“Peace with Democracy” (Paz con Democracia), a civil organization which arose in the context of the conflict in Chiapas, organized an observation mission in the state from February 17-20. Based in the understanding of the internal armed conflict as an expression of the structural conflict, this visit included a series of exchanges with various social and civil actors in Chiapas, with the goal of constructing a vision which is broader and, at the same time, closer to their perception of the current context. The organization met with the Network for Peace in Chiapas (Red por la Paz en Chiapas) of which SIPAZ is a member. The following is a reporduction of part of the report published in the newspaper “La Jornada.”

An attempt to characterize the conflict and its actors in the current phase

Eleven years after the explosion of the Zapatista indigenous campesino insurrection, the international context is today dominated by the imperial hegemony of the United States, who, under the alibi of the “war on terrorism” and the defense of its “national security,” is instigating what has come to be called a “neoliberalism of war.” In this model, the neoliberal economic and financial policies and the militarization of the world go hand in hand and feed each other.

The unilateral policies of the United States have eroded national sovereignties and extremely debilitated the system of the United Nations. The world today lives under the threat of the rise of a new violent authoritarianism, which utilizes “preemptive war,” the privatization of conflicts through the use of mercenaries and scientific torture as daily practice. This authoritarianism has been marked by its Neo-nazi components and is accompanied by a new element which has begun to emerge during George W. Bush’s second term: the probable utilization of squadrons of death (paramilitaries), as part of Washington’s diplomacy of war on a world scale.

The current official conception of the conflict, its regulation and its solution are those which were established in the “Law for Dialogue, Conciliation and Just Peace in Chiapas” passed on March 11, 1995, as a propitiatory legal framework. Article 1 of the law acknowledges the existence of an “armed conflict,” and while this term is not defined, the document does recognize the political-military nature of the conflict. This law establishes that the EZLN (Zapatista National Liberation Army), as an armed actor, is an organization of Mexican citizens, in its majority indigenous, who became disgruntled for a variety of reasons. Although this law locates the struggle within the dimension of the state, it assumes that the causes of the struggle, and therefore, the necessary solutions, are of an economic, cultural, social and political order.

Nevertheless, the government currently classifies the struggle as “a conflict of local political nature which has now overcome its phase of armed confrontation.” It maintains that the conflict’s dimension is regional, involving multiple local actors responding to a grave situation of historic social shortages in and the marginalization of indigenous communities, as well as an intense level of extra-, intra- and intercommunity conflict, driven by religious, ideological and political motives. The government therefore bases its strategy in the creation of social programs and mechanisms for compromise among communities in order to attend to this local problem. In the same vein, the government explains that the military presence is necessary to insure public order, guard the border, combat drug trafficking and guarantee national security in case of a declaration of war. Within this framework, the conflict with the EZLN is only one component of the problem.

For the EZLN, on the other hand, this is about an armed conflict generated by a “war of extermination,” directed against the communal ways of life and cultural reproduction and employing the tactics of “low-intensity warfare.” This war is driven by the State’s vision that military logic is necessary for the imposition of its solution to the problem. In the face of this, the Zapatista movement defines a strategy of active and autonomous resistance and of the political and territorial accumulation of strength, directing its discourse and actions against the foundations of legitimacy of the State. The Zapatistas maintain that their causes are structural and national and that their resolution requires a profound transformation of the State and of the economic model, in addition to the recognition of indigenous rights, a struggle which is today a fundamental identifying element of the movement.

In addition to these two conceptions, the Peace with Democracy mission in Chiapas received denouncements formulated by various actors in the state which allude without distinction to the existence of government acts of war under the categories of “Integral War of Attrition,” “Low-Intensity War,” and “Economic War” and alert us to the reorganization of the traditional groups of political and economic power, as well as to a reactivation of paramilitary groups with the support of the Military, Public Security forces and the local and national PRI. From this, we can conclude that the military conflict continues to be active, even though the actual military component has not been utilized in an intensive or constant way in the confrontation between the parties.

The absence of open war does not indicate the end of the conflict, but rather, the strategy of the Federal Army is currently manifiested as a war of contrainsurgency. The conceptualization and the strategy of the State continue to be dominated by military logic. As part of the conflict, the federal government and army continue to act in the authoritarian logic of the State, deploying their force disproportionately. In the conflict zone, the Army guarantees territorial control, administers and channels violence, and, according to the political context, could resort to a new phase of paramilitarization.

Without recognizing the structural character of the conflict, the national and deep scope of its causes, the referential power of the EZLN for diverse sectors of Mexican society and particularly for indigenous peoples, the federal government has opted for a strategy of minimization, attempting to impose solutions from the base of its various power structures, particularly the use of force.

At the same time, with the rapid and strategic turn of the EZLN towards the option for political and ideological struggle, both within and outside of the political institutional frameworks for change, their maintenance of an armed resistance without confrontations in the territories under their influence, and the strengthening of their capacity for discourse and communication against the sources of legitimacy of the State, the Zapatistas set up the dispute not only in terms of causes and projects, but also in regards to the very modes of confrontation and the means of resolution.

As a new type of actor, the EZLN, acting strategically, does not pose as its goal the destruction, but rather, the transformation of the State. The use of arms has a political meaning and its axis is not military victory nor the taking of power, but rather the defense of dignity, understood as the struggle for social rights, identity and justice. The armed resistance with which they oppose the government is directed more at dismantling the factors of systemic structural violence than at the physical annihilation of the adversary. The EZLN has converted its symbolic representation and the ability to influence the media into a fundamental piece of the dispute for legitimacy between the State and the movement.

In this scenario, it is also necessary to mention that the conflict has transferred to other actors and agendas as well. The eruption of new actors is notable, including the reactivation of campesino organizations and the growth of civil resistance, as well as the advance of official neoliberal plans (Plan Puebla Panama, FTAA) and the implementation of others, like Prodesis, which under the umbrella of the European Union places the territory of Chiapas, in particular the Lacandon jungle and Montes Azules, at the center of an intercapitalist and inter-Atlantic dispute for energy and genetic resources, under the cover of “conservation” and “eco-tourism.”

In addition, the passage of the Law of Biosecurity in the Mexican Congress on February 15, 2005, and Monsanto’s purchase of Mexican multinational firm Seminis, formerly owned by the Mexican magnate Alfonso Romo and part of the Savia-Pulsar Group, form part of this same conflict. U.S.-based Monsanto, favored by the Bush administration, is the world leader in genetically-modified grains and seeds for oils. The company obtained, as a result of the purchase, southern access to the Biospheric Reserve of Montes Azules, rich in water, biodiversity and forest reserves. Both events are not unconnected to the policies of expulsion of indigenous families, primarily from Zapatista support bases in the zone of Montes Azules.

Based in the reality of the current political context, Peace with Democracy invites the social and popular movements of the country to demand the subordination of military logic and its actors and political supports and, as such, put a stop to the growing militarization, paramilitarization, impunity and polarization in Chiapas. In the mid-term, this means a reformulation of the means and conditions for a negotiated political solution, oriented towards a solution of the structural and national causes of the conflict. In order to bring this solution about, it is also necessary to recreate the connection of the conflict and its peace to the necessary construction and transformation of democracy and justice.