******************************************************************
*                      REVISTA FARABUNDO MARTI                   *
*                       (Australian Edition)                     *
*                    Number 14, March 4, 1993                    *
******************************************************************

                  THE UPRISING IN CHIAPAS, MEXICO


This text, including titles, sub-titles, and the following
introduction was sent by the EZLN to "La Jornada."


Dear Sirs:

Now that the Chiapas conflict has brought us into the national
consciousness, many and very varied authors have dusted off their
little Illustrated Larouse, their Unknown Mexico, their disks
containing statistics from the INEGI and Fonapo, and even classic
texts dating back to Bartolome de las Casas.  With the hope of
quench this thirst for knowledge about the situation in Chiapas, we
send you an essay that our companero and sub-commander Marcos
completed in mid-1992 to awaken the conscience of various brothers
and sisters who have since then joined our struggle.

We hope that this material finds a place in one of the sections or
supplements of your prestigious paper.  The authors rights belong
to the insurgents, who will feel sufficiently rewarded by seeing
something of their history circulated on a national level.  Perhaps
other brothers and sisters will feel inspired to write about their
situations and locations, hoping that other prophecies, like that
of the people of Chiapas, are also fulfilled.

          The Press and Advertising Department
          EJERCITO ZAPATISTA DE LIBERACION NACIONAL

          Lacandon Forest, Mexico, January 1994.


CHIAPAS: THE SOUTHEAST IN TWO WINDS, A STORM AND A PROPHECY

First Wind
The One From Above

          Let them tell about how the supreme government was
touched by the misery of the indigenous people of Chiapas and
endowed the area with hotels, prisons, barracks, and a military
airport.  And let them also tell about the beast that feeds off of
the blood of the people and other wretched and unfortunate
successes.

Let us suppose that you live in the North, Centre, or West of the
country.  Let us suppose that you give mind to the old Secotur
(Ministry of Tourism) phrase "Get to know Mexico first."  Let's
suppose that you decide to visit the southeast of your country and
that of the southeast you choose the state of Chiapas.  Let's
suppose that you drive (getting there by air is not only expensive
but unlikely, a mere fantasy: there are only two "civil" airports
and one military one).  Let's suppose that you take the
Transistmica highway.  Let's suppose that you pay no mind to the
army barracks located at Matias Romero and that you continue on to
Ventosa.  Let's suppose that you don't notice the Ministry of
Government's immigration checkpoint near there (and that makes you
think that you are leaving one country and entering another). Let's
suppose that you decide to take a left and head towards Chiapas.
Several kilometers beyond you will leave the state of Oaxaca and
you will see a big sign that reads, "WELCOME TO CHIAPAS."  Did you
find it?  Good, let's suppose you did.  You entered on one of the
three existing roads in Chiapas: one in the northern part of the
state, one along the pacific coast, and the one you came on are the
three ways to get to this southeastern corner from the rest of the
country by road.  But the state's natural wealth doesn't only leave
by way of these three roads.

Chiapas loses blood through many veins: through oil and gas ducts,
electric lines, train cars, bank accounts, trucks and vans, boats
and planes, through clandestine paths, gaps, and forest trails.
This land continues paying tribute to the imperialists: petroleum,
electric energy, cattle, money, coffee, banana, honey, corn, cacao,
tobacco, sugar, soy, melon, sorghum, mamey, mango, tamarind,
avocado, and Chiapan blood flows as a result of the thousand some
teeth sunk into the throat of southeastern Mexico.  Primary
materials, thousands of millions which flow to Mexican ports, and
railroad, air and truck transportation centres headed towards
different parts of the world: The United States, Canada, Holland,
Germany, Italy, Japan; but with the same fate: imperialism.  The
fee that capitalism imposes on the southeastern part of this
country oozes, as it has since from the beginning, blood and mud.
A handful of businesses, one of which is the state of Mexico, take
all the wealth out of Chiapas leaving behind in exchange their
mortal and pestilent track: in 1989 the financial tooth obtained a
filling of 1,222,669,000,000 pesos and only left behind
616,340,000,000 in credits and works.  More than 6,000,000,000
pesos went to the stomach of the beast.

In Chiapas, Pemex has 86 teeth clenched in the municipalities of
Estacion Juarez, Reforma, Ostuacan, Pichucalco, and Ocosingo. Every
day they suck 92,000 barrels of petroleum and 516.7,000,000,000
ft.cubed of gas.  They take the petroleum and gas away and leave
the stamp of capitalism as change: ecological destruction,
agricultural scraps, hyperinflation, alcoholism, prostitution, and
poverty.  The beast is not satisfied and extends its tentacles to
the Lacandon Forest: eight petroleum deposits are under
exploration.  The paths are made with machetes by the same peasants
who were left without land by the insatiable beast.  The trees fall
and dynamite explodes on land where peasants are not allowed to cut
down trees to cultivate the land.  Every tree that is cut down
costs them a fine of 10 minimum wages and a jail sentence.  The
poor cannot cut down trees while the petroleum beast, every day
more in foreign hands, can.  The peasant cuts them to survive, the
beast to plunder.

Chiapas also bleeds coffee.  35% of the coffee produced in Mexico
comes from the area.  The industry employs 87,000 people.    47% is
for national consumption and 53% is exported abroad, principally to
the United States and Europe.  More than 100,000 tons of coffee
leave the state to fatten the beast's bank accounts: in 1988 a kilo
of pergamino coffee was sold abroad for 8,000 pesos.  The Chiapan
producers were paid 2,500 or less.

The second most important export after coffee is beef.  3 million
head of cattle wait for coyotes and a small group of people who do
the introductions to go and fill refrigerators in Arriaga,
Villahermosa, and the Federal District.  The cattle are sold for
400 pesos per kilo by the poor farmers and resold by the coyotes
and introducers for up to 10 times the price they paid for them.

The tribute that capitalism demands from Chiapas has no historical
parallel.  55% of national hydro-electric energy comes from this
state along with 20% of Mexico's total electrical energy.  However,
only one third of the homes in Chiapas have electricity.  Where do
the 12,907 kilowatts produced annually by hydroelectric plants in
Chiapas go?

In spite of the trend of ecological awareness, the extraction of
wood continues in Chiapas' forests.  Between 1981 and 1989
2,444,777 meters cubed of precious woods, conifers, and tropical
tree types were taken out of Chiapas destined for the Federal
District, Puebla, Veracruz, and Quintana Roo.  In 1988 wood exports
brought a revenue of 23,900,000,000 pesos, 6,000% more than in
1980.

Honey which is produced in 79,000 beehives in Chiapas goes entirely
to U.S. and European markets.  2,756 tons of honey produced
annually in the Chiapan countryside is converted into dollars which
the people of Chiapas never see.

Of the corn produced in Chiapas more than half goes to the domestic
market.  Chiapas is one of the biggest producers in the country.
Sorghum grown in Chiapas goes to Tabasco.  90% of the tamarind goes
to the Federal District and other states.  Two-thirds of the
avocados produced are sold outside of the state and all of the
mamey.  69% of the cacao goes to the national market and 31% is
exported to the U.S., Holland, Japan, and Italy.  The majority of
the bananas produced are exported.

What does the beast leave behind in exchange for all it takes away?

Chiapas has a total area of 75,634.4 km2, some 7.5 million
hectares.  It is the eighth largest state and is divided into 111
municipalities organised for looting purposes into nine economic
regions.  40% of the nation's plant varieties, 36% of its mammals,
34% of its reptiles and amphibians, 66% of the bird species, 20% of
the sweet-water fish, and 80% of the butterfly species are found in
Chiapas.  7% of the total national rainfall falls in Chiapas.  But
its greatest wealth is the 35 million people of Chiapas, of whom
two-thirds live and die in rural communities.  Half of them don't
have potable water and two-thirds have no sewage.  90% of the rural
population pays minimum or no taxes.

Communication is a grotesque joke for a state which produces
petroleum, electric energy, coffee, wood, and cattle for the hungry
beast.  Only two-thirds of municipality capitals have paved-road
access.  12, 000 communities have no other means of transport and
communication than mountain trails.  Since the days of Porfirio
Diaz, the railroad lines have serviced capitalism rather than the
people.  The railroad line that follows the coast (there are only
two lines: the other crosses the northern part of the state) dates
back to the turn of the century and its tonnage is limited by the
old bridges which cross the canyons of the southeast.  The only
Chiapan port, Puerto Madero, is just one more way for the beast to
extract the state's resources.

Education.  The worst in the country.  At the elementary school
level, of every 100 children, 72 don't finish the first grade. More
than half of the schools only offer up to third grade and half only
have one teacher for all the courses offered.  There are very high
numbers, though these are of course kept secret, of indigenous
children who are forced to drop out of school due to their
families' need to incorporate them into the system of exploitation.

In whichever indigenous community it is common to see children
carrying corn and wood, cooking, or washing clothes during school
hours.  Of the 16,058 classrooms in 1989, only 96 were in
indigenous zones.

Industria.  Look: 40% of Chiapan "industry" consists of tortilla,
tortilla corn, and wood furniture mills.  Large companies
(petroleum and electricity), 0.2% of the total industry, belong to
the Mexican government (and soon to foreigners).  Medium-sized
industry, 0.4%, is made up of sugar refineries and fish, seafood,
flour, milk, and coffee processing plants.  94.8% of the state's
industry is micro-industry.

The health conditions of the people of Chiapas are a clear example
of the capitalist imprint: One and a half million people have no
medical services at their disposal.  There are 0.2 clinics for
every thousand inhabitants, five times less than the national
average.  There are 0.3 hospital beds for every thousand Chiapans,
three times less than in the rest of Mexico.  There is one
operating room per 100,000 inhabitants, two times less than in the
rest of Mexico and 0.5 doctors and 0.4 nurses per 1,000 people, two
times less than the national average.

Health and nutrition go hand in hand in poverty.  54% of the
Chiapan population suffers from malnutrition and in the highlands
and forest this percentage increases to 80%.  A peasant's average
diet consists of coffee, corn, tortillas, and beans.

Capitalism is in debt for everything that it takes away...


SECOND WIND  (EXCERPTS)
THE ONE FROM BELOW
(CHAPTER 4)

Let them tell how dignity and defiance joined hands in the
southeast and how Jacinto Perez's phantoms and raccoons run through
the Chiapan highlands.  Let them also tell of patience that has run
out and of other happenings which have been ignored but have
probable consequences.

These people were born dignified and rebellious, sisters of the
rest of Mexico's exploited people.  They are not just the product
of the Annexation Act of 1824 but of a long chain of disgraces and
rebellions.  From the time when cassock and armour conquered this
land, dignity and defiance have lived and spread under these rains.

Collective work, democratic thinking, and subjection to the
decisions of the majority are more than just traditions in
indigenous zones.  They have been the only means of survival,
resistance, dignity, and defiance.  These "evil ideas," as seen by
landholders and businesspeople, go against the capitalist precept
of "a lot in the hands of a few."

It has mistakenly been said that the Chiapan rebellion has no
counterpart, that it is outside of the national calendar.  This is
a lie.  The exploited Chiapan's specialty is the same as that of
exploited people from Durango, Veracruz, or the plateau of northern
Mexico: to fight and to lose.  If the voices of those who write
history speak excessively it is because the voice of the oppressed
does not speak...yet.  There is no historic, national, or regional
calendar which has documented each and every rebellion against the
system imposed and maintained with blood and fire throughout the
national territory.  In Chiapas this rebel voice is only heard when
it shakes the world of the landowners and businesspeople.  So
indeed the phantom of indigenous barbarism strikes government
building walls and gains access with the help of revolution,
hiding, trickery, and threats.  If the rebellions in the southeast
lose, as they do in the north, centre, and west, it is not the
result of bad timing because wind is the fruit of the land, it has
its time and its ripeness in the breasts of those who have nothing
but dignity and rebelliousness.  And this wind from below, that of
rebellion and dignity, is not just an answer to the imposition of
the wind from above.  It is not just an angry response or the
destruction of an unjust and arbitrary system.  Rather it carries
with it a new proposal, a hope of converting rebellion and dignity
to freedom and dignity.

How will they make this new voice heard here and all over Mexico?
How will they make this hidden wind which now blows only in the
mountains and canyons descend to the valleys where the people live
who handle the money and govern us with lies?

This wind will come from the mountains, born under the trees and
conspiring for a new world, so new that it is barely an intuition
in the collective heart which inspires it.

Excerpts from Chapter 5

Antonio dreams of owning the land he works on, he dreams that his
sweat is paid with justice and truth, he dreams that there is a
school to cure ignorance and medicine to scare away death, he
dreams of having electricity in his home and that his table is
full, he dreams that his country is free and that this is the
result of its people governing themselves, and he dreams that he is
at peace with himself and with the world.  He dreams that he must
fight to obtain this dream, he dreams that there must be death in
order to gain life.  Antonio dreams and then he awakes... now he
knows what to do and he sees his wife crouching by the fire, hears
his son crying, looks at the sun rising in the east, and, smiling,
grabs his machete.

A wind picks up, he rises and walks to meet others.  Something has
told him that his dream is that of many and he goes to find them.
The viceroy dreams that his land is agitated by a terrible wind
which rouses everything, he dreams that all he has stolen is taken
from him, that his house is destroyed, and that his reign is
brought down.  He dreams and he doesn't sleep.  The viceroy goes to
the feudal lords and they tell him that they have been having the
same dream.  The viceroy cannot rest.  So he goes to his doctor and
together they decide that it is some sort of indian witchcraft and
that they will only be freed from this dream with blood.  The
viceroy orders killings and kidnappings and he constructs more
jails and army barracks.  But the dream continues and keeps him
tossing and turning and unable to sleep.

Everyone is dreaming in this country.  Now it is time to wake up...

THE STORM...
...that which is here

The crash of these two winds will be born, its time has arrived, it
has stoked the fire of history.  Now the wind from above rules, but
here comes the wind from below, here comes the storm...that is how
it will be...

THE PROPHECY...
...that which is here

When the storm calms, when rain and fire again leave the country in
peace, the world will no longer be the world but something better.

The Lacandon Forest, August 1992


ZAPATISTA PAMPHLET
February 25, 1994

AVAILABLE NOW

TITLE: Zapatistas: Spreading Hope for Grassroots Change, Starting
in Chiapas, Mexico. Open Magazine Pamphlet Series, pp.22, ISBN:
1-884519-06-7, $4.00 ppd.

AUTHOR: Text by Marc Cooper, Hannah Holm, Barbara Pillsbury & The
Zapatistas

CONTACT: Open Media PO Box 2726 Westfield NJ 07091 Tel: (908)
789-9608 Fax: (908)654-3829 E-mail: opengrss@maestro.com

-------------------------------------------------------------------
"Here we are, the dead of all times, dying once again, but now with
the objective of living."--The Zapatistas
-------------------------------------------------------------------

Resistance to NAFTA, GATT and the New World Order economy has just
begun. Spreading from the mountains and jungles of southern Mexico
is an insurgent liberation movement demanding political democracy
and economic justice for all Mexicans. Calling themselves
Zapatistas, their guerrilla activity began on January 1, 1994, the
first day that NAFTA went into effect. Zapatista demands, backed by
expressions of solidarity across Mexican society, are at this
moment changing the dynamics of power in Mexico. How will the
Zapatistas effect the upcoming elections in Mexico?  Can an
indigenous movement trigger a popular movement in North America?
How will North Americans in the United States and Canada respond as
the movement spreads?

-----------------------------------------------------------------
Why is every one so quiet? Is this the "democracy" you wanted?
--The Zapatistas, Feb 4, 1994
-----------------------------------------------------------------

Zapatistas: Spreading Hope for Grassroots Change braids together
the incisive, on-site reporting of Marc Cooper (staff writer for
the Village Voice), the translated communiques of the Zapatistas
from the Mexican jungle, plus solidarity and resistance notes by
Hannah Holm (co-editor of Chiapas Digest) and Barbara Pillsbury
(original translator of Zapatista communiques).

Zapatistas: Spreading Hope for Grassroots Change is not only about
expressing solidarity for the indigenous people of Mexico, but
about applying their demands for greater democracy throughout all
of Canada and the United States. While pessimists may argue that it
is ridiculous to advocate a North American insurgency movement, it
is even more ridiculous to accept the emerging order. The
Zapatistas remind us that We, the People, are the only legitimate
democratic power.

------------------