archivi delle proteste globaliarchives of global protestsZAPATISTA CONCLAVE A REALITY CHECK FOR NEO-LIBERALISM
Period: April 15th-23rd, #11
LA REALIDAD, CHIAPAS - Imposed in 1982 by the International Monetary Fund as a condition for bailing Mexico out from near default on its soaring foreign debt, the so-called "Neo-liberal Economic Model" is being bashed from pillar to post these days in this recession-racked land. Archbishops like Mexico City's socially-conservative Norberto Rivera decry the free market's devastating impacts on the poor, and even an ex-Secretary of Finance (David Ibarra) concedes that neo-liberalism has not brought the boom times he once triumphantly envisioned. The rank and file of the long-ruling (67 years) Institutional Revolutionary Party (PRI) has become so disgruntled at social dis-protection caused by wholesale privatizations that deputies call upon President Ernesto Zedillo to "revise the model." Captains of commerce and industry such as Carlos Abascal, president of the COPARMEX business federation, harshly critique government economic policies - albeit without ever pronouncing those dread syllables "Neo-liberalism."
But perhaps the most enthusiastic thrashing of this economic model championed by the past three Mexican presidents was administered during an unlikely international forum, sponsored by the rebel Zapatista Army of National Liberation (EZLN) in this tiny jungle hamlet that goes by the name of La Realidad ("The Reality"), April 3rd-8th.
While millions of Mexicans flocked to sun-stroked resorts like Acapulco and Cuernavaca for the traditional Semana Santa (Holy Week) getaway, a rainbow gathering of radicals from throughout the continent crawled through the Lacandon rain forest on reluctant buses to reach this remote jungle clearing which has become the most public site of EZLN activities since the February 1995 military offensive ordered by Zedillo pushed the rebels into deep cover.
Despite the town name, surrealism pervaded "The Continental Forum On Behalf of Humanity and Against Neo-liberalism," an event attended by 400 scholars, activists, and Zapatista groupies from the U.S., Europe and ten Latin American nations and staged here in a corral-like "cultural center" ("Aguascalientes") carved from the surrounding jungle. The Tojolabal Mayan Indian community of 600 residents - amongst them a three-year-old child named "Clinton" (his father heard the name on his radio and liked the sound) - is under constant surveillance from the Mexican Army.
The script for the Zapatista economic forum - which began on a night that featured a full lunar eclipse - might well have been authored by Colombian magic realist Gabriel Garcia Marquez. With several Hollywood celebrities in attendance (see below), the festivities included dramatic horseback arrivals by ski-masked comandantes and a working paper ostensibly written by a beetle. La Realidad residents offered graphic evidence of the triumph of free market economics by vending "neo-liberal breakfasts" (corn flakes, fruit, coffee) and boosted hammock sales by advertising that the forum was being conducted at the height of the scorpion season.
Despite the exotic setting, scorching sun, occasional drenching downpour, and swarms of gnat-like wildlife, the working sessions of the five sub-forums (Economics, Politics, Social Impacts, Cultural, and Impacts on Indigenous Peoples) were twice- a-day business-like interchanges in which participants remained undistracted even when the charismatic Subcomandante Marcos, trademark pipe clenched tightly in teeth, galloped in from the neighboring hills.
Neo-liberalism is an economic model, and the economic workshop drew a creative brew of Latin American trade unionists (Argentina, Chile, Venezuela, Costa Rica). Mexican and Canadian economists, British ecologists (Peter Barret, former editor of "The Ecologist"), U.S. feminists, the Swiss-born "futurologist" Jean Robert, left politicos, wandering poets, and, occasionally, a ski-masked Zapatista. While chickens pecked at the sparse grass around their feet, participants sought to define neo- liberalism, denounce the damage it has done throughout the continent, and develop strategies for resistance.
Despite hair-splitting on arcane issues such as whether or not neo-liberalism represents the "ultimate stage of capitalism" or merely "a new phase in the class war," the economics workshop offered abundant examples of how free market policies are causing trauma throughout the Americas. Migration, drug trafficking, the resurgence of cholera, and the privatization of health care systems were cited as common social afflictions induced by the neo-liberal model.
Strategies for taking the offensive against the domination of free market policies were examined: representatives from the three NAFTA (TLC) nations stressed the need for transnational unionization as a response to the transnationalization of capital that is one underpinning of neo-liberalism - activists pointed to the recent General Motors strike that idled the giant corporation's production plants in the three "North American" countries as an illustration of the new leverage that providers of labor have in a globalized world.
Polemics raged around a proposal for an international campaign for a six hour workday to resist the net decrease in employment that accompanies the globalization process. Suspension or renegotiation of Latin America's foreign debt was forcefully argued, as were proposals for alternative money systems. Ecologists postulated that the globalization of trade presents an imminent threat to the planet's bio-diversity.
Final conclusions from the five workshops were presented at plenary sessions that were often spelled by cultural programs spotlighting marimba bands, Tojolabal "bailables," howling poets, and top Mexico City rock n' rollers. The documents will help set the agenda for what Subcomandante Marcos touts as the "Intergalactic" Forum On Behalf of Humanity and Against Neo- Liberalism that will bring together delegates from similar continental conclaves to be held in Europe, Africa, Asia, and Oceania in coming months - the "Intergalactic" is tentatively set for July 27th-August 3rd in the heart of the Lacandon jungle.
Of all the forum documents, perhaps the most discussed working paper read in La Realidad was submitted by a purported beetle - "Durito," the alter ego with which Subcomandante Marcos has entertained fans for several years in a constant stream of communiques issued from the Lacandon rain forest. "The problem with globalization in the neo-liberal model is that balloons ('globos') burst," argued "Durito" in a document read by Marcos that was preposterously entitled "Promising Elements For An Initial Analysis as The First Basis For An Original Approximation Of The Primogenic Considerations In Respect To The SupraHistoric And Overweening Spiral Of Neo-Liberalism In the Decisive Conjuncture On April 6th, 1996 At 1:30 Southeastern Time With A Moon That Looks Like The Pocket Of A Worker In This Age Of The Rise Of Privatizations, Monetary Adjustments, And Other Economic Measures That Are So Effective They Produce Events Such As That Of La Realidiad" (first of 17,907 parts).
"Because the work we are doing is so serious, we have to take time out to laugh," Subcomandante Marcos later told forum participants, half apologizing for poking fun at their earnest efforts. "Our job is not to change the world," Marcos told the inaugural session, "we have a more modest proposal: to build a new world..."
The Zapatista troops who patrolled the forum grounds at La Realidad set their sites on less lofty levels. Noting that spring planting would soon begin, Raul, a masked militia member, defined neo-liberalism: "For us, it means that only one or two people will own all the land. We are farmers. We have a right to live..."
In summoning the Mexican people and the people of Latin America and the world to join together against neo-liberalism, the EZLN once again seeks to seize the initiative from the Mexican government and promote solidarity with its cause on the international front. Much like predecessor unity movements launched by the Cuban revolution and the continental call for a Latin American debt moratorium in the 1980s, the Zapatista bid to the Americas to resist neo-liberalism will no doubt boost their stock on the international left.
Such Bolivarian pretensions do not much endear the EZLN to the Zedillo braintrust, which during the Easter week forum in the jungle dispatched its top negotiators to Europe in an effort to persuade members of the European Parliament that the Zapatistas no longer represent a threat to foreign investment.
Closer to home, the Zedillo administration continues to pressure the EZLN with displays of military might. Despite the high energies and expectations of the forum in La Realidad, the difficult military position in which the Zapatistas find themselves generated tensions throughout the event. Mexican military convoys appeared on several mornings, slowly advancing up the road that skirts La Realidad, the cannons of their tanks directed at the community. An Army manhunt for six of its deserters startled forum goers and villagers alike, and military aircraft overflew La Realidad on several occasions. Immigration agents took names and inspected documents of all foreigners entering the jungle for the forum. At the immigration checkpoint near Las Margaritas, an agent of the Center for National Security Investigation (CISEN) filmed anti-neo-liberal caravaners.
Documents taken from the undercover agent identify him as Arturo Acosta Andrata, whose CISEN number is 103-25. Acosta Andrata was also in possession of a ski-mask and a press credential issued by the Chiapas state electoral commission (folio number 101) in the name of the Mexico City daily, "El Financiero."
The presence of the CISEN, a super secret national security agency that operates under the aegis of the Secretary of the Interior, is one further indication of how warily the Zedillo administration views the Zapatistas' campaign to unify national and international allies against the neo-liberal model.
HOLLYWOOD STARDUST BRINGS GLITTER TO ZAPATISTA REBELLION
LA REALIDAD, CHIAPAS - "Wow, I said to Marcos, you made the most dramatic entrance I've ever seen in my life," Hollywood's premiere director Oliver Stone gushed to La Jornada interviewer Blanche Petrich, after meeting with Zapatista comandantes near here March 26th. Stone arrived in this remote Lacandon jungle hamlet on the night his latest film "Nixon" was up for four Oscars, far away in Hollywood. Instead, at nightfall, Marcos and a handful of his horsemen rode in from the surrounding jungle and presented the director of "JFK," "Salvador" and "Natural Born Killers" with one of the Subcomandante's well-chewed pipes as a memento of his brief stay in the EZLN lair.
Oliver Stone reportedly traveled into the rain forest with a satellite phone in order to communicate his acceptance of the coveted Oscar - but "Nixon" drew a blank at the Academy Awards. Curiously, soon after the director's controversial huddle with Marcos, "Nixon" was withdrawn from release in Mexico City.
Stone came to Chiapas on what he termed a "human rights" mission and repeatedly denied that he was scouting locations for a Zapatista movie. Nonetheless, the director told Petrich that his film career has been much shaped by another Zapatista film: "Viva Zapata," the 1952 Elia Kazan-John Steinbeck Oscar-winner starring Marlon Brando as the martyred revolutionary Emiliano Zapata, from whom the neo-Zapatistas draw their inspiration.
Stone's jungle adventure was helpful to the Zapatista cause, ventured Mexico's leading actress Ofelia Medina, a very visible rebel supporter - but Medina was critical of the director's nostalgia for the original Zapata. "Oliver made a beeline straight for Marcos but he missed what this rebellion is all about - community and land," the actress commented during a break at a Holy Week anti-neo-liberal forum here. Medina and ex- Televisa soap opera queen Ana Colchero were two prominent Mexican film faces at the forum.
Although invitees Jodie Foster ("The Silence of The Lambs") and Kevin Costner ("Robin Hood") were no shows at the forum, Hollywood's most significant Chicano actor, Edward James Olmos, hiked in for the event. Olmos ("Zoot Suit," "American Me," "The Ballad of Gregory Cortez") was accompanied by director Robert Young, whose socially-conscious films ("Nothing But A Man," "Gregorio Cortez") enjoy success on the U.S. repertory circuit. Subcomandante Marcos paid tribute to Gregorio Cortez's battle against the Texas "Rinches" ("Rangers") in his forum-opening address, and Olmos later revealed that he had twice met Marcos in Los Angeles during the 1970s. The Chicano idol, an apostle of non-violence, expressed stiff opposition to the EZLN's armed stance, arguing that "violence begets violence."
Despite the Foster-Costner snub, Hollywood personalities are flocking to the Zapatistas' defense. Martin Sheen, perhaps Tinseltown's most socially committed personality, is the voice of Subcomandante Marcos in Saul Landau's soon-to-be-released public television documentary. Other Hollywood headliners who have lent their names to the Zapatista cause include Antonio Banderas and his companera, Melanie Griffith, and this year's Oscar-winner Susan Sarandon and her mate, Tim Robbins.
Although Oliver Stone is projecting a film on the assassination of Mexican politician Luis Donaldo Colosio, he insists he has no plans to bring the Zapatista saga to the silver screen - "the only way Hollywood will want to make this movie is if Marcos is dead," he tells reporters. Nonetheless, a handful of screenplays featuring ski-masked Mexican rebels have been making the rounds of adventurous Hollywood producers for the past year - Young, who along with Latin directors Luis Mandoki and Alfonso Arau is mentioned as a possible director, has seen three distinct scripts. Competition between rival screenwriters has reached fever pitch with charges of plagiarism and break-ins flying. Last year, a proposed scenario, faxed from Los Angeles to San Cristobal, Chiapas, was copied by Zapatista opponents and published as an EZLN document in two right-wing Mexican magazines.
Stars of the Political Left were as much in evidence as their cinematic counterparts at the Forum On Behalf of Humanity and Against Neo-Liberalism. Among the luminaries: Bill Means and Vernon Bellancourt of the American Indian Movement (AIM), legendary peace activist Brian Wilson, who lost his legs when crushed by a California train carrying supplies to U.S. troops in Central America; a representative of the venerable Venezuelan guerrillero Douglas Bravo; Argentine rebel poet Juan Gelman; and, of course, "Superbarrio Gomez," the Mexican superhero and defender of Mexico City tenants whose life story Mexican-American movie whiz Luis Valdez once contemplated filming. Messages of solidarity with the Zapatistas were tendered by such stars of the international political firmament as Nobelist Rigoberta Menchu, Noam Chomsky, Leonardo Boff (who was booked into Mexico City during the forum for a series of neo-liberal bashing conferences), and Uraguayan stellar writers Eduardo Galeano and Mario Benedetti. Although he missed the anti-neo-liberal fiesta, Regis Debray, the French intellectual and Renaissance man who accompanied Che Guevara on his doomed Bolivian adventure, was scheduled to arrive in the heart of the Lacandon jungle April 13th to present Subcomandante Marcos with recently-revised editions of his work and discuss plans for the July "Intergalactic" Forum On Behalf of Humanity.
MEXICO BARBARO by John Ross John Kenneth Turner wrote MEXICO BARBARO as the Diaz dictatorship was crumbling back in 1910. John Ross reincarnates MEXICO BARBARO as the PRI dictatorship comes tumbling down nearly 90 years later. Copyright 1996 by John Ross. Please do not reproduce before end of period in head. Distributed by WEEKLY NEWS UPDATE ON THE AMERICAS. 48 articles per year; for subscription (postal or email) contact: Weekly News Update on the Americas, 339 Lafayette St., New York, NY 10012, 212-674-9499, fax 212-674-9139, email nicanet@nyxfer.blythe.org, home page http://homebrew.geo.arizona.edu/wnuhome.html
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