Who Are the Zapatistas?
(Check link below for pictures)
http://www.providence.edu/polisci/projects/zapatistas/zapatistas.htm
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Introduction Ever since the beginning of the conflict between the Mexican government and the Zapatista National Liberation Army (EZLN), propaganda has surfaced as to who is in charge of the EZLN. The Mexican government accuses the EZLN of being led by foreigners and professional purveyors of violence. So who are these Zapatistan soldiers? They are Mayan Indians and non-indigenous peoples of the lower classes, called campesinos. They are of all ages and include both genders. These soldiers are displaced from the highlands of southern Mexico and resettled on ejidos (rural communal production units) in the Lacandon Jungle. Before becoming soldiers they were cultivators, land less wage laborers, artisans, and a small minority of intellectuals.

They derive their name from Emiliano Zapata, a Nahua Indian general of the Army of the South who was assassinated by federal troops in 1919 to end the Mexican Revolution. Zapata was a champion of agrarianism and led peasants against the haciendas who had stolen their land. The Zapatistas are focused on local and national demands for healthcare, land, and democracy. They aren't really revolutionaries but "armed reformists", (Jorge C. Castaneda author of The Future of the Left in Latin America).

The EZLN has been training since 1986 for this conflict. They number between 5,000 and 7,000 fighters. Though they are zealous fighters they are poorly armed. They have few automatic weapons, mostly shotguns, .22 caliber rifles, Molotov cocktails, and clubs, (John Ross, Latin American Press).

They speak as a collective, not as individual leaders. This is why they wear ski masks. It is symbolic because the EZLN doesn't want the public to associate with one person leading them, but an entire people with the same voice. They choose black and red for their uniform, as symbol to represent the working people on strike.

Why are they fighting?

1. They refuse a capitalist system because it has held them down at the bottom for 500 years.

2. They denounce the cultural assimilation and economic annihilation that the Mexican government seeks.

3. Further development because of NAFTA will lead to the continuation of their expulsion from the land. Including the irresponsible rate at which cattle and timber are harvested, increased oil prospecting, and pollution.

4. Perhaps the worst development is offered to us from the book Zapatistas! Documents of the New Mexican Revolution written by a collective of EZLN members. In it EZLN say they fear a role well known to Native Americans in the U.S.: attractions within the tourist industry. The government, one EZLN spokesperson has said, sees the Indigenous "as nothing more than anthropological objects, tourist curiosities, or part of a 'Jurassic Park'.

Home - NAFTA - History - Neo- Liberalism

American Involvement - Related Links