The timing of the Zapatista uprising should have made it
clear: by taking up arms against the Mexican government on the
day the North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA) came into
effect, the Zapatista Army of National Liberation (EZLN) told
the world that lives were at stake in the reorganization of
the global economy. But despite the public statements by the
Zapatistas, and the lines of solidarity that have been forged
between the EZLN and other popular movements throughout the
continent, the mainstream media in North America by and large
continues to portray the uprising in Chiapas as a limited
disturbance provoked by strictly localized issues.
In January 1994, the Continental Coordinating Commission of
Indigenous Nations and Organizations (CONIC) organized an
international delegation of indigenous peoples to visit the
state of Chiapas and to report on the concerns of indigenous
peoples participating in or witness to the uprising. One of
the members of that delegation was Jeannette Armstrong, a poet
and teacher from the Okanagan nation currently working with
the En'owkin Centre in Penticton, British Columbia. The
following conversation was recorded by telephone in March
1994.
Q: I wanted to begin by asking you about your first reaction
to the news of the uprising in Mexico.
A: I guess my immediate reaction was anger, outrage and then
grief. Understanding that these were Indian people -- and I
had some idea of the conditions they were living under -- my
reaction centered around wondering how the uprising was going
to be handled by the Mexican government.
There seems to be almost polarized reactions to the
uprising. The mainstream media , the Canadian government, and
certainly the Mexican government have gone out of their way to
down play the uprising. They have described it primarily in
terms of incidents of human rights violations in the south of
Mexico, of poverty and of peoples reaction to those
conditions. At the same time groups and organizations which
have been concerned over the North American Free Trade
Agreement (NAFTA), over the general conditions of economic
restructuring in North America and over the issue of
indigenous land rights have all emphasized the way that the
Zapatistas are advancing a political and economic program in
relation to a much broader range of problems, rather than to
isolated incidents of poverty or violence. I think that was
one of the most frustrating issues for me in terms of the
reports that we were getting from our contacts, from
indigenous people who were down there just days into the
conflict, and the analysis they were providing in terms of the
indigenous peoples' movement down there and the reasons they
were taking the stand that they were taking. You know, the
declarations that came out from the EZLN were very clear on
the reasons that these actions had to be taken and these
reasons were related very directly to the effects of NAFTA.
And I think because of the vested interests in Canada and the
US that message has been really seriously down played and red
herring tactics have been used, particularly in terms of
focusing primarily on human rights violations.
And I guess the way that I see it, this is the first action
of this sort that goes beyond local concerns. It is the first
resistance, the first violent resistance, to the global
economy. It is a movement that is opposed to much more than
just the national government of Mexico, so that the uprising
is on behalf of a lot more people than just the indigenous
people of Mexico or the underprivileged classes throughout the
states of Mexico.
Q: Before calling you I was reading an article in the latest
issue of Canadian Forum, an article by Joyce Nelson called
"The Zapatistas vs. the Spin Doctors." It's about the way in
which public relations firms, the mass media and the Mexican
and Canadian governments have "handled" the Zapatista
uprising. In this article she also talks about how a Canadian
delegation to Chiapas led by Ovide Mercredi, the National
Chief of the Assembly of First Nations, has called for the
creation of a commission to oversee human rights under the
North American Free Trade Agreement. Joyce Nelson points out
that although obviously there has to be attention to human
rights, that particular delegation to Chiapas has already
accepted that we must live with NAFTA. In other words this
delegation is pulling back from the much more radical demands
made by the Zapatistas.
A: Yeah, and it doesn't even take into account the critical
factors which gave rise to the uprising in the first place.
These factors had to do with policies that were being
implemented in marketing and in the export control of
marketable products, as well as changes in the Mexican
constitution which changed the status of the communally held
land that is the fundamental basis of survival for the
peasants and the indigenous people in that area.
Basically, if we're looking at the Chiapas uprising as a
strictly localized problem then you can think of it in terms
of human rights violations that the Mexican military and army
is perpetrating. But if we're looking at what is at the bottom
of it, we're looking at human rights violations that are being
perpetrated through a systemic process which involves an
international trade agreement in which the US and Canada are
complicit. When you're dealing with a criminal government and
you're complicit with that government through creating the
kind of agreement that puts more oppression and repression on
the people who are already impoverished and underprivileged,
are you as criminal? Are you as involved in human rights
violations? Those are the sorts of questions that people need
to be asking of the [Canadian] government, of these two
governments that are involved in that complicity.
Q: Now you were part of a delegation that went to Chiapas,
but as you've described it to me, it was not a human rights
observer delegation, it was an indigenous solidarity
delegation. Can you tell me what your objectives were in going
to Chiapas?
A: The delegation was organized by the Continental
Coordinating Commission of Indigenous Nations and
Organizations. It is an organization which encompasses
indigenous peoples' organizations and nations from North
America, Central America and South America. The participating
organization in North America is the Indigenous Peoples
Alliance. We were the principle organizers of the delegates
that came from the US and Canada. Their position in taking a
delegation [to Chiapas] was to meet with the indigenous
peoples of the Chiapas region where the conflict was taking
place, not only to observe the coming together of those
organizations to establish the terms of peace that they were
going to be negotiating in relation to demands of the EZLN,
but they were also there to witness that process in terms of
what the indigenous peoples were saying and what the
underlying and background reasons might be, coming from an
indigenous perspective. The feeling very much centered around
the understanding that we have as indigenous people that many
times mainstream press networks will not cover the indigenous
perspective, but will cover only the mainstream perspective.
We wanted to make sure that there were witnesses there who
were listening and hearing and reporting back the indigenous
concerns, the indigenous view, and their objectives in terms
of the demands that were being put forward by the EZLN on
behalf of all indigenous people and campesino organizations in
the state of Chiapas and throughout Mexico. So the reason for
being there was to listen to them, to hear them and to record
as correctly as possible what they were saying.
Q: For you, having gone and heard indigenous people of
Chiapas speak of their concerns, what was the most important
aspect of the struggle that you came away with a better sense
of understanding?
A: There were two things I came to really understand very
clearly. It wasn't an overnight reactionary kind of action. It
was part of a much longer term movement toward trying to
instill some justice in terms of the really oppressive style
of government that has been there for many years and the
really oppressive style of colonialism that has been there for
many years and the conditions that it has created in terms of
factionalizing the indigenous population and the campesino
population and of course the elite class, the landlord class.
And I guess what I came to understand clearly was that this is
probably the first time in the history of Mexico -- and this
was expressed by a number of people at the meetings which I
attended -- where a certain bridge had been created and there
was now a commonality in terms of the campesino organizations
and the indigenous organizations. It was the first time those
two groups had actually come together to discuss a solidarity
movement in terms of reforms that could meet both of their
needs. I think it was the first time in history that that
solidarity was achieved. And that's really a critical thing in
terms of the present government.
Q: I want to pursue that point of alliances being formed
among grassroots indigenous peoples movements and other
popular sectors, not just in Mexico but around the world. You
are connected now not only to the indigenous peoples' movement
in Chiapas, but also to the indigenous peoples' movement in
the Ecuadorian Amazon in the form of the Organization of
Indigenous Peoples of Pastaza Province (OPIP) and also to the
Tonantzin Land Institute in Albuquerque, New Mexico. It seems
characteristic of all of these organizations that they are
working to form alliances with non-native women and men who
might in some way share a basis for solidarity. I'm thinking,
for example, of OPIP trying to reach out to the Ecuadorian oil
workers to try to collaborate with them to try to resist oil
exploitation on indigenous lands. This seems to be a very new
development in international organizing by indigenous peoples.
A: I think it's a really necessary development and it has
been precipitated by the indigenous peoples movement looking
for those alliances, speaking out and creating those bridges.
In some cases some of the extreme conditions affecting
indigenous and non-indigenous people have resulted in those
alliances just naturally coming about. But a lot of it has
been precipitated by indigenous people in their effort to
dialogue in that particular way.
Some of the movements which you mentioned are some of the
ones which are taking a strong role in terms of the problems
created by the exploitation of land and resources and the
exploitation of people. Another good example is the coming
together in Brazil of the indigenous people there and the
rubber tappers which I witnessed and saw at the Global Forum
in Brazil. It was a similar kind of situation in that they had
shared the same territory and the rubber tappers had been in
opposition to indigenous people in competition for the
resources of the rainforest. But when the large corporations
started making inroads into that same rainforest, it very
quickly became clear -- and it galvanized the actions of the
people -- that they needed to protect the land base if they
were interested in continuing to live in it in a relatively
healthy coexistence. So I saw that occur. There was a
solidarity movement. They came into the meeting together and
they spoke together. They recognized their differences, but
they were clear that they stood in solidarity against the
onslaught that was occurring in their territory.
Q: The mainstream media has responded to the Chiapas
uprising by trying to denigrate or down play the extent to
which the Zapatistas reflect an indigenous analysis that is
international, that is sophisticated , that takes into account
things like NAFTA and other global processes. Despite this
media portrayal, it seems to me that one of things that
necessarily is beginning to happen, is that indigenous people
are beginning to be respected as people who can present an
analysis in areas such as macroeconomics that have previously
been reserved for non-native, so-called experts.
A: That was something which became very clear in Chiapas.
Meeting with organizations, the analysis that had taken place,
the amount of information that was out there in the
community... A really good example is a women's textile
cooperative that we visited in the mountains above San
Cristobal. They were all very clear how NAFTA affected them
directly in terms of their textiles and whether or not they
were in control or participant to the changes in the economy.
They were very much aware of the kinds of impacts that the
global market economy has in terms of the export and marketing
of their textiles and in terms of the benefits back to their
growers and producers. They were very clear that the problem
here was the profiteering motive in the NAFTA, that NAFTA
would circumvent and obliterate that kind of manufacturing and
that kind of localized economy which had been in place for
thousands of years, and that they will be very directly
affected by the flooding onto the market of cheap materials
from other parts of the world.
Q: Just to wrap up, what do you think are the key lessons
for the future in terms of international organizing for
solidarity between indigenous peoples and various sectors of
the non-native population?
A: Well, I think one of the very clear messages is that
people on an everyday level who are involved in labour or
business on a local level need to inform themselves and really
need to understand some of the global frameworks that are
going to be impacting on them in terms of their lives and
their participation in the economy, and whether or not they're
going to have any say in that economy. We're not being
informed. There's this priest class of people who know what
the GATT agreement is and who know what NAFTA is and nobody
else seems to know.
But everybody needs to know, everybody needs to understand
the compromises that are being asked and sell-offs that are
occurring, especially in a country like Canada where the
resource base lies on such a diverse geography. If you're
looking across the board there need to be all kinds of
frameworks put in place to protect agriculture, for instance,
by marketing boards that are constructed specifically to
maintain and sustain agriculture in this country. What happens
if that kind of sustaining program can no longer be done
because the free trade tribunal has said that unfair subsidies
are being provided? That means those businesses go down the
drain, multinational corporations pick up that land and pick
up those businesses, and the people in Canada become subject
to the same kinds of things that are happening in Chiapas, but
on an even larger scale.
To me its very clear that it's up to the people who are
going to be impacted by this to inform themselves, to
understand as clearly as possible the effects in their own
backyard, right in their own kitchen, and understand the
actions that they can take, and understand the things that are
necessary in terms of standing in solidarity with each other.
We are talking about a war against the effects of corporate
industry and the profiteering in a market and wage economy.
Where do we draw the line? Who is more important? And where do
people come in? Are investment corporations more important
than the people on a local level who will directly feel the
impact on the land that they live on, but which they have
absolutely no control over? Those are the kind of questions
that people need to be asking of those governments that are
involved in and are complicit in this kind of agreement
making.
Thunder Bay, March 1994
suggestions for further reading:
Armstrong, Jeannette. Breath Tracks. Vancouver:
Williams-Wallace, 1991.
Arsenault, Kevin J. "Free Trade and Agriculture: NAFTA
Threatens Loss of More Family Farms." Action Canada Dossier
38 (December 1992), pp. 22-23.
Churchill, Ward. Struggle for the Land: Indigenous
Resistance to Genocide, Ecocide and Expropriation in
Contemporary North America. Toronto: Between the Lines,
1993.
Cleaver, Harry. "The Zapatista Uprising." Studies in
Political Economy, 44 (Summer 1994), pp. 141-157.
CONAIE. "Political Declaration." The Fourth Congress of
the Confederation of Indigenous Nationalities of Ecuador,
December 15-18, 1993. Distributed via Internet by Agencia
Latino Americano de Informacion, address below.
Continental Coordinating Commission of Indigenous Nations
and Organizations (CONIC). Preliminary Report, International
Solidarity Delegation Chiapas, Mexico January 22-26.
(Contact TONATIERRA, Coordinating Office of the Indigenous
Peoples Alliance, address below.)
Dawkins, Kristin and Jeremy Brecher. NAFTA, GATT, and the
World Trade Organization: The New Rules for Corporate
Conquest. (Open Magazine Pamphlet Series #24). New Jersey:
Open Media, 1993.
Dunbar Ortiz, Roxanne. Indians of the Americas: Human
Rights and Self-Determination. New York: Praeger Publishers,
1984.
Fife, Connie. The Colour of Resistance: A Contemporary
Anthology of Writing by Aboriginal Women. Toronto: Sister
Vision Press, 1993.
Forbes, Jack D. Columbus and Other Cannibals: The Wetiko
Disease of Exploitation, Imperialism and Terrorism.
Brooklyn: Autonomedia, 1992.
Gedicks, Al. The New Resource Wars: Native and
Environmental Struggles Against Multinational Corporations.
Montreal and New York: Black Rose Books, 1994.
Hecht, Susanna and Alexander Cockburn. The Fate of the
Forest: Developers, Destroyers and Defenders of the Amazon.
London and New York: Verso, 1989.
Jaimes, M. Annette. "Re-Visioning Native America: An
Indigenist View of Primitivism and Industrialism." Social
Justice 19:2 (1992), pp. 5-34.
LaDuke, Winona. " Succeeding into Native North America,"
in W. Churchill, ed. Critical Issues in Native North
America. (IWGIA Document #62). Copenhagen: International
Work Group for Indigenous Affairs, 1989. pp. 1-9.
Nelson, Joyce. "The Zapatistas versus the Spin-Doctors."
Canadian Forum, 72:827 (March 1994), pp. 18-25.
Subcommandante Marcos, EZLN. "The Southwest in Two Winds."
in Cleaver, Harry, et al, eds. Zapatistas! Documents of the
New Mexican Revolution. Brooklyn: Autonomedia, 1994.
Varese, Stefano. "Think Locally, Act Globally." Report on
the Americas 25:3 (December 1991), pp. 13-17.)
Organizations
Action Canada Network. 251 Laurier Avenue West, Suite 804,
Ottawa, Ontario, K1P 5J6.
Agencia Latino Americano de Informacion (ALAI). Casilla
17-12-877, Quito, Ecuador. E-MAIL: info@alai.ec.
En'owkin Centre. 257 Brunswick Street, Penticton, British
Columbia, V2A 5P9.
TONATIERRA, Coordinating Office of the Indigenous Peoples
Alliance (IPA). P.O. Box 24009, Phoenix, AZ 85074, USA.
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