I do not have the text in English of the document this was in response to, if you have it please email it to me at mark_connolly@newmail.net
WRITTEN BY THE NATIONAL COMMISSION FOR DEMOCRACY IN MEXICO, USA
We have strong disagreements with the interview with Salvador Castaneda. (Castaneda was a founding member of the Revolutionary Action Movement (MAR), which led a guerrilla struggle in the 1970's in Mexico. In 1990 he and other former guerrillas founded the Center for Historical Studies of Armed Movement.) Throughout this interview Castaneda reveals a set of rigid concepts which in in sum argues the uselessness of the struggle of the EZLN. It is almost as though he were frozen in time, locked within the context of his own era, his own organization's mistakes, and a theory which still elevates the armed struggle above all other forms of struggle. His conception does not acknowledge the dialectical relationships of all forms of political struggle. In addition, some of Castaneda's statements are a careless misrepresentation of the facts. Below, we list points of contention. Let us state clearly, that we in no way judge or denigrate the sincerity of Castaneda's struggle during his time. We just strongly disagree with his critique of the EZLN. Below are our reasons.
PARAGRAPH 2 "..the EZLN were able to build up their organization without being noticed. They were not confronted with a whole variety of security risks which our urban guerrilla..had to deal with.."
-Is Castaneda unable to imagine the security challenges of providing food, uniforms, training, recruitment, education, etc., to one of the largest forces in the history of Latin American revolutionary struggle? What does he think it took to move and grow in the context of the Lacandon Jungle? Unlike previous movements, which believed that guerrillas should be built in urban areas because they contained most of the populace, the EZLN chose to build, not a guerrilla, but an Army and chose to do it quietly under the protection of a jungle terrain and its indigenous populace, which has a courageous and proven history of resistance and struggle during revolutionary movements in Mexico. This civilian population protected and prepared the EZLN for a period of ten years. The EZLN not only succesfully overcame "security risks", it endured, it grew, it learned from its base communities and accumulated influence and experience; and it did so on the strength of its political program as well as its armed character. PARAGRAPH 4 "..The only military confrontation was the struggle around the Rancho Nuevo barracks.."
-An attentive reading to press reports should help one know; there was everything from skirmishes to fierce combat at Las Margaritas, Ocosingo, and other areas as well. PARAGRAPH 5 "..the present conditions all favour the federal army. They have been able to expand and strengthen their ring of defenses with military advisors and modern weapons."
--Technology, weapons, even advice must be managed by human beings who must have a strong reason for fighting. The Mexican federal army may be bristling with weapons whose use has been distinguished by indiscriminate brutality against civilians, based on their role in Mexican society as a defensive force for the interests of the powerful. Its primary use has been as a repressive force in political and electoral conflicts. For all its firepower, it has not confronted an organized armed force, with a strong reason for fighting.
Those of us in the United States especially recall the story of a similar confrontation between a force based in a jungle and a superior force in numbers and technology. The force with the technology eventually just evacuated. The name of the story was Vietnam. PARAGRAPH 8 "The CND exists because of the conditions of the ceasefire, but when the ceasefire is over, the CND will disappear. It cannot be an effective support for the EZLN."
--How does Castaneda define political power? Does it exist only when there is a registered political party? When people find registered political parties to be ineffective or restraining within given historical circumstances, do they not have the political right to create another vehicle? The CND exists precisely as an organizational vehicle for those without a "party", and those party members committed to fighting for an end to the party-state system. In spite of the breadth and complexity of its task and for all its problems, the CND has established a presence in all of Mexico--not a homogenous or well-developed one, but a presence nonetheless. It exists because of the vibrant and growing opposition to the party-state system in Mexico.
In the next paragraph Castaneda goes on to attack the EZLN's warnings about events in December, implying that they have been empty over-estimations. Castaneda apparently expected a literal manifestation of the EZLN's warnings. What has occurred is social turmoil on many different levels and for many different reasons. While this turmoil is not at a profound level of visibility or strength, the passage of time has demonstrated that the EZLN is a careful student of the social reality around them. In Mexico today, there are thousands of civilians openly confronting the party-state system at enormous risk to their lives. Castaneda sorely underestimates the integrity of the Mexican people. In its projections the EZLN does the opposite; it gives voice to that integrity. PARAGRAPH 10 "I think it was a mistake to go to the negotiations table after only two weeks of struggle. They should have carried out many more military actions to prove that they are capable of inflicting serious blows against the federal army. Then they could have entered into negotiations in a stronger position."
--Castaneda argues that the EZLN should conduct itself as though it were in a vacuum. To kill for the sake of killing or to prove oneself, is a vain, desperate act. It has been demonstrated historically that armed struggle in isolation of other forms of struggle has not alone achieved profound social change. In the EZLN's charge to the CND to "struggle for a peaceful transition to democracy..struggle and defeat us..defeat will be sweet if it is at the hands of [a peaceful transition]". Sweet, because the EZLN's goal is "democracy, liberty, justice" for all of Mexico. The EZLN's goal is not its reputation, its glorification, its individual elevation to a governor's mansion or transformation to a political party. It has stated repeatedly that it is an armed group and that, within a national political struggle, its character has limitations. It has invested an enormous amount of its resources in asking civil society to organize itself, to accomplish what the EZLN clearly understands it cannot do alone. PARAGRAPH 14 "What's more there are internal differences within the EZLN regarding the conception of the struggle....the EZLN put their faith in the PRD"
--If the EZLN had faith in a political party, all of its members would be party militants and not armed insurgents. In a document written shorty after the August 1994 elections, the EZLN states;
"The EZLN did not give its support to the CND with the condition that the election results be favorable to some opposition party. The EZLN did not bet on an electoral juncture. The EZLN bet on the Mexican people, we believe in them, we live for them, we struggle for them, we will die for them.."
Castaneda apparently sees the EZLN as a monolithic structure, as though internal differences of expression should not exist in organizations. He adheres to a mechanistic dogmatic left conception of an organizational "line", and does so on the basis of select interviews with EZLN leadership. To say there are "internal political differences" within the EZLN based on this superficial background is an unsubstantiated sweeping generality. PARAGRAPH 16 "The mistake was [of the EZLN] to start to war without [building up bases of suport outside their zone]. That is the same mistake which we in the MAR made..[we] discussed this with Marcos in August..we just don't fit into your scheme of things was his reply..the entire politics of the EZLN since January seems very improvised and voluntary to me.."
--On May 26th of 1993 the Federal Army found a training camp of the EZLN. It is now known that Carlos Salinas de Gortari decided to deny reports of an armed group in Chiapas in order to secure the passage of NAFTA. In interviews held with the EZLN early in 1994, they stated their decision to act on January 1st was based on their certainty that the PRI government would act against them soon after NAFTA was secured.
The politics of the EZLN seem improvised to Castaneda, because the EZLN has rescued the dynamism of revolutionary theory. In the Third Declaration from the Lacandon Jungle the EZLN states;
" The pre-electoral process in August 1994 brought hope to many sectors of the country, that the transition to democracy was possible by means of the electoral process. Knowing that elections are not, in the current conditions, the road to democratic change, the EZLN accepted being put to one side in order to give legal political opposition forces the opportunity to struggle. The EZLN pledged its word and its effort, then, to seeking a peaceful transition to democracy."
In their respectful acknowledgement that at given points in history the EZLN must step aside and let other sectors of Mexican society act, the EZLN breaks the "vanguardist" mold of the traditional left. In so doing, the EZLN has confused and frustrated those dogmatic sectors of the left who still believe that to be a vanguard means to lead at all times, to denigrate other forms of struggle, to act in defiance of reality, to assume or declare that role without having earned it.
At various points Castaneda argues that the truce, negotiations, etc., only serve the purpose of giving the party- state system the opportunity to solidify itself. He ignores another fact. This time also gives civil society a place, a say- so in the speed and nature of the struggle for democracy in Mexico, and an opportunity to organize itself. Castaneda is correct when he says that by so doing the EZLN puts itself at risk. But the EZLN is not interested in self-preservation, it is interested in "democracy, liberty, and justice" for the people of Mexico and its action prove this.
In December of 94 the EZLN was surrounded by 40,000 federal troops. The Third Declaration of the Lacandon jungle contains the EZLN's analysis of the state of the country;
" The government and the country again forgot the original inhabitants of these lands. Cynicism and laziness returned to take possession of the sentiments of the Nation. Along with their rights to the minimal conditions of life with dignity, the indigenous peoples were denied the right to govern and govern according to their own reason and will. The deaths of our members become useless. Seeing that they [the PRI government] did not leave us with any other alternative, the EZLN risked breaking the military blockade that surrounded it, and marched with the help of other indigenous brothers, who were fed up with the despair and misery and tired of the peaceful means. Seeking at all costs to avoid bloodying Mexican soil with the brothers' blood, the EZLN saw itself obliged to call the Nation's attention anew to the grave conditions of Mexican indigenous life."
The EZLN's analysis resulted in its mobilization outside the military encirclement. It did so without firing a shot, because it knew this would weaken its political position. It risked everything in doing so. But it knew that to remain inactive was to betray the aspirations of the civilian movement which had established a government in rebellion and carried out various acts of civil resistance. In response, Mexican society has moved once again for peace.
The EZLN has studied the fates of past armed movement. "From El Salvador we learned never to give up our arms..from Nicaragua never to trust an electoral process.." they have stated. To be students of the social reality which surrounds them, necessarily imply changes and adjustments in their plans and projects, and even their organizational conceptions. They have, as yet, never strayed from a set of basic principles, yet they have indeed improvised and adjusted in response to a constantly changing reality.
The EZLN has taught the world that change is possible when one acts from a position of humility. It is this integrity, this quiet courage which has made the EZLN a vanguard. Although they have never claimed or sought it, the world has given them this position. It is the blood of these insurgents, of those who "don't speak good Spanish" as Castaneda whines, which has advanced revolutionary theory, shed fossilized conceptions, given new life to the political movement in Mexico, new hope to sectors all over the world.
The success of the EZLN's struggle is not dependent on their military strength as Castaneda seems to believe. It is, as it should be, directly tied to the will of civil society in Mexico and other parts of the world. How will civil society construct a peace with dignity? How will they organize a viable democracy? Since they reject a military conflict, what will they do to put an end to the fierce and brutal war on Mexico's poor by famine, domination and repression perpetrated by a corrupt dictatorship? How will the honest sectors of the world respond to the fact that Mexico is a microcosm of the global reality. What will civil society do in view of the fact that the planet's resources are controlled by a small percentage of the world's population while billions suffer in incredible misery? Will the people of the United States continue to allow its government to enslave the people of Mexico?
In the period of twelve months, the EZLN has given the world a rich and vast legacy. If the EZLN disappears tomorrow, it will nevertheless have left an indelible mark on history. Mexico will never be the same. If those of us who thirst for a just society are good students of history, we will never be the same as well.