The full picture began to emerge in the New Year: 45 unarmed civilians, many women and children, shot in the back by paramilitaries. Following the subsequent condemnation from international opinion, the Mexican Government showed itself keen to distance itself from the massacre by dismissing the Interior Minister. The Governor of Chiapas has also resigned.
A change of faces, however, does not imply a change of policy. The PRI, which has ruled for the last 70 years, has no support in much of rural Mexico. In many areas, it consists only of the corrupt local state structure and armed paramilitaries, which together run extortion rackets against the local communities and deliver rigged election results for the ruling elite. The fact that the Zapatistas organised a largely successful boycott of last year’s elections in Chiapas was acutely embarrassing for the regime.
Reports have emerged of whole communities being kept in near slavery or being forced to pay huge fines to live unmolested. A Zapatista spokesperson claimed the Government was effectively waging a dirty war against indigenous communities. A recently leaked Defence Department document, Chiapas Campaign Plan ’94, reveals it was the Government that initiated the creation of paramilitary squads as the principal way of dealing with the Zapatistas. The Bishop of Chiapas has confirmed the paramilitaries were trained by government soldiers.
The duplicity of the Mexican Government is also under scrutiny. In a recent statement, the Zapatista Comandante Marcos asserted that the EZLN (Zapatista Army of National Liberation) had largely suspended armed struggle over the last four years while it was engaged in a process of negotiation and dialogue with the regime. This broke down in August 1996 and has not resumed. Paramilitary activity in Chiapas increased subsequently.
The Clinton Administration condemned the massacre. Yet the US gives the Mexican military extensive covert intelligence support and training. This has been justified by the need to step up the effort against drugs, despite the jailing of prominent Mexican army generals for their role in the trade. The period of US military collaboration has seen a deteriorating human rights record by the Mexican military.
American pressure also played a role in the breakdown of national dialogue between the Zapatistas and the Government 18 months ago. An initial agreement was reached in February 1996, legally recognising traditional indigenous communities as self-determining entities with respect for their cultural practices guaranteed. In August 1996 the Mexican Government refused to acknowledge its signature on this document, spurned new attempts at mediation and presented a new text, wholly unacceptable to the Zapatistas. Behind these manoeuvres lay an American insistence that, as part of the North American Free Trade Agreement, Mexico abolish its traditional land system, and allow US companies to buy up the previously protected communally held lands of the indigenous communities.
The breakdown in negotiations was followed by “low intensity war” by the Government against communities sympathetic to the Zapatistas. The deployment of 25,000 soldiers in the area brought murders, kidnappings, beatings and the forced expulsions of whole villages. In that context, December’s massacre was part of the Government’s ongoing strategy, albeit the most appalling example so far. Since then, Zapatista sources document several cases of fresh aggression by the paramilitaries in Chiapas. In one instance, PRI paramilitaries took 40 hostages demanding the release of those held for the Acteal massacres.