New political tone is emerging in Mexico - Zapatista National Liberation Army renews its political activity with a demonstration in Mexico City - Brief Article

National Catholic Reporter, Sept 26, 1997 by Marni McEntee

MEXICO CITY -- As Eugenio Almaraz Morales jerked his Volkswagen taxi through nearly impenetrable traffic, he admitted that he rarely contemplates the plight of Mexico's impoverished indigenous communities living a world away in the country's southermost state of Chiapas.

The pace in the world's fourth most populous city is simply too fast, Almaraz said, for him to think much about the country's Indians, who make up 10 percent of Mexico's population.

He said most Mexicans consider the situation of the indigenous people "a great shame ... but people here in the city are concerned about themselves."

But when Almaraz pulled his cab over in the city's southern neighborhood of Xochimilco Sept. 12, sliding beside busloads of masked Zapatista rebels, his skin bristled with goose bumps.

"It fills me with emotion," Almaraz said, gazing at the some of the 1,111 members of the Zapatista National Liberation Army who were met by an outpouring of 150,000 Mexico City supporters at a march toward the Zocalo, or central plaza. The rebel's four-day journey from Chiapas to the capital city broke a yearlong stalemate between the government and Zapatista leaders. The Zapatistas are pressing for implementation of an agreement signed last year to give greater political autonomy to Mexico's indigenous communities.

The march preceded a week of meeting during which the Zapatistas founded a political arm, the Zapatista National Liberation Front -- FZLN -- with the aim of making indigenous concerns part of the national political debate.

Although it carries the Zapatista name, the front represents more than Indians, according to Cecilia Rodriguez, a Zapatista representative in El Paso, Texas, and a member of the U.S.-based National Commission For Democracy in Mexico.

The march, scheduled on the eve of the national celebration of Mexico's independence from Spain, brought the Zapatistas back to a political stage occupied in recent months by Cuauhtemoc Cardenas, a founder of the center-left Party of the Democratic Revolution (PRD). On July 6, he became the first popularly elected mayor of Mexico City. The post previously had been handpicked by the president.

The election of Cardenas and the installation of the first-ever opposition-majority Congress this month has set a new tone for politics in Mexico, long the province of the authoritarian Institutional Revolutionary Party (PRI).

The policy changes achieved in the capital city by Cardenas, a Zapatista supported, are likely to influence the rest of the country.

President Ernesto Zedillo failed to mention both the Zapatistas and Chiapas during his state-of-the-nation address early this month. But the government could not ignore the Zapatistas for long. During the rebel's weekend conference, Zedillo's head peace negotiator, Pedro Joaquin Coldwell, announced that the government aimed to "complete the San Andres accords and to elaborate on a legal text that responds to the hopes of the indigenous people."

Coldwell was referring to agreements signed between the Zapatistas and the government in the jungle town of San Andres in February 1996, 13 months after the uprising by the rebels.

The accords include provisions that would recognize the Indian's centuries-old practice of self-governance through direct elections of community representatives. Rodriguez said she believes Zedillo's rejection of the accords stemmed from fear that recognizing such indigenous representation would interfere with the PRI's practice of installing traditional town bosses, or caciques, who represent the authoritarian government at the local level.

"[The government] sees it as dismantling their little political machine that has served them so well," she said.

The accords also call for the federal government to follow the United Nations Treaty On Indigenous Rights, to which Mexico is a signatory.

Coldwell's statement is an important step for the government in light of persistent tension in the oil- and coffee-rich Chiapan countryside, home to 1 million indigenous people of Mayan descent, who live in extreme poverty.

An estimated 40,000 army troops patrol the state's 63 municipalities. The National Commission for Mediation, presided over by Chiapas Bishop Samuel Ruiz Garcia, recently reported that an average of two Indians per day have been killed in low-intensity warfare since January 1994.

Evens surrounding the Zapatista gathering in Mexico City do not bode well for a rapid easing of tensions in Chiapas. On Sept. 13, charismatic leader Subcommandante Marcos announced that the Zapatistas would not disappear as an armed insurgency with the debut of the political front. "The Zapatistas are not just an armed and clandestine group. The Zapatistas are also civilians and pacifists," he said.

Coldwell, meanwhile, insisted that withdrawal of government troops from Chiapas depends on the rebels' surrendering their arms.

However, hope may arise for resolution of the conflict in Chiapas since the Zapatistas and the new front find themselves riding a powerful ideological wave in Mexico, and particularly in Mexico City, according to Daniel Lund, director general of the polling firm Market Opinion Research International.