On their caravan through twelve different states, the Zapatista representatives met with most of the 56 ethnic groups in the country, and participated in the third National Indigenous Congress (CNI). Numerous representatives of the indigenous peoples represented in the CNI as well as members of civil society accompanied the Zapatistas in their march. The Zapatista caravan received many expressions of support at the national and international levels, but it was also met with hostility by some social, business and political groups.

Diverse positions before the march

A few days before the departure of the caravan, President Fox called upon the Mexican people to support it. In response, the two largest television networks initiated the “United for Peace” campaign. In January, in the World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland, Fox said he was not frightened by the Zapatista march, and he made a promise to the European investors to achieve peace and prosperity for Chiapas.

According to the Minister of Foreign Relations, Jorge Castañeda, “The logical corollary for bringing peace to this area is the Puebla Panama Plan”, a transnational economic development and trade project that will include southern Mexico and Central America.  On February 19, Castañeda affirmed in the European Parliament that there are real hopes that the objectives and the results of the Zapatista march are the renewal of peace talks, the signing of a peace accord and the passage of the law of indigenous rights and culture. The European Union welcomed Fox’s initiative to reinitiate dialogue.

The leaders of the PRI (Institutional Revolutionary Party) and the PAN (National Action Party) were reluctant to permit the EZLN representatives to speak on the floor of the National Congress. The leader of the PAN, Diego Fernandez de Cevallos, even rejected the intention of President Fox to go to the Senate to speak in support of the COCOPA legislative proposal that he had presented to Congress, arguing that the discussion should occur solely with the appropriate congressional committees.

The Mexican Bishops Conference called upon Congress to listen closely to the EZLN and in turn asked the Zapatistas, after being heard by the legislators, to “accept the resulting law without imposing criteria.”

Continuation of the caravan and others developments

At the same time as the Zapatista march, the World Economic Forum took place in Cancun, Mexico. There President Fox praised the Zapatistas: “Thanks to the mobilization that [the EZLN] initiated seven years ago in Chiapas, it was possible to create an awareness concerning the rights of the indigenous people.” He demanded, “No more excuses or conditions that only delay the resolution of the conflict.” Later, when dozens of demonstrators against the Forum were getting ready to disperse, they were badly beaten by the PFP (Federal Preventive Police). State and PFP agents charged each other with responsibility for this action.

On March 2 the caravan arrived at Nurio, Michoacan, to participate in the third National Indigenous Congress that brought together representatives of 42 indigenous peoples. The approximately five thousand delegates agreed to undertake a peaceful national uprising to demand the approval of the COCOPA legislative proposal; to recognize the EZLN as fully representative of the CNI and to send a delegation on the march to Mexico City; to reject the Puebla Panama Plan (because, among other reasons, it veils the interests of transnational corporations that seek to exploit the natural resources and geographic advantages of the region); and to demand a moratorium on all international projects that seek to develop new drugs based on native knowledge until the Indian peoples have discussed matters concerning the control of their own resources.

On March 11, the caravan arrived in Mexico City, where it was met by a crowd of approximately 200,000 people. There Marcos announced that he would not accept President Fox’s invitation to engage in a dialogue in Los Pinos (the Presidential Mansion) because the three conditions that the EZLN had set for renewing peace talks with the government had not been fulfilled.

Political chess

Inside of Congress, the Party of the Democratic Revolution (PRD) unconditionally endorsed peace talks and the approval of the COCOPA legislative proposal. The Mexican Green Ecology Party (PVEM) and the Labor Party (PT) maintained similar positions. The PRI asserted that it agreed with the demands of the EZLN in spite of some differences. Within the PAN, the differences were irreconcilable.

There followed a long public argument about whether to permit the EZLN to speak from the floor of Congress. The legislators of the PAN and some from the PRI hardened their positions against the EZLN’s request, and the EZLN threatened to simply return to Chiapas. President Fox called upon Congress to find the appropriate forum and means to receive and to listen to the EZLN. In this context he announced the closure of the three remaining military camps (the last of the seven whose removal the EZLN had demanded as a precondition for renewing talks) and the release of Zapatista prisoners.

On March 22 approval to speak in the Chamber of Deputies was finally granted to the EZLN for a meeting with Chamber members, the Senate’s Subcommittee for Analysis of Indigenous Initiatives, and the members of COCOPA.

Beginning March 21, the Army began to pull out of the three remaining military posts: Rio Euseba, Guadalupe Tepeyac and La Garrucha. According to the President, in place of the three vacated military posts, community development centers will be set up. They will be run by the Ministry of Social Development. On April 20, in the presence of Fernando Yañez (the EZLN’s liaison to the government) and Luis H. Alvarez (Peace Commissioner for Chiapas), the facilities of Guadalupe Tepeyac and Rio Euseba, were officially vacated.

Concerning the Zapatista prisoners, 84 were released by the governor of Chiapas, Pablo Salazar. On April 18 it was announced that Luis H. Alvarez, Interior Minister Santiago Creel and the members of COCOPA agreed that eleven prisoners with ties to the EZLN remained to be released: five in Chiapas, four in Tabasco and two in Queretaro.

The EZLN speaks in Congress

On March 28, members of Congress listened and spoke with the Zapatista commanders and representatives of the CNI. Subcommander Marcos was not present. Whereas the PAN deputies followed the order of the national leadership not to attend, two PAN senators did come to hear the EZLN.

Speaking for the EZLN, Commander Esther defended the COCOPA legislative proposal, acknowledged that the president had made gestures of peace with the military closures, and stated that the EZLN will not advance on the seven positions vacated by the Army. She called on Congress to provide a space for an initial meeting between the Zapatista liaison and the Peace Commissioner, Luis H. Alvarez, so that along with the COCOPA, the Army’s withdrawal from the seven positions, and with it, the fulfillment of one of the three conditions set by the EZLN, could be verified.

Several of the legislators who spoke promised to produce legislation on the COCOPA initiative within the regular session set to end on April 30. However, the PAN and the PRI insisted that it was necessary to make changes to the initiative.

Upon returning to their communities, the commanders expressed their elation about the results they obtained. “Today dialogue is closer and confrontation is more distant,” said Marcos, although “the EZLN maintains the declaration of war, as a safeguard of its survival.”

The political tension escalates in Chiapas

On February 6, the Office of the Attorney General of the Republic (PGR) found the remains of three indigenous who had been tortured and murdered in the county of Tila. The Network of Community Human Rights Defenders accused the suspected paramilitary group Peace and Justice of responsibility for the three murders and claimed that Peace and Justice intended to seek revenge against the witnesses in this case.

Meanwhile, the head of the PGR’s Special Unit on Crimes Committed by Suspected Armed Civil Groups, Armando del Rio, affirmed that in Chiapas there is a high degree of violence. He indicated that the PRI-affiliated organization Peace and Justice is a large group and that a number of its members have been accused of a variety of criminal acts. In the beginning of March, the official observed that 1065 people related to some armed group in Chiapas have been called to testify before the Special Unit. He said that 776 had appeared to make statements, some of them as defendants and others as witnesses.

Prior to the departure of the Zapatista caravan, ranchers in Chiapas announced that they intended to prevent the passage of the march if they were not compensated for the land from which they had been displaced as a result of the Zapatista uprising. They also requested that they be included in the peace talks, a call echoed by the leaders of Peace and Justice.

Social conflict

At the beginning of April, after several weeks of work, the indigenous organization Las Abejas (The Bees) announced its withdrawal from negotiations with the Chiapas state government and the county authorities of Chenalho, claiming that conditions were not right for making progress. The meetings were held to find a solution to the problem of the displaced members of Las Abejas and to other conflicts in the county. Las Abejas demanded that the federal government solve the problem of the paramilitaries in the region and that it guarantee a fair legal solution concerning the 1997 Acteal massacre.

In his first months in office, numerous demands were made of Governor Pablo Salazar by different groups and sectors of society: release of imprisoned union leaders and peasants, security guarantees for the return of the thousands of displaced, relocation of some of the victims of religious persecution, fulfillment of promises of land made by the previous government, etc.

In March, there was a confrontation over land between Indian peasants of the Regional Organization of Coffee Growers of Ocosingo (ORCAO) and Zapatista supporters from the community of San Salvador (county of Ocosingo). Three people were injured. In the third week of April, approximately 300 hooded and armed people, suspected members of the PRD, invaded a landholding in the county of Chilon. They were demanding a solution to the problem created by the fact that the previous governor had given title to the land to two different groups.

On April 18, ranchers, small land owners, and displaced ejido (communal landholding) members that do not belong to the EZLN marched through San Cristobal de las Casas to demand that Congress not approve the COCOPA proposal because it would cause more division in Chiapas. Jorge Constantino Kanter, leader of the ranchers, insisted that the president and the governor allow the mestizos (people of mixed European/Indian descent) and other groups to be heard. He announced a march to the country’s capital to demand the right to voice their opinions in the Congress.

A day later, eleven members of the Farming and Forestry Indigenous Peasant Union (a splinter group of Peace and Justice) were exonerated of serious crimes for lack of evidence. The eleven had been jailed since last October. Still facing charges of property damage and plunder, each one paid 22,000 pesos (about $2300) in order to be released on bail.

On April 19, eight members of the San Bartolome de los Llanos Alliance, a PRI-affiliated peasant organization, were ambushed and killed on a farm in the county of Venustiano Carranza, about 70 kilometers from the conflict region. The governor expressed his surprise and added, “What happened when I was a member of COCOPA is happening again. Whenever there was good news in the peace process, inevitably something very bad occurred.”

Meanwhile, on April 3 the Secretariat of Accounting and Administrative Development (SECODAM) confirmed that the audits made of the administration of Albores Guillen, the previous governor of Chiapas, show serious irregularities, especially in the handling of the special federal funds intended for the regions with EZLN presence. It announced that the result of the audits will be ready at the end of April.