Indigenous Peoples.

According to the 2005 INEGI (National Statistics and Geography Institute) census, Chiapas has 4,293,459 inhabitants, making it the 7th most populated state in the country.

Chiapas, like other states in southeastern Mexico, has a multiethnic and multicultural population. According to INEGI, some 957,255 of the state’s residents are indigenous. The percentages vary according to the criteria used in the research. One approach establishes “visible” criteria, such as speaking an indigenous language or wearing traditional dress, while other studies prioritize an individual’s self-identification as indigenous.

Of the indigenous population, 81.5% is concentrated in three regions of Chiapas: the Highlands, the Northern Zone, and the Jungle. The predominant indigenous groups are:

1. Tzeltal – 37.9% the total indigenous population of Chiapas;

2. Tzotzil – 33.5%;

3. Ch’ol – 16.9%;

4. Zoque – 4.6%;

5. Tojolabal – 4.5%.

The Mame, Chuj, Kanjobal, Jacalteco, Lacandon, Katchikel, Mochó (Motozintleco), Quiché and Ixil groups comprise the remaining 2.7% of the state’s indigenous population.

• The state fertility rate is the second highest in the country: 2.4 children per woman.
• The indigenous population is young: 32.8% of the total indigenous population was aged between 5 and 14 in the year 2005.

SOURCE: Secretary of Social Development of the State of Chiapas, 2003.

Social Inequalities :

According to the National Population Council (CONAPO), since 2000 Chiapas has been the state with the second highest level of marginalization in Mexico. In its 2005 study, it was found that municipalities located in the Highlands of Chiapas represent the highest levels of marginalization. However, the municipality of Sitalá, located in the Northern-Jungle Zone, is ranked second in terms of marginalized municipalities at a national level. To reach these conclusions, CONAPO studied the percentages of the “population which does not enjoy the use of goods and services essential to the development of its physical capacities.”

SOURCE: CONAPO 2005

1. Income

The subsistence model of agriculture which dominates throughout the state does not provide income-generating agricultural surpluses. Neoliberal structural reforms focused on opening markets to foreign trade (i.e. globalization) and the abandonment of public policies protecting rural life have served to impoverish Mexican campesinos.

• More than 10 years since the signing of NAFTA in 1994, the national minimum wage has lost 20% of its purchasing power.
• The current minimum wage is approximately 49.50 pesos per day (the equivalent of USD4.80).
• The per capita income of indigenous people is equivalent to only 32% of the income of nonindigenous people in the state.
• There are 304,018 indigenous people employed in the state of Chiapas, 42% of whom (122,345) do not report any income. Another 42% (127,682) survive on an income below the minimum monthly wage. Only 9.9% of the Chiapan indigenous population earns between one and two minimum monthly wages.
• 83% of the indigenous population works in agriculture, in comparison to 58.3% of the broader population of Chiapas. Approximately 5.5% of indigenous people work in industry, and another 8.6% in the service sector.
• Chiapas is the state with the greatest concentration of income in the hands of few individuals or families at a national level, with a degree of concentration parallel to that found in the poorest African nations. It also has the greatest inequality in the distribution of monetary income in Mexico.
• In 2006, Chiapas received USD807.6 million in remittances, occupying the 11th position in the list of Mexican receptor entities.

SOURCES: CDI 2000, CIEPAC 2004, CONAPO 2005, ECOSUR 2003, La Jornada 2005, 2007, World Bank 2003

2. Right to Adequate Housing

Chiapas ranks first of Mexico’s states in regards to water resources (30% of the country’s surface water is located in the state, concentrated primarily in Montes Azules) and hydroelectric energy (54% of Mexico’s hydroelectric energy comes from a single Chiapan watershed, the Grijalva River). Paradoxically, in spite of such a wealth of natural resources, many indigenous communities still lack both electricity and running water because of the state’s extreme social inequalities.

A large percentage of indigenous homes do not meet the minimum conditions for adequate housing. Across the state of Chiapas:

• 25.9% of homes do not have running water;
• 5.88% do not have electricity;
• 8.07% have no sewage system or equivalent;
• 32.9% have dirt floors;
• 85.7% cook with wood or coal.

Sources: CONAPO

A social movement in resistance against high electricity costs has been formed in other states of Mexico, but it is particularly strong in Chiapas. The movement considers that free access to electricity is a human and constitutional right, as the electricity is sourced from natural resources located in territory where the majority of the state’s indigenous population lives. In Chiapas, many people participate in the State Network of Civil Resistance “The Voice of Our Heart” (la Red Estatal de Resistencia Civil “La Voz de Nuestro Corazón”). The network claims that some 350,000 people have united under their banner. In the Northern Zone, the majority of those in resistance have united in PUDEE (People United to Defend Electric Energy, Pueblos Unidos en Defensa de la Energía Eléctrica).

3. Education

According to CONAPO, 42.76% of the Chiapan population aged over 15 has not completed primary school, and 20.4% has not received any kind of formal education.

Education has traditionally been an instrument of policies which seek to “acculturate” and assimilate indigenous peoples into Mexico’s national culture, thus suppressing the expression or development of their own culture. However, a large number of indigenous communities have never had access to public education. For these reasons, education became one of the principal demands of the Zapatista struggle and one of the primary foci of their autonomous project. The Zapatista education system seeks to recover and develop the indigenous cosmovision and to consolidate the Zapatista project. In both content and structure, they distance themselves from the official model of education.

Access (for the Indigenous population):

• 14.1% of 6 to 14 year-olds currently do not attend school.
• 24.9% of the state’s population does not speak Spanish.
• For indigenous population aged 15 and over in 2005, the average period of time spent in the education system was 3.9 years.

Sources : INEGI

Illiteracy :

According to the 2005 national census, Chiapas has the country’s highest illiteracy rate.

• For the overall Chiapas population aged between 8 and 14, 9.6% can neither read nor write (compared to a national average of 3.3%).
• 21.4% of the Chiapan population 15 years and older cannot read or write, compared to 39.2% of the state’s indigenous population in the same age group.
• Among indigenous men, 27.9% are illiterate; among women, the figure is 50.1%.

SOURCE: INEGI

4. Health

Due to a series of discriminatory policies, the majority of indigenous communities have had no access to the Mexican health care system. The lack of resources and the remoteness of certain communities from large urban centers have led to the spread and increasing severity of easily curable illnesses. For these reasons the Zapatistas have developed their own autonomous health care system, made up of regional autonomous clinics where patients are attended by indigenous health promoters.

Lack of Health Services :

According to 2007 figures published by the Secretary of Health, in Chiapas there is less than one doctor per 1000 inhabitants, Mexico’s lowest ratio. The situation may even be more serious, particularly in terms of infant mortality in the state’s rural areas: in those areas, there are no reliable official statistics, and it is believed that up to 80% of the population is not officially registered. It is officially accepted that more than one million inhabitants of Chiapas, the majority of whom are indigenous and reaching a total of 25% of the state’s population, do not have access to health care facilities.

SOURCES: CDI 2000, CIEPAC 2001, El Universal 2007

Malnutrition :

The state of Chiapas has the second highest level of malnutrition in Mexico, behind only Guerrero. According to statistics published by the Chiapas state government at the end of 2006, sixty municipalities present cases of severe malnutrition, 36 represent serious malnutrition, 13 moderate and only two a slight degree.

SOURCE: Government of Chiapas 2006

• Malnutrition is the seventh leading cause of illness in the state of Chiapas, and the tenth cause of death. In 1994, it was the sixth leading cause of death among indigenous people.
• In 2008, 71.6% of the indigenous population suffers malnutrition.

SOURCES: CIEPAC 2001, Women’s Communication and Information
AC (CIMAC) 2004, Cuarto Poder 2008, Secretary for Social Development
of the State of Chiapas 2003, La Jornada 2003

Mortality (General):

The mortality rates in Chiapas are among the highest in Mexico.

• Infectious diseases constitute eight of the 10 principal causes of illness. Respiratory infections represent 59%, followed by intestinal diseases (caused by lack of potable water and drainage) at 31%.
• In indigenous municipalities, tuberculosis is the 11th leading cause of death (compared to 16th throughout Mexico).
• Chiapas is the fourth-ranking state in Mexico in regards to the number of women infected with HIV. With the constant increase of migration from the state, the risk of contracting HIV has increased accordingly.

SOURCES: CIEPAC 2001, INEGI, Secretary for
Social Development of the State of Chiapas 2003

Infant Mortality:

According to the National Institute of Medical Sciences and Nutrition “Salvador Zubirán” (INCMNSZ, Instituto Nacional de Ciencias Médicas y Nutrición “Salvador Zubirán”), in 2007 Chiapas was home to a total of 176, 124 malnourished children. In line with current trends, in 2020 the total will be some 93,000. In rural and indigenous locations which demonstrate high levels of marginalization, the infant mortality occurs at a rate of 75 deaths per 1000, on a par with indicators for nations in sub-Saharan Africa.

In 2006, 132,205 children were born in Chiapas; of these, 1,146 did not survive to their first birthday. In 2007, the rate of infant mortality was 21.7 per 1000 live births, the second highest in the country.

SOURCES: INEGI 2005, Instituto Nacional de Ciencias
Médicas y Nutrición “Salvador Zubirán,” La Jornada 2007, UNICEF

Maternal Mortality :

Maternal death principally affects poor women and is caused by deficiencies in, and lack of access to, health services. Supplementary causes are malnutrition, domestic violence, premature or unwanted pregnancies and poorly conducted abortions.

• In industrialized countries, the average is 10 maternal deaths per 100,000 live births.
  • In Mexico, 51 women die per 100,000 births.
  • In Chiapas, 117 women die per 100,000 births, making it the Mexican state with the third highest maternal mortality rate.
• The regions which reported the largest number of cases of maternal death between 1999 and 2002 were the Highlands and the Jungle, predominantly indigenous areas.

SOURCES: CIEPAC 2001, Women’s Communication and Information AC
(CIMAC) 2003, 2004, 2008, Secretary for Social Development of the State of
Chiapas 2003, Secretary of Health 2003

5. Land

Agrarian reform, which was effected throughout the greater part of Mexico following the Mexican Revolution of 1917, never actually took place in Chiapas. The land remained in the hands of a few landowners. This has made land one of the principal sources of social conflict in Chiapas, a relationship which has become more noted over time. The search for land spurred a complex process of migration to the Lacandon Jungle beginning in the 1950's. Additionally, in the 70's the state government decided to grant a few families of the Lacandon ethnic group more than 600,000 hectares of land in the Jungle, while disregarding the land needs of the area’s growing indigenous and campesino population. As a result of this and other factors, the Jungle is one of the areas of greatest conflict today. In 1992, Article 27 of the Constitution was reformed, permitting communal and ejidal lands (lands held in common by campesino or indigenous peoples) to be sold freely. This had previously been prohibited, protecting the rights of these lands and landholders. This reform caused an explosion of social protest across the country and its repeal was one of the principal demands of the armed uprising of 1994.

In order to implement this reform, the government instituted the Programs of Communal and Ejidal Certification - PROCEDE and PROCECOM - to facilitate the purchase and sale of lands and accelerate the destruction of the social fabric of rural communities.

• Chiapas has the second highest number of ejidos in Mexico, with a total of 1,887. Seventeen percent of the land in Chiapas is owned collectively.
• By 2003, 37% of the ejidos in the state had not yet entered into PROCEDE.

In December 2006, the government formally ended the PROCEDE program. In Chiapas a total of 2,883,375.7779 hectares were registered by that date. It is still possible to register in the National Agrarian Registry to continue the drafting, certification and title-granting of land rights through the Fund to Support Unregularized Agrarian Centers (FANAR, Fondo de Apoyo para Núcleos Agrarios sin Regularizar).

It has been reported that land regularization has had a counterinsurgent impact in the recent cases of confrontations principally occurring between Zapatista support base communities and the social organization OPDDIC (Organization for the Defense of Indigenous and Campesino Rights, Organización para la Defensa de los Derechos Indígenas y Campesinos). The majority of these cases are related to lands “recovered” by the Zapatistas following the 1994 uprising. In these cases, the “normalization” of ownership of these lands has been granted to members of the OPDDIC –overriding previous titles granted to Zapatista supporters, a legally dubious procedure– as in the area surrounding Chilón. In other regions, such as Agua Azul, situations have arisen which imply a confrontation of visions regarding the concept and function of land. One view is that land is ancestrally owned, and not for sale; the other considers land available for sale of rent for the development of ecotourism projects. The community of Roberto Barrios (location of one of the five Zapatista Caracols), in the Northern Zone, listed itself in the National Agrarian Registry in May 2008; this paves the way for the entry for ecotourism projects in its territory.

Another project being promoted by the Chiapas state government in recent times is “Rural Cities.” For the year 2008, the construction of eight rural cities has been planned, reaching a total of 25 during the six-year mandate of Governor Juan Sabines Guerrero. In these new developments, the state government plans to relocate 31,050 people who currently live in communities remote from state resources and infrastructure. The idea behind the plan is to restructure the rural economy and combat the demographic dispersion of Chiapas’ population (i.e. migration of individuals for economic reasons). The threat that “Rural Cities” is designed to fulfill counterinsurgency and social control functions has been highlighted by researchers and members of civil society.

SOURCES: CIEPAC 2008, Minutes of the National Meeting Against
PROCEDE and PROCECOM 2003, 2006, National Agrarian Registry

6. Natural Resources

Due to its geographical location, Chiapas is home to a great diversity of animal and plant species. A significant proportion of the forests of Chiapas have been preserved; the Lacandon Jungle is particularly significant because of its rich biodiversity. In recent decades, the jungle has suffered serious degradation due to the exploitation of timber and livestock farming, as well as the heavy demands put on the land by the growing human population. In addition to this, a series of contradictory governmental policies has been implemented: on one hand they attempt to promote conservation, but on the other they have been instrumental in the jungle’s development as a source of marketable natural resources. “Environmental conservation” megaprojects, such as the Mesoamerican Biological Corridor, or the Project of Social, Integrated, and Sustainable Development in the Lacandon Jungle (PRODESIS) have been superimposed on preexisting policies. Others, such as the Plan Puebla–Panama, directed at modernization and territorial restructuring, would permit access to and extraction of natural resources.

In contrast to these megaprojects, which defend “conservation” in order to exploit biodiversity for financial gain, indigenous communities are proposing alternatives that would allow them to continue coexisting with nature. Organizations such as the EZLN and the Rural Association of Collective Interests - Independent and Democratic Union of Unions (ARIC-ID-UU) are implementing new cultivation techniques and implementing their own plans for sustainable land usage.

Water/Hydroelectricity

• A total of 30% of Mexico’ surface water is concentrated in Chiapas. The state contains two of the largest rivers in the country: the Usumacinta and the Grijalva.
• The largest hydroelectric region in Mexico is found in the Montes Azules Biospheric Reserve.
• Of the more than 10 hydroelectric basins in Chiapas, the most important is the Grijalva River which generates 54% of the country's hydroelectric energy.
• In recent years, Chiapas has increasingly suffered heavy rainfall which has caused serious flooding in various parts of the state. These kinds of natural disasters are related to global warming and the sustained logging of the state’s forests.

Petroleum

The state of Chiapas is significant not only for the petroleum it currently produces, but also for its oil reserves which have yet to be exploited.

• In 2001, Chiapas produced 17.5 million barrels of crude oil, equivalent to 21% of the national production.
• There are 118 oil wells located in the northern part of the state.
• In 2002, national petroleum company PEMEX made plans to invest 63 billion pesos in southeastern Mexico in the following five years. 32% of this investment was designated for drilling and the production of oil.
• Although PEMEX denies the existence of oil exploration projects in the Lacandon Jungle, its projects in Chiapas have previously operated in the municipalities of Palenque, Ocosingo, Benemérito de las Américas, and Marqués de Comillas, all in the Jungle region. PEMEX has already initiated exploration in the municipalities of Las Margaritas, Independencia, La Trinitaria, and Maravilla Tenejapa in the Border region.

Natural Gas

• In 2001 Chiapas produced 222,964 million cubic feet of natural gas, representing 47% of national production.

Protected Natural Areas

• Chiapas has more protected natural areas (37) than any other state in Mexico. 20% of state territory is under official protection.
• The biodiversity in Chiapas in concentrated in these protected natural areas. One of the largest of these areas is the Montes Azules Biospheric Reserve.
• On March 13, 2007, the EZLN declared part of Huitepec, close to San Cristóbal de las Casas in the Highlands of Chiapas, as a “Zapatista community protected natural area and ecological reserve.” It is located on the same lands as the Protected Natural Area Huitepec-Los Alcanfores, which was subsequently created by the state government (according to reports) without consulting the local community. The community reported that they had been threatened with eviction to make way for the new area.

SOURCES: CIEPAC 2002, COMPITCH 2005, Communiqué
from the Caracol of Oventic, Government of Chiapas 2001

Biodiversity

There is significant interest from translational and pharmaceutical companies in Chiapas and its “green gold,” particularly in medicinal plants which could be patented. The following species are found in Chiapas:

• 19 types of vegetation;
• close to 8,500 plant species;
• 180 mammal species;
• 666 bird species;
• 227 reptile species;
• 92 amphibian species; and
• more than 1,200 species of butterflies.

Source : SEMARNAT 2005

Ecotourism

Ecotourism is one way in which the community’s natural riches are exploited to generate income. While government projects may be successful in generating income for indigenous peoples, they are brought into question for subjecting the indigenous communities to the rules and demands of an external commercial market. Ecotourism, as “alternative” tourism, has cultural implications inasmuch as the reality of community life and territoriality must be adapted to meet foreign expectations. Given the lack of opportunities to maintain food sovereignty and community self-sufficiency, ecotourism often encourages the loss of cultural practices linked to the land.

With the relaunch of Plan Puebla–Panamá in 2006, in combination with other federal and regional projects promoted by the World Bank, Chiapas has entered into a stage of “political economics,” focusing on megaprojects for the economic and political development of the region. These projects include the “Strategy for the Development of the Southern States” (EDES, Estrategia para el Desarrollo de los Estados del Sur); the 2007 proposal for development in Chiapas, Oaxaca and Guerrero, suggested by the South–South-East Commission of the Chamber of Deputies, “Program of the South”; and the “Declaration of Comitán,” a development document for the state of Chiapas drafted by ex-Chiapas Governor Roberto Albores Guillén (1998-2000) and his advisors. Albores Guillén proposes the construction of a “new Cancún” (one of the most tourist-oriented parts of Mexico) in the north of Chiapas. One of the priorities of the government of Juan Sabines has been the construction of the San Cristóbal de las Casas–Palenque highway. The infrastructure megaproject includes the conversion of Palenque’s airport an international one, the construction of big-chain hotels, shopping centers, a golf course, and a natural theme park at Agua Azul. It forms part of the creation of a “tourist corridor” or “the country’s first ecoarcheological development.”

• There are so-called “ecotourism hotels” in the Lacandon Jungle, such as in Boca Chajul, the Tzendales River, and the Lacanjá Lagoon (under construction) sponsored by multinational corporations such as Ford Motor Company. There is a threat that these hotels will be used as centers of “scientific tourism” for the looting of the jungle’s biodiverse genetic material, independent of government regulations.
• Indigenous communities have denounced ecotourism projects for their negative impacts, which include:
  • the purchase and privatization of ejidal land;
  • the forced displacement of indigenous communities from strategic areas;
  • the exploitation of indigenous customs and traditions solely for the entertainment of tourists;
  • the commodification of natural resources;
  • the destruction of the environment, including the illegal felling and removal of trees and the contamination of water sources;
  • the arrival of drugs and other vices to previously isolated rural areas.

Source : La Jornada 2005, FZLN 2005