[Lasnetmail] Review of John Ross' Zapatistas struggle for autonomy and freedom.

[Viola Wilkins]

  A Review of John Ross' Zapatistas
  struggle for autonomy and freedom.

by Stephen Lendman

John Ross is a Latin American correspondent and activist who's been 
living in and writing about Mexico for nearly four decades turning out 
some of the most important and incisive analysis of events there of 
anyone covering the country, its history, politics and people. Few 
writers anywhere make the country come alive like he can. He lives 
among the people and knows them well including Zapatista leader 
Subcommandante Marcos who may have given Ross his first ever interview.

Ross has written eight books of fiction and non-fiction and is one of 
the few surviving Beat poets with nine chapbooks of poetry in and out 
of print, the latest of which is due out soon called Bomba. He's also 
been called a new John Reed (who wrote the classic 10 Days that Shook 
the World on the Russian Revolution) covering a new Mexican revolution 
playing out around the country from its most indigenous, impoverished 
South in Chiapas and Oaxaca to the streets of its capital in Mexico 
City.

Ross' books include the Annexation of Mexico, From the Aztecs to the 
IMF and his eyewitness frontline trilogy on the Zapatista rebellion 
beginning with Rebellion From the Roots, Indian Uprising in Chiapas in 
1995 for which he received the American Book award; The War Against 
Oblivion, The Zapatista Chronicles; and his latest work and subject of 
this review - Zapatistas, Making Another World Possible, Chronicles of 
Resistance 2000 - 2006 just published. It's subtitle is taken from the 
misnamed anti-globalization citizens' movement for global justice from 
Seattle to Doha, Genoa, Washington, Prague, Quebec, Miami, Cancun, Hong 
Kong and dozens of other locations everywhere where ordinary people are 
struggling for a better world against the dark neoliberal forces pitted 
against them.

The book's theme is the heroic ongoing Zapatista struggle for autonomy 
and liberation as "a dramatic and inspiring effort to make this 
possibility a reality" matched off against a made-in-Washington world 
of permanent wars for conquest and domination from the sands and 
streets of Iraq and desolate rubble of Afghanistan to the Israeli 
genocidal terror war against the Palestinians to the streets of Mexico 
City and Oaxaca and the mountains and jungles of Chiapas.

This book comes after Ross' Murdered by Capitalism, A Memoir of 150 
Years of Life & Death on the American Left in 2004 for which he 
received the Upton Sinclair award. Ross is a gifted writer whose prose 
is passionate and poetic. From its beginning, he documented the 
Zapatista "rebellion from the roots," and in his latest book covers it 
from the July, 2000 election of corporatist Vincente Fox through the 
mid-2006 stolen presidential election, unresolved when the book went to 
press. He notes like all other elections in the country, it was 
orchestrated "before, during, and after the ballots (were) cast" just 
like they are in the belly of the bestial empire in el norte whose 
current high office incumbent Ross calls "an electoral pickpocket 
(twice over)."

He also reminds us of past events that may foretell Mexico's future: 
"The metabolism of revolution in Mexico is precisely timed. It seems to 
burst from the subterranean chambers every hundred years or so - 1810, 
1910, 2010? To be continued." And he notes the theft of the 1910 
election from Francisco Madero triggered the Mexican Revolution led by 
Emiliano Zapata Salazar with readers left to wonder if Subcommandante 
Marcos is his modern incarnation. Stay tuned. As in Venezuela, the 
Mexican revolution will not be televised, but John Ross will chronicle 
it.

The Zapatistas' Chronicles of Resistance - From Its Beginning

Ross begins his book with a Preamble of the Zapatistas' own words 
saying: "We are the Zapatistas of the EZLN (who) rose up in January 
1994 because we were tired of all the evil the powerful did to us, that 
they only humiliated us, robbed us, killed us, and no one ever said or 
did anything. For all that we said 'Basta' (enough) we weren't going to 
permit that they treat us worse than animals anymore." The Zapatista 
commentary continues saying they want democracy, liberty and justice 
for all Mexicans, and to get it they organized to defend themselves and 
fight for it. And so they have. Their spirit of resistance continues in 
their ongoing struggle for autonomy and freedom.

Ross begins volume three of his trilogy in year 2000, but let's go back 
to where it all began to understand its roots. The Zapatista Army of 
National Liberation (EZLN) was founded in 1983 taking its name from the 
Liberation Army of the South led by Emiliano Zapata Salazar, the 
incorruptible Mexican Indian peasant rebel leader who supported 
agrarian reform and land redistribution in the battles of the Mexican 
Revolution. It began in 1910, went on till 1921, and saw Zapata 
betrayed and executed by government troops in 1919. It wasn't before he 
got new agrarian land laws passed that for a time returned to the 
people what President Porfirio Diaz confiscated to sell off to foreign 
investors the way things work today where everything's for sale under 
market-based rules. It's the reason for indigenous Mexican 
impoverishment today the way it is everywhere and why modern-day 
Zapatistas began their campaign to end centuries of imperial repression 
to liberate their people.

They planned quietly for years learning from successes and failures of 
earlier peasant struggles. The were all crushed or co-opted by the 
ruling Institutional Revolutionary Party (PRI) showing real change in 
Chiapas could only come through struggle from outside the political 
process that time and again proved those in power can't be trusted even 
though the Zapatistas gave gave the system a chance to prove otherwise 
knowing it would let them down which it did. It's the way it is in all 
developing states and most elsewhere as well. Mexico is no exception, 
and it may be one of the worst under repressive oligarch rule for the 
privileged and the people be damned, especially the indigenous Indian 
ones Mexico has plenty of.

Ross chronicled the Zapatistas' struggle in two previous books 
beginning January 1, 1994 when 2,000 from the EZLN marched into San 
Cristobal de las Casas and five other municipal seats in Mexico's 
Chiapas state. They seized control stunning the nation's leaders who 
knew something was up but kept it under wraps so as not to affect 
passage of the NAFTA that brought it on. The EZLN declared war on the 
Mexican state and its long-standing contempt for ordinary peoples' 
rights and needs now with new harsh neoliberal trade policies in place 
that could cost them their lives. Their struggle would highlight the 
plight of Mexico's 70 million poor and 20 million indigenous people 
including in the most indigenous city in the world plagued by poverty - 
Mexico City.

Rebellion for change erupted in the open the first day NAFTA went into 
effect. Zapatistas in Chiapas called it a "death sentence." It would 
threaten their agriculture and way of life creating even more hardship 
than Indian campesinos already face. Chiapas is the poorest of Mexico's 
31 states where most people live off the land earning a meager living 
in the best of times growing crops, the staple of which is corn, 
"maiz." The state is predominantly rural with 70% of its 4.3 million 
people living in 20,000 localities in 111 municipalities mostly in the 
countryside. The state capital of Tuxtla Gutierrez is its one major 
city with a population of 250,000 while several others have populations 
half that size or less, one of which is San Cristobal de las Casas in 
the mountainous central highlands that was one of the six municipal 
seats the EZLN took in its 1994 rebellion from the roots against the 
Mexican government.

Their action stunned the nation and world, and President Carlos Salinas 
de Gortari responded ferociously against Chiapans cutting short his 
planned celebration. The Zapatistas weren't to be denied as they stated 
in their manifesto that "We are a product of 500 years of 
struggle...against slavery....against Spain (and then) to avoid being 
absorbed by North American imperialism... later the dictatorship of 
Porfirio Diaz (so) people rebelled and leaders like Villa and Zapata 
emerged, poor men just like us (so we continue the struggle for our) 
inalienable right (under the Mexican constitution) to alter or modify 
their form of government (and set up) liberated areas (in which the 
people will have) the right to freely and democratically elect their 
own administrative authorities."

They weren't alone as hundreds of thousands of supporters flooded 
Mexico City's vast Zocalo plaza near the country's Palacio Nacional 
seat of power. They sent a strong message of solidarity to the "People 
the Color of the Earth" in the South forcing Salinas to abort his 
effort after 12 days without subduing the first major Global South blow 
against the neoliberal new world order that prevailed triumphantly 
unchallenged in Mexico following the dissolution of the former Soviet 
Union - until the New Year's day rebellion from the roots changed 
things.

A single event may have inspired the EZLN's shot heard round the world 
launching their armed rebellion for autonomy. It was the Salinas 
government's 1992 decision to repeal Article 27 in the country's 
constitution that came out of the 1917 Revolution. It gave only natural 
born or naturalized Mexicans the right to own land and water, 
stipulated all land is originally the nation's property that can grant 
control of it to private citizens with restrictions, and that only the 
state may control, extract and process oil and its derivatives. It also 
returned stolen peasant lands to their owners and generally protected 
Mexican peoples' land ownership rights from foreign exploitation.

Repealing Article 27 changed everything for what the Revolution had 
"giveth," Carlos Salinas had "taketh" away by ending land distribution 
to the landless. His action drove a "final nail in the revolution's 
coffin" polarizing indigenous peoples and igniting the uprising 
beginning the day NAFTA became law. Rewriting the Article was a key 
condition of NAFTA that would henceforth deny indigenous peoples' right 
to the land so the state could sell or lease it to private investors 
(aka corporate predators), mostly from el norte.

Mexico's poor, including its rural indigenous population, suffered 
terribly in the last generation from the disastrous effects of global 
restructuring tight monetary and fiscal policies, unfair 
"neoliberalized trade laws, privatizations of state enterprises, and 
abandonment of earlier economic and industrial development strategies. 
The result was regional growth collapsed throughout Latin America. From 
1960 - 1980, regional per capita GDP grew 82% falling to 9% from 1980 - 
2000 and 4% from 2000 - 2005.

It meant trouble always affecting the most vulnerable poor the most. It 
hit Mexico with falling oil prices, high interest rates, rising 
inflation, an overvalued currency, and a deteriorating balance of 
payments causing capital flight that by 1982 saw the peso collapse and 
economy hit hard. IMF and World Bank-imposed mafia-style loan 
arrangements followed imposing their special kind of austerity to 
people least able to tolerate it. It included structural adjustments 
with large-scale privatizations of state-owned industries, economic 
deregulation, and mandated wage restraint allowing inflation to grow 
faster than personal income with the poor feeling it most again.

As predicted, things got much worse under NAFTA-imposed trade rules. 
They hit the rural poor the hardest especially the country's farmers 
crushed under the weight of heavily subsidized Northern agribusiness 
they can't compete against including for corn, "maiz," the sacred crop, 
the struggle for which went to the root of the Zapatista rebellion also 
against made-in-the-USA neoliberal new world order rules of the game 
rigged against them.

They include Washington Consensus market uber alles diktats that led to 
Mexico's growing dependency on capital inflows with lots of "hot money" 
free to enter and leave the country under its deregulated financial 
markets. Again it caused an unsustainable current account deficit and 
peso collapse in early 1995 resulting in the country's worst economic 
depression in 60 years after experiencing the same type collapse 14 
years earlier.

The Zapatistas got hammered by it with no relief when economic 
conditions improved. It caused mass discontent and anger making the 
country ripe for rebellion as an elite few grew rich at the expense of 
the great majority sinking deeper into poverty and no where more than 
in indigenous rural areas like Chiapas.

The Oakland Institute think tank specializing in social, economic and 
environmental issues documented the harm done. Their researchers 
reported heavily subsidized US corn exports to Mexico tripled after 
NAFTA and in 2003 topped 8 million tons. It came at the expense of 
Mexico's farmers where corn is the country's staple. It drove over two 
million of them off the land that was predicted in advance and allowed 
to happen anyway. It ruined lives and led to suicides but not like in 
India where WTO-imposed trade rules caused 100,000 deaths because of 
farm foreclosures from indebtedness.

The worst is still to come in Mexico if UCLA professor and Research 
Director of the North American Integration and Development Center Raul 
Hinojosa's worse case prediction comes true. He believes NAFTA will 
eventually force 10 million poor farmers off the land with Ross saying 
it's already over 6 million people in a country where farm families 
average five members and they're all counted in the bloodletting.

Ross laid out the other ugly damage from NAFTA's first 10 years through 
2003:

-- All Mexican banks controlled by foreign corporate giants, mainly 
from the US.

-- All the railroads sold off to Union Pacific with former President 
Ernesto Zedillo now on its board as his reward.

-- The country's mines and airlines in private hands.

-- Two million hectares of tropical forest destroyed for private 
development with junk tree plantations sprouting up throughout Southern 
Mexico controlled by corporate behemoths like International Paper and 
Temple-Inland.

-- Homegrown industries, especially in textiles and plastics, shut down 
unable to complete with US giants.

-- Even the "Maquiladora Miracle" once creating 2 million jobs on the 
US border losing out to China and other lower wage countries in the 
inevitable race to the bottom WTO one-way trade deals always cause to 
countries from North and South.

-- Real wages down 20% over 10 years with the disparity of wealth far 
greater than in 1994 when the Zapatista struggle began.

-- 600 Wal-Mart megastores crushing small homegrown retailers and 
Mexican chains. Wal-Mart de Mexico SAB is the country's largest private 
employer and biggest retailer in Latin America far and away. This 
predatory colossus dominates Mexican retailing (like it does up North) 
with forecasted 2007 sales of $21 billion and soaring profits gotten at 
the expense of its workers even more than in the US because in Mexico 
Wal-Mex can get away with anything.

-- The Mexican landscape littered with thousands of McDonald's, Burger 
King's, Wendy's, and other US retail chains destroying local culture 
and homogenizing markets to sell the same stuff in Mexico as in 
Milwaukee, Missouri and Maine.

-- The importation and consumption of genetically modified (GMO) corn 
presenting a clear danger to "the People of the Corn" by displacing and 
contaminating locally-grown varieties cultivated for thousands of years 
as dietary and cultural staples. The GMO poison from el norte is now 
spreading like an uncontrollable infestation from indigenous cornfield 
to cornfield.

Add to the above, former President Vincente Fox's Plan Puebla-Panama 
(PPP) that so far flopped but isn't dead. He proposed it early in his 
term as a multi-billion dollar development scheme to turn Southern 
Mexico (including Chiapas) and Central America all the way to Panama 
into a colossal free trade paradise displacing indigenous people, 
destroying their culture and sacred corn, and harming the environment 
for profit. He wanted to induce private investment by handing over to 
them the region's natural resources including its oil, water, minerals, 
timber and ecological biodiversity. Fox wanted to rip into the area 
with new ports, airports, bullet trains, bridges, superhighways, 25 
hydroelectric dams, new telecommunication facilities, electrical grids, 
and a new Panama Canal - for starters, with more development to follow. 
He also wanted to open the country's wildlife reserves for 
bioprospecting in a giveaway to giant seed, chemical and drug companies 
and connect everything with new highways linking Mexico to Central 
America facilitating business throughout the region - meaning 
indigenous people had to make way for it.

The area planned for development is enormous and so far stalled. It 
covers 102 million hectares with 64 million inhabitants in eight 
countries few of whom would benefit from a scheme to exploit 
masquerading as infrastructure and private development and more without 
consent of the people the way it's always done. It's the reason the 
plan went nowhere - so far. It's irrelevant to the poor, rural South 
gaining nothing except picking up the tab so corporate predators can 
take their land for private gain selling back to the people what's 
already theirs like Chiapas' fresh water that's 40% of the country's 
total Coca-Cola is dying to get its hands on. It would also destroy the 
last significant tropical rain forest in Chiapas' Montes Azules 
Integral Biosphere in the Lacandon jungle where the government wants to 
remove native Mayans from lands belonging to them.

An Enduring Struggle for Liberation and Autonomy

The EZLN struggled to win redress for their major demands, but the 
Zedillo government in the 1990s reneged on a promise to address them. 
The key betrayal came in 1996 when EZLN leaders thought they had a deal 
known as the San Andres Accords. It was a landmark document based on 
the International Labor Organization's Resolution 169, the universally 
accepted benchmark for defining an indigenous people stipulating they 
have both territory or habitat and "territoriality" meaning they have 
autonomy over their own lands free from government control.

Had it passed, it would have given Mexico's 57 distinct indigenous 
peoples local autonomy over all aspects of their lives - agrarian 
policy, natural resources, the environment, health and educational 
institutions, judicial system, and their overall social and cultural 
rights. It needed to be legislatively approved by changes in state, 
federal, local laws and the Mexican Constitution committing the 
government to eliminate "the poverty, the marginalization and 
insufficient political participation of millions of indigenous 
Mexicans." But like before and always, it wasn't to be as PRI President 
Zedillo, an "inflexible globophile" and technocratic servant of empire, 
upheld Mexico's business as usual mal gobierno (bad government) dark 
forces reneging on the deal as fast as he could unleash Mexican army 
troops against the people of Chiapas stepping up his "dirty war" on 
them to undermine their popular support and end the EZLN rebellion.

"PRIista" Zedillo failed, biting off more than he could chew, because 
the Zapatistas then and now aren't giving up their struggle or going 
away. Their response was a greater effort to mobilize broader support 
throughout the country. In 1999, the collective Zapatista Revolutionary 
Indigenous Clandestine Committee (CCRI) leadership made up of 23 
commanders and spokesperson Subcommandante Marcos organized a national 
consulta, or referendum, for indigenous rights and implementation of 
the San Andres Accords that were signed in 1996. More than three 
million Mexicans participated with 95% of them endorsing the EZLN's 
demands providing the kind of mass support hard to ignore.

In December, 2000, National Action Party's (PAN) Vincente Fox (and 
former Coca-Colaista big cheese) had to address it. He shook Mexico's 
political firmament in the July elections becoming the country's first 
president able to end the PRI's stranglehold single party 71 year rule 
under a system known as "Presidentialism." After taking office, he 
arrogantly promised to cut the Gordian knot deadlock with the EZLN and 
would meet with Subcommandante Marcos to "fix things up in 15 minutes" 
by committing to submit the San Andres Accords or La Ley Cocopa Indian 
Rights Law to Congress for resolution where almost for certain they'd 
be none.

Still, the Zapatistas and their supporters went on the road for it for 
16 days going from Chiapas to Mexico City in February and March 2001. 
The climax was a mass rally of hundreds of thousands in the capital's 
Zocalo, to no avail as the Congress gutted the Accords ending the 
EZLN's hope for redress through the political process that was 
reinforced when the nation's Supreme Court upheld the legislators 8 - 3 
on September 7, 2002. It left the Zapatistas high and dry and more than 
ever determined to work for change outside the political process that 
works for the privileged, not the people.

La Otra Campana - The EZLN's Other Campaign

The Zapatista's Other Campaign grew out of the organization's Sixth 
Declaration of the Lacandon Jungle (the Sexta) issued June, 2005 
calling for a new approach outside traditional party politics the EZLN 
rejects because it doesn't work for ordinary people. The idea was to 
build a grand alliance of all jodidos (the "screwed" over people) to 
include Indians and the "real left" to join in solidarity from the 
bottom up outside the political process and call a constitutional 
convention to write a new anti-neoliberal document protecting the 
nation's land and resources as well as enact an Indian Rights law.

The Other Campaign went on the road to all parts of the country during 
the 2006 electoral period working outside the political process 
withholding support for opposition Party of the Democratic Revolution 
(PRD) presidential candidate and ex-PRIista Andres Manuel Lopez 
Obrador, popularly known as ALMO.

Ross calls him El Peje, his nickname, noting while serving as Mexico 
City's popular mayor he eschewed ostentation; provided essential social 
services for the people like free milk for young mothers; shelters for 
the homeless; and jobs for tens of thousands. He also cut deals with 
the business class from Mexico's Council of Businessmen (CMHN) made up 
of the country's 37 richest men like he did with billionaire tycoon 
Carlos Slim showing he was a "demon in disguise, a demagogue, (a) 
dreaded politician. A danger, in short, for Mexico." A man who sleeps 
with the devil. Not anyone the Zapatistas could trust or support, and 
they didn't, sitting out the campaign to further their own to end 
Mexico's unjust economic system of corrupted predatory capitalism 
exploiting people for profit. Their goal is noble, and they're 
committed to it - to one day bring real social, economic and democratic 
change to the country but do it outside party politics within which it 
can never happen.

Working through the system always turns out the same. The dominant PRI 
and PAN are Mexico's Republicans and Democrats - two wings of the 
nation's property party exploiting the masses to serve the country's 
capital interests, latifundistas, and foreign investors from el norte. 
It hardly matters whether PAN or PRI rules with the PRD scarcely better 
as most in it are recycled "PRIANS" (formerly from PRI and PAN) - aka, 
Mexico's bipartisan criminal class with softer edges offering the 
people more crumbs, but still crumbs. In power they'd never address the 
Zapatistas' original 13 demands - land, work, labor, bread, education, 
health, shelter, communication, culture, independence, democracy, 
liberty, and peace as well as foster solidarity with the aggrieved.

Ross' criticism is even harsher calling the PRD "mortally flawed, 
venomously venial and vulnerable to splintering into brittle battle 
over scraps of power." In his judgment, if ALMO became president (he 
didn't, but it was unresolved at press time), the dominant business 
class, Washington, and even the Church would slap him down each time he 
proposed overly generous crumbs. And if he managed doing more than 
thought possible, Ross adds an exclamation point - "Think Salvadore 
Allende" who was no match for Nixon-Kissinger the way a Mexican 
progressive today would be out of his league against the demon-duo 
Bush-Cheney, even meaner and nastier than their uglier-than-sin 
predecessors.

They don't daunt the EZLN's 13 year resolve against mal gobierno, 
running strong and gaining strength with the Other Campaign continuing 
throughout 2006. It's still ongoing in the new year with the country 
now under PAN president-by-mass-electoral-fraud Felipe Calderon. Ross 
will pick up the story in his next book, sure to come, continuing his 
chronicle of rebellion for a better world Zapatistas are in the 
vanguard for.

La Otra Campana grew out of planning meetings and is comprised of many 
thousands of supporters including Indians, farmers, workers, social 
movements, NGOs, autonomous collectives, all groups on the left and all 
others willing to join a social movement for change. The plan was to 
take Subcommandante Marcos (who's mestizo, not Indian) and a 16 member 
Sexta commission on a six month barnstorming blizzard, beginning 
January 1, 2006, to all 31 Mexican states to meet and listen to a 
diverse range of people, groups and organizations. They want their 
ideas as input to use toward building broader support toward the goal 
of real change in a country stultified by decades of corruption and 
mass exploitation.

This was the fifth time the Zapatistas left their Chiapas stronghold 
home taking their message to the country, the last time being in 2001 
for the "March of Those Who Are The Color of the Earth" after Congress 
gutted the La Ley Cocopa or Indian Rights Law. This time the plan was 
much more ambitious with goals great enough to make Marcos tell his 
followers "we could be jailed, we could be killed. We may never return 
home" because at stake is the future of Mexico also playing out in the 
streets of Oaxaca since May for social justice long denied because 
getting it is never easy in a country ruled by powerful interests 
unwilling to sacrifice their privilege and till now never having to.

The Other Campaign aims high continuing into 2007. It calls for 
enacting a new constitution barring privatization of public resources 
and getting rid of the whole array of neoliberal poison served up by 
Washington-controlled international lending agencies and WTO one-way 
"bunko game" free trade deals unmasked as unfair. It also wants 
indigenous autonomy for Mexico's 57 individual Indian peoples and a 
nationwide public stage for the EZLN to spread its message to people in 
every Mexican state. It comes down to "the Other Campaign vs. Politics 
as Usual" meaning elections for sale to the highest bidder or easily 
stolen when the Mexican power structure controls them and won't 
tolerate power to the people in a country run by and for the privileged 
alone, the way it's always been. The EZLN renounces them all while 
knowing the PRI's return to power would be a big step backward in 
Mexico's glacial struggle for democracy that at best advances in 
mini-fragile steps easily reversible.

The Other Campaign is still ongoing aiming toward its longer range goal 
for a new constitution with regional autonomy run from the bottom up 
outside the political process it wants no part of. Today the EZLN is 
the most interesting, radical and important grass roots democratic 
movement in the world. Subcommandante Marcos believes new fraudulently 
elected Mexican president Felipe Calderon "is going to start to fall 
from his first day (December 1 and) we're on the eve of a great 
uprising or civil war." He believes the Mexican people will join him in 
"spontaneous uprisings, explosions all over, civil war" the way it's 
gone on uninterrupted in Oaxaca since May. "When we rise up (he says), 
we're going to sweep away the entire political class, including those 
who say they're the parliamentary left" as the political process 
corrupts them like all the others.

It's the way all social revolutions take root that begin from a 
committed core, then broaden into a unified network of mutual support 
for real democratic change. The spirit of resistance is alive in Latin 
America. It bubbled up in Venezuela, Bolivia and Ecuador, and in Mexico 
it's electric and more alive than since Emiliano Zapata Salazar led the 
1910 Revolution that ushered in a period of real change, albeit 
short-lived. Today Mexicans again are fed up with decades of fraud, 
corruption and abuse, and modern-day Zapatistas are in the vanguard of 
resistance for real social democratic change for people long denied it. 
No one knows how this will end and if it will turn out to be a 
watershed moment in the country's history. Those in power never yield 
it easily, so things may get ugly as events play out. For now, Mexico's 
future is unfolding on its streets and mountains and jungles of Chiapas 
that will chart the road ahead for better or worse to an uncertain time 
the Zapatistas are struggling to make a better one.

It isn't easy, and since early 2007 Zapatista communities have been up 
against increasing opposition from a government-allied paramilitary 
group called the Organization for the Defense of Indigenous and Peasant 
Rights (Opddic). It uses threats of violence, land invasions, crop 
thefts, beatings and kidnappings to expropriate Zapatista land so 
private developers can exploit natural resources and develop large 
tourist projects. Opddic has been around since the late 1990s but grew 
more powerful while Vincente Fox was president. It's present activities 
signal what's ahead from the Calderon government's policy to seize 
Zapatista land, weaken the movement, and give corporate predators an 
open field to develop the land indigenous Chiapans claim as their own.

Zapatistas say they'll defend their lands against Opddic incursions but 
up till now have avoided violence. That may not last as attacks 
continue that may be intended to provoke a response strong enough to 
set up the ominous possibility the government may step in with force 
making things very ugly.

It won't step in to help the Chiapas-based NGO Center for Economic 
Political Investigations of Community Action (CIEPAC) threatened by a 
late February note saying: "Enjoy your last day. We will kill you I am 
looking for you and now we have found you." This followed other 
incidents of threatening surveillance and harassment against CIEPAC 
members for several months. The organization takes the threats 
seriously and asks for "national and international organized groups (to 
join) in solidarity (to) maintain your vigilance in anticipation of 
events that might occur shortly, continue your solidarity with social 
movements in Mexico, and denounce the continuous violations to human 
rights that are affecting civil society in this country." Whatever may 
happen, John Ross will be there following the Zapatistas' struggle 
against the dark forces affecting them and ordinary people everywhere.

Ross ends his current chronicle in 2006 where it began - in Chiapas 
with the Mayan people the color of the earth and the corn, "maiz" in 
the "milpa" that's the core of their life. The country and people can't 
survive without it. He writes: "The Zapatistas are Mayans and the 
Mayans are the People of Maize, not just because it is the center of 
their universe but because they are actually made from it. And like the 
maize....the people the color of the earth return, renew themselves, 
are reborn and flourish." They won't allow the country's dark forces to 
take that from them. Their spirit is alive and so is their hope another 
world is possible. Their struggle for it continues, and Ross will be 
there chronicling it all for us.

Stephen Lendman lives in Chicago and can be reached at  
lendmanstephen at sbcglobal.net.

- Homepage: http://sjlendman.blogspot.com