by MICHAEL MCCAYGHAN/SAN CRISTOBAL DE LAS CASA
Mexico is caught in the grip of an escalating drug war which has cost 40,000 lives in the past five years and has no end in sight. By comparison, the Zapatista uprising in January 1994, with less than 200 casualties, prompted peace rallies, a speedy ceasefire, and a national dialogue. The body count varies from day to day, 29, 41 or 33, numbers and methods varying as decapitation and mutilation compete with asphyxiation and the traditional bullet in the head. This endless war of unimaginable cruelty has numbed most Mexicans who observe from afar and hope the river of blood doesn’t arrive at their doorstep.
Once in a while, however, a single incident can trigger a powerful reaction. The death of Juan Francisco Sicilia, one of seven people gunned down in march, sparked a national mobilisation and a new movement aimed at shifting government policy away from perpetual warfare and toward an integrated political solution to the conflict. Javier Sicilia, poet and father of Juan Francisco, launched ‘The March for Peace with Justice and Dignity’ this month, a three-day event which culminated in a rally in Mexico City. The idea was simple: a silent march and a single slogan, ‘Estamos hasta la madre – no mas sangre’ (‘We’ve had it up to here, no more bloodshed’). This idea captured the popular imagination and on Sunday, May 8, hundreds of thousands of people marched all over Mexico demanding a radical change to government policy.
In Chiapas, the Zapatista National Liberation Army (EZLN) answered the call and issued a communique in which they announced their plan to march into San Cristobal de las Casas, the town where the Zapatistas first appeared in January 1994. It has been five years since the Zapatistas last mobilised in this manner and for many people the movement has become a fading memory, a noble insurrection which inspired millions but ultimately fizzled out; victims of a sterile and bitter debate over the pitfalls and possibilities of electoral politics.
As Latin America shifted leftwards in the past decade, electing a range of perceived progressive leaders in what has been referred to as the ‘pink tide’, Mexican citizens have waited their turn, hoping that Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador (AMLO) of the opposition Party of the Democratic Revolution (PRD) might fulfill the long awaited dream of leading a decent government.
The Zapatistas publicly rejected AMLO, regarding his electoral platform as a continuation of right wing politics by other means. The PRD leader modified his radical agenda on the campaign trail and sought support from Mexico’s business class. AMLO was once a vocal supporter of the Zapatistas (and still speaks of them with respect), but the breaking point came when the PRD leadership joined the right wing National Action Party (PAN, currently in government) to annul the San Andres Peace Accords (signed in 1996 but never implemented) and approved a diluted version (in 2001) which gutted the original of all its promise. In Chiapas, the situation worsened in recent times when villages affiliated with the PRD attacked Zapatista communities. During the 2006 presidential race, however, many observers viewed the angry exchanges between the PRD and the EZLN as little more than a ‘berrinche barato’ (a childish tantrum) between two macho leaders (Subcomandante Marcos and AMLO) eager to establish themselves as Mexico’s opposition leader.
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