h2g2 The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy: Earth Edition

Well, the FARC are on the run as government troops reoccupy the area of Columbia they've held, reasonably peaceably for four years. One assumes the Columbian government had explict permission from the US to do this following Pastrinas couring for them after Sept 11. A sad day.

Which brings to mind the FZLN / EZLN - the Zapatistas of southern Mexico, long a thorn in the hide of the US & Mexican governments. They usually issue a communique in the new year, assesing the previous years campaign and the programme for the year ahead. I've heard little about them since Sept 11 other than a stepping up of the Low Intensity War in October - since then nothing.

Does anyone know what's going on with these groups?

The ELZN / FZLN do issue annual statements. I think their reveiw of the year is issued on the aniversary of the establishment of their first camp in autunm 1983 - not, as i assume you're thinking, the aniversary of their 'coming out' and taking control in Chiapas at new year 1994.

And have they issued one lately? Following the big march / tour to Mexico city this time last year, a statement on globalisation / neo-libralism and the reports that the government (allegedly) had stepped up paramilitary actions, i've heard nothing.

In fact do any other reasearchers een know who the Zapatistas are?

Heard of them, but don't know a lot about the situation.

There's a nice 'introductory' page about them in the guide here http://www.bbc.co.uk/h2g2/guide/A521443

and another one on how their social system is structured here:
http://www.bbc.co.uk/h2g2/guide/A364718

Revolution redefined along the lines of Camus' Rebel. Not taking power, but demanding dignity - refusing to be ruled, and taking control of your own life. These poeple are the future.

Thanks autist, I shall read these.

Its hard work sometimes keeping up with international events, but you guys help a lot. I may not post much but I do read all of these, and I learn from seeing them through the eyes of different people. Thanks.

For the latest info, I would recommend an ORGanizational website called "zmag." They have a section devoted to Chiapas/Zapatista activity. If you can figure out the basic url, just add "/chiapas1" to the end of the url. They link to articles from Mexican newspapers or journals, EZLN communiques, plus about 3 dozen other websites that support or give info about the Zapatistas. The latest pieces you might like to see are a statement from Sub Marcos in October 2001 and a statement about "new excursions into Zapatista territory" from 4 Dec 2001.

The Zapatista Organisation link i posted above has been updated a little here:
http://www.bbc.co.uk/h2g2/guide/A682085



No news since the Coliumbian government went in. I guess that means the FARC have retreated into the hills, and we'll hear nothing more from them until they restart guerilla actions. A sad step backwards.

Thanks Autist, I have read that and have bookmarked the Durito stories for later.

A Mexican newspaper reported on Friday:


For eight months, the Lacondon jungle has been shrouded in silence.

In April, the Chiapas-based Zapatista National Liberation Army (EZLN) cut off all communication with President Vicente Fox's administration, accusing the government of "sabotaging" the peace process after Congress passed a watered-down version of an indigenous rights amendment the rebel group demanded.

The reform - and with it the fate of the eight-year conflict between the government and the Zapatistas - now stands before the Supreme Court, which is expected to give its decision in late February.

"We have to wait for the resolution of the Supreme Court," said Dep. Emilio Ulloa, a member of the congressional peace commission (Cocopa), in an interview Thursday. "The EZLN rejected the reform, but they haven't said what they are going to do if the Supreme Court passes it. We don't know how they're going to react."

Hopes for a solution to the stand-off soared when Fox took office 13 months ago, ending 71-years of authoritarian one-party rule.

Responding to conditions set by the guerrilla group before it would return to peace talks, Fox closed seven military bases and sent an indigenous rights reform endorsed by the Zapatistas to Congress.

Last March, rebel leader Subcommander Marcos led a caravan of Zapatistas and their supporters from Chiapas to Mexico City, where EZLN leaders made an unprecedented appearance before the Chamber of Deputies, urging legislators to approve the constitutional reform.

But when Congress passed a revised bill that did not grant indigenous communities the political autonomy and rights to natural resources they had demanded, the Zapatistas broke off contact with the government. Congressmen from Fox's National Action Party (PAN) were the most adamant opponents of the original initiative endorsed by indigenous rights groups and the EZLN.

Hundreds of indigenous-populated municipalities and the state government of Oaxaca have challenged the constitutionality of the reform before the Supreme Court.

The Fox administration, meanwhile, has continued making unanswered calls for the Zapatistas to return to the negotiating table.

If the court rules the reform unconstitutional, all sides would start "from scratch," said Ulloa, with Congress likely being compelled to draft new legislation.

On the other hand, if the reform is approved by the nation's highest court, the ball would be thrown in the court of the Zapatistas, who have refused to yield on their demand that Fox's original draft be approved.

Such a decision likely would further polarize the conflict, said Ulloa.

"I agree with the representative of the Pope, there is a nervous calm in Chiapas," he said, referring to a comment made by papal envoy Cardinal Roger Etchegaray in his trip to the state this week. "Everything is tranquil now, but it is a place where from one moment to the next conflicts and problems can arise."



Thanks to Red Lindsay for translating.

So much for Vicente Fox's boast that he would solve the Chiapas problem in 15 minutes.

I see Marcos is in the BBC History Magazine this month, an article placing him in a tradition of 'Masked Heroes'.

I've got some updates on the Columbian situation which look promising too, i'll post them here when i get the chance: the jist being that the givernment have agreed to extend peace talks, but the FARC rebels still have to retreat.

My hope is that the ELN will enter any terrtory that the FARC cede, a union between the two groups is long overdue, the one having the virtues the other lacks. Won't happen though i'm sure.

Not sure i like the Zapatistas being thought of as 'History' already.

Making history yes, but i'd hope it's many years yet before anyone can think of them as a historical movement.

When you titled the thread "FZLN/FARC," I thought there was some stronger link between the groups than I had heard. But it sounds like they're not kissing cousins. I found this in an interview from March 2001. (Yay for the test period of posting URLs in conversation threads!)

http://www.newleftreview.net/NLR24304.shtml
Subcomandante Marcos interviewed in Columbia by Garcia Marquez and Roberto Pombo, around 26 March 2001.
==================================
Q: How do you see the Colombian guerrillas and the armed conflict of our country?

Marcos: From here I see very little. Just what the media filter through: the current process of dialogue and negotiation, and its difficulties. So far as I can tell, it’s a very traditional kind of dialogue—it’s not innovative. Both sides are simultaneously sitting at the table and bringing their military forces into play to gain an advantage at the table. Or vice versa, because we don’t know what each of them has in mind. Perhaps the table offers advantages for military confrontations. We don’t pay much attention to the accusations of links to drug-trafficking because it wouldn’t be the first time such charges are made and then they turn out not to be true. We give the Colombians the benefit of the doubt. We don’t label them good or bad, but we do keep our distance from them, as we do with other armed groups in Mexico, in so far as we consider it unethical to approve of any measures to secure the victory of the revolution. Including, for example, kidnapping civilians. The seizure of power does not justify a revolutionary organization in taking any action that it pleases. We do not believe that the end justifies the means. Ultimately, we believe that the means are the end. We define our goal by the way we choose the means of struggling for it. In that sense, the value we give to our word, to honesty and sincerity, is great, although we occasionally sin out of naïveté. For example, on 1 January 1994, before attacking the Army, we announced that we were going to attack. They didn’t believe us. Sometimes this yields results and sometimes it doesn’t. But it satisfies us that, as an organization, we are creating an identity as we go along.

...Q: If everyone knows who you are, why the mask?

Marcos: A touch of coquetry. They don’t know who I am, but it doesn’t matter to them anyway. At stake is what Subcomandante Marcos is, not who he was.