people, and perhaps we will find there the same love which we feel for our Patria.And perhaps we will find agreement between those of us who are simple and humble and, together, we will organize all over the country and reach agreement in our struggles, which are alone right now, separated from each other, and we will find something like a program that has what we all want, and a plan for how we are going to achieve the realization of that program, which is called the "national program of struggle."And, with the agreement of the majority of those people whom we are going to listen to, we will then engage in a struggle with everyone, with indigenous, workers, campesinos, students, teachers, employees, women, children, old o nes, men, and with all of those of good heart and who want to struggle so that our Patria called Mexico does not end up being destroyed and sold, and which still exists between the Rio Grande and the Rio Suchiate and which has the Pacific Ocean o n o ne side and the Atlantic o n the other.VI - How We Are Going To Do ItAnd so this is our simple word that goes out to the humble and simple people of Mexico and of the world, and we are calling our word of today:Sixth Declaration of the Selva LacandonaAnd we are here to say, with our simple word, that...The EZLN maintains its commitment to an offensive ceasefire, and it will not make any attack against government forces or any offensive military movements.The EZLN still maintains its commitment to insisting o n the path of political struggle through this peaceful initiative which we are now undertaking. The EZLN continues, therefore, in its resolve to not establish any kind of secret relations with either national political-military organizations or those from other countries.The EZLN reaffirms its commitment to defend, support and obey the zapatista indigenous communities of which it is composed, and which are its supreme command, and - without interfering in their internal democratic processes - will, to the best of its abilities, contribute to the strengthening of their autonomy, good government and improvement in their living conditions. In other words, what we are going to do in Mexico and in the world, we are going to do without arms, with a civil and peaceful movement, and without neglecting nor ceasing to support our communities.Therefore...In the World...1 - We will forge new relationships of mutual respect and support with persons and organizations who are resisting and struggling against neoliberalism and for humanity.2 - As far as we are able, we will send material aid such as food and handicrafts for those brothers and sisters who are struggling all over the world.In order to begin, we are going to ask the Good Government Junta of La Realidad to loan their truck, which is called "Chompiras," and which appears to hold 8 tons, and we are going to fill it with maize and perhaps two 200 liter cans with oil or petrol, as they prefer, and we are going to deliver it to the Cuban Embassy in Mexico for them to send to the Cuban people as aid from the zapatistas for their resistance against the North American blockade. Or perhaps there might be a place closer to here where it could be delivered, because it's always such a long distance to Mexico City, and what if "Chompiras" were to break down and we'd end up in bad shape. And that will happen when the harvest comes in, which is turning green right now in the fields, and if they don't attack us, because if we were to send it during these next few months, it would be nothing but corncobs, and they don't turn out well even in tamales, better in November or December, it depends.And we are also going to make an agreement with the women's crafts cooperatives in order to send a good number of bordados, embroidered pieces, to the Europes which are perhaps not yet Union, and perhaps we'll also send some organic coffee from the zapatista cooperatives, so that they can sell it and get a little money for their struggle. And, if it isn't sold, then they can always have a little cup of coffee and talk about the anti-neoliberal struggle, and if it's a bit cold then they can cover themselves up with the zapatista bordados, which do indeed resist quite well being laundered by hand and by rocks, and, besides, they don't run in the wash.And we are also going to send the indigenous brothers and sisters of Bolivia and Ecuador some non-transgenic maize, and we just don't know where to send them so they arrive complete, but we are indeed willing to give this little bit of aid.3 - And to all of those who are resisting throughout the world, we say there must be other intercontinental encuentros held, even if just o ne other. Perhaps December of this year or next January, we'll have to think about it. We don't want to say just when, because this is about our agreeing equally o n everything, o n where, o n when, o n how, o n who. But not with a stage where just a few speak and all the rest listen, but without a stage, just level and everyone speaking, but orderly, otherwise it will just be a hubbub and the words won't be understood, and with good organization everyone will hear and jot down in their notebooks the words of resistance from others, so then everyone can go and talk with their compañeros and compañeras in their worlds. And we think it might be in a place that has a very large jail, because what if they were to repress us and incarcerate us, and so that way we wouldn't be all piled up, prisoners, yes, but well organized, and there in the jail we could continue the intercontinental encuentros for humanity and against neoliberalism. Later o n we'll tell you what we shall do in order to reach agreement as to how we're going to come to agreement. Now that is how we're thinking of doing what we want to do in the world. Now follows...In Mexico...1 - We are going to continue fighting for the Indian peoples of Mexico, but now not just for them and not with o nly them, but for all the exploited and dispossessed of Mexico, with all of them and all over the country. And when we say all the exploited of Mexico, we are also talking about the brothers and sisters who have had to go to the United States in search of work in order to survive.2 - We are going to go to listen to, and talk directly with, without intermediaries or mediation, the simple and humble of the Mexican people, and, according to what we hear and learn, we are going to go about building, along with those people who, like us, are humble and simple, a national program of struggle, but a program which will be clearly of the left, or anti-capitalist, or anti-neoliberal, or for justice, democracy and liberty for the Mexican people.3 - We are going to try to build, or rebuild, another way of doing politics, o ne which o nce again has the spirit of serving others, without material interests, with sacrifice, with dedication, with honesty, which keeps its word, whose o nly payment is the satisfaction of duty performed, or like the militants of the left did before, when they were not stopped by blows, jail or death, let alone by dollar bills.4 - We are also going to go about raising a struggle in order to demand that we make a new Constitution, new laws which take into account the demands of the Mexican people, which are: housing, land, work, food, health, education, information, culture, independence, democracy, justice, liberty and peace. A new Constitution which recognizes the rights and liberties of the people, and which defends the weak in the face of the powerful. TO THESE ENDS...The EZLN will send a delegation of its leadership in order to do this work throughout the national territory and for an indefinite period of time. This zapatista delegation, along with those organizations and persons of the left who join in this Sixth Declaration of the Selva Lacandona, will go to those places where they are expressly invited.We are also letting you know that the EZLN will establish a policy of alliances with non-electoral organizations and movements which define themselves, in theory and practice, as being of the left, in accordance with the following conditions:Not to make agreements from above to be imposed below, but to make accords to go together to listen and to organize outrage. Not to raise movements which are later negotiated behind the backs of those who made them, but to always take into account the opinions of those participating. Not to seek gifts, positions, advantages, public positions, from the Power or those who aspire to it, but to go beyond the election calendar. Not to try to resolve from above the problems of our Nation, but to build FROM BELOW AND FOR BELOW an alternative to neoliberal destruction, an alternative of the left for Mexico.Yes to reciprocal respect for the autonomy and independence of organizations, for their methods of struggle, for their ways of organizing, for their internal decision making processes, for their legitimate representations. And yes to a clear commitment for joint and coordinated defense of national sovereignty, with intransigent opposition to privatization attempts of electricity, oil, water and natural resources.In other words, we are inviting the unregistered political and social organizations of the left, and those persons who lay claim to the left and who do not belong to registered political parties, to meet with us, at the time, place and manner in which we shall propose at the proper time, to organize a national campaign, visiting all possible corners of our Patria, in order to listen to and organize the word of our people. It is like a campaign, then, but very otherly, because it is not electoral.Brothers and sisters:This is our word which we declare:In the world, we are going to join together more with the resistance struggles against neoliberalism and for humanity.And we are going to support, even if it's but little, those struggles.And we are going to exchange, with mutual respect, experiences, histories, ideas, dreams. In Mexico, we are going to travel all over the country, through the ruins left by the neoliberal wars and through those resistances which, entrenched, are flourishing in those ruins.We are going to seek, and to find, those who love these lands and these skies even as much as we do. We are going to seek, from La Realidad to Tijuana, those who want to organize, struggle and build what may perhaps be the last hope this Nation - which has been going o n at least since the time when an eagle alighted o n a nopal in order to devour a snake - has of not dying.We are going for democracy, liberty and justice for those of us who have been denied it.We are going with another politics, for a program of the left and for a new Constitution.We are inviting all indigenous, workers, campesinos, teachers, students, housewives, neighbors, small businesspersons, small shop owners, micro-businesspersons, pensioners, handicapped persons, religious men and women, scientists, artists, intellectuals, young persons, women, old persons, homosexuals and *****, ***** and girls - to participate, whether individually or collectively, directly with the zapatistas in this NATIONAL CAMPAIGN for building another way of doing politics, for a program of national struggle of the left, and for a new Constitution.And so this is our word as to what we are going to do and how we are going to do it. You will see whether you want to join.And we are telling those men and women who are of good heart and intent, who are in agreement with this word we are bringing out, and who are not afraid, or who are afraid but who control it, to then state publicly whether they are in agreement with this idea we are presenting, and in that way we will see o nce and for all who and how and where and when this new step in the struggle is to be made.While you are thinking about it, we say to you that today, in the sixth month of the year 2005, the men, women, children and old o nes of the Zapatista Army of National Liberation have now decided, and we have now subscribed to, this Sixth Declaration of the Selva Lacandona, and those who know how to sign, signed, and those who did not left their mark, but there are fewer now who do not know how, because education has advanced here in this territory in rebellion for humanity and against neoliberalism, that is in zapatista skies and land.And this was our simple word sent out to the noble hearts of those simple and humble people who resist and rebel against injustices all over the world.Democracy!Liberty!Justice!>From the mountains of the Mexican Southeast.Clandestine Revolutionary Indigenous Committee - General Command of the Zapatista Army of National Liberation.

Subcomandante Marcos
The Fourth World War

Subcomandante Marcos,La Realidad, Chiapas, Mexico.


Translated by irlandesa


The following text is an excerpt from a talk given by Subcomandante Insurgente Marcos to the International Civil Commission of Human Rights Observation in La Realidad, Chiapas on November 20, 1999. The outline for the talk was published in Letters 5.1 and 5.2 in November of the same year, with the titles "Chiapas: the War: 1, Between the Satellite and the Microscope, the Other's Gaze," and 2, "The Machinery of Ethnocide." Any similarity to the conditions of the current war is purely coincidental. Published in Spanish in La Jornada, Tuesday, October 23, 2001.

The Restructuring of War
As we see it, there are several constants in the so-called world wars, in the First World War, in the Second, and in what we call the Third and Fourth.
One of these constants is the conquest of territories and their reorganization. If you consult a map of the world you can see that there were changes at the end of all of the world wars, not only in the conquest of territories, but in the forms of organization. After the First World War, there was a new world map, after the Second World War, there was another world map.
At the end of what we venture to call the "Third World War," and which others call the Cold War, a conquest of territories and a reorganization took place. It can, broadly speaking, be situated in the late 80's, with the collapse of the socialist camp of the Soviet Union, and, by the early 90's, what we call the Fourth World War can be discerned.
Another constant is the destruction of the enemy. Such was the case with nazism in the second World War, and, in the Third, with all that had been known as the USSR and the socialist camp as an option to the capitalist world.
The third constant is the administration of conquest. At the moment at which the conquest of territories is achieved, it is necessary to administer them, so that the winnings can be disbursed to the force which won. We use the term 'conquest" quite a bit, because we are experts in this. Those States, which previously called themselves national, have always tried to conquer the Indian peoples. Despite those constants, there are a series of variables which change from one world war to another: strategy, the actors, or the parties, the armaments used and, lastly, the tactics. Although the latter change, the former are present and can be applied in order to understand one war and another.
The Third World War, or the Cold War, lasted from 1946 (or, if you wish, from the bombing of Hiroshima in 1945) until 1985-1990. It was a large world war made up of many local wars. As in all the others, at the end there was a conquest of territories which destroyed an enemy. Second act, it moved to the administration of the conquest and the reorganization of territories. The actors in this world war were: one, the two superpowers, the United States and the Soviet Union and their respective satellites; two, the majority of the European countries; three, Latin America, Africa, parts of Asia and Oceana. The peripheral countries revolved around the US or the USSR, as it suited them. After the superpowers and the peripherals were the spectators and victims, or, that is, the rest of the world. The two superpowers did not always fight face to face. They often did so through other countries. While the large industrialized nations joined with one of the two blocs, the rest of the countries and of the population appeared as spectators or as victims. What characterized this war was: one, the arms orientation and, two, local wars. In the nuclear war, the two superpowers competed in order to see how many times they could destroy the world. The method of convincing the enemy was to present it with a very large force. At the same time, local wars were taking place everywhere in which the superpowers were involved.
The result, as we all know, was the defeat and destruction of the USSR, and the victory of the US, around which the great majority of countries have now come together. This is when what we call the "Fourth World War" broke out. And here a problem arose. The product of the previous war should have been a unipolar world - one single nation which dominated a world where there were no rivals - but, in order to make itself effective, this unipolar world would have to reach what is known as "globalization." The world must be conceived as a large conquered territory with an enemy destroyed. It was necessary to administer this new world, and, therefore, to globalize it. They turned, then, to information technology, which, in the development of humanity, is as important as the invention of the steam engine. Computers allow one to be anywhere simultaneously. There are no longer any borders or constraints of time or geography. It is thanks to computers that the process of globalization began. Separations, differences, Nation States, all eroded, and the world became what is called, realistically, the global village.
The concept on which globalization is based is what we call "neoliberalism," a new religion which is going to permit this process to be carried out. With this Fourth World War, once again, territories are being conquered, enemies are being destroyed and the conquest of these territories is being administered.
The problem is, what territories are being conquered and reorganized, and who is the enemy? Given that the previous enemy has disappeared, we are saying that humanity is now the enemy. The Fourth World War is destroying humanity as globalization is universalizing the market, and everything human which opposes the logic of the market is an enemy and must be destroyed. In this sense, we are all the enemy to be vanquished: indigenous, non-indigenous, human rights observers, teachers, intellectuals, artists. Anyone who believes themselves to be free and is not.
This Fourth World War uses what we call "destruction." Territories are destroyed and depopulated. At the point at which war is waged, land must be destroyed, turned into desert. Not out of a zeal for destruction, but in order to rebuild and reorder it. What is the primary problem confronted by this unipolar world in globalizing itself? Nation States, resistances, cultures, each nation's means of relating, that which makes them different. How is it possible for the village to be global and for everyone to be equal if there are so many differences? When we say that it is necessary to destroy Nation States and to turn them into deserts, it does not mean doing away with the people, but with the peoples' ways of being. After destroying, one must rebuild. Rebuild the territories and give them another place. The place which the laws of the market determine. This is what is driving globalization.
The first obstacle is the Nation States: they must be attacked and destroyed. Everything which makes a State "national" must be destroyed: language, culture, economy, its political life and its social fabric. If national languages are no longer of use, they must be destroyed, and a new language must be promoted. Contrary to what one might think, it is not English, but computers. All languages must be made the same, translated into computer language, even English. All cultural aspects that make a French person French, an Italian Italian, a Dane Danish, a Mexican Mexican, must be destroyed, because they are barriers which prevent them from entering the globalized market. It is no longer a question of making one market for the French, and another for the English or the Italians. There must be one single market, in which the same person can consume the same product in any part of the world, and where the same person acts like a citizen of the world, and no longer as a citizen of a Nation State.
That means that cultural history, the history of tradition, clashes with this process and is the enemy of the Fourth World War. This is especially serious in Europe where there are nations with great traditions. The cultural framework of the French, the Italians, the English, the Germans, the Spanish, etcetera - everything which cannot be translated into computer and market terms - are an impediment to this globalization. Goods are now going to circulate through information channels, and everything else must be destroyed or set aside. Nation States have their own economic structures and what is called "national bourgeoisie" - capitalists with national headquarters and with national profits. This can no longer exist: if the economy is decided at a global level, the economic policies of Nation States which try to protect capital are an enemy which must be defeated. The Free Trade Treaty, and the one which led to the European Union, the Euro, are symptoms that the economy is being globalized, although in the beginning it was about regional globalization, like in the case of Europe. Nation States construct their political relationships, but now political relationships are of no use. I am not characterizing them as good or bad. The problem is that these political relationships are an impediment to the realization of the laws of the market. The national political class is old, it is no longer useful, it has to be changed. They try to remember, they try to remember, even if it is the name of one single statesman in Europe. They simply cannot. The most important figures in the Europe of the Euro are people like the president of the Bundesbank, a banker. What he says is going to determine the policies of the different presidents or prime ministers inflicted on the countries of Europe.
If the social fabric is broken, the old relationships of solidarity which make coexistence possible in a Nation State also break down. That is why campaigns against homosexuals and lesbians, against immigrants, or the campaigns of xenophobia, are encouraged. Everything which previously maintained a certain equilibrium has to be broken at the point at which this world war attacks a Nation State and transforms it into something else.
It is about homogenizing, of making everyone equal, and of hegemonizing a lifestyle. It is global life. Its greatest diversion should be the computer, its work should be the computer, its value as a human being should be the number of credit cards, one's purchasing capacity, one's productive capacity. The case of the teachers is quite clear. The one who has the most knowledge or who is the wisest is no longer valuable. Now the one who produces the most research is valuable, and that is how his salary, his grants, his place in the university, are decided.
This has a lot to do with the United States model. It also so happens, however, that this Fourth World War produces an opposite effect, which we call "fragmentation." The world is, paradoxically, not becoming one, it is breaking up into many pieces. Although it is assumed that the citizen is being made equal, differences as differences are emerging: homosexuals and lesbians, young people, immigrants. Nation States are functioning as a large State, the anonymous State-land-society which divides us into many pieces.
If you look at a world map of this period - the end of the Third World War - and analyze the last eight years, a restructuring took place, most especially - but not only - in Europe. Where there was once one nation, now there are many nations. The world map has been fragmented. This is the paradoxical effect that is taking place because of this Fourth World War. Instead of being globalized, the world is fragmenting, and, instead of this mechanism hegemonizing and homogenizing, more and more differences are appearing. Globalization and neoliberalism are making the world an archipelago. And it must be given a market logic. These fragments must be organized into a common denominator. It is what we call "financial bomb."
At the same time that differences appear, the differences are multiplied. Each young person has his group, his way of thinking, such as punks and skinheads. All of which are in every country. Now the different are not only different, but their differences are multiplied and they seek their own identity. The Fourth World War is obviously not offering them a mirror that allows them to see themselves with a common denominator. It is offering them a broken mirror. As long as it has control of the archipelago - of human beings - the powers are not going to be very upset.
The world is breaking into many pieces, large and small. There are no longer continents in the sense that I would be a European, African or American. What the globalization of neoliberalism is offering is a network built by financial capital, or, if you would prefer, by financial powers. If there is a crisis in this node, the rest of the network will cushion the effects. If there is prosperity in a country, it does not produce the effect of prosperity in other countries. It is, thus, a network which does not function. What they told us about the size of the world was a lie, a speech repeated by the leaders of Latin America, whether Menem, Fujimori, Zedillo, or others leaders of compromised moral character. In fact what is happening is that the network has made Nation States much more vulnerable. It is useless for a country to struggle to construct an equilibrium and its own destiny as a nation. Everything depends on what happens in a bank in Japan, or what the mafia in Russia or a speculator in Sydney does. In one way or another, Nation States are not saved, they are permanently condemned. When a Nation State agrees to join this network - because there is no other choice, because they force it, or out of conviction - it is signing its death certificate.
In short, what this great market wants is to turn all of these islands into commercial centers, not nations. One can go from one country to another and find the same products. There is no longer any difference. In Paris or in San Cristóbal de las Casas you can consume the same thing. If you are in San Cristóbal de Las Casas, you can simultaneously be in Paris getting the news. It is the end of Nation States. And not just that: it is the end of the human beings who make them up. What matters is the law of the market, and that is what establishes how much you produce, how much you are worth, how much you buy, how much you are worth. Dignity, resistance, solidarity all disturb. Everything which prevents a human being from turning into a producing and purchasing machine is an enemy, and it must be destroyed. That is why we are saying that the human species is the enemy for the Fourth World War. It is not destroying it physically, but it is destroying its humanness.
Paradoxically, by destroying Nation States, dignity, resistance and solidarity are built anew. There are no ties stronger, more solid, than those which exist between different groups: between homosexuals, between lesbians, between young people, between migrants. This war, then, goes on to also attack those who are different. That is what those campaigns are owing to, so strong in Europe and in the United States, against the different, because they are dark, speak another language or have another culture. The means of cultivating xenophobia in what remains of the Nation States is to make threats: "These Turkish migrants want to take away your job." "These Mexican immigrants came to rape, they came to steal, they came to sow bad habits." Nation States - or the few of them that remain - delegate to those new citizens of the world - computers - the role of getting rid of those immigrants. And that is when groups like the Ku Klux Klan proliferate, or persons of such probity as Berlusconi reach power. They all build their campaigns based on xenophobia. Hate for the different, persecution against anything that is different, is worldwide. But the resistance of anything that is different is also worldwide. Faced with that aggression, these differences are multiplied, they are solidified. This is how it is, I am not going to characterize it as good or bad, that is how it is happening.

The War Is Not Only Military
In strictly military terms, the Third World War had its logic. It was, in the first place, a conventional war, conceptualized in such a way that, if I put in soldiers, and you put in soldiers, we confront each other, and whoever is left alive wins. This took place in a specific territory which, in the case of the North Atlantic Treaty Organization, NATO, forces, and the Warsaw Pact, was Europe. Starting from a conventional war, between armies, a military and weapons oriented path was established.
We are going to look at the details a bit more. This [he shows a rifle], for example, is a semi-automatic weapon, and it's called an AR-15 automatic rifle. They manufactured it for the Vietnam conflict, and it can be taken apart very easily [he disarms it], there it is. When they made it, the Americans were thinking about a conventional war scenario, that is, large military contingents which confronted each other. "We'll collect a lot of soldiers, we'll advance, and in the end someone will have to be left." At the same time, the Warsaw Pact was developing the Kalashnikov automatic rifle, which is commonly called the AK-47, a weapon with a lot of firing volume at short range, up to 400 meters. The Soviet concept involved large waves of troops: a mountain of soldiers would advance, firing, and, if they died, a second and a third wave would arrive. The one who had the most soldiers would win.
The Americans then thought: "The old Garand rifle from the Second World War isn't of any use anymore. Now we need a weapon that has a lot of short-range firing power." They took out the AR-15 and tested it in Vietnam. The problem was that it broke down, it didn't work. When they attacked the Viet Cong, the mechanism remained open, and when they fired it went "click." And it wasn't a camera, it was a weapon. They tried to solve the problem with an M16-A1 model. Here the trick is in the bullets, which are called two different things. One, the civilian, 2.223 of an inch - can be bought in any store in the United States. The other - 5.56 millimeter - is for the exclusive use of NATO. This is a very fast bullet and it has a trick to it. In war, the objective is to see that the enemy has losses, not deaths, and an army considers itself to have casualties when a soldier can no longer fight. The Geneva Convention - an agreement to humanize war - forbids expanding bullets, because at the point at which it enters it destroys more, and it's a lot more lethal than a hard tipped bullet.
"Given that the idea is to increase the number of wounded and decrease the number of dead," - they said - "we are prohibiting expansive bullets." A shot from a hard bullet leaves you useless, you're a casualty now, it doesn't kill you unless it reaches a vital organ. In order to fulfill the Geneva Convention and to dupe them, the Americans created the soft tip bullet which, when it enters the human body, bends and turns. The entrance hole is one size, and the exit hole is much bigger. This bullet is worse than the expanding one, and it doesn't violate conventions. Nonetheless, if it gets you in the arm...it will blow you up. A 162 bullet goes through you and leaves you wounded, but this one destroys you. Coincidentally, the Mexican government has just bought 16,000 of these bullets.
That is, weapons are created for precise scenarios. We are going to assume they don't want to use the nuclear bomb. What are they going to use? Many soldiers against many soldiers. And so the NATO and Warsaw Pact conventional war doctrines were created.
The second option was a localized nuclear war, a war with nuclear weapons, but only in some places and not in others. There was an agreement between the two superpowers to not attack each other in their own lands, and to fight only on neutral ground. It remains to be said that that this ground was Europe. That's where the bombs were going to fall and one would see who would be left alive in Western Europe and what was then called Eastern Europe.
The last option of the Third World War was total nuclear war, which was a huge business, the business of the century. The logic of nuclear war is that there would be no winner. It doesn't matter who fired first, no matter how quickly he fired, the other would be able to fire also. The destruction was mutual, and, from the beginning, this option was simply renounced. The nature of it came to be what is called in military diplomatic terms, "deterrence."
So that the Soviets wouldn't use nuclear weapons, the Americans developed many nuclear weapons, and, so that they wouldn't use nuclear weapons, the Soviets developed many nuclear weapons, and so on. They called it IBM (Intercontinental Ballistic Missile), and they were the rockets that went from Russia to the United States and from the United States to Russia. They cost a fortune, and now they're not useful for anything. There were also other nuclear weapons for local use which were the ones they were going to use in Europe in the case of a localized nuclear war.
When this phase began, in 1945, there was a war to be fought because Europe was divided in two. The military strategy - we are speaking of the purely military aspects - was the following: a few forward positions in front of the enemy line, a line of permanent logistics, and the mother country, called the United States or the Soviet Union. The logistical line supplied the forward positions. Large airplanes that were in the air 24 hours a day, the B-52 Fortress, carried the nuclear bombs, and they never had to land. And there were the pacts. The NATO Pact, the Warsaw Pact and the SEATO (South East Asia Treaty Organization) Pact, which is like the NATO of the Asian countries. The model was put into play in local wars. Everything had a logic, and it was logical to fight in Vietnam, which was an agreed scenario. The local armies and insurgents were in the role of the forward positions. In the role of permanent logistics were the lines of clandestine or legal arms sales, and, in the role of the mother countries, the two superpowers. And there was also an agreement about the places where they had to remain as spectators. The clearest examples of these local wars are the dictatorships of Latin America, the conflicts in Asia, especially Vietnam, and the wars in Africa. These apparently had absolutely no logic whatsoever, since the majority of the time what was going on wasn't understood. But what was happening was part of this outline of conventional war.
It was during this period - and that is important - that the concept of "total war" was being developed. Elements which are no longer military enter into military doctrine. For example, in Vietnam, from the Tet offensive (1968) until the fall of Saigon (1975), the media again became a very important battle front. And so, the idea began to develop in the military that military power was not enough. It was necessary to incorporate others, such as the media. And also that the enemy could be attacked with economic measures, with political measures and with diplomacy, which is the game of the United Nations and of international organizations. Some countries create sabotage in order to secure the condemnation or censuring of others, which is called "diplomatic war."
All these wars followed the domino theory. It sounds ridiculous, but they were like two rivals playing dominoes with the rest of the population. One of the opponents would put down a piece, and the other would try to put his down in order to cut off the follow-up. It is the theory of that illustrious individual by the name of Kissinger, the Secretary of State for the United States government during the Vietnam era, who said: "We cannot abandon Vietnam because it would mean giving up the game of dominoes in Southeast Asia to the others." And that is why they did what they did in Vietnam.
It was also about trying to regain the logic of the Second World War. For most of the population, it [the Second World War] had been heroic. There was the image of the Marines liberating France from the dictatorship, liberating Italy from the Duce, liberating Germany from the military, the red army entering from all sides. The Second World War was supposedly waged in order to eliminate a danger for all humanity, that of national socialism. Thus the local wars attempted, one way or another, to regain the ideology of "we are acting in the defense of the free world." But now Moscow was in the role of national socialism. And Moscow, for its part, did the same thing: both superpowers tried to use the argument of "democracy" and the "free world", as each of them conceived it.
Afterwards came the Fourth World War, which destroyed everything from before, because the world is no longer the same, and the same strategy cannot be applied. The concept of "total war" was developed further: it is not only a war on all fronts, it is a war which can be anywhere, a total war in which the entire world is at stake. "Total war" means: at any moment, in any place, under any circumstances. The idea of fighting for one place in particular no longer exists. Now the fight can take place at any moment. There is no longer the concept of escalation of the conflict with threats, the taking of positions and attempts to reposition oneself. At any moment and in any circumstances, a conflict can arise. It can be domestic problem, it can be a dictator and everything which the last wars of the last five years have been, from Kosovo to the Persian Gulf War. The entire military routine of the Cold War has, thus, been destroyed.
It is not possible to make war, in the Fourth World War, under the criteria of the Third, because now I have to fight any place, I don't know where I'm going to have to fight, nor do I know when, I have to act rapidly, I don't even know what circumstances I'm going to have to prosecute this war. In order to resolve the problem, the military first developed the "rapid deployment" war. An example would be the Persian Gulf War, a war which involved a great accumulation of military force in a short period of time, a large military action in a short period of time, the conquering of territories and withdrawal. The invasion of Panama would be another example of rapid deployment. There is, in fact, a NATO contingent which is called "rapid intervention force." Rapid deployment is a large mass of military force which throws itself against the enemy and which makes no distinction between a children's hospital and a chemical weapons factory. That is what happened in Iraq: the smart bombs were quite stupid, they made no distinctions. And that's where they remained, because they realized that this is quite expensive, and it contributes very little. In Iraq they made an entire deployment, but there was no conquest of territory. There were the problems of the local protests, there were the international human rights observers.
They had to withdraw. Vietnam had already taught them that, in these instances, it is not prudent to insist: "No, we can't do this now," they said. They then moved on to the strategy of "projection of force." "Better to have forward positions in North American military bases all over the world, accumulating a great continental force which, in a matter of hours or days, will have the capacity to put in military units any place in the world." And they can, in fact, put in a division of four or five thousand men in the most distant point in the planet in four days, and more, constantly more.
But the projection of force has the problem of being based on local soldiers, or, rather, on US soldiers. They believe that, if the conflict is not resolved rapidly, the body bags, the dead, will begin arriving, like in Vietnam, and this could provoke many domestic protests in North America, or in whichever country. In order to avoid those problems, they abandoned the projection of force, making - let us be clear - mercantile calculations. They did not make calculations about the destruction of the human forces, or the natural ones, but of publicity and image. And so the war of projection was abandoned, and they went on to a model of war with local soldiers, more international help, more of a supranational body. Now it was not about sending soldiers, but of fighting by means of the soldiers who were there, helping them according to the basis of the conflict, and not using the model of a nation which declares war, but of a supranational body like the UN or NATO. The ones doing the dirty work are the local soldiers, and the ones in the newspapers are the Americans and the international support. This is the model. Protesting no longer works: it is not a war of the United States government. It's a war by NATO, and, besides, NATO is merely doing the favor of helping the UN.
Throughout the entire world, the restructuring of armies is so that they can confront a local conflict with international support under supranational cover, and under the disguise of humanitarian war. It has to do with saving the population from a genocide by killing it. And that is what happened in Kosovo. Milosevich waged a war against humanity: "If we confront Milosevich, we are defending humanity." That is the argument the NATO generals used and which brought so many problems to the European left: opposing NATO bombings implied supporting Milosevich, better, then, to support the NATO bombings. And Milosevich, you know, was armed by the United States. The military conception - which is what is now at play - is that the entirety of the world - whether Sri Lanka or any other country, the most distant one can think of - is now the backyard, because the globalized world produces simultaneity. And that is the problem: in this globalized world, anything that happens any place affects the new international order. The world is no longer the world, it's a village, and everything is very close. Therefore the great policemen of the world - especially the United States - have the right to intervene anywhere, at any time, under any circumstances. They can consider anything as a threat to their domestic security. They can easily decide that the indigenous uprising in Chiapas threatens the domestic security of North America, or the Tamils in Sri Lanka, or whatever you want. Any movement - and not necessarily armed - anyplace can be considered a threat to domestic security.
What is that has happened? The old strategies and old concepts of making war have collapsed. Let us see.
"Theatre of operations" is the military term for indicating the place where the war is going to occur. In the Third World War, Europe was the theatre of operations. Now it is not known where it is going to break out, it could be any place, it is no longer certain that it is going to be in Europe. Military doctrine moves from what is called "system" to what they call "versatility." "I have to be ready to do anything at any moment. A plan is no longer sufficient: now I need many plans, not just to construct a response to particular incidents, but to construct many military responses to specific incidents." This is where information technology intervenes. This change leads to moving from the systematic, the inflexible, the rigid, to the versatile, to that which can change from one moment to the next. And that is going to define the entire new military doctrine of armies, of military corps and of soldiers. This will be one element in the Fourth World War. The other will be the movement from "containment strategy" to that of "drawing out" or "extension": now it is not just about conquering territory, containing the enemy, now it is about prolonging the conflict to what they call "non-war acts." In the case of Chiapas, this has to do with taking out and putting in governments and municipal presidents, with human rights, with the media, etcetera.
Included in the new military conception is an intensification of the conquest of territory. This means that it is necessary to not only be concerned about the EZLN and its military force, but also about the church, the NGOs, international observers, the press, civilians, etcetera. There are no longer civilians and neutrals. The entire world is part of the conflict.
This implies that national armies are of no use, because they no longer have to defend Nation States. If there are no Nation States, what are they going to defend? Under the new doctrine, national armies go on to play the role of local police. The case of Mexico is quite clear: the Mexican Army is doing more and more police work, like the fight against drug trafficking, or this new body against organized crime which is called the Federal Preventative Police and which is made up of military personnel. It is about national armies turning into local police in the manner of a US comic book: a Super Cop, a Super Police. When the army in the former Yugoslavia was reorganized, it had to turn into a local police force, and NATO is going to be its Super Cop, its senior partner in political terms. The star is the supranational body, in this case NATO or the US army, and the extras are the local armies.
But national armies were built on the basis of a doctrine of "national security." If there are enemies or dangers to the security of a nation, their work is to maintain security, sometimes against an external enemy, sometimes against destabilizing domestic enemies. This is the doctrine of the Third World War or Cold War. Under these assumptions, national armies develop a national conscious which now makes it difficult to turn them into police friends of the Super Police. Thus the doctrine of national security must now be transformed into "national stability." The point is no longer defending the nation. Since the main enemy of national stability is drug trafficking, and drug trafficking is international, national armies which operate under the banner of national stability accept international aid or international interference from other countries.
The problem of again reordering national armies exists at the world level. Now we go down to America, and from there to Latin America. The process is a bit similar to that which took place in Europe and which was seen in the Kosovo war with NATO. In the case of Latin America, there is the Organization of American States, the OAS, with the Hemispheric Defense System. According to the former president of Argentina, Menem, all the countries of Latin America are threatened and we need to unite, destroying the national consciences of the armies, and to make a great army under the doctrine of a hemispheric defense system, using the argument of drug trafficking. Given that what is at stake is versatility - or the capacity to make war at any moment, in any place and under any circumstances - rehearsals begin. The few bastions of national defense which still exist must be destroyed by this hemispheric system. If it was Kosovo in Europe, in Latin America it is Colombia and Chiapas. How is this system of hemispheric defense constructed? In two ways. In Colombia, where the threat of drug trafficking is present, the government is asking for everyone's help: "We have to intervene because drug trafficking not only affects Colombia, but the entire continent." In the case of Chiapas, the concept of total war is applied. Everyone is a part, there are no neutrals, you are either an ally or you are an enemy.

The New Conquest
In the fragmentation process - turning the entire world into an archipelago - financial power wants to build a new shopping center which will have tourism and natural resources in Chiapas, Belize and Guatemala.
Apart from being full of oil and uranium, the problem is that it is full of indigenous. And the indigenous, in addition to not speaking Spanish, do not want credit cards, they do not produce, they are involved in planting maize, beans, chile, coffee, and they think about dancing to a marimba rather than using a computer. They are neither consumers nor producers. They are superfluous. And everything that is superfluous is expendable. But they do not want to go, and they do not want to stop being indigenous. There is more: their struggle is not to take over power. There struggle is to be recognized as Indian peoples, that their right to exist is recognized, without having to turn into other people.
But the problem is that here, in the land that is at war, in zapatista territory, are the main indigenous cultures, there are the languages and the largest oil deposits. There are the seven Indian peoples who participate in the EZLN, Tzeltal, Tzotzil, Tojolabal, Chol, Zoque, Mam and mestizos. This is the map of Chiapas: communities with an indigenous population and with oil, uranium and precious wood. For neoliberalism everything is merchandise, it is sold, it is exploited. And these indigenous come to say no, that the land is mother, it is the depository of culture, that history lives here, and the dead live here. Absolutely absurd things that cannot be entered on any computer and which are not listed on a stock exchange. And there is no way to convince them to be good, to learn to think right, they simply do not want to. They even rose up in arms. This is why - we say - that the Mexican government does not want to make peace: it is because they want to do away with this enemy and turn this land to desert, afterwards reorganizing it and setting it to operate as a huge shopping center, a Mall in the Mexican Southeast. The EZLN supports the Indian peoples, and is, in this way, an enemy, but not the main one. It is not enough to sort things out with the EZLN, even worse if sorting things out with the EZLN means renouncing this land, because that will mean peace in Chiapas, it will mean renouncing the conquest of a land rich in oil, in precious woods and uranium. This is why they have not done so and are not going to do so.