The Zapatistas take to the streets, "we are on high alert"

Thousands of people protest in more than 20 cities around the world to denounce the attacks by paramilitary groups against the Zapatista communities

The Zapatista Army of National Liberation (EZLN) is on the warpath. The recent wave of attacks against their communities perpetrated by paramilitary groups and drug cartels, in the face of the indifference of the Mexican authorities, have provoked the unanimous reaction of the guerrillas and their allied organizations. This Thursday, thousands of people have participated in a global protest in twenty cities to call for an end to hostilities before the Chiapas sierra becomes a powder keg. The most massive concentration has been held in the streets of Mexico City, in a journey that has reached the very doors of the National Palace where the president of the country lives and offices, Andrs Manuel Lopez Obrador (AMLO).

“We are on maximum alert, we have displaced compañeros, seriously injured, the situation is truly terrible, we have entered a state of ‘narco-government,'” Dulce María, a Zapatista sympathizer present at the demonstration in the Mexican capital, denounced to EL MUNDO. Since its uprising in 1994, the EZLN has consolidated a network of 43 autonomous territories that have managed to coexist with their neighboring communities in the highlands of Chiapas in relative calm. That peace began to crack following the incursion into the area of ​​the Ocosingo Regional Coffee Growers Organization (ORCAO), a paramilitary group, allegedly allied with drug cartels and local politicians, which harass the Zapatista communities to seize territory from them.

The guerrilla denounces that ‘Orcao’ uses those lands to benefit from government programs, such as ‘Sembrando Vida’, which offers financial resources in exchange for planting fruit and timber trees. The conflict between the two organizations went from threats to events in September 2021, when paramilitaries kidnapped two Zapatista leaders for eight days. Pressure from various humanitarian organizations allowed his release, but hostilities did not cease. The straw that broke the camel’s back was the attack against the guerrilla Jorge Lopez Santz, on May 22 in the Zapatista community of Moiss and Gandhi, who continues to be seriously injured in a hospital in Tuxtla Gutirrez.

“Given the action and omission of the state and federal authorities regarding the current and previous crimes, we will take the pertinent measures so that justice is applied to the Orcao criminals and the officials who sponsor them,” denounced the EZLN last 1 June in a statement, in which they also warned that “Chiapas is on the brink of civil war.” This Thursday the response of the guerrilla flooded the streets of the center of the Mexican capital, in a demonstration lived, under the constant threat of rain, between the indignation at the attacks suffered and the rejection of a State that they do not recognize as their own.

As Dulce María explains, “the politicians have allied themselves to destroy our project of peace and hope. They do not want it to be known that a community that does not take a penny from the State can live in freedom, with justice, dignity, its own schools and hospitals.” , a place where women are free, where there are no femicides or rapes”. Like many of her colleagues, this Zapatista sympathizer denounces that the paramilitaries are a puppet in the hands of corrupt politicians and drug traffickers, “They know who they are and let them act with impunity. The same government has sponsored these groups since the time of former President Salinas.”

“AMLO said that everything would change, a lie, a lie, the same crap,” hundreds of protesters chanted in unison yesterday as they walked along the Paseo de la Reforma, the main artery of the Mexican capital. Although López Obrador might seem sensitive to the Zapatista struggle, in reality, he is one of the presidents who has had the worst relationship with the guerrillas. His former political formation, the Democratic Revolutionary Party, voted against a law that sought to make effective the San Andrés Accords, signed in 1996 to end the conflict, but never implemented. The EZLN did not support AMLO in any of his three presidential races.. The Mexican president did not forgive him and the conflict has only grown during this six-year term.

The construction of various infrastructure projects in the southeast of Mexico, such as the Mayan Train or the Trans-Isthmic Train, provoked the unanimous rejection of the anti-capitalist and environmentalist guerrillas, who threatened to “defend ‘Mother Earth’ until death if necessary.” The EZLN does not look kindly on the National Guard either, the militarized armed force created by López Obrador to deal with the public security of the country. “Get rid of the paramilitaries and the National Guard,” claims Ignacia, an indigenous Otomi displaced from Chiapas, who confesses that “violence is very strong.” Along with her, hundreds of people carrying signs and the iconic Zapatista ski mask, have come to the Zcalo in the Mexican capital to demand a “Stop the war.”

The EZLN lives through one of the most tense episodes in its history, six months before the 30th anniversary of his armed uprising. After the latest wave of attacks and threats by paramilitary groups, the call for this global demonstration – which will be held in Madrid this Friday in front of the Mexican Embassy – is the Zapatistas’ last warning to López Obrador to take action in the matter and stop the harassment against their communities. Otherwise, they will defend themselves with their own weapons. For Alfredo Cruz, a resident of Chiapas in the Mexican capital, “the conflict began a long time ago, if the government does nothing, there will be war in Chiapas.”