World View: Sliding into the Economic Mire (1995)

From the September 1995 issue of the Socialist Standard

At the moment of writing, there is something of a stalemate between the Mexican government and the Zapatista Liberation Army in Chiapas. It could, of course, be the calm before the storm. Nevertheless, Mexico is far from tranquil. And throughout this year, the economy has gone from bad to worse.

Negotiations between the United States and the Mexican government, in an attempt by the Clinton administration to bail Mexico out of its economic crisis, began in the middle of February, and lasted six days before an agreement was reached. The Americans offered Mexico a loan of $20 billion in an attempt to stabilise the peso. At least that was the idea. Mexico promptly raised short-term interest rates by 10 percent and the rate on some government debts to 50 percent.

The Americans naturally drove a hard bargain. They insisted that PEMEX, the state-owned Mexican oil company, must deposit payment into an account of the US Federal Reserve Bank, where it can be withdrawn if the Mexican government defaults on the loan. Instead of American companies and corporations paying Mexico directly for oil, American companies would deposit payments with the Federal Reserve Bank, which would transfer them to Mexico at a later date. Hopefully, Mexico would receive an international rescue package of up to $50 billion.

Slashing living standards

As always, the ordinary people, the workers and peasants, were the first to suffer the consequences of the agreement. Guillermo Ortiz, the Finance Minister, said that Mexico "had been living beyond its means and running up debts it could not pay”. And continued: "It will be difficult for all Mexicans . . . There are no easy solutions." Instead of the 4 percent economic growth which President Zedillo had promised for 1995, he now expected a recession. The economy would, in fact, decline by 2 percent, and prices would rise by more than 40 percent. But Mr Ortiz had a plan; he also called for “extraordinary efforts" from citizens (i.e. the workers and peasants) "to make the plan work”.

Most workers would get only a 4 percent rise in wages, with the minimum salary, on which large sections of the Mexican working class depend, up by 10 percent from April. Indeed, there had already been a 100 percent increase in public transport fares and a 56 percent fall in purchasing power since December 1994. Fuel prices were to rise 35 percent, and the sales tax (like VAT) would be increased from ten to fifteen percent In March, a survey showed that 46 percent of companies expected to sack at least some of their workforce; and 16 percent expected to close down altogether. About 750,000 workers were expected to lose their jobs before September.

At the end of May. however, Michel Camdessus, the director-general of the International Monetary Fund, said that he was confident that the economy in Mexico was "headed for recovery”. But Guillermo Ortiz admitted that the worst of the crisis was yet to come; and Jose Luis Romero of Canancintra, which represents small and medium-sized businesses, predicted that job losses could reach 1.2 million by the end of December. And, indeed, unemployment had risen by 800,000 by the middle of July, and by more than one million by early August. The suicide rate has also risen sharply since the end of last year. Writing in the Guardian (10 July), Edward Balls, editor of the 1995 World Development Report, said: “the recession is expected to last into next year and living standards continue to plunge". He added: "In today's world of fast-moving, global capital markets, it is the workers who bear the brunt of financial crises.” Of course! But it has always been thus. Controlling capitalism’s crises is an impossible task, as Mexico's politicians, and so-called economists, have discovered.

Further unrest

Mexico's workers and peasants have lot entirely taken the worsening situation lying down although, as workers elsewhere, they tend to react to effects rather than organise to get rid of the cause—capitalism itself—of their misery.

In March, more than 100,000 people converged on the Zocalo, in the centre of Mexico City, to demand the withdrawal of the Army from Chiapas. The army is still there. In recent local elections, the Institutional Revolutionary Party (PRI) which, under various names, has governed Mexico for more than six decades, has been losing out to the right-wing National Action Party (PAN) and, to a lesser extent, the left-wing Party of Democratic Revolution (PRD), both of which, despite their "revolutionary” tag. are thoroughly reformist

And away from Chiapas, in the adjoining state of Guerrero to the west, guerrilla activity has, once again, flared up. In June, 17 peasants on their way to a protest meeting, were killed in Coyuca dc Benitez by armed police; and at the beginning of July five policemen were ambushed and killed, and two wounded, near Cualiac, north-cast of Acapulco. This was almost certainly in revenge for the killing of the peasants. Indeed, armed insurrections in Guerrero against agents of the Mexican state have occurred on and off since 1910.

Peter E. Newell

Power to the 99 Percent (2012)

From the September 2012 issue of the Socialist Standard

Is the first anniversary of the Occupy Movement this month something to celebrate? With a bit of perspective, we can now look at its tangible achievements and limitations.

“Those who cannot remember the past are condemned to repeat it.” George Santayana, The Life of Reason (1905).

The background to 2011 was one of weak class consciousness, let alone socialist consciousness. Inequality remained firmly off the political agenda. The message from the millionaire ruling class was “We’re all in this together”. Ed Milliband’s challenge to the austerity myth was merely that the cuts were too deep and too fast. Little surprise then that cuts to welfare were implemented relatively free of political impediments.

Then in Spain, protests calling for “Real Democracy Now!” and to “Take the Square” formed the inspiration for Adbusters magazine to call for similar protests in the United States.  It asked, “What is our one demand?”

  “In the weeks leading up to Sept. 17, the NYC General Assembly seemed to be veering away from the language of ‘demands’ in the first place, largely because government institutions are already so shot through with corporate money that making specific demands would be pointless until the movement grew stronger politically. Instead, to begin with, they opted to make their demand the occupation itself—and the direct democracy taking place there—which in turn may or may not come up with some specific demand. When you think about it, this act is actually a pretty powerful statement…” (Reproduced in Occupied Wall Street Journal 1).

This was the start of the Occupy Movement, with the core slogan, “We are the 99 percent”. Various organisations participated in starting it, although Occupy remained much broader than any of them.

The methods of Occupy were not totally without precedent even in the last few decades. Back in the 1990s, the Zapatistas had used horizontalism for decision-making. One slogan that was used, “Another World is Possible,” also recalled the comparable international impact of the protests against the G8 in Seattle. These protests inspired the Anti-Globalisation movement (subsequently renamed Alter-Globalisation) which petered out, although Indymedia and World Social Forum proved more sustainable.

Occupy is formed along non-hierarchical lines.  Its decisions are taken by consensus in general assembly and in smaller working groups. Its commitment to organising without hierarchies seems to have so far deterred vanguards from hijacking it, as happened in the anti-globalisation movement. Regular (mostly weekly) General Assembly meetings have been held in London since its inception and despite repeated evictions from the Stock Exchange, St Pauls, Finsbury Park and Hampstead Heath.

Despite protests from unions, Occupy Oakland was able to partially mobilise for a march of 40,000 people. Occupy London occupied an abandoned bank building and created the venue, Bank of Ideas. They were evicted from that, but they had also formed the Tent City University to organise more talks. Several significant publications have emerged from Occupy locals around the US and UK including propaganda sheets such as Occupied Wall Street Journal, D.C. Mic Check, Occupied Chicago Tribune, Boston Occupier and Occupied L. A. Times as well as much lengthier papers such as Occupied Times of London and Occupy! Gazette by n+1 (literary journal publishers).

The ideological support for austerity was challenged, the genie was out of the bottle and, worse still for the 1 percent, opinion polling showed favourable attitudes to the Occupy movement. The 1 percent establishment were forced to respond.

Co-option by the 1 percent?

In the US, the Democratic Party seem to be targeting Occupy for co-option, using initiatives such as a “99 percent declaration” , “99 percent Spring”, “Occupy Congress” and “Occupy the Dream”. Although Occupy, seeking political support from the electorate isn’t necessarily harmful, Glenn Greenwald comments:

  “they are going to try to convert OWS into a vote-producing arm for the Obama 2012 campaign, and that’s what ‘Occupy Congress’ is designed to achieve. I believed then and — having spent the last few weeks talking with many OWS protesters around the country — believe even more so now that these efforts will inevitably fail: those who have animated the Occupy movement are not motivated by partisan allegiance.” (“Here’s what attempted co-option of OWS looks like”, Salon.com)

The members of Bush Snr’s administration, which Colin Powell is alleged to have called “the crazies”, are the now powerful neoconservative strain which has chosen to attack Occupy. Dirtier muckraking smears of the 1 percent than those in the film, Occupy Unmasked, would be hard to find. The trailer seems to suggest that Occupy is hierarchical, astroturfed and nihilistic. However, just because some participants may have such ideas, does not mean they should be taken as representative of Occupy. Only those agreed by the general assembly can. Whether the controversial body called the “Spokes Council” in Occupy Wall Street makes their movement hierarchical remains to be seen.

Divisions within Occupy

The most controversial argument within Occupy in the US seems to have been between Chris Hedges and David Graeber:

  “The Black Bloc anarchists, who have been active on the streets in Oakland and other cities, are the cancer of the Occupy movement. Black Bloc adherents detest those of us on the organized left and seek, quite consciously, to take away our tools of empowerment. They confuse acts of petty vandalism and a repellent cynicism with revolution. The real enemies, they argue, are not the corporate capitalists, but their collaborators among the unions, workers’ movements, radical intellectuals, environmental activists and populist movements such as the Zapatistas. Because Black Bloc anarchists do not believe in organization, indeed oppose all organized movements, they ensure their own powerlessness. They can only be obstructionist. And they are primarily obstructionist to those who resist.” (Chris Hedges, The Cancer in Occupy, 6 February 2012, Truthdig.com)

To which David Graeber replied:

 “I have on more than one occasion taken part in Blocs where property damage has occurred. (I have taken part in even more Blocs that did not engage in such tactics. It is a common fallacy that this is what Black Blocs are all about. It isn’t.) I was hardly the only Black Bloc veteran who took part in planning the initial strategy for Occupy Wall Street. In fact, anarchists like myself were the real core of the group that came up with the idea of occupying Zuccotti Park, the “99 percent” slogan, the General Assembly process, and, in fact, who collectively decided that we would adopt a strategy of Gandhian non-violence and eschew acts of property damage. Many of us had taken part in Black Blocs. We just didn’t feel that was an appropriate tactic for the situation we were in.” (David Graeber, Concerning the Violent Peace-Police, An Open Letter to Chris Hedges, 9 February 2012, n+1)

Like the World Socialist Movement, Occupy does not seek to impose its object on unwilling participants. It aims rather at facilitating the diversely ideological 99 percent to freely arrive at ideas. The above controversy demonstrated the need for a space to develop those sometimes conflicting ideas. This is where Tidal Magazine (OccupyTheory.org) comes in. In depth but plain-speaking and free from jargon, Tidal argue, “We believe we can’t have radical action without radical thought”.

Occupy is important since it is rare to arrive at an analysis of the class composition of society close to that of the World Socialist Movement but popularised independently. And it is anti-Leninist too.

For us, socialism is the best system for the interests of the 99 percent. For Occupy as well as for those who want socialism, the twin dangers are of treading the path of reformist demands (which would undermine the 99 percent core message), or the path of inevitably doomed insurrection, which was the fate of the Paris Commune of 1871.

Politics has come a long way since the era of the reforms demanded by the Chartists in the 19th century. The manifestos of Real Democracy Now and the Global Occupy Manifesto demonstrate that these have chosen the reformist path. If the iterative Initial Statement of Occupy London continues “veering away from the language of ‘demands’” they may be able to avoid this mistake.

China’s first modern capitalist premier Zhou Enlai is reputed to have said in 1972 it was too early to judge the significance of the French Revolution of 1789. Though the quote is thought to be misinterpreted, hopefully, this opinion rather than Santayana’s is more applicable to the green shoots of the Occupy Movement, still in its infancy.

DJW

Letter: Does Everywhere Have To Pass Through Capitalism? (1994)

Letter to the Editors from the July 1994 issue of the Socialist Standard

Peter Newell’s informative account of the history surrounding recent events in Chiapas, Mexico (Socialist Standard, February) started me thinking about the different political responses to this indigenous uprising. In Vancouver where I live, these ranged from the predictable bandwagon-jumping escapades of various Leninist sects to a more interesting - but equally flawed - attempt to create an alliance of "leftist" inspired groups with the aim of supporting the Zapatista-led rebellion primarily by drawing links with "democratic struggles" here in Canada. The latter response, while moving beyond the insulting vanguardism of many groups on the left, was nevertheless typical of the kind of political strategy endorsed by many self-styled "post-Marxist" intellectuals currently resident in University departments. While the democratic decision-making processes of such alliances are, in my view, to be applauded, this post-Marxist political strategy remains mired in the rhetoric of failed projects of social democracy. Instead of challenging the profit-system in its entirety, the talk here is largely of smoothing the rough edges of capitalism by supporting social and environmental, justice and human rights incentives as ends in themselves.

Unfortunately, I don’t think that Peter Newell’s conclusions to his otherwise excellent article takes us a great deal further. According to him the uprisings were based on "backward-looking" ideas which "can achieve nothing of value, neither in the short nor the long run". This euro-centric view ignores the fact that for generations of First Nations’ peoples "violent rebelling" has been pretty much the only course of action available to them in the face of Euro-sponsored slavery and genocide. To sit back and regard their conversion into good little proletarians as somehow inevitable is to be complicit in their extinction. It also forgets that what is at stake for indigenous peoples is not simply higher wages or better working conditions but whole civilizations and ways of life. Do we really want one day to inherit a border-less world with a homogenous global culture where indigenous cultures have been reduced to quaint museum relics or trendy clothing styles for white people?

Part of the problem, I would argue, lies in the apparent unwillingness of many contemporary socialists to move beyond the sterile orthodox Marxist analysis of the effects of global capitalism on First Nations’ peoples. While there is nothing inherently euro-centric about socialism — there are countless historical examples of people the world over who have rejected wage labour and capital in favour of a cooperative, needs-based economy — there is clearly the need for contemporary socialists to be aware of the ways in which commitment to the goals of "scientific socialism", "reason", and the "positive aspects of capitalist development", contributes to the silencing and continued suffering of non-Western peoples. Even Marx himself acknowledged the extent to which capitalism was built on the oppression, slavery, and genocide of people of colour. It would seem to make sense, then, to see the abolition of capitalism as tied up with the overturning of euro-centrism, the elimination of white privilege and continuing opposition to newly emerging forms of colonialism and slavery.

For those socialists who would dismiss this as reformist and nationalist nonsense, I would ask you to consider what the Zapatistas of Chiapas, the Mohawks of Kahnesatake, or the East Timorese are fighting for. For the most part these autonomous struggles are anti-Statist, grass-roots and non-hierarchical movements calling for the return of communal land holdings. They have involved degrees of active participation by women on a scale that puts socialist parties to shame. Furthermore, are there not parallels to be drawn between the struggles of First Nations’ peoples for self-determination, and the economic and political struggles of wage-workers in the West?

Showing critical support for the Zapatista rebels does not imply a step-backwards for socialists; it merely acknowledges the extent to which the abolition of wage-slavery and the emergence of a world community of different cultures is inextricably linked to the self-determination of indigenous people worldwide.

Julian Prior, 

Vancouver, 

Canada 

Reply:
Julian Prior makes a number of interesting points, many of which I do not dispute. Nevertheless, I did not say that the uprisings in Chiapas, at the beginning of this year, were based upon "backwardlooking" ideas, which "can achieve nothing of value, neither in the short nor long run"; although, earlier in the article, I did suggest that, if he was anything, Emiliano Zapata, some 80 years’ ago, "was a rather backward-looking utopian communist".

What I did say was that such a movement will fail against the power of a modern state which, I should think, is obvious (I encountered units of the Mexican army when they were mopping-up the remnants of the "party of the poor" in the state of Guerrero); and that violent rebelling against such a state can achieve nothing of value (to the oppressed Indians) neither in the short nor the long run, although I did comment that it is not surprising that some of the Indians rebelled. Indeed, it is true that, over the last 90 years, almost all struggles and land occupations in Mexico, and elsewhere in Latin America, began peacefully and only became violent following state intervention and repression. Recent reports from Chiapas appear to confirm my view that the Indian masses of Chiapas will have achieved no more, and probably less, than if they had used various forms of non-violent strikes, and non-cooperation, against the large cattle ranchers and the pro-government village bosses.

Julian Prior seems to imply that socialists "sit back", and regard the conversion of the Indians "into good little proletarians as somehow inevitable". We do not, of course, sit back, but actively encourage people — all people — in London, Vancouver and Chiapas, to strive for a socialist world, not of conformity and uniformity, but of diversity. Sadly, or otherwise, it is more than true that capitalism is rapidly destroying pre-capitalist culture, some of which, at least in part, may well have been worth preserving — although we should not idealise some of their practices and mores.

Lastly, I agree with Julian Prior that both the original, and the recent Zapatista, movements have involved degrees of "active participation by women that puts socialist parties to shame". Hopefully, however, this is beginning to change.

Peter E. Newell

Class War in Mexico (1994)

From the February 1994 issue of the Socialist Standard

Peter Newell, author of a biography "Zapata of Mexico", gives the historical background to the recent peasant uprising in the south of Mexico

The Mexican government appears to have been taken by surprise at the recent events in the state of Chiapas, three hundred miles east of Acapulco, in southern Mexico. Indeed, as late as October last year the Interior Minister was denying the existence of insurrectos in Chiapas.

Yet on New Year's day, hundreds of guerrilleros, calling themselves the Zapatista National Liberation Army, captured the town of San Cristobal. They carried a variety of mostly old hunting rifles, home-made grenades and machetes. Many were women. On the same day, Canada, the United States and Mexico signed the North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA).

The Land Question
When the Spaniards first arrived in Mexico, in 1517, the Indians still held the land in common. The idea of private property in land did not exist. The common lands were usually located on the outer edges of the pueblos or settlements. They were called "ejidos", which means exit or "way out".

New Spain, as Mexico was called, was largely conquered by private adventuruers known as conquistadors, who were firmly controlled by a group of agents of the Spanish Crown known as "gachupines" (Wearers of Spurs), together with the leaders of the Catholic Church. At first, the conquistadors numbered only a few hundred,and even after a generation only a few thousands. The conquistadors soon made the Indians work on their land, which in theory now belonged to the Spanish Crown, whilst the Indians, later called peones (People of the Earth), were expected to live on the produce of their ejidos.

As time went by, the Spanish Crown granted legal titles of ownership of the land. But since most of the Indian pueblos could not obtain grants, the conquistadors grad ually enlarged the boundaries of their estates, claiming that the land that they were occupying belonged, not to the peones, but to the Spanish Crown:

"By a slow process of attrition extending through generations, the relatively small holdings of the original conquistadors were gradually enlarged into enormous haciendas which covered most of the fertile lands of Central Mexico." (Henry B. Parkes, A History of Mexico).

Probably 40 percent of the Indian population were compelled to become labourers on the haciendas and large estates. They became debt-slaves, and their debts were inherited from generation to generation.

The hacienda owners, or "hacendados", were not generally interested in improving their methods of production. And the Indians were deprived of farm implements and domesticated animals such as oxen. Agriculture, therefore, stagnated. But early in the nineteenth century, a form of "plantation capitalism" slowly began to emerge. Within a still largely feudal economy the haciendas developed, whose aims were purely commercial.

After a long and bitter struggle, Mexico achieved its independence from Spain in 1821. Following independence, the Catholic Church was forbidden to own land; but it was paid compensation for its former estates. The Indian peones were unable to purchase the former Church land (which, before the Spanish conquest, was theirs anyway); only the already wealthy landowners could afford to. The result was to increase the concentration of land ownership on a scale hitherto unknown.

By 1889, twenty-nine landowners obtained 27.5 million hectares, or 14 percent of the total land area of Mexico. By 1900, about 50 haciendas comprised more than 100,000 hectares each. Meanwhile, the Indians continued to lose their common lands; and more and more of them were forced to work on the large estates.

Dictatorship
On November 21, 1876, Porfiro Diaz became President of Mexico. He was to remain virtual dictator until May 1910. Nevertheless, under Diaz, Mexico underwent profound change. He encouraged the flow of foreign capital into the country. Money flowed in from Britain, the United States and elsewhere. Vast sums were invested in the construction of railways, the mining of silver and, after 1900, the production of coffee, sisal and sugar. Between 1880 and 1890, foreign capital outpaced Mexican investment. Public works were undertaken, including harbours, canals, drainage works and telephone and telegraph lines. A new industrial working class was recruited from the former peones dosplaced from the land. Indeed, by 1907, there were 40,000 textile workers and 100,000 miners in Mexico.

Naturally, this emphasis on industrialization increased the already clearly defined differences between rich and poor.

Industrial capitalism was very largely imposed upon the hacienda system, under which half the population was bound by debt-peonage. Modern capitalism was developing within the shell of a buereaucratic, corrupt and decadent feudalism. In cooperation with foreign interests, Mexico's economy was tightly controlled by a small group of businessmen and financiers known as "cientificos".

But by 1904, there were signs, tenuous at first, of economic instability. Between 1907 and 1910, inflation was rampant. Yet there was no ascertainable rise in wages. Trade unions were banned or severely restricted; but in 1906, the first industrial conflict in Mexico broke out at Cananea, in the state of Sonora. The workers of Mexico had begun to move. Other strikers, in the textile industry, followed in 1908 and 1909.

Without quite realizing it, Porfirio Diaz began to lose support.

Revolution
The first to rebel against Diaz was Francisco Madero, the son of rich landowners in northern Mexico. Madero had a passion for education and radical reform. In June 1910 he challenged Diaz for the presidency; but first, he was arrested, then he was said to have received only 196 votes throughout the country. (Later on, in 1913, he was to be murdered by supporters of the by then deposed Diaz.) Madero, however, had begun a movement which would not only overthrow Diaz, and the ancient regime, but would result in a bloody and violent conflict lasting ten years. To the casual observer, the Mexican revolution seemed quite chaotic and purposeless. Small armies and guerrilla bands appeared to be rushing about in all directions; and the whole country seemed to be in a state of disintegration. But by 1911, a distinct pattern began to emerge. Mexico was, in fact, rent into three completely irreconcilable socio-economic classes.

The first was the deeply-entrenched hacendado, land-owning element, supported by the Catholic Church, a few home-grown financiers, and a powerful coterie of foreign concessionaires, chiefly British and American. Politically, they were Porfiristas; and they were looking for a new and yong dictator. The second was the emergent, rising bourgeoisie - the businessmen and small land-owning class, including a few propserous rancheros. They were generally nationalistic, which meant being anti-British and anti-American. And, like the bourgeoisie of seventeenth-century England and eighteenth-century France, they favoured a somewhat limited constitutional democracy that would free them from the fetters of a largely feudal absolutism,and give them a modern administration responsive to their needs.

The third was the great mass of Mexico's dispossessed - the peones and debt-slaves, the small rancheros, and the new class industrial wage-slaves, such as the miners and railway workers. Among these, there was a distinct, and very independent group, mostly confined to the state of Morelos and a few neighbouring states, who would later be called Zapatistas.

Zapata
Morelos lies just over 60 miles south of Mexico City. Since the sixteenth century, sugar plantations have dominated its life. Unlike elsewhere in Mexico, the great hacendados produced sugar-cane for profit and the market, and not for immediate consumption. After 1880, more and more of the Indians were forced off their common lands. Many of the haciendas developed into "company" towns, employing from between 250 and 3,000 workers. Such was the environment into which Emiliano Zapata was born, in San Miguel Anencuilco, in 1879.

Zapata was not a landless peon; his family owned a modest rancho, and his parents lived in a small adobe-and-stone house (the remains of which still exist, as I discovered when I visited Anencuilco). The Zapata family were poor, but, unlike most of the people in Morelos, not depressed to the verge of want. Emiliano also had a little schooling. And he became an expert horseman. He was a bad orator, but he became a good organizer. And soon came to hate the rich landowners. Nevertheless, he was far more patient than many of his companions, even after he had been elected Supreme Chief of the Liberation Army of the South.

Emiliano Zapata was, of course, not a socialist. Nor was he an ideologue. He wanted, and fought for, the return of the common lands stolen from the Indians; and, as time went by, he was influenced to some extent by the ideas of the anarcho-communist Ricardo Flores Magon. If anything, Zapata was a rather backward-looking utopian communist. But he could not be bought. He was offered almost anything to give up the struggle against the rich, the powerful and the Mexican state; but he never gave up, even after ten years. In 1919 he was lured into a trap by government agents and murdered.

By 1920, after ten years of struggle, insurrection and civil war, Mexico was in a very poor way indeed. The power of the hacendados had been largely broken; but the people were exhausted. Even the Zapatistas had had more than enough. But, as recent events have shown, Zapatismo lives on.

New Mexico
Between 1920 and 1933, almost eight million hectares of arable land was returned to the peones. But between 1934 and 1940, during the presidency of Lazaro Cardenas, more than twelve million hectares was distributed. He also organized an "ejidal" bank to give credit to new farmers.

However, with what was to be the slow, but irreversible, development of industrial capitalism in Mexico, the few existing, as well as newly-created ejidos, tended to become merely cooperative farms, largely financed by the government. Since 1940, more land has been distributed; but, in the main, the plots have been so small that they are economically unviable.

Feudalism in Mexico has gone. A new, bourgeois, capitalist class has emerged, as well as its opposite, a propertyless, working class. But there are still millions of peones and former peones often living in appalling poverty. Many are, in the words of Franz Fanon, the "Wretched of the Earth", waiting, if they are lucky, to be used as cheap, exploited labour in a increasingly capitalist economy. For decades following the end of the civil war, they had became apathetic, demoralized, even frightened. Meanwhile the Mexican government had become more powerful, efficient and, therefore, more repressive. Then, things began to change. In October 1968, on the eve of the Olympic Games, over 200 student demonstrators were killed by units of the army.

After 1969, numerous Zapatista-type groups began to operate in various parts of the country. There was considerable unrest in the state of Puebla, following land occupations. In the state of Guerrero, a guerrilla "party of the poor", another Zapatista-type organization, had considerable grassroots support in the vast, almost impenetrable mountain and jungle areas between Acapulco on the Pacific Coast and Morelos.

Still Active
Although its leader, Lucio Cabanas, was finally killed by the army in 1974, remnants of the "party of the poor" were still active in Guerrero when I was there in 1980. Throughout the 1970s, there was considerable unrest in at least five states. And hundreds of peones were killed by the Mexiacan army. In 1981, there were violent demonstrations against the state oil company, Pemex - in the state of Chiapas.

Chiapas
Chiapas is in the extreme south-east of mexico, and borders Guatemala, with which it has more in common than northern and central Mexico. It has the highest percentage of "pure" Indians, largely of Maya origin, in the country. Many of its people do not speak Spanish, the official language of Mexico, but up to 20 local languages.

Although capitalist relationships prevail in Chiapas, as elsewhere in Mexico, semi-feudal, conditions continue to exist. There are also still vast cattle ranches, controlled by a small clique, with the Indian villages administered by pro-government caciques or village bosses. Only about 65 percent of households have any electricity; and, particularly in the rural areas, there is little main drainage or running water. In a manifesto issued by the Zapatista Liberation Army, they claim" "we possess nothing, absolutely nothing, not land, not work, not education. Today, we say: enough". It is not surprising, therefore, that some at least have rebelled.

They have claimed up to 2,000 guerrilleros, but this is obviously an exaggeration. Most of their weapons have been stolen from army depots. Originally, they captured about six towns, including San Cristobal de la Casa and Guadalupe Tepayac.

The army have drafted in up to 15,000 troops. Over 200 people have been killed, much of them from bombing by the Mexican air force.

Modern State Power
It is obvious that such a movement will fail against the power of a modern state. Furthermore, it has no positive, forward-looking objective.

The people know what they are against, but that is about all. Now that, especially with the signing of NAFTA, Mexico is being integrated into the North American capitalist orbit, the workers of Chiapas, and elsewhere in Mexico, have no alternative but to organize with their fellow workers throughout the world, in order to abolish capitalism completely. Violent rebelling can achieve nothing of value, neither in the short nor the long run.

Peter E. Newell

Are We All Zapatistas? (2005)

From the September 2005 issue of the Socialist Standard

"We are all Zapatistas" has been painted on banners, walls and shouted at demonstrations in recent years. The slogan has been used by leftists, anarchists, advocates of fair-trade schemes and even for commercial gain. But who are the Zapatistas?

The Zapatistas take their name from Emiliano Zapata who led the Ejrcito Libertador del Sur (Liberation Army of the South) during the Mexican Revolutionary war from 1910 until his assassination in 1919. During the 30-year dictatorship of Porfirio Diaz which preceded the revolution much of the land farmed by the indigenous people was enclosed to form haciendas or ranches for the production of food for export markets forcing peasants into, both wage- and debt-slavery to the often cruel ranch owners. Zapata's army sought to institute the Plan of Ayala for the repossession of the haciendas for landless peasants where pre-enclosure legal titles existed and partial expropriation of land, with compensation, where legal titles didn't exist. The Liberation Army of the South initially fought the federal forces who sought to uphold the dictatorship of Porfirio Diaz. Zapata's army also fought the constitutionalist forces which eventually replaced Diaz as well as the intervening military dictatorship.

Despite the defeat of Zapata's army, the 1917 Mexican Constitution contained a provision for the return of communal lands appropriated by the haciendas and to provide new lands called ejidos to landless peasants. Communal lands and ejidos are owned by the people of a village and plots within the designated areas are divided amongst individual families to work. However, this article of the constitution was never fully implemented, or yielded only small or unproductive land areas to the peasants. In 1992, President Carlos Salinas de Gortari revoked the constitutional commitment protecting communal land from private ownership in preparation for implementation of the North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA). The NAFTA would also remove agricultural price support affecting peasants who were increasingly reliant on small scale cash crop production.

On the day the NAFTA came into force the Ejrcito Zapatista de Liberacin Nacional (EZLN, Zapatista Army of National Liberation) officially declared war on the Mexican government and invaded six main population centres and many ranches in the Chiapas region of south eastern Mexico. It is the EZLN and their supporters that are referred to as Zapatistas.

Open conflict in Chiapas lasted twelve bloody days in which hundreds lost their lives mainly due to aerial bombardment of EZLN-held towns by the Mexican army. By 1995, tens of thousands of troops were stationed in the region. There has been little open combat since, but a network of checkpoints, army patrols, military incursions and alliances with local paramilitary groups have been used to intimidate and wear down the EZLN. The EZLN signed an accord with the Mexican Government in 1996 to institute peace and political rights for the people of Chiapas, though the government later reneged on many of the provisions. Paramilitaries, who have subsequently been linked to local landowners and ruling party officials, assassinated 45 Zapatistas in the town of Acteal in December 1997.

Chiapas is about the same size (area and population) as the Republic of Ireland. The area has a long history of conflict over land. Peasants have been forced onto the thin, rocky soils and steep slopes of the highlands with the encroachment of cattle ranching, coffee and sugar plantations from the more fertile lowland regions. Land availability has also been reduced by forestry and mineral, gas and oil extraction operations. Migration from neighbouring Guatemala, migration of those fleeing poverty in Mexico and the return of many of those who had migrated to urban areas for employment after crisis of capitalism in the early 1980s caused rapid population increase and eventual retreat into the inhospitable Lacandon jungle where the Zapatista rebellion is centred.

The EZLN was formed in the early 1980s by Leninists who had migrated into the Chiapas jungle to lead the peasantry to revolution. One of those who joined the EZLN was the man now known as Subcommandante Marcos, the Zapatista's military leader and most famous spokesman. The EZLN found that many of the peasants there could not support the idea of the revolutionary vanguard and language of 'Marxism'. What followed was what Marcos calls a period of "indianization". The Leninist founders of the EZLN steeped themselves in native Mayan culture. In the words of Marcos, quoted by Yvon Le Bot (El Sueno Zapatista, 1997):

"Suddenly the revolution transformed itself into something essentially moral. Ethical. More than the redistribution of wealth or the expropriation of the means of production, the revolution began to be the possibility for a human being to have a space for dignity."

The "indianization" of the EZLN seemed to infuse the organisation with the local traditions of direct and decentralised democracy. However, in material terms the EZLN retained much of the previous reformist ideology. The Declaration of War, written in 1993, stated that the EZLN was acting legitimately to overthrow the ruling government because of their unconstitutional actions. The statement also says that the EZLN proudly carry the national flag into battle.

In June this year the EZLN announced a new political initiative in the Sixth Declaration of the Selva Lacandona. They suggest a national campaign, "which will be clearly of the left, or anti-capitalist, or anti-neoliberal, or for justice, democracy and liberty for the Mexican people, in order to demand that we make a new Constitution, new laws which take into account the demands of the Mexican people, which are: housing, land, work, food, health, education, information, culture, independence, democracy, justice, liberty and peace. We are also letting you know that the EZLN will establish a policy of alliances with non-electoral organizations and movements which define themselves, in theory and practice, as being of the left, . . "

The stipulations for organisations wishing to join the national campaign are a democratic structure and a "clear commitment for joint and co-ordinated defence of national sovereignty, with intransigent opposition to privatization attempts of electricity, oil, water and natural resources." In addition, the Zapatistas offered food aid to Cuba for their resistance to the USA's embargo, express admiration for Che Guevara and Simon Bolivar and offered to send handicrafts, coffee or soup to activists in Europe to help with the struggle against neo-liberalism. The Zapatistas clearly think that capitalism can be run in the interests of the workers through state possession of industry and with the absence of the intervention by foreign capital.

The EZLN stopped making demands for constitutional rights from the Mexican government in 2001 and began to form a state within a state. This is described by Marcos in Chiapas: The Thirteenth Stele as involving the withdrawal of the EZLN from civil matters and establishment of self-governing villages or Autonomous Municipalities, with recallable and rotated functionaries. In August 2003, the 'Juntas of Good Government' were formed. These are regional councils which take the functions of administering justice, taxation, healthcare, education, housing, land, work, food, commerce, information and culture, and local movement from the EZLN. Marcos states that there have been improvements in living conditions as well as improvements in gender equality in the notoriously patriarchal peasant societies since the formation of 'Juntas of Good Government'.

However, the war is not over as EZLN recruitment and guerilla warfare training continues. The U.S. Department of State's Bureau of Democracy, Human Rights, and Labor report for 2004 highlights instances of state and local police involvement in kidnappings and extortion, torture, unlawful killings, narcotics-related crime and the trafficking of illegal migrants in Chiapas. The report also states that there were numerous allegations of the use of excessive force and the violation of international humanitarian law against the Mexican Army as well as continued violence by paramilitary groups.

There is also US involvement in the Chiapas rebellion which is perhaps of no surprise given the proximity and the fact that Mexico has the third-largest proven crude oil reserves in the Western Hemisphere and is the third-largest foreign supplier of petroleum to the United States, behind Canada and Saudi Arabia. PEMEX, the state-owned oil corporation, is a vital source of revenue for the Mexican state which is heavily indebted to the banks in the USA. Oil fields with one billion barrel potential have recently been discovered in Chiapas.

According to the Federation of American Scientists' Arms Sales Monitoring Project direct commercial sales of defence articles (e.g. machine guns, rifles, pistols, grenade launchers and ammunition) and defence services (e.g. missiles, rockets, torpedoes, bombs, mines and tanks) amounted to $112million and $436million, respectively, in 2003. The US military also spent $1.25million on training the Mexican Army in 2003. The US training programmes are officially for counter-narcotic operations, however the Mexican Army have been observed using techniques learnt from the US military against the EZLN in Chiapas.

From the initial uprising the EZLN has publicised their struggle using the printed media and the internet. The writings of Subcommandante Marcos are available in many different editions and languages. The Chiapas conflict has become a celebrated cause for many activists across the world and has, in part, been shaped by the involvement of activists. The Mexican Army's ceasefire has been attributed to the protests in Mexico's urban centres far away from the Chiapas. The presence of peace observers mostly drawn from Zapatista support groups in the USA and Europe, as well as Mexico itself, is thought to have prevented excessive violence and intimidation by the Mexican army in Chiapas.

So well-known across the world is the name and image of the Zapatista that co-operatives in the Zapatista communities are producing and marketing their own brand of coffee which is distributed in Europe through various ethical shopping outlets. In 1994 The Independent (1 March) reported that Zapatista t-shirts, dolls and even condoms bearing an image of Marcos and the word 'uprising' have been marketed. In 2001, workers of a trendy clothing shop in Covent Garden selling Zapatista-inspired merchandise spray-painted Zapatista imagery and slogans on walls around major shopping areas in central London as well as dressing up as Zapatista guerrillas to hand out advertising material.

For socialists there are several encouraging things about the Zapatista movement: their apparent reliance on direct democracy and the solidarity shown to them by workers across the world. However, it is clear that the Zapatistas think their rallying cry of 'democracy, liberty and justice' can be fulfilled whilst the greatest amount of wealth, all it commands, and that we all depend upon remains in the hands of a minority.

So are we all Zapatistas? The workers and peasants of Chiapas have experienced some of the worst poverty and violence that humans have inflicted on each other. Workers across the world experience poverty and violence to some extent on a daily basis it is the common bond that transcends national boundaries. This feature of our class-based society, an inevitable result of the social relation of worker to capital, has never been abolished by national liberation, state capitalism or 'good' government. The Zapatistas' desire for real democracy is commendable, however, this should not be limited to defence of perceived or actual gains within capitalist society but for the abolition of capitalism and establishment of world socialism.

Piers Hobson