[Onthebarricades] Activist-related news stories, Dec-Jan 07/08

[Andy]

*  Two approaches to saving coral reefs - Indonesia and Papua New Guinea
*  The unstoppable rise of Spanish antifa
*  Report from Genoa six years after
*  Postscript on New Zealand "anti-terror" attack on activists
*  Venezuela:  interview with an indigenous activist
*  Rent wars of East Harlem
*  Sinking islanders seek help at Bali - Carteret Islands about to go under
*  Tasmanian teacher kayaks for climate change
*  Sex workers, transvestites and Zapatistas
*  Ten years after Acteal, new massacres loom
*  Naomi Klein - Zapatista Code Red
*  Immanuel Wallerstein - What have the Zapatistas accomplished?
*  Army buildup in Zapatista zone

http://blogs.earthsky.org/dankulpinski/2007/12/08/two-approaches-to-saving-coral-reefs/

Two approaches to saving coral reefs
Published December 8th, 2007 in Oceans, Science, Innovation, Earth, Animals 
and Global Warming.
In Papua New Guinea and Indonesia, people are taking different approaches to 
preserving - and in one case re-growing - coral reefs. Global warming and 
rising sea temperatures have been "bleaching" and killing reefs worldwide, 
making reef conservation an important issue.

The Coral Triangle region of the West Pacific - between Indonesia, the 
Philippines and the Solomon Islands - is home to more than 50 percent of the 
world's coral and 75 percent of its species. It's kind of like a coral 
homeland, a source of coral biodiversity for the world.
Papua New Guinea's Kimbe Bay is at the southeast part of the triangle and is 
the focus of a new conservation effort, hatched by The Nature Conservancy 
and scientists from the region, to create 15 restricted zones in the 
3,300-square-mile bay. Fishing and other activities would be banned or 
restricted in these zones. The Coral Triangle has adapted to pulses of 
warming temperatures over millions of years, so the goal of this project is 
to protect this coral paradise from other threats, such as overfishing, 
fishing by dynamiting or poisoning, erosion runoff, agricultural chemicals 
and coral harvesting.
Project participants face the challenge of getting local Papua New Guinea 
clans to agree to the proposed restricted areas.
A bit farther west, off the Indonesian island of Bali, another reef project 
takes a different tack. Here reefs were being bleached by warming waters and 
damaged by dynamite fishing and cyanide poisoning.
A scientist and an architect came up with the idea to submerge metal 
structures on which coral could grow. They've built dozens of the metal 
frames in Pemuteran Bay. By sending a low-voltage electric current through 
the frames, the team gets limestone to gather on the metal. Then the team 
collects pieces of coral that have broken off nearby reefs, and attachs them 
to the frames. The electricity apparently gets the coral to restore itself.
Coral reefs are important because they protect shores from tides and waves 
and provide habitat for beautiful plant and sea life. The reefs can also be 
important tourist attractions.
Have you seen coral in situ before? What do you think of these two ways to 
protect coral? Do you think one is better than the other?

http://www.expatica.com/es/life_in/feature/anti-fascists-defy-neo-nazis-on-spanish-streets-47006.html

"Anti-fascists" defy neo-Nazis on Spanish streets 17/12/2007 00:00
Neo-Nazis attacking immigrants are nothing new in Spain, but an equally 
marginal and violent force opposing them is now emerging.
Youths calling themselves anti-fascists clash in Madrid, Barcelona and other 
cities with neo-Nazis or similar gangs whom they resemble with their shaved 
heads, leather jackets and military boots like in a mirror image.
Little is known about the groups which only make headlines when something 
bigger happens, such as the recent killing of a 16-year-old anti-fascist by 
a neo-Nazi on the Madrid subway, or clashes between hundreds of 
anti-fascists and police in Barcelona.
The emergence of violent as well as non-violent anti-racist groups are a 
response to insufficient official policies, which have failed to stem the 
increase of racist attitudes, says Esteban Ibarra, president of the Movement 
Against Intolerance, which campaigns against xenophobia.
Sociologists, on their side, are detecting an increasing, even if 
superficial, interest in ideologies among young people who have grown up in 
a consumerist society.
Spain is one of the European Union countries where the number of immigrants 
has grown most rapidly, now making up nearly 10 percent of the population of 
45 million.
The biggest non-European groups are Moroccans and Ecuadorians, who number 
around half a million each.
Police estimate that about 10,000 people belong to various kinds of 
far-right groups in the country which does not have a far-right party with 
parliamentary representation.
Neo-Nazi youths do not only attack immigrants, but also others such as 
homosexuals and homeless people. Such groups suffer about 4,000 acts of 
aggression annually, according to the Movement Against Intolerance.
The youths most commonly known as anti-fascists, who seek to prevent such 
attacks, belong to groups with names such as Sharp, Redskins, National 
Revolutionary Youth, Anti-Fascist Brigades or Bukaneros.
Both the anti-fascists and the neo-Nazis often have their roots in similar 
movements in other European countries or the United States.
Both types of radicals also seek ideological points of reference in Spain's 
1936-39 Civil War, which pitted the leftist republican government against 
right-wing dictator-to-be Francisco Franco.
Police estimate that there are at least 500 "really violent" anti-fascists 
or related people in Madrid alone. But it is difficult to distinguish the 
violent from the non-violent ones, making the total number hard to 
determine.
The violent groups that make headlines are part of a much wider movement 
comprising the most heterogeneous groups ranging from punks and squatters to 
anarchists and the far left, Ibarra pointed out in an interview with the 
Deutsche Presse-Agentur dpa.
The anti-fascist groups started emerging already a decade ago as part of a 
Europe-wide "anti-globalisation" movement, but they are now becoming more 
visible, he observed.
People whom police regard as thugs looking for brawls often attend peaceful 
demonstrations for causes ranging from calls to end poverty to affordable 
housing.
Demonstrations, football matches, neighbourhood festivals or other events 
can escalate into violent clashes with police, as has happened in Barcelona, 
where hundreds of anti-fascists and "opponents of the system" confronted the 
security forces with stones, bottles or sticks.
Dozens of people have been injured in clashes which have also caused 
material damage worth hundreds of thousands of euros in the recent years.
"Political parties' lack of efficiency against racism feeds the activity of 
marginal groups," Ibarra says. "Neo-Nazi flags, for instance, are allowed at 
football stadiums."
"Racist websites continue functioning with impunity, and people who are 
convicted of racist attacks come away with light sentences," he added.
While activists like Ibarra urge the authorities to take action against the 
far right before violence between neo-Nazis and anti- fascists escalates, 
sociologists place both types of radicals within a wider context.
Young people whose identity is based on consumerist values feel insecure and 
in need of collective projects, but are also unwilling to give up a 
pleasure-oriented approach to life and to embrace ideologies on a deeper 
level, experts believe.
The apparent ideologies of people displaying neo-Nazi or anti-fascist 
slogans are "empty, without a clear content," sociology professor Antonio 
Espantaleon told the daily El Pais.
Some youths even pass from anti-fascist to neo-Nazi gangs or vice versa, 
seeking acceptance and security within a group regardless of its ideas, 
experts point out.
[December 2007]

http://de.indymedia.org/2007/11/199980.shtml

microreport from genoa six years after
Alex Foti 19.11.2007 11:47 Themen: G8 Repression Weltweit
It was a supermassive demo (at least 50,000 people) with the genoa 
generation -- that of tute bianche, indymedia, black and pink blocs --  
opening in front and assalti frontali blasting the right kind of politically 
rhymed speech from the first truck. It was 20,000 youth that spearheaded the 
demo, almost silent in their boiling anger, with, because of the choice made 
by supporto legale and global project organizing the demo, no symbols and no 
flags, save a handful of nodalmolin, pirate, anarcho/red, guevarist, 
zapatista symbols.
The parties, associations and mainstream unions were relegated to the 
smaller half in the back. The numbers and thrust of the demonstration were 
constituted by the body politic of centri sociali, who reacted with 
promptness and anger to the public prosecution asking for hundreds of years 
of prison for protesters. They called for everybody subversive to hop on the 
rebel trains from milan, turin, venice, rome, naples and plenty other cities 
and towns (it was tough for little or no money getting on the trains at the 
stations heavily presided by police and carabinieri; thousands got there 
that the demo had just started, because trenitalia manipulated by the 
minister of the interior refused customary discounts for demos and delayed 
trains).

We demanded with all the forces of our bodies and minds to free the 25 under 
trial from all ridiculous charges brought against them (ten years of prison 
per person + zillions of euros for having tarnished
the image of spaghettiland abroad, no joke) as if the italian state hadn't 
committed murder, butchery, torture during those fateful two days in the 
third week of july 2001 in the port city, then under
medieval self-siege to protect the g8 from radical democracy, today open to 
demonstrators, especially in its popular and ethnic neighborhoods by the 
waterfront (the manifestation ended in the city's
navel, piazza de ferrari, where a big stage was built across the square from 
a garibaldi statue donning a red-cloth poncho because of the celebrations 
surrounding the bicentenary of his birth, this
somewhat incongruous scene was unfolding under a skyscraper topped by a 
megapixel screen advertising the genoa aquarius and the genoa soccer
club).

The cops kept at safety distance and were invisible during the whole thing, 
also considering that week a poliziotto had aimed and shot at a soccer 
supporter, a popular dj in sections of rome especially with
traditionally fascist lazio hooligans, while he was resting in his car at a 
gas station, sparking assaults on police stations in rome, street turbulence 
in milano and stadium break-ins in bergamo. but you know that as well as the 
state-decreed intolerance of roma people aka gypsies (postfascist fini who 
commanded the police forces in genoa called for ethnic cleansing even went 
beyond, saying they're as people incompatible with italy), what you may not 
know is that aldo bianzino, a cool 44-year-old man arrested for cultivating 
pot plants, was beaten to death while in custody in perugia last month.

The parliamentary left and its media allies tried to manipulate its message 
saying the demo was in favor of some hazy parliamentary committee that the 
head of the newlyborn and american-inspired democratic party already said it 
should investigate "the violence of demonstators and of the police": 
precisely in that order, that is. The genoa generation doesn't care one 
second about such lofty baloney, it only cares for our people to be freed 
from judicial persecution.

Yesterday it was the noglobal generation back in force as we hadn't seen 
since 2003-2004, asking for justice and loudly declaring that it wont' allow 
its history be put under trial, its ranks replenished by riotous teens and 
rebellious earlytwentysomethings who couldn't have been in genoa and 
suffered at tolemaide, diaz, bolzaneto.

http://www.scoop.co.nz/stories/HL0711/S00312.htm

Postscript on Operation 8

Paul G. Buchanan
11-19-07
The dust has largely settled after the police whirlwind that was Operation 
8. Yet some questions remain about the operation itself, and there are 
political repercussions that need addressing.
With regards to the way in which Operation 8 was planned and conducted, 
questions remain about the catalyst or precipitant. The Prime Minister and 
Leader of the Opposition stated that they were informed of the operation one 
week before the raids took place, yet Police Commissioner Broad claims to 
have ordered the action in response to information he received less than 48 
hours before the raids commenced. It is possible that a general brief to the 
political leadership could be followed by a contingent tactical response, so 
the discrepancy can be reconciled. But the interrogatory remains as to what, 
exactly, precipitated the police action, and when, precisely, did the Prime 
Minister, as Minister of Security and Intelligence, know that a 
counter-terrorist operation was underway?
On the same note, questions must asked as to what role the Combined Threat 
Assessment Group (CTAG) played in this affair. CTAG is a senior level 
interagency group responsible to the Minister of Security and Intelligence 
that draws on the resources and perspectives of MFAT, Treasury, Immigration, 
Defense, the Police, SIS, GCSB and External Assessments Bureau (EAB) to 
conduct national-level threat assessments and security risk analysis. 
Although primarily focused on the international security environment and the 
externally derived threats coming from it, CTAG is also responsible for 
internal threat assessment and for coordinating the response to potential 
terrorism in New Zealand. Security risk assessments generally focus on 
worst-case scenarios, both in terms of the threat as well as the fallout 
from countering it. Such scenarios involve the political, cultural, economic 
and security implications of armed intervention. CTAG presumably brings 
together designated liaison officers to trouble-shoot and brainstorm the 
nature of threats, the sequence of possible events and range of plausible 
outcomes when countering them, capitalizing on the heterogeneous 
perspectives they bring to the table. This would be particularly important 
in the case of Operation 8 given the first invocation of anti-terrorist 
legislation against domestic targets rather than the foreign entities that 
are the priority interest. Given that, was the CTAG involved in the decision 
to launch Operation 8, and if so, at what stage of the game? It would be of 
serious concern if the police had acted on their own accord without 
consulting CTAG. It would be of even worse concern if they did.
Surveillance was conducted by means of a hub and spoke network analysis in 
order to establish a terrorist conspiracy wheel. The police bugged the 
communications of one mentally unhinged individual with anti-social 
tendencies and a compulsion to boast. They then ran through the list of 
people he communicated with, tapped into their phones and computers, zeroed 
in on political activists, ran cross-searches on their contacts, and used 
human and technical intelligence collection to confirm their collective 
presence in the Ureweras at various points in time over the last twelve 
months. Infiltrators-there is speculation that police counter-narcotics 
undercover agents or SAS troops using the opportunity to do some 
reconnaissance exercising-monitored the comings and goings from a handful of 
what were locally known as hunting camps or cannabis patch guard posts, 
deploying video surveillance technology to record the presence of those who 
stayed at them. The electronic dragnet, authorized by warrants issued under 
the Terrorism Suppression Act, identified a core of six people who 
supposedly combined violent anti-status quo rhetoric with a penchant for 
firearms and explosives. The others were considered incidental to the main 
plotting of the purported hardcore. Human intelligence collection confirmed 
the bush connection between both groups, although it remains to be seen if 
it can confirm that all received training in military firearms operation and 
guerrilla warfare tactics.
For the Solicitor-General, the evidence wheel was too rickety to sustain 
charges of a terrorist conspiracy. There was no legal traction, to say 
nothing of political mileage to be gained from prosecution on terrorism 
charges against this particular group of people. It would be hard to find a 
jury that would convict them of terrorism-related offenses, and that would 
have negative political consequences for the government. Evidence collected 
under warrants issued under provisions of the TSA will be largely 
inadmissible in court when the accused face charges under the Firearms Act. 
Perhaps that is why snippets of the communications intercepts were leaked to 
the media "in the public interest," although the real motives (and sources) 
for the leaks are probably a bit more varied.
Other loose ends are worth noting. Under the TSA local connections with 
foreign terrorist groups are outlawed. It is known that at least one of 
those arrested visited Zapatista-controlled areas of Chiapas, Mexico in the 
last year. Tame Iti was deported from Fiji just weeks before his arrest and 
apparently visited Iran (a member of the so-called "axis of evil") in early 
2007. Could it be that these foreign connections influenced the invocation 
of the TSA to secure surveillance warrants? If so, the judges who issued the 
warrants demonstrated unfamiliarity with the law, as the TSA refers only to 
contacts with officially designated (by the UN and traditional security 
partners) terrorist groups. Tame Iti may have connections with George 
Speight and other indigenous Fijian coup plotters, but none of them have 
been designated as international terrorists (or, for that matter, has the 
authoritarian regime of Commodore Frank Bainimarama). The same is true of 
the Zapatista movement, which even the Mexican government recognizes as more 
an indigenous social movement than an irregular army. Iti's visit to Iran 
was apparently for business, not terror, and he did not associate with 
elements of the Revolutionary Guard that the US has tried to brand as a 
terrorist organisation. Thus even if these international linkages are 
proven, they do not fall within the purview of the TSA because they were not 
with officially designated terrorist organizations. Given the recently 
passed amendment to the TSA that allows the Prime Minister rather than the 
High Court to designate terrorist groups, it is now easier for the 
government to target political dissidents under the guise of fighting 
terrorism, but even that unhealthy temptation cannot be applied 
retroactively to the people arrested in Operation 8.
The charges under the Firearms Act are also of interest. One individual was 
charged with being in possession of two .22 caliber cartridges. Reports have 
it that a handful of firearms were seized in the raid, of which only one had 
potentially military-type configuration. A couple hundred rounds of 
ammunition, mostly .22 caliber, were also seized. So far, no AK-47 or 
modified automatic weapons have been produced by way of evidence against the 
accused. Nor have the purported "grenade launchers" ostensibly used at the 
training camps. If that is the level of proof that the police have with 
regards to Firearms Act violations, their case is on thin ice.
So is the attempt to charge people with violations under the Firearms Act or 
Misuse of Explosives statutes (codified in the 1957 Explosives Act, 1974 
Dangerous Good Act, and 1979 Toxic Substances Act, now all subsumed under 
the 1996 Hazardous Substances and New Organisms Act (HSNO)). It is alleged 
that some of the accused were in possession of bottles of kerosene or 
quantities of jellified petrol. So-called Molotov cocktails-be they based on 
petrol, kerosene or other combustible liquids--are not firearms or 
explosives. Firearms are ballistic devices that fire projectiles using inert 
material as propellants. Explosives are percussive, fragmentation or 
concussive devices that utilise rapid chemical reactions triggered in a 
number of ways to cause explosive releases of kinetic energy. Although they 
can be configured in combination with other materials so that they are 
effectively made into explosives, in and of themselves Molotov cocktails and 
homemade "napalm" are technically defined as incendiary devices that do not 
fall under the scope of either the Firearms Act or any laws dealing with 
explosives or hazardous materials.
In fact, under Schedule Seven (Part D section 223) of the 1996 HSNO ACT 
titled "Explosives," there is no mention of combustible liquid incendiary 
devices. Even US criminal law excludes Molotov cocktails from the definition 
of explosive, mainly because the myriad innocent or peaceful uses for 
combustible liquids makes it near impossible to prove untoward intent prior 
to actual use for such purposes. Unless the incendiary devices found in the 
police raids show unmistakable proof of being configured in a way that would 
cause ballistic, percussive, concussive or fragmentary effect (which would 
take at least a modest amount of technical acumen), they cannot convincingly 
be covered under the Firearms, Explosives, Dangerous Good, Toxic Substances 
or HSNO Acts.
At best the Environmental Risk Management Authority (ERMA) can lay charges 
against those found with bottles of rag-stuffed petrol under the HSNO Act 
for improper storage of flammable liquids, but that could prove to be a 
discriminatory and selective application of the law given the amount of 
petrol stored in uncertified containers extant around the country. Perhaps 
the Crimes or Summary Offenses Acts have clauses the prohibit possession of 
improvised incendiary devices, but the same problems would apply with regard 
to proving that they were destined for more than common farm or household 
use. It would therefore seem that from what is known so far about them, even 
the weapons charges being laid against the so-called Urewera 16/17 are open 
to challenge.
The police allege that Molotov cocktails were found in a "ready to use" 
condition. That makes one wonder about the terrorist competence of the 
accused if such reports are true, since Molotovs are best constructed 
immediately prior to their use because of their volatility, and storing them 
around the house, garage or shed is an invitation to self-immolation and a 
visit from the Fire Brigade.
On a broader plane, the political repercussions of Operation 8 need to be 
considered. Besides what was mentioned earlier about possible government 
involvement in the planning and conduct of Operation 8 (so far denied), some 
interesting ramifications have risen from the event and its immediate 
sequels.
The issue of whether the police raids were timed to coincide with the debate 
about the amendments to the TSA or passage of the Electoral Finance Bill 
have been much discussed and need not occupy us at length here. It is 
incongruous that the second reading of the TSA amendment bill was passed on 
the day the Solicitor General pronounced the original act to be 
 "incoherent," and that the entire bill was passed a week later supposedly 
to uphold New Zealand's international obligations in the face of its failure 
in the first instance of its use. As things stand, the Law Commission will 
have an opportunity to review the TSA in order to determine if it should 
remain on the books, and it may well be more interested in coherence rather 
than foreign relations when doing so.
The matter of electoral financing is one of money and voice rooted in class 
interest. A terrorism scare will not affect the debate on that score. 
However, should the TSA remain in force, it is conceivable-albeit a stretch 
at this juncture-- that individuals and groups in violation of the EFB (if 
passed) could be branded as domestic "terrorists" or "terrorist 
 sympathizers" by the Prime Minister of the day. Ironically, many of those 
leading the charge against the EFB are also those most ardently in support 
of the TSA.
Some believe the police undertook the raids in order to divert attention 
from a series of internal scandals and crime-solving bungles that have 
diminished confidence in their professionalism and competence. If so, 
Operation 8 may not improve that perception even though polls show an 
apparent majority believe that their actions were justified. That may say 
more about the manufactured climate of fear surrounding the specter of 
"terrorism" than it does the realities of the situation at hand. Perhaps 
security agencies in a 9/11 era feel the need to justify their expanded 
budgets, personnel and purview by taking worst-case approaches to what 
otherwise would be relatively minor criminal matters. Anti-terrorism 
legislation in the form of the TSA gives them the tool to do just that.
The raids have seriously strained relations between Tuhoe and the police, 
and Maori have reason to ask about the way in which their grievances are 
addressed by the security services. Maori-Pakeha relations have been brought 
back into the centre stage of political debate, as has Tame Iti's heretofore 
marginal sovereignty movement. The political Left has fractured over the 
incident, activists seeing the arrest of their mates as a brutish act of 
political intimidation, while more corporately-inclined socialists tending 
to believe that the Urewera 16/17 are to blame by virtue of the company they 
kept, the activities they conducted in the bush and the motives they may 
have had. The party Left-in this case the Greens-have been joined by the 
Maori Party in challenging the rationale behind the TSA as well as Operation 
8, although their specific reasons differ (the Greens have principled 
opposition to terrorist legislation on human rights and freedom of speech 
grounds, whereas the Maori party appears to be more opportunistic and 
selectively ethnic in its opposition).As for the party Right, the National 
Party and United Future have remained largely silent about the affair , even 
with regards to the implications for civil liberties it clearly has. New 
Zealand First welcomes the TSA amendment's passage and blames the activists 
for trying to destabilise society. Amongst the right parties, only ACT 
questioned (on civil rights grounds) the utility of the law and its 
invocation in the police raids.
The government has distanced itself from the police as the case begins to 
unravel away from a potential terrorism threat and towards firearms 
violations by a small group of blowhards and activists. Given the evidence 
produced so far, it certainly did not need terrorism trials to be conducted 
during the 2008 election campaign. Early distance on the issue and the 
subsequent (some might say convenient) refusal to lay charges under the TSA 
relieved it of that particular political burden. For the other parties, 
especially National and the Maori Party, the prospects for any potential 
relationship in a future government may well hinge on how they reposition 
their responses to the event. The Maori Party emerges as a swing vote 
strongly influenced by its activist wing, more than off-setting other 
possible minority coalition partners as a decisive factor in the upcoming 
balloting. How the two major parties court the Maori vote in light of the 
raids should make for interesting political theater.
Legal experts and lawyers will benefit from the case, and taxpayer dollars 
will be poured into a review of the TSA as well as the prosecution of the 
Urewera 16/17. The accused will suffer financial penalties as they mount 
legal defenses, and both the political right and left will posture and pose 
around the issue of domestic terrorism. Meanwhile, those who may be 
genuinely inclined towards acts of mass political violence in New Zealand 
will learn the lessons of secrecy and planning in order to escape detection 
and apprehension. As a result, countervailing domestic terrorist threats may 
well be more difficult to accomplish in the future for both practical as 
well as legal reasons stemming from Operation 8, even as concepts of civil 
liberties and permissible dissent are narrowed in accord with the security 
interests of foreign powers.

http://www.anarkismo.net/newswire.php?story_id=6847

Venezuela: Interview with an indigenous activist
by El Libertario, Venezuela Thursday, Nov 15 2007, 3:30pm
ellibertario at nodo50.org
venezuela/colombia / indigenous struggles / other libertarian press

"We have a truth in front of us and we need to inform it"
* As part of the 2.300 delegates in the second Zapatista and indigenous 
community's international reunion, which took place last July in Mexico, 
members of the wayuu community delivered a truly important message: 
Venezuelan indigenous community's situation is very different than the 
declared by the government people in Caracas. El Libertario talked about the 
experience with Jorge Montiel, member of the Maikiralasa'lii.
As part of the 2.300 delegates in the second Zapatista and indigenous 
community's international reunion, which took place last July in Mexico, 
there was a small delegation from Zulia. Jorge Montiel and Diego, members of 
the wayuu community, delivered a truly important message: Venezuelan 
indigenous community's situation is very different than the declared by the 
government people in Caracas. The message transmitted concerned the 
"zapatista" movement which, as previous declarations confirmed, started to 
consider in good terms the Venezuelan government actions. El Libertario 
talked about the experience with Jorge Montiel, member of the Maikiralasa'lii, 
which means organization who does not sell itself.

What motivated you to assist to the Zapatista reunion?
- The invitation came from Professor Quintero Weil, from LUZ (Zulia's 
University); he's studying a PhD degree in Mexico and has some relations 
with the Zapatista movement. It was always part of our aims to go to Mexico 
and share the experience with our fellow Zapatistas, opportunity we had 
thanks to people like Cristian Guerrero, fellow students from the UNAM 
(National Autonomic Mexican University) and also other people who welcomed 
us with solidarity.

Homoetnatura, which you are linked with, has taken a continue struggle about 
the coal issue. Now the wayuu have formed a new group named Maikiralasa'lii. 
What's the difference?
- Homoetnatura has always been linked to the indigenous communities, but we 
wanted to have an organization strictly for wayuu indigenous, despite this 
we have the same aims. Right now we are only wayuu, but we are considering 
the possibility of associate with other communities in order to include also 
our fellow Yukpa and Bari. With this new organization and against the coal 
we went to Mexico.

How was the welcoming in the reunion?
- Our message surprised our fellow Zapatistas and other indigenous, 
journalists and fellows from all continents. We talked a lot about our 
struggle, which is very similar to Zapatista's struggle: land, water, 
biodiversity. They loved the fact that in Venezuela we have an organization 
not handled by political parties. When we explained everything related to 
the struggle, the Zapatistas said "you are the first Venezuelan indigenous 
organization who comes without wearing the red shirt and cap (red is related 
to Venezuelan government). We have met a lot of Venezuelan organizations who 
speak about a lot of issues but don't explain the real situation". We 
explained our own truth with no intention to attack President Chavez 
government, because we have a truth in front of us and we need to inform it. 
We were the most interviewed delegation in this reunion. We had almost 40 
interviews from all over the World. When we came back our struggle was 
clearer, since we realized we are not alone.

Which activities you took part of during the reunion?
- We participated in every workshop. We spoke in the stage; we delivered 
messages to sub Commander Marcos, Moisés, Tacho and Commander Hortensia. We 
couldn't speak personally with Marcos, but we had a short conversation with 
Tacho. We delivered a folder with information about our struggle. We 
expressed that we wanted support. We delivered also the video "Socuy lucha 
por la tierra" and the movie "Nuestro petróleo y otros cuentos". We offered 
a press conference for all our fellows who couldn't attend. We were there 
for 2 hours, one hour clarifying why Wayuu were attending the reunion and 
then we had the questions round.

_Not chavistas or antichavistas: indigenous_

What did they know about the indigenous situation in Venezuela?
- In the beginning a lot of people were surprised because we told the truth. 
They had a different information, trough the ministries and deputies, that 
everything was OK in the country, that they were settling the historical 
rights in Venezuela. The wrong idea came also from the president speeches 
outside the country. We said we had no representative; no deputy speaks in 
favor of the indigenous threatened by the coal. We explained that all the 
Perijá mountain range was going to be given in concession and that 
Corpozulia was responsible of it. We also said that the indigenous ministry 
was managed by the government, not the indigenous. There was no popular 
vote, the indigenous did not vote to found the ministry or assign a 
minister. We said we have the land issue, since the land demarcation stopped 
and we didn't know why. We also said that the Mara indigenous community 
legitimacy was not accepted, even when the law establishes that for 
tradition or even foundation you can create an indigenous community. Fellow 
Zapatistas said "Wow, how come? If they speak positive about the indigenous 
situation in Venezuela, the deputies and the ministries." No, we answered, 
it's completely the opposite. Deputies are with Corpozulia, with the 
transnational companies. We also made clear that we are not chavistas or 
antichavistas: we are indigenous against imperialism and capitalism. If we 
were antichavistas we would be running for high positions in the opposition. 
If we were chavistas we would be running for deputy in the assembly, the 
legislative counsel or running for counselor. We are in the middle, standing 
for our own interests, which is the land.

Was there a negative reaction towards these words?
- At the beginning of the speech in San Cristóbal, Chiapas, in the 
university, some North Americans became very upset. They were chavistas and 
said we were conservators and we shouldn't speak like that when everything 
is OK in Venezuela. But one fellow who speaks English, because we don't, 
said "have you been to Socuy? Have you seen the situation of our fellow 
indigenous?". "No". "Then how come you say there are no problems there? You 
have to go there first, and then you can criticize them.

What's the thing you remember the most?
- The workshops, since we have them in a different way in Venezuela. For the 
Zapatistas it's all about giving response to what they've done, because many 
organizations support them. For example they talk about the doctors. They 
say there's a "huesero" who is in charge of repairing the bones. Another 
doctor is the naturist "yerbatero", and he is in charge of preparing the 
traditional medicines. They also explained the effects of the medicines. 
They also talked about the maternity medicine they use for childbirth, which 
is not the regular university medicine. They explained how they do it, and 
also explained everything about their teachers and the "good government 
boards". People asked, but for me it was clear. It was very organized. That 
part we highly recommend, there were 14 years old young men standing in the 
stage, giving speeches and explaining how they manage themselves as an 
autonomic community. They also explained the punishment for men who mistreat 
their women: 60 days of social work in the community. There was a fellow 
asking about the zapatist jail compared to the government jail. They 
answered: "different, since we do not torture".

Did you make any agreements with other Latin American organization?
- With one indigenous organization from Mexico named FUDEM, they protect 
electric energy. We reached an agreement with the zapatistas so two fellow 
wayuu woman can go to a women reunion, which is going to take place in 
December 30 and 31. We subscribed the historical book of our fellow 
Zapatistas, and we also had the chance to talk to the indigenous movements 
in Oaxaca, Guerrero and also with the Mexican Indigenous Congress. We 
reached commitments with organizations from France, Italy and Spain, 
agreements establishing they are going to visit us and we are going to visit 
their countries to speak about the indigenous consensus. We also had 
relations with anarchist groups, and they are going to visit us too. We are 
multiplying and growing and we have no fear because we are fighting for our 
rights. We said we would always be in touch. We are planning to ask for 
permission to have the third Zapatistas reunion with the world in El Socuy. 
It's up to them, because they are coming down to Latin America to have the 
other campaign.

What are you going to do now, what plans do you have for Maikiralasa'lii?
- To fortify it, get together more fellows and keep making conscience. We 
are not going to fall for the same ambition than CONIVE (National Venezuelan 
Indigenous Confederation), which Nohelí Pocaterra manages. It's going to be 
a strictly indigenous non-profit organization with no parties' relation. 
When you have political interest the organization can't succeed. We have 
different projects: schools, museums, radio stations, houses. We have no 
resources but we are advancing, we are strong and we are many. A struggle 
like this is dignifying and a lot of people admire it. Sub Commander Marcos 
itself used one of our phrases and said it was from the "Venezuelan 
indigenous who fights". Here we are, here we stand, and here we resist.

_Retaliation to the dissidence_

Wayuu indigenous, after their trip to Mexico, started to suffer intolerance 
attacks in their own flesh. They were invited to a National Venezuelan Radio 
workshop, from a state radio station; all of the sudden Montiel was notified 
that they were no longer invited. The reason? They signed the letter 
delivered to Marcos from the EZLN, regarding the local indigenous situation. 
"That's a retaliation against us", said the indigenous activist who decided 
to live the protagonist democracy that claims the Venezuelan government. 
"Can't we criticize anything? This was said specifically to the person who 
invited us. In Mexico we said: probably from now on there is going to be a 
police persecution against us and our fellow ecologist. We fear that 
persecution, since that's the way coal people, transnational companies and 
their friends act".

[El Libertario, # 51, November 2007, Venezuela]
www.nodo50.org/ellibertario - ellibertario at nodo50.org

http://www.indypendent.org/2007/11/18/rent-wars-of-east-harlem-it-takes-a-village-to-raise-hell/

Rent Wars of East Harlem: It Takes a Village to Raise Hell
By Andalusia Knoll
>From the November 16, 2007 issue | Posted in Local | Email this article
Taking on Goliath: Natalia Evangelista and Ricardo Ramón, with 3-year-old 
daughter Abigail, are two of hundreds of El Barrio residents fighting 
eviction efforts by corporate landlord Dawnay, Day. Photo : K. Cyr
By Andalusia Knoll
When Ricardo Ramón and Natalia Evangelista immigrated to th United States 
from Santa Inez, a small, arid farming town in the southern Mexican state of 
Puebla, they didn't imagine that they would be fighting displacement again. 
"We have the same problems we left in Mexico," said Ramon. "There, they 
fight for a place to live. Here, we do the same."Ramón, 25, and Evangelista, 
23, are just two of about 380 tenants, organized with the Movement for 
Justice in El Barrio (MJB), who are fighting off efforts by their new 
landlord to evict tenants from 47 rent-stabilized and rent-controlled 
buildings in East Harlem, also known as El Barrio.Since the 47 buildings 
were bought by Dawnay, Day Group, a privately owned British bank that 
manages $10 billion in worldwide assets and has real-estate holdings in 
Europe, India and Australia, tenants have faced widespread harassment and 
have been falsely charged for services that they never received.

In response, MJB, a Zapatista-inspired organizing model (see sidebar) that 
has taken root in East Harlem over the last five years, has begun a battle 
to save one of the last bastions of affordable housing in Manhattan. It's 
trying to stop "landlords, the government, and their culture of money," from 
displacing people of color and low-income residents under the guise of 
"development."
"Their dream is that we leave the building and go away," said Ramón, who 
earns $1,800 a month working as a cook, out of which he pays $874 in rent 
and helps support Evangelista and their two small children. If Dawnay, Day 
gets the rent increases it seeks, their family and most of the other tenants 
will be forced out.
Ramón says they love living in El Barrio and "would like to stay here for 
many years. Our dream is that our children remain here, go to school, 
graduate and enter a profession." "Their goal is to make more money each day 
and that the poor stay poor," said Evangelista.
DIRTY TRICKS TO EVICT TENANTS
One of numerous foreign investors who have been recently attracted to the 
New York City real-estate market, Dawnay, Day spent close to $250 million in 
March on buildings north and east of Central Park from East 100th to East 
120th streets, containing 1,137 apartments and 55 commercial spaces.East 
Harlem, called El Barrio by many of its 100,000 residents, is a historically 
Puerto Rican neighborhood that has recently experienced a large influx of 
Mexican, Chinese and Arab immigrants. Nearly 40 percent of its residents 
live below the poverty line. The median household income in 2005 was only 
$23,000 per year, less than half of the $50,000 figure for all of Manhattan. 
The median rent was $900 a month - 47 percent of the median income. Dawnay, 
Day's objectives were clear: Push out the current rent-regulated tenants, 
renovate the buildings and raise rents. "East Harlem is the last area of the 
whole of Manhattan being gentrified," Phil Blakely, Dawnay, Day's director, 
speculated in The Times (London).
He likened purchasing property in East Harlem to buying real estate in 
Brixton, a London neighborhood - once the heart of the city's Afro-Caribbean 
immigrant culture - whose recent gentrification has led to sharp rent 
increases. "A typical two-bedroom flat taking $150 per month in rent can see 
the rents rise 3 percent to 4 percent each year without doing anything," 
Blakely told The Times (London). "As soon as you take vacant possession, the 
rents will typically rise 17 percent when re-let without doing anything. But 
with renovation, a flat could well take $1,700 a month once re-let on the 
open market." He estimated that once the East Harlem apartments were 
renovated and rented at market rates, the value of the properties would 
increase from the purchase price of $280 per square foot to more than $1,000 
per square foot.
To do this, Dawnay, Day can take advantage of the loopholes the state has 
drilled into its rent regulations over the last 15 years. In New York City, 
about 1 million apartments, in buildings containing six or more units which 
were built before 1974, are rent-stabilized, with maximum annual rent 
increases set by the city Rent Guidelines Board. (About 43,000 apartments, 
mainly occupied by elderly people who have lived there since 1971, are 
protected by the older rent-control system, but are usually subject to 7.5 
percent annual increases.) But for vacant apartments, landlords are 
automatically allowed to hike the price by 20 percent. If they renovate, 
they can add 1/40 of the cost to the rent.
Many landlords routinely flout even these limits. If they can get the rent 
to $2,000 or more, the apartment is deregulated, which means that the owners 
can charge whatever they can get, and the tenants have no right to renew 
their lease when it expires.
Using tactics that have become increasingly common in the last 10 years, 
Dawnay, Day has been harassing its tenants and charging them for repairs 
that never took place, in an effort to push the rent-regulated residents 
out.
Zoila Jara, a single mother of two who has lived on East 106th Street for 13 
years, says the company falsely charged her for $1,495. "Dawnay Day claims 
that some of this is for a washer they say they gave me. The fact is I do 
not have and never had a washer," she said. "On top of this, for every month 
that goes by that I refuse to pay, they add false late fees." The company 
has also refused to make much-needed emergency repairs, according to an 
August article published by the Daily News. Tenant Cristina Ortega reported 
two separate incidents in which Dawnay, Day failed to do repairs after 
pieces of her ceiling fell, injuring her two teenage daughters. "I notified 
HPD," she told the News. "They have done nothing." Residents been subject to 
accusations of overcrowding apartments, asked to pay imaginary legal fees 
Dawnay, Day has claimed are owed to the former landlord and been offered 
money to leave.
"They know that we are people with little resources and they take advantage 
of us. They wouldn't do this to people who have lots of money. They just 
want to kick us out so that they can fix these apartments up a little, bring 
in new richer people, and charge higher rents," says Josefina Salazar, a 
Dawnay, Day tenant and MJB member.
NEW LANDLORD, BIGGER FIGHT
Tenants say that Stephen Kessner, the previous landlord of the 47 buildings, 
used similar tactics. But instead, they evicted him from East Harlem. Fed up 
with the dilapidated conditions of their apartments, Ramón, Evangelista and 
other tenants organized and brought Kessner to Housing Court."When one 
person goes to Housing Court alone it doesn't work. Having many people in 
court together is what carried the day," said Evangelista. "When a judge 
sees a group of tenants together fighting, he is more likely to respond than 
when he sees you alone," added Ramón. MJB's campaign against Kessner 
garnered much press attention - the Village Voice labeled him one of "NYC's 
10 Worst Landlords" in July 2006 - and eventually forced him to put his East 
Harlem properties on the market. Dawnay, Day bought them in March.
On Oct. 17, along with Harlem Legal Services and the Neighborhood Economic 
Development Advocacy Project, MJB filed a consumer-protection lawsuit 
against Dawnay, Day. It requests an injunction to prevent the company from 
"engaging in deceptive practices by charging all kinds of fees and charges 
against their tenants which don't really exist and have no basis in the 
 law," said lawyer Ed Josephson.
"We think [they're] part of a scheme to harass the tenants to get them to 
move out so they can raise the rents on the vacant apartments." Juan Haro, 
an organizer and co-founder of MJB, accuses the city Department of Housing 
Preservation and Development of selective inaction. "HPD says their stated 
goal is to ensure that tenants are protected, since tenants do have legal 
rights, but the truth of the matter is when tenants in East Harlem call 311, 
HPD turns a blind eye, HPD doesn't respond as they would if these tenants 
were white, middle-class, upper-class residents such as those that live in 
midtown Manhattan." He says that they are fighting not just greedy 
landlords, but the larger capitalist system and its globalized tentacles - 
"our objectification by these multinational companies, by these landlords, 
by the city, by HPD in its attempt once again to displace us so that we are 
forced to leave East Harlem and live elsewhere." "They want to remove from 
the street the street vendors who earn an honorable and dignified living, 
the families that have their small restaurants, small clothing stores, and 
the small bodegas on the corners in our neighborhood," MJB said in a 
statement.
"They want to displace us to bring their luxury restaurants, their large 
expensive clothing stores, their supermarket chains. They want to change our 
neighborhood. They want to change our culture. They want to change that 
which makes us Latino, African-American, Asian or Indigenous. They want to 
change everything that makes us El Barrio."
Just as Dawnay, Day crosses borders in search of capital gains, MJB will 
soon cross the Atlantic to meet with anti-gentrification groups in London to 
challenge the company at its global headquarters.
They will also be organizing with groups nationwide by conducting a workshop 
"Organizing Across Borders for Humanity and Against Neoliberalism" at an 
immigrant rights conference in Texas and a National Organizers Gathering in 
Maryland. With this multi-pronged approach, MJB members are confident that 
they will kick Dawnay, Day out of El Barrio. "We are not going to leave. We're 
gonna fight to the end for our children," says MJB member Paula Serrano.
John Tarleton contributed to this report.

http://news.nationalgeographic.com/news/2007/12/071205-AP-bali-sinking.html

Sinking Islanders Seek Help at Bali Climate Conference

Charles J. Hanley in Kilu, Papua New Guinea
Associated Press
December 5, 2007
Squealing pigs tore inland, and Filomena Taroa herded the children to higher 
ground.
The sea was rolling in deeper than anyone had ever seen last week on Papua 
New Guinea's island of New Britain.

"I don't know [why it happened]," the sturdy, barefoot grandmother told a 
visitor. "I'd never experienced it before."
As scientists warn of rising seas due to global warming, more reports are 
coming in of flooding from record high tides in villages like Kilu.
It's happening not only to low-lying atolls but also to shorelines from 
Alaska to India.
This week by boat, bus, and jetliner a handful of villagers are converging 
on Bali, Indonesia, to seek help from representatives of the more than 180 
countries gathered there for a United Nations climate conference.
"Climate Refugees"
The coastal dwellers' plight-once considered theoretical-appears all too 
real in 2007. The problem is spreading to new coasts, and the waters are 
flowing further inland.
Scientists project that seas expanding from warmth and from the runoff of 
melting glaciers may displace millions of coastal inhabitants worldwide in 
this century if heat-trapping industrial emissions are not sharply 
curtailed.
A Europe-based research group, the Global Governance Project, will propose 
at the two-week Bali meeting that an international fund be established to 
resettle "climate refugees."
(Read "Climate Change Creating Millions of 'Eco Refugees,' UN Warns" 
[November 18, 2005].)
Ursula Rakova is a resident of the Carteret Atoll northeast of the nearby 
island of Bougainville.
"We don't have vehicles, an airport," she said, summing up the islanders' 
plight. "We're merely victims of what is happening with the industrialized 
nations emitting greenhouse gases."
The sands of the atoll have been giving way to the sea for the past 20 
years. The salt water has ruined their taro gardens, a food staple, and has 
contaminated their wells and flooded homesteads. The remote islands now 
suffer from chronic hunger.

The national government has appropriated $800,000 (U.S.) to resettle a few 
Carteret families on Bougainville out of 3,000 islanders.
"That's not enough," Rakova told the Associated Press in Papua New Guinea's 
capital, Port Moresby. "The islands are getting smaller. Basically, 
everybody will have to leave."
"Sloshing" Ocean Rising
In a landmark series of reports released this year, the UN climate-science 
network reported that seas rose by a global average of about 0.12 inch (0.3 
centimeter) annually from 1993 to 2003, compared to an average of about 0.08 
inch (0.2 centimeter) annually between 1961 and 2003.
A 2006 study by Australian oceanographers found the rise was much 
higher-almost an inch (2.5 centimeters) every year-in parts of the western 
Pacific and Indian oceans.
"It turns out the ocean sloshes around," said the University of Tasmania's 
Nathaniel Bindoff, a lead author on oceans in the UN reports. "It's moving, 
and so on a regional basis the ocean's movement is causing sea-level 
variations-ups and downs."
Regional temperatures, atmospheric conditions, currents, and undersea and 
shoreline topography are all factors contributing to sea levels.
On some atolls, which are the above-water remnants of ancient volcanoes, the 
coral underpinnings are subsiding and adding to the sinking effect.
(Related photos: "Quake Lifts Island Ten Feet Out of Ocean" [April 10, 
2007].)
The oceanic sloshing is steadily taking land from such western Pacific 
island countries as Tuvalu, Kiribati, and the Marshall Islands.
In Papua New Guinea, reports have trickled in this year of fast-encroaching 
tides on shorelines of the northern island province of Manus, the mainland 
peninsular village of Malasiga and the Duke of York Islands off New Britain.
International media attention paid to the Carteret Islands, the best-known 
case, seems to have drawn out others, said Papua New Guinea's senior 
climatologist, Kasis Inape.
"Most of the low-lying islands and atolls are in the same situation," Inape 
said.
No Escape
The village of Kilu sits on a brilliantly blue Bismarck Sea bay ringed by 
smoldering volcanoes, swaying coconut palms, and thin-walled homes on 
stilts.
Invading waves last year forced some villagers to move their houses inland 
20 or more yards (18 or more meters)-taking along their pigs, chickens, and 
fears of worse to come.
Worse did come on November 25, when the highest waters yet sent people 
scurrying further inland.
"We think the sea is rising," said 20-year-old villager Joe Balele. "We 
don't know why."
The scene is repeated on shores across the Pacific, most tragically on tiny 
island territories with little inland to escape to.
Preparing to head to Bali to present her people's case Tuesday at the UN 
climate conference, Rakova searched for words to explain what was happening 
back home.
"Our people have been there 300 or 400 years," she said. "We'll be moving 
away from the islands we were born in and grew up in. We'll have to give up 
our identity."

http://www.abc.net.au/news/stories/2007/12/11/2115655.htm

Tasmanian teacher kayaks for climate change
Posted Tue Dec 11, 2007 2:01pm AEDT
Updated Tue Dec 11, 2007 2:00pm AEDT
Climate change will be a focus of a school curriculum to be crafted from a 
Tasmanian teacher's kayaking trip around Papua New Guinea (PNG).
Andrew Hughes will set off on the 4,000 kilometre journey in May and will 
detail his adventures on the website, expeditionclass.com.
He says he chose PNG because its issues are globally significant.
"Also at the same time it's a stunningly beautiful country from what I can 
see," he said.
"And I guess I'm just keen to explore that amazing mix of the good and the 
bad and the beautiful and everything that's right on our doorstep and 
bringing that back to the schools back here."
Mr Hughes says the the website will be a valuable learning resource for 
grades five to eight.
"The crucial part is the curriculum that's online for teachers to download 
and to use in their classrooms and that'll be around issues mainly around 
climate change," he said.
"So there'll be a curriuclum pack on climate change and there'll also be 
some risk-taking units and probably one on coastal use as well."
The trip is sponsered by the University of Tasmania School of Science and 
the Australian National Geographic Society.

http://www.counterpunch.org/zibechi12212007.html

December 21, 2007
Can Sex Workers and Transvestites Change the World?
Sex and Revolution

By RAÚL ZIBECHI

The alliance between Zapatistas, sex workers, and transvestites shows the 
power of social change in a key cultural way-when it's anchored to daily 
life. In Mexico, one of the strongest and most overbearing enclaves of 
patriarchy and machismo, Subcomandante Marcos has opened the doors to debate 
about discrimination in a controversial area.

What purpose is there, in classic revolutionary logic, in covering thousands 
of kilometers to meet with a handful of whores and crossdressers? What can 
such alliances offer to strengthen the "accumulation of power," any 
professional politicians' central task? It seems obvious, from a 
cost-benefit analysis, that this type of effort should be useless. However, 
Subcomandante Marcos has been committed to this kind of meeting since 
January of last year under the auspices of The Other Campaign (La Otra 
Campaña), with the understanding that it means looking for new ways of doing 
politics. It passes through places that are far from the madding crowd and 
takes place with actors who, like indigenous people, understand social 
change as an affirmation of difference.

Brigada Callejera de Apoyo a la Mujer (Women's Supportive Street Brigade) is 
a Mexican collective that has managed, in the last 15 years, to weave a wide 
net of social work with prostitutes and transvestites, called the Mexican 
Sex Work Network. This has meant transcending the "victim" role and becoming 
people who want to be recognized as workers by their peers, not seen as 
beings who have "fallen" into the world's oldest profession through 
ignorance, poverty, or submission. A quick look at what they have tackled so 
far reveals a deep work of emancipation.

Education, Clinics, and Condoms

A differentiating characteristic of the Network is that its members don't 
want to depend on the State, although they are constantly criticizing it. 
Street Brigade began its work 15 years ago, its base a group of sociology 
graduates from the National Autonomous University of Mexico (UNAM). The 
small initial nucleus-Elvira Madrid, Jaime Montejo, and Rosa Icela-began to 
weave a net that now reaches 28 of Mexico's 32 states. Over time they chose 
to work in a horizontal form, but not for ideological reasons. "The 
government co-opted many state coordinations, a habitual practice in the 
political culture of this country, so we saw that the best way to work is 
horizontally, in an assembly style, and trying not to have representatives," 
Elvira points out.

The Network encouraged women to form cooperatives to avoid dependence and to 
make themselves the bosses of their sources of employment. They rented 
hotels and shared the profits among the members. The first were the 
transvestites who formed the cooperative Angeles en Busca de Libertad 
(Angels Searching for Freedom).

"The cooperative hotels exist in various states but some of them failed 
because the members would end up replicating the same behavioral patterns as 
the ones they were organizing against," Rosa comments.

But the star project, the one most valued by the workers, are the clinics. 
Two clinics already exist in Mexico City and are self-managed and free of 
charge. They were born from the corruption and discrimination of the state 
organisms that only provided them with services through bribery. Moreover, 
Elvira indicates, "Getting tested scared them because it could mean loss of 
income, given that when a girl has AIDS there are state governments that 
will put her photo up in hotels so that they don't give her a room." On the 
contrary, in the Network clinics tests are voluntary and confidential, 
emphasizing education. "The majority of sex workers are illiterate and many 
are indigenous. For this reason we dedicate most of our efforts to 
education, to the point that most of the participants in the Network are 
health promoters and educate their peers, which is much more effective."

The clinics, one of them situated in the center of the city right in the 
"red light district" offer colposcopies and pap smears and also 
electrosurgery because, as Rosa says, "in Mexico papiloma viruses (HPV) 
cause more deaths than HIV." While inefficient public hospitals have 
two-month waiting lists for being seen and one year waiting lists for 
surgery, the Network clinics' results are ready in just a week.

The prostitutes and the transvestites seem enthusiastic about "their" 
clinic, where they often bring their partners, and where some even drag 
their clients. "The main part of our work is respect. We don't ask why they 
got infected, rather we concentrate on educating them so it doesn't happen 
to them again, so they aren't just patients any more, so they begin to be 
active participants in their health care," Elvira says. The project is 
rounded off with a food program for people with limited resources or who for 
some reason can't work, a school assistance program for the kids, and 
another to help mothers finish school.

The Network's projects are financed by "social condom marketing." Condoms 
are sold at different prices depending on the ability and responsibility of 
the buyer, and represent 85% of the Network's income. No one is salaried and 
the only people who are paid for their work are the doctors. "We don't agree 
with sex work, but it exists and will continue to exist, and in the meantime 
we have to do something. We were an abolitionist group but later we saw that 
it wasn't about saving anybody, but really about working together," Jaime 
intervenes. For those who are looking for alternatives to sex work, there 
are productive projects, the most outstanding of which are handicrafts, 
production and sale of clothing, and condom stores. Although some projects 
have turned out to be unviable, as families collaborated they managed to 
keep two-thirds of the attempts open.

Survival in the Jungle

In 2004, the members of the Street Brigade came into contact with the Health 
Collective for Everyone (Colectivo de Salud para Todos y Todas), university 
students who coordinate health projects in the autonomous Zapatista 
communities in Chiapas. For two years they worked with a group of health 
promoters in the communities, indigenous people chosen by their neighbors to 
specialize in sanitary assistance. "One of the first challenges was breaking 
the fear of supposed cultural resistances about the subject of 
contraception, sexual and reproductive rights, and sexually transmitted 
diseases," they relate.

During these consultations and workshops they chose the themes that would 
later resurface in the elaboration of a long and densely-named manual: The 
Other Campaign of Sexual and Reproductive Health for the Indigenous and 
Peasant Resistance in Mexico. Over 270 pages, this text, full of detailed 
illustrations designed for work with indigenous women, covers the usual 
issues like anatomy and physiology of the reproductive organs, use of 
contraceptives, pregnancy, sexually transmitted diseases, and other 
illnesses. They also speak of abortion, although the catechists condemn it. 
"Samuel Ruiz, a man who is very close to the indigenous people, toured the 
communities when the Zapatistas decriminalized abortion, saying that it's a 
crime," Jaime remembers.

But there are sections imbibed with diverse currents of alternative health. 
One of these concentrates on "women's bodily autonomy," which covers 
education on how to avoid illnesses, choosing how many children to have, and 
how to enjoy one's sexuality (almost a taboo among indigenous people). 
Bodily autonomy supposes, according to this manual, the exploration of the 
senses, connection with language to do with the body, and the different 
reactions of the body in extreme situations. Collective and self-massages 
link this to a holistic conception of health and curing.

Can Transvestites Change the World?

Can indigenous people? Half a century ago, one of the founders of so-called 
"scientific socialism," wrote that the proletariats could change the world 
because they had nothing to lose "but their chains." Today, the heirs of 
those proletariats are rebellious at the hour of losing privileges like 
steady work and retirement, they refuse to pay taxes, and they strike to 
avoid being charged the tax on their income.

Marcos himself hints at this in his epilogue to the manual, laying bare how 
the alliance between health and sex is one of the strongest nuclei of social 
control. "Capitalism converts health into a market good, and health 
administrators, doctors, nurses, and all the apparatus of hospitalization or 
health distribution are also turned in to a type of foreman of this 
business, turning the patient into a de facto client, from whom the object 
is to get as much money as possible from without necessarily giving more 
health back in return." It seems to be no coincidence that, along their 
dependency-breaking road, the Zapatistas have run up against the area of 
prostitute health and organized transvestites, groups that have been forced 
to take control of healthcare into their own hands. Seen in this light, some 
people belong in the "disposable" category, barely even having chains, 
material or symbolic, to lose.

Translated by Nalina Eggert.

Raúl Zibechi is a member of the Editorial Council of the weekly Brecha de 
Montevideo, teacher and researcher of social movements at the Multiversidad 
Franciscana de América Latina, and adviser to social groups. He is a monthly 
collaborator of the IRC Americas Program .

http://www.counterpunch.org/ross12212007.html

December 21, 2007
Ten Years After Acteal
New Massacres Loom in Mexico

By JOHN ROSS

The men milled about on the shoulder of the mountain road, their faces 
hooded and masked. Christmas was just three days away but first they had 
some killing to do. When the signal was given, they picked up their 
weapons--at least five AK-47s were included in their arsenal--and began 
firing downhill into the trees. A detachment of 40 state police officers 
posted at a school 200 meters down the road seemed to take no notice.

After an hour, the shooters advanced downhill, firing their weapons as they 
pushed forward through the wounded trees. At the bottom of the hill, the 
dead were spread around a wood plank chapel where they had been fasting and 
praying for several days. Most were women, their dead children still 
clinging to them. The shooters continued down the ravine, taking their time, 
killing their victims slowly, slicing them open with machetes. Four of the 
women were pregnant. Marcela Capote, the wife of the catechist, was nearly 
at full term and they hacked open her womb and yanked out the baby inside 
and dashed its skull against the rocks. They told each other that they had 
come to kill "la Semilla"--the seed.

Although the press regularly reports that the number of those massacred at 
Acteal was 45, "Las Abejas" ("The Bees") have always said 46 of their 
comrades died December 22nd, 1997, including Marcela Capote's baby. Last 
year, on the ninth anniversary of the massacre, they upped the count to 49 
to honor the three other pregnant women murdered by the paramilitaries--21 
women, 15 children, nine men, and four unborn babies.

The Abejas are a devoutly Catholic association of Highland Maya--Tzotziles, 
"the people of the bat"--based in rural Chenalho county where they have 
acquired a well-deserved reputation as excellent coffee growers and honey 
gatherers. Their formation during a bitter land battle in the early 1990s 
was mid-wived by San Cristobal de las Casas Bishop Emeritus Samuel Ruiz 
Garcia and they have always shared Don Samuel's liberationist leanings.

Although the Abejas backed the demands of the Zapatista Army of National 
Liberation (EXLN) when they rose in armed rebellion in the highlands in 
1994, they did not support the rebels' use of violence. Nonetheless, by the 
1997 coffee harvest with paramilitary gunsills from surrounding 
communities--mostly affiliated with the then-ruling PRI party--stealing 
their crops and their farm animals and burning Abeja families out of their 
homes, they appealed to the pro-Zapatista village of Acteal for protection 
and were given a piece of land down below the highway, "Los Naranjos", where 
they would be massacred December 22nd, 1997 by their persecutors.

In the ten years since the killings shocked a shaken nation, the Abejas have 
become a moral touchstone reaching far beyond the Chiapas highlands. 
Liberationist Catholics make pilgrimages to Acteal where a chapel covering 
the graves of the martyrs has become a shrine. Each year on the anniversary 
of their sacrifice, a memorial Mass presided over by Bishop Ruiz or his 
former coadjutor Raul Vera or the current bishop of San Cristobal, Felipe 
Arizmendi, draws thousands to this anonymous bend in the ill-paved highway 
that connects up the county seats of Chenalho and Pantelho. Nobelist Jose 
Saramago mourned here, as did former U.N. Human Rights Commissioner Mary 
Robinson and the late U.S. author Susan Sontag. In their grief and dignity, 
the Abejas have come to symbolize for many the cruel suffering of Latin 
America's indigenous peoples.

Horrendous as it was, the Acteal massacre was not the most lethal in a 
history that is stained with such mass killings--the Conquistadores and the 
Revolution saw to that. Under the governance of President Ernesto Zedillo, 
four massacres occurred between June 1995 and June 1998 that took a total of 
87 lives. Acteal was not even the bloodiest mass killing in recent Chiapas 
memory--that dubious honor goes to the massacre by the Mexican military of 
at least 60 Indian farmers at Golonchan in 1979 during the regime of PRI 
governor Juan Sabines, whose son, also named Juan, is the current governor 
of the state.

But because the Zapatistas have a national and international network and the 
horror of the killings at Christmastime attracted the glare of Big Media, 
Acteal became synonymous with human rights abuses in Mexico. Bill Clinton, 
former French premiere Lionel Jospin, and the late Pope John Paul condemned 
the murders, so agitating Zedillo that he accused the world leaders of 
intervening in Mexico's affairs and subsequently deported 400 non-Mexican 
human rights observers from Chiapas in a xenophobic rage.

Now as the tenth anniversary of the Acteal massacre approaches, the 
martyrdom of the Abejas is being called into question by an orchestrated 
chorus of revisionist voices bent on altering the narrative and absolving 
then-president Zedillo, the PRI, and the Mexican military of any culpability 
for the notorious mass killings, and, instead, shift the blame to the 
victims--the Abejas and their Zapatista allies.

Last spring, the national committee of right-wing president Felipe 
Calderon's PAN party called for the reopening of judicial proceedings 
against more than 80 persons convicted of participating in the slaughter. 
Most are evangelicals whose release is being demanded by their churches and 
the PAN is accused of an opportunistic ploy to attract this fast-growing 
constituency by Luis Hernandez Navarro, op ed editor at the left daily La 
Jornada and a former Zapatista advisor.

To compliment the PAN gesture, Hugo Eric Flores, a spokesperson for those 
convicted, will soon publish "The Other Injustice" to coincide with the 
anniversary of the killings--the book posits that the prisoners were 
railroaded by federal and state prosecutors to tamp down the visibility of 
the scandal and that rather than a massacre, the Abejas were caught in a 
deadly crossfire between Zapatistas and anti-Zapatista "self-defense" 
fighters, the "pojwanejetic" in Tzotzil.

Perhaps the lead voice in this revisionist choir is a high profile 
journalist and author, Hector Aguilar Camin (he has his own late night show 
on Televisa) whose three-part series "Return to Acteal" published in Nexos, 
the glossy highbrow monthly he co-edits, seeks to debunk the Zapatista 
"legend" that the "mal gobierno" (bad government) was responsible for the 
murders of the Abejas. Aguilar Camin was the house intellectual during the 
reigns of Carlos Salinas (1988-94) and Ernesto Zedillo (1994-2000) and has 
had a continued presence under PANista Vicente Fox (2000-2006) and his 
successor Felipe Calderon. "Aguilar Camin always serves the princes," sneers 
Hernandez Navarro.

Aguilar Camin's lengthy chronicle not only redeems Zedillo, who now heads 
Yale's Institute for Globalization Studies, but also neglects overwhelming 
evidence of his government's involvement in the events of December 22nd, 
1997, instead ascribing the cause of the massacre to long latent 
"inter-communal" and religious disputes that he suggests are inherent in 
Highland Maya culture and which were exacerbated by the Zapatista uprising.

Not unsurprisingly, Aguilar's version invokes the Zedillo government's 
much-discredited "White Book of Acteal" issued weeks after the massacre that 
pinned the onus on "disputes inherent in highland Maya culture" and traced 
the route to Acteal from a family conflict back in the 1930s. The White Book 
was compiled by Zedillo's attorney general to provide a more 
"anthropological" assessment of the murders.

Anthropologist Aida Hernandez Castillo, then director of the CIESAS research 
institute in San Cristobal, recalls being offered funds by Zedillo 
government investigators to study "the manner in which the cultural 
practices of Chenalho can help us to understand the rituals of war utilized 
in the Acteal massacre" (sic.) Sensing that the investigators were trying to 
whitewash the government's role in the killings, CIESAS refused to 
participate in the study.

Aguilar Camin's sources for his revisionist chronicle are instructive: the 
aforementioned White Book and bulletins from the Attorney General's office 
where the White Book was concocted. The writer also borrows liberally from 
Gustavo Hirales, an ex-Marxist guerrillero in the 1970s who was tortured and 
defected to the "mal gobierno" where he fingered former comrades and 
prepared scenarios for intelligence agencies. Hirales' "Road to Acteal", 
based on his dispatches from Chiapas for a government-run newspaper and 
published on the heels of the massacre, endorsed the White Book's 
"inter-communal" skew and accused the Zapatistas of inciting homicide in 
Chenalho.

Also cited by Aguilar: an unpublished manuscript by Hirales's ex-guerrilla 
crony Manuel Anzaldo, whose political faction had been given a franchise to 
exploit a sand and gravel bank that the EZLN claimed belonged to a nearby 
Zapatista village. Anzaldo's Internet page, "The Farmers Information 
Service" (SIC by its Spanish initials) spread anti-Zapatista venom 
throughout the highlands during the hostilities in Chenalho.

But the vertebrae of Aguilar Camin's narrative is Flores's "The Other 
Injustice" which argues the Abejas were killed in a gun battle between the 
EZLN and its enemies and that the 83 prisoners being held for the killings 
are as innocent as the driven snow.

In assembling "Return to Acteal", Hector Aguilar Camin disregards in-depth 
reports on the situation in the Chiapas highlands regularly issued between 
1995 and 1997 by the San Cristobal-based Fray Bartolome de las Casas Human 
Rights Center of which Bishop Ruiz remains the guiding spirit, maintaining 
that the information is "loaded" in favor of the Abejas and the EZLN.

The "FRAYBA" negotiated disputes between Zapatista autonomias and official 
municipalities during that period and meticulously documented the skein of 
killings that gripped Chenalho between May and December 1997 in which 35 
Indians were gunned down (18 associated with the PRI, 17 with the EZLN 
and/or Las Abejas.) Despite the wholesale mayhem, no local, state, or 
federal government raised a hand to stop the bloodshed. "They just let 
Acteal happen," concludes Hermann Bellinghausen, a veteran correspondent who 
covered the killings day by day for the left tabloid La Jornada.

Responses to the Nexos pieces were sharp and swift. The Abejas accused 
Aguilar Camin of being "the voice of the killers." La Jornada assigned 
Bellinghausen to write a 21-part series exposing the gross distortions in 
"Return to Acteal." The Jornada reporter recalled that in the days following 
Acteal, Aguilar Camin had written a front-page letter to the leftist daily 
accusing it of "black and white journalism." "No one in his right mind can 
accuse Zedillo of engineering this crime," Aguilar avowed.

Despite the writer's exculpation of Zedillo, there is overwhelming evidence 
that his government committed crimes of omission and commission at every 
level before, during, and after the Acteal massacre and that the killings of 
the 49 Indians constitute a crime of state.

Acteal was, indeed, the bitter fruit of the Chiapas Strategy Plan, a 
counter-insurgency plan cooked up at the Seventh Military Region in the 
Chiapas state capital of Tuxtla to combat the uprising in the 37 
municipalities where the EZLN had influence by arming and training 
"patriotic" paramilitary units. The Chiapas Strategy Plan was implemented by 
General Mario Renon Castillo, a graduate of the Center for Special Forces at 
Fort Bragg North Carolina in counter-insurgency warfare.

Least there be any question, the "pojwanejetics" who attacked the Abejas 
were themselves trained by an Mexican Army corporal, officially placed "on 
leave" who had been ordered to show the paramilitaries how to use their 
newly-acquired weapons. Mario Perez Ruiz told the court he thought he would 
be killed if he refused to carry out the orders of his superiors.

Aguilar Camin, on the other hand, denies military involvement in the attack 
on the Abejas and describes the "pojwanejetic" as a "self-defense" squad 
that developed "spontaneously" in reaction to the Zapatista uprising.

Evidence that the "mal gobierno" and its state and local affiliates were up 
to their necks in the Acteal massacre abounds. The PRI municipal president 
of Chenalho bought the weapons that would be used against the Abejas. The 
weapons were transported by police through military checkpoints and 
distributed to the killers--the police even donated their uniforms to the 
"pojwanejetic."

On the day of the lethal assault, a detachment of state police witnessed the 
killing and did nothing to stop it. A noontime phone call from the San 
Cristobal diocese to Governor Julio Ruiz Ferro's office advising his 
Secretary of Government (Ruiz Ferro was on vacation in California) of the 
on-going massacre at Acteal elicited a promise to investigate. But there was 
no investigation.

When the wounded began to arrive in San Cristobal on the night of the 22nd, 
Chiapas state security chief Jorge Enriquez Hernandez and the 
under-Secretary of Government Uriel Jarquin drove to Acteal where they 
ordered the bodies of the Abejas stacked and burnt before the press appeared 
the next morning but the police took too long and daylight forced them to 
load the corpses in dump trucks and drive them to the state capital for 
"autopsies."

Forced to resign as governor, Ruiz Ferro, who had full knowledge of the 
dangerous standoff in Chenalho and refused to intervene, was promoted by 
Zedillo to agricultural attaché at Mexico's Washington embassy and is now 
reportedly a functionary of the Calderon regime.

Putting Indians on Indians--there are more than a million indigenous peoples 
in Chiapas, a third of the population--has always been the fulcrum of PRI 
control of the state.

As noted, 83 people have been processed and convicted for the Acteal 
massacre. All of them are Indians. No state or federal official has ever 
been indicted for the killings. Two generals, who served as police 
commanders and were charged with dereliction of duty, fled the state and 
have never been brought to justice. Zedillo is at Yale. The Indians are in 
jail.

Are they the real killers? All 83 are charged with murder and using 
prohibited firearms which seems a stretch--no more than 40 "pojwanejetics" 
took part in the massacre (Aguilar Camin insists it was only nine.) Two key 
leaders of the paramilitaries have been freed. Antonio Santis Lopez who 
organized the death squad is alive and free in Chenalho. Antonio Vazquez 
Secum, who contracted the killers after his son was murdered, either by his 
own comrades because he refused to kick in to the paramilitaries' gun fund 
or by Zapatista sharpshooters because he was driving a pick-up filled with 
the Abejas' stolen coffee, was sentenced to 25 years in prison but was 
released when he fell ill and died shortly before the tenth anniversary of 
the massacre.

In 1999, United Nations rapateur Asma Jahngar, now under house arrest in her 
native Pakistan, visited Chiapas to take testimony from witnesses. The U.N. 
official interviewed some of the prisoners and concluded that many of the 
Indians had been rounded up and framed to get Zedillo off the international 
human rights hook. "At least that's they way they do it in my country" she 
observed to this reporter.

Ten years after Acteal, the paramilitary scourge is still a malignant 
feature of the Chiapas landscape. Groups like "Red Mask" (the name the 
pojwanejetics took in Chenalho) and the incongruously named "Peace & 
Justice", responsible for over 100 murders in the north of the state, have 
just changed their initials. The Popular Organization for the Defense of the 
Rights of Indian Farmers (OPDDIC) is the latest avatar of the Chiapas 
Strategy Plan, staging intermittent attacks on Zapatista autonomous 
communities in the lowlands.

Three times in November, the OPDDIC invaded the tiny rebel hamlet of Bolom 
Ajaw, firing long guns and slashing the villagers with their machetes in an 
effort to drive 70 families off land they have reclaimed from the hacienda 
where they once slaved. "If you don't leave here, we will cut your bodies to 
pieces and throw the pieces in the river," one paramilitary threatened. The 
violent attacks in Bolom Ajaw spark fears that they are prelude to another 
Acteal. Just as it did ten years ago, the mal gobierno does nothing.

Contact: johnross at igc.org

http://www.thenation.com/doc/20080107/klein

| posted December 20, 2007 (January 7, 2008 issue)
Zapatista Code Red

Naomi Klein

San Cristóbal de las Casas, Chiapas

Nativity scenes are plentiful in San Cristóbal de las Casas, a colonial city 
in the highlands of Chiapas, Mexico. But the one that greets visitors at the 
entrance to the TierrAdentro cultural center has a local twist: figurines on 
donkeys wear miniature ski masks and carry wooden guns.

It is high season for "Zapatourism," the industry of international travelers 
that has sprung up around the indigenous uprising here, and TierrAdentro is 
ground zero. Zapatista-made weavings, posters and jewelry are selling 
briskly. In the courtyard restaurant, where the mood at 10 pm is festive 
verging on fuzzy, college students drink Sol beer. A young man holds up a 
photograph of Subcomandante Marcos, as always in mask with pipe, and kisses 
it. His friends snap yet another picture of this most documented of 
movements.

I am taken through the revelers to a room in the back of the center, closed 
to the public. The somber mood here seems a world away. Ernesto Ledesma 
Arronte, a 40-year-old ponytailed researcher, is hunched over military maps 
and human rights incident reports. "Did you understand what Marcos said?" he 
asks me. "It was very strong. He hasn't said anything like that in many 
years."

Arronte is referring to a speech Marcos made the night before at a 
conference outside San Cristóbal. The speech was titled "Feeling Red: The 
Calendar and the Geography of War." Because it was Marcos, it was poetic and 
slightly elliptical. But to Arronte's ears, it was a code-red alert. "Those 
of us who have made war know how to recognize the paths by which it is 
prepared and brought near," Marcos said. "The signs of war on the horizon 
are clear. War, like fear, also has a smell. And now we are starting to 
breathe its fetid odor in our lands."

Marcos's assessment supports what Arronte and his fellow researchers at the 
Center of Political Analysis and Social and Economic Investigations have 
been tracking with their maps and charts. On the fifty-six permanent 
military bases that the Mexican state runs on indigenous land in Chiapas, 
there has been a marked increase in activity. Weapons and equipment are 
being dramatically upgraded, new battalions are moving in, including special 
forces--all signs of escalation.

As the Zapatistas became a global symbol for a new model of resistance, it 
was possible to forget that the war in Chiapas never actually ended. For his 
part, Marcos--despite his clandestine identity--has been playing a defiantly 
open role in Mexican politics, most notably during the fiercely contested 
2006 presidential elections. Rather than endorsing the center-left 
candidate, Andrés Manuel López Obrador, he spearheaded a parallel "Other 
Campaign," holding rallies that called attention to issues ignored by the 
major candidates.

In this period, Marcos's role as military leader of the Zapatista Army of 
National Liberation (EZLN) seemed to fade into the background. He was 
Delegate Zero--the anti-candidate. Last night, Marcos had announced that the 
conference would be his last such appearance for some time. "Look, the EZLN 
is an army," he reminded his audience, and he is its "military chief."

That army faces a grave new threat--one that cuts to the heart of the 
Zapatistas' struggle. During the 1994 uprising, the EZLN claimed large 
stretches of land and collectivized them, its most tangible victory. In the 
San Andrés Accords, the right to territory was recognized, but the Mexican 
government has refused to fully ratify the accords. After failing to 
enshrine these rights, the Zapatistas decided to turn them into facts on the 
ground. They formed their own government structures--called good-government 
councils--and stepped up the building of autonomous schools and clinics. As 
the Zapatistas expand their role as the de facto government in large areas 
of Chiapas, the federal and state governments' determination to undermine 
them is intensifying.

"Now," says Arronte, "they have their method." The method is to use the deep 
desire for land among all peasants in Chiapas against the Zapatistas. 
Arronte's organization has documented that, in just one region, the 
government has spent approximately $16 million expropriating land and giving 
it to many families linked to the notoriously corrupt Institutional 
Revolutionary Party. Often, the land is already occupied by Zapatista 
families. Most ominously, many of the new "owners" are linked to thuggish 
paramilitary groups, which are trying to force the Zapatistas from the newly 
titled land. Since September there has been a marked escalation of violence: 
shots fired into the air, brutal beatings, Zapatista families reporting 
being threatened with death, rape and dismemberment. Soon the soldiers in 
their barracks may well have the excuse they need to descend: restoring 
"peace" among feuding indigenous groups. For months the Zapatistas have been 
resisting violence and trying to expose these provocations. But by choosing 
not to line up behind Obrador in the 2006 election, the movement made 
powerful enemies. And now, says Marcos, their calls for help are being met 
with a deafening silence.

Exactly ten years ago, on December 22, 1997, the Acteal massacre took place. 
As part of the anti-Zapatista campaign, a paramilitary gang opened fire in a 
small church in the village of Acteal, killing forty-five indigenous people, 
sixteen of them children and adolescents. Some bodies were hacked with 
machetes. The state police heard the gunfire and did nothing. For weeks now, 
Mexico's newspapers have been filled with articles marking the tragic 
ten-year anniversary of the massacre.

In Chiapas, however, many people point out that conditions today feel eerily 
familiar: the paramilitaries, the rising tensions, the mysterious activities 
of the soldiers, the renewed isolation from the rest of the country. And 
they have a plea to those who supported them in the past: don't just look 
back. Look forward, and prevent another Acteal massacre before it happens.

http://www.alterinfos.org/spip.php?article1907

MEXICO - What Have the Zapatistas Accomplished?

Immanuel Wallerstein

Thursday 3 January 2008, posted by Dial


January 1, 2008 - On January 1, 1994, the Ejército Zapatista de Liberación 
Nacional (EZLN), commonly called the Zapatistas, led an insurrection in San 
Cristobal de las Casas in the state of Chiapas in Mexico. Just under 
fourteen years later, the EZLN convened an international colloquium on 
December 13-17, 2007 in the same city on the theme "Planet Earth: 
Antisystemic Movements" - a sort of stock-taking, both global and local, of 
their objectives. I myself participated in this colloquium, as did many 
other activists and intellectuals. In the course of the colloquium, 
Subcommandant Marcos gave a series of six talks, which are available on the 
internet.

In a sense, what everyone was asking, including Marcos, is what have the 
Zapatistas accomplished and what are the future prospects of antisystemic 
movements - in Chiapas and in the world? The answer to this question is not 
simple. Let us start the story on January 1, 1994. That day was chosen for 
the beginning of the insurrection because it was the day on which the North 
American Free Trade Association (NAFTA) came into effect. The slogan that 
day was !Ya basta! ("Enough is enough"). The Zapatistas were saying from the 
outset that their five-century- long protest against injustice and 
humiliation and demand for autonomy was linked today organically to the 
worldwide struggle against neo-liberalism and imperialism of which NAFTA was 
both a part and a symbol.

Chiapas, let us remember, is perhaps the poorest region of Mexico and its 
population is composed overwhelmingly of so-called indigenous peoples. The 
first Catholic bishop of Chiapas was Bartolomé de Las Casas, the 
sixteenth-century Dominican priest who devoted his life to defending 
vigorously (before the Church and the Spanish monarchy) the rights of the 
Indians to equal treatment. From the days of Las Casas until 1994, the 
Indians never saw that right acknowledged. The EZLN decided to try different 
methods. So were they more successful? We should look at the impact of the 
movement in three arenas: in Mexico as a political arena; in the 
world-system as a whole; in the realm of theorizing about antisystemic 
movements.

First, Mexico: Armed insurrection as a tactic was suspended after about 
three months. It has never been resumed. And it is clear that it will not be 
unless the Mexican army or right-wing paramilitaries massively attack 
autonomous Zapatista communities. On the other hand, the truce agreement 
reached with the Mexican government - the so-called San Andrés accords 
providing for the recognition of autonomy for the indigenous communities - 
was never implemented by the government.

In 2001, the Zapatistas led a peaceful march across Mexico to the capital, 
hoping thereby to force the Mexican Congress to legislate the essential of 
the accords. The march was spectacular but the Mexican Congress failed to 
act. In 2005, the Zapatistas launched "the other campaign," an effort to 
mobilize an alliance of Zapatistas with groups in other provinces with more 
or less similar objectives - again spectacular but it did not change the 
actual politics of the Mexican government.

In 2006, the Zapatistas pointedly refused to endorse the left-of-center 
candidate for the presidency, Andrés Manuel López Obrador, who was running 
in a tight election against the proclaimed winner, the very conservative 
Felipe Calderón. This action was the one that caused most controversy with 
Zapatista sympathizers in Mexico and the rest of the world, many of whom 
felt that it cost López Obrador the election. The Zapatista position derived 
from their deep sense that electoral politics does not pay. The Zapatistas 
have been critical of all the left-of-center presidents in Latin America, 
from Lula in Brazil to Chávez in Venezuela, on the grounds that they were 
all top-down movements which changed nothing fundamental at the base for the 
oppressed majority. The only Latin American government which the Zapatistas 
speak well of is that of Cuba, because it is the only government they 
consider to be truly anti-capitalist.

On the other hand, within Mexico, the Zapatistas have managed to establish 
de facto autonomous indigenous communities which operate well, albeit they 
are besieged and constantly menaced by the Mexican army. The political 
sophistication and determination of these communities is impressive. Will 
this however last in the absence of serious political change in Mexico, 
especially in the light of increasing pressure on the rights of the Indians 
to control their own land? This is the unresolved issue.

The picture on the world scene is somewhat different. There is no question 
that the Zapatista insurrection of 1994 became a major inspiration for 
antisystemic movements throughout the world. It is unquestionably a key 
turning-point in the process that led to the demonstrations in 1999 at 
Seattle that caused the failure of the meeting of the World Trade 
Organization (WTO), a failure from which the WTO has never recovered. If 
today the WTO finds itself semi-moribund as a result of a North-South 
deadlock, the Zapatistas can claim some credit.

Seattle in turn led to the creation in 2001 of the World Social Forum (WSF), 
which has become the principal meeting-ground of the world's antisystemic 
movements. And if the Zapatistas themselves have never attended any WSF 
meeting because technically they are an armed force, the Zapatistas have 
remained an iconic movement within the WSF, a sort of inspirational force.

The Zapatistas from the beginning have said that their objectives and 
concerns were worldwide - intergalactic in their jargon - and they offered 
support to movements everywhere and asked actively for support from 
movements everywhere. They have been very successful in this. And if some 
worldwide support has suffered fatigue of late, the December 2007 colloquium 
was clearly an attempt to resuscitate these alliances.

In many ways, however, the most important contribution of the Zapatistas - 
and the most contested - has been in the theoretical realm. It was striking 
that in the six talks that Marcos gave in December, the first devoted itself 
to the importance of theorizing in the social sciences. What do the 
Zapatistas say about how to analyze the world?

First of all, they emphasize that the basic thing that is wrong with the 
world today is that it is a capitalist world, and that the basic thing to 
change is that, something they insist will require a real struggle. Now the 
Zapatistas are surely not the first ones to argue this. So what do they add 
to this? They are part of a post-1968 view that the traditional analyses of 
the Old Left were too narrow, in that they seemed to emphasize only the 
problems and struggles of the urban industrial proletariat. Marcos devoted 
one whole talk to the struggles of women for their rights. He devoted 
another to the crucial importance of control of the land by the world's 
rural workers.

And quite strikingly he placed several talks under the rubric, "neither core 
nor periphery" - rejecting the idea of a priority for one or the other, 
either in terms of power or of intellectual analysis. The Zapatistas are 
proclaiming that the struggle for rights of every oppressed group is equally 
important, and the struggle must be fought on all fronts at the same time.

They also say that the movements themselves must be internally democratic. 
The slogan is "mandar obedeciendo," which might be translated "lead by 
obeying the voice and wishes of those whom one is leading." This is easy to 
say and hard to do, but it is a cry against the historic verticalism of left 
movements. This leads them to a "horizontalism" in the relations between 
different movements. Some of their followers say that they are opposed to 
taking state power ever. While they are deeply skeptical of taking state 
power via the "lesser evil," they are willing to make exceptions, as in the 
case of Cuba.

Was the Zapatista insurrection a success? The only answer is in the 
apocryphal story about the answer that Zhou En-lai is supposed to have given 
to the question: "What do you think of the French Revolution?" Answer: "It 
is too early to tell."

http://www.ipsnews.net/news.asp?idnews=40743

MEXICO: Army, Paramilitary Build-Up in Zapatista Stronghold
By Diego Cevallos

MEXICO CITY, Jan 10 (IPS) - The Zapatista guerrillas and their supporters in 
the southern Mexican state of Chiapas are experiencing the worst onslaught 
by state forces in the last 10 years, although most people are unaware of 
the fact, according to reports from a research centre working in the area.

On Monday, in the area under Zapatista influence, "we rescued a wounded 
Indian grassroots supporter of the guerrillas who had been shot by 
paramilitaries. The situation is serious," Ernesto Ledesma, head of the 
Chiapas-based non-governmental Centre for Political Analysis and Social and 
Economic Research (CAPISE), told IPS.

According to CAPISE, which has had brigades out for the past five years, 
monitoring military movements in areas held by the barely-armed Zapatista 
National Liberation Army (EZLN), in recent weeks there has been an increased 
presence of uniformed soldiers who are acting in concert with paramilitary 
groups.

Also, agrarian reform institutions have initiated an "irregular" 
distribution of land that had been occupied by indigenous people when the 
EZLN rose up in arms for two weeks in January 1994, according to CAPISE.

Title deeds to about 250,000 hectares are being distributed, but Zapatista 
sympathisers are being excluded, Ledesma said.

"Around 30 Zapatista communities are under enormous pressure from the 
military, the paramilitaries and the authorities, with the intention, we 
presume, to undermine the strength of the EZLN. This has not happened since 
1998," said the head of CAPISE.

The Fray Bartolomé de las Casas Human Rights Centre has also been reporting, 
for months now, that the situation in Zapatista areas is serious, because of 
the increasing presence of the army and of indigenous groups opposed to the 
guerrillas.

An anonymous source in the government of conservative President Felipe 
Calderón told IPS that the reports from Chiapas came as a complete surprise, 
and stated that the executive branch has no harassment strategy towards the 
EZLN, who have not fired a single shot since the second week of 1994.

The authorities in Chiapas, headed by Governor Juan Sabines of the leftwing 
Party of the Democratic Revolution (PRD), have not reported any changes in 
the situation in the area, while lawmakers and social activists have lost 
interest in the once-famous guerrilla group.

Ledesma said that on Monday he travelled through jungle and valley areas in 
Chiapas, and with the help of several companions rescued a wounded 
indigenous man who had been shot and pursued by groups that he identified as 
paramilitaries, in a conflict over land.

"A deliberate concerted action between paramilitaries (who are also 
indigenous people) and the police, army and authorities is taking place 
here, the purpose of which is to attack the Zapatistas," Ledesma said.

One of the first actions undertaken by former president Vicente Fox 
(2002-2006) was to order the withdrawal of the army from the guerrilla-held 
areas and their surroundings, but human rights organisations say that this 
was merely a strategic relocation of troops.

Since 2001, when a convoy of EZLN delegates entered Mexico City to the 
cheers of hundreds of thousands of people, to call for approval of a law on 
indigenous culture and rights, the guerrillas have gradually faded from the 
political scene and their leader, 'Subcomandante Marcos", has distanced 
himself from the left and the intellectuals who supported him.

In 2006 and 2007, beginning in parallel with the election campaign which 
brought Calderón to power on Dec. 1, 2006, Marcos travelled the country 
unarmed, with government permission, leading "The Other Campaign", an 
attempt to rally non-electoral political actors and press for the drafting 
of a new constitution.

But most Mexican saw and heard nothing of his cross-country travels.

Before the end of 2007, Marcos announced that he was returning to his 
stronghold in Chiapas and that he would neither emerge nor speak again until 
a future unspecified date. He warned, however, that the EZLN would retaliate 
if attacked.

Fourteen years ago, thousands of Mexicans mobilised against the army attacks 
on the EZLN, which led to a law declaring a ceasefire.

But now it appears that no one is prepared to react to the information that 
an onslaught against the rebel group is in progress.

"The situation in Chiapas is serious and violence is on the rise. The public 
should know this," Ledesma said.

Earlier reports by the Fox administration, confirmed by several researchers, 
indicate that the EZLN is in administrative and political control of 15 
percent of Chiapas, the country's poorest state, which has a total area of 
75,634 square kilometres.

In that area, where government social programmes are inoperative, there are 
about 100,000 mainly indigenous people, who live in dire poverty, as do most 
of Mexico's roughly 10 million Indians.

About 5,000 poorly armed men constitute the military forces of the EZLN. But 
Zapatistas have forsworn all offensive action.

CAPISE says that indigenous self-rule in the Zapatista area is a reality, 
and that their own health, education and development programmes are in 
place. But these achievements are increasingly threatened by the military 
and paramilitary presence and by pressure from indigenous campesino groups 
opposed to the guerrillas. (END/2008)