A tourist guide to Chiapas - Mexico

Monthly Review, May, 1994 by Rafael Sebastian Guillen Vicente

Dear Sirs:

Now that the Chiapas conflict has brought us into the national consciousness, many and very varied authors have dusted off their little Illustrated Larouse, their Unknown Mexico, their disks containing statistics from the IAEGI and Fonapo, and even classic texts dating back to Battolome de las Casas. With the hope of quenching this thirst for knowledge about the situation in Chiapas, we send you an essay that our partner and sub-commander Marcos completed in mid-1992 to awaken the conscience of various brothers who have since then joined our struggle.

We hope that this material finds a place in one of the sections or supplements of your prestigious paper. The authors rights belong to the insurgents, who will feel sufficiently rewarded by seeing something of their history circulated on a national level Perhaps other brothers will feel inspired to write about their situations and locations, hoping that other prophecies, like that of the people of Chiapas, are also fulfilled.--The Press and Advertising Department, National Zapatista Liberation Army Chiapas: The Southeast in Two Winds, a Storm and a Prophecy

First Wind: The One From Above. Let them tell about how the supreme government was touched by the misery of the indigenous people of Chiapas and endowed the area with hotels, prisons, barracks, and a military airport. And let them also tell about the beast that feeds off of the blood of the people and other wretched and unfortunate successes.

Let us suppose that you live in the North, Center, or West of the country. Let us suppose that you give mind to the old Secotur (Ministry of Tourism) phrase "Get to know Mexico first" Let's suppose that you decide to visit the southeast of your country and that of the southeast you choose the sole of Chiapas. Let's suppose that you drive (getting there by air is not only expensive but unlikely, a mere fantasy; there are only two "civil" airports and one military one). Let's suppose that you pay no mind to the army barracks located at Matias Romero and that you continue on to Ventosa. Let's suppose that you don't notice the Ministry of Government's immigration checkpoint near there (and that makes you think that you are leaving one country and entering mother). Let's suppose that you decide to take a left and head towards Chiapas. Several kilometers beyond you will leave the state of Oaxaca and you will see a big sign that reads, "WELCOME TO CHIAPAS." Did you find it? Good, let's suppose you did. You entered on one of the three existing roads in Chiapas: one in the northern part of the state, one along the Pacific coast, and the one you came on are the three ways to get to this southeastern corner from the rest of the country by road. But the state's natural wealth doesn't only leave by way of these three roads. Chiapas loses blood through many veins: through oil and gas ducts, electric lines, train cars, bank accounts, trucks and vans, boats and planes, through clandestine paths, gaps, and forest trails. This land continues paying tribute to the imperialists: petroleum, electric energy, cattle, money, coffee, banana, honey, corn, cacao, tobacco, sugar, soy, melon, sorghum, mamey, mango, tamarind, avocado, and Chiapan blood flows as a result of the thousand some teeth sunk into the throat of southeastern Mexico. Primary materials, thousands of millions which flow to Mexican ports, and railroad, air and truck transportation centers headed towards different parts of the world: The United States, Canada, Holland, Germany, Italy, japan; but with the same fate: imperialism. The fee that capitalism imposes on the southeastern part of this country oozes, as it has since from the beginning, blood and mud.

A handful of businesses, one of which is the state of Mexico, take all the wealth out of Chiapas leaving behind in exchange their mortal and pestilent track: in 1989 the financial tooth obtained a filling of 1,222,669,000,000 pesos and only left behind 616,340,000,000 in credits and works. More than 600,000,000,000 pesos went to the stomach of the beast.

In Chiapas, Pemex has eighty-six teeth clenched in the municipalities, of Estacion Juarez, Reforma, Ostuacan, Pichucalco, and Ocosingo. Every day they suck 92,000 barrels of petroleum and 516.7,000,000,000 cubic feet of gas. They take the petroleum and gas away and Wave the stamp of capitalism as change: ecological destruction, agricultural scraps, hyperinflation, alcoholism, prostitution, and poverty. The beast is not satisfied and extends its tentacles to the Lacandon Forest: eight petroleum deposits are under exploration. The paths are made with machetes by the same peasants who were left without land by the insatiable beast. The trees fall and dynamite explodes on land where peasants are not allowed to cut down trees to cultivate the land. Every tree that is cut down costs them a fine of ten minimum wages and a jail sentence. The poor cannot cut down trees while the petroleum beast, every day more in foreign hands, can. The peasant cuts them to survive, the beast to plunder.