Almost one year after the Acteal massacre, more than 15,000 displaced still remain in more than 10 municipalities in Chiapas (Tila, Sabanilla, Tumbala, Salto de Agua, Palenque, Venustiano Carranza, La Independencia, Las Margaritas, Chenalho, Altamirano, Ocosingo, El Bosque and Tenejapa, among others). In this bulletin, we wish to share with you what has taken some time to become apparent, and what may be the central objective of the forced displacement.
"They beat me up, they put me in jail, they made me cooperate. They persecuted me, they spied on my house. I left my community to go to the mountain, they displaced me, they separated me from my family. I am anxious, because now I have nothing". (2)
"They stole my belongings: my coffee growing land, they killed my mule. I left my house, community and land, my field. I don't think very well now, I forget things, I'm distracted. I'm constantly frightened, nervous, fearful. Now I have a headache".
"They kidnapped me and threatened me. I displaced, I am sad, worried, I cry a lot. Fear, anxiety about thinking about what happened, I feel like I have lost everything".
""I am not well, because, since December 22 my heart has been wounded, and it still hasn't healed, and I believe it's going to stay like that for months and years. I have headaches, I'm worried, I am afraid of the paramilitaries, and I want to cry".
"When the rumor came, even hunger went away, the women got sick more because they had no fun, they don't go out like we do to collect firewood".
"I am not well, I am worried because I'm not in my house, I'm used to seeing my field there, I am sick".
Deaths, being imprisoned, threats, dislocations, robbery, kidnappings, flight, and a long etcetera_The traumatic experiences which the displaced population has experienced have had a clear impact on their mental health. What we have been able to see up to this point is:
- On the one hand, in the area of thought processes: Lack of control of thoughts. Problems in concentration and in memory, specific or generalized fears, "much worrying," ideation of death, psychological weakness, nightmares, recurrent thoughts_
- Disorders in the affective arena: profound sadness, uncontrollable crying, anxiety (persecution, existential), profound feelings of loss (generalized sadness: over belongings, persons, physical), "attacks of nerves", feelings of defenselessness and insecurity, depression (wanting to die, fear, lack of interest in work, lessening of self-esteem, insomnia), "being scared".
- Psychosomatic disorders: Loss of speech, epileptic attacks during traumatic situations (we still do not know whether they existed prior to the situation, or whether they were provoked by it), spontaneous abortions due to "fright", amenorrea or menorrhagia, headaches, stomach problems.
- Behavior disorders: Increase in aggressive behaviors, alcoholism, passivity-inactivity.
The displaced are experiencing a great variety of emotions: fear, lack of reality, terror, defenselessness, the sensation of being imprisoned and lack of liberty, persecution anxiety, feelings of loss, disorientation, chaos, confusion and insecurity, blocking of thoughts, loneliness, anger, weakness, vulnerability, instability, experiences of physical injury.
The yearning for everything they left behind is accentuated by the current deprivations which they are experiencing. This speaks to us of a collective pain which needs to be addressed, of emotional insecurity and difficulties in thought, accentuated by the lack of clarity of the immediate present and, most especially, of the future. There is a difference in the experience of the older persons and in that of the youngest. The older ones feel the loss of everything that cost them so much to achieve and to build: the feeling of loss is greater, and the sense of having to start all over again at zero, with nothing. Damage is also seen in the men in their role as head of the family, not being able to work, not being able to support their family.
- In the families: The situation of tension and the attacks they have suffered is transferred to the family unit, and it is added to a situation of great uncertainty which makes the social development of each member of the family, and relative, impossible.
In addition, the overcrowding of several families into a hall increases the appearance of intra and inter-family conflicts. The breakdown of the families also occurs through the lack of privacy. This creates an important change of roles in the nuclear family (especially in the paternal role), and it exacerbates the experience of displacement, with the lack of even a space of normality within the family which is not conditioned by the situation of the conflict.
These symptoms are worse in populations depending on the presence of various variables: more or less inactivity-passivity, more or less political formation, greater or lesser possibilities of leaving the place of displacement, greater or lesser experiences of threats in their communities of origin, greater or lesser amounts of economic losses, etc.
Learning from the history of conflicts in the world, and, above all, in this part of the south, it is clear that the situations experienced by the displaced population have a predetermined cause and effect relationship in mental health.
According to Elisabeth Lira, "The objective [_] is, in the last analysis, to obliterate the subject in his existence, in his ties, in his life project, in his future, in his social project [_]" (3)
- Concerning the daily experience of fear, Maria Teresa Almarza says: "it alters the cognitive aspects of the relationship with the world and the perceptual keys necessary in order to correctly read reality". Mental blocks, difficulty in thinking clearly, lack of concentration: all make the analysis of reality difficult, and, with that, the making of decisions and the planning for suitable alternatives, which, consequently, hinder the population's resistance responses, remaining enclosed in the dynamic of survival. Everyone knows that a disoriented population is a controllable population.
- A population enclosed by hunger and illnesses, and without the basic necessities, is a population that is easily purchased. This has a direct relationship to the history of official humanitarian aid. The social work in the camps, imposed against the will of the people, is a clear example of this objective.
- Stealing and looting of belongings: Beyond all the denunciations which have been made of the thefts (such as payments to the attackers, the selling of the goods in order to purchase weapons, etc_), for the displaced, the loss of their belongings is an important injury, and it is not by chance that, for example, in Chenalho, the brunt of the attacks and the massive displacement have occurred during harvest time. It increases the sense of having lost everything, of being empty, without reference; it generates and exacerbates the process of pain, and it profoundly damages the person's identity.
According to Castilla del Pino: "The loss of the object, which ceases to be mine due to force, constitutes a loss, not just of the object, but also of me, myself, of a part of me, myself [_]" (4). This is perhaps even more real in the indigenous culture, where identity is deeply tied to the land and to maize. In the statements we have listened to, to be far away from one's land, to see one's harvest looted and destroyed, causes great pain and melancholy. It provokes and worsens an injury and the sense of loss (of one's belongings, of one's land and of a part of oneself).
- The daily experience of fear and stress produces emotional and psychosomatic disorders. Anxiety, deep sadness, the sense of being defenseless and of vulnerability, all prevent the establishment of healthy affective relationships and hinder communication and dialogue. It encourages individualism and separation from the task of the damaged population's organizing and/or political life.
The person remains in a situation of low self-esteem, and the feeling of being of less value is directly related to the sense of impotency. If the person remains there, at a standstill, and remains immobilized, everything is lost, the other is omnipotent. The perception of one's own potential to confront danger is limited, and, simultaneously, much greater power is granted to the one who provoked the damage that that person actually has. And, in the face of this, it is not possible to do anything.
"If inhibition survives, that is, the inability of the subject to love and to work owing to the sense of generalized helplessness, we are confronted with a subject who is psychologically damaged". (5)
- Displacement places a large part of the population in a dynamic of inactivity-passivity, which is one of its objectives: to paralyze. The people feel "dazed", they have little sense of direction and the self-esteem of these persons is damaged. In the indigenous worldview, mental health is intimately related to the function which each person has within his community; if he loses that function, damage is produced, which, in Western terms, we call mental health. In this way, the inactivity-passivity causes injury to the socio-cultural system itself (which is what determines the concept of disorder and its psychological manifestations).
If the threats and the deaths are traumatic situations, which cause undeniable damage in the people, there is also an entire series of circumstances which surrounds the displaced and which also carry out their function of exacerbating the damage.
Maria Teresa Almarza says: "Terrorizing, which is the instilling of fear, causes the memory of the terrible things which have been experienced to be rekindled [_]" (6)
- Not being able to work: Upon being asked once about the characteristics of a psychologically healthy person, Freud responded: someone who is capable of working and of loving. Independent of Freud, it is clear that the possibilities of working, of maintaining a family, of taking care of the necessities through ones' own efforts and of playing the role which corresponds to each in their community: these are all an important part of the maintenance of the person's life program and mental health. Displacement makes this impossible.
Quite the contrary, it increases the population's passivity and inactivity, something well-thought out in the strategies of mass control. With this, we are referring to the experience of the camp as a place of waiting, where there is nothing to do other than surviving. This encourages and exacerbates the inactivity-passivity of the population which we mentioned previously.
Maintaining this dynamic, and the maintenance of displacement. In Nuevo Plan de Ayala and Emiliano Zapata (municipality of Palenque), a group of State Security Police occupied the school building (the only concrete structure) in order to "make sure the invaders don't return", one of the police officers succinctly stated. But the 664 children, women and men of the two dislocated lots, for the time being in refuge in the Ojo de Agua and Rio San Diego ejidos, had already made a decision: "We will return to the land so that we don't die of hunger. There is no alternative". (Perez, M., La Jornada, 3/17/97, p.7) (7)
This is obvious in the actions which provoked the displacements, and also in those which are maintained once the original population is no longer there. The burning of houses and the destruction of the cultivated lands are powerful reasons for not being able to return and for the maintenance of displacement. In Chenalho, for example, during the months of the displacement, the displaceds' harvests continued to be stolen, and, further, there have been cases where a new owner occupies the house and the land of the person who had been forced to leave. There are also the threats for those returning and the insecurity provoked due to the paramilitaries' remaining free and armed.
The actions are also evident in the dislocated autonomous municipalities, where, in place of the municipal president's house, or, in place of a clinic or school, there is an army barracks, where the PRI members are maintaining a circle of control around the Zapatista population, and where experience now dictates that, when one organizes according to uses and customs, there is no fate other than Cerro Hueco (the name of the state prison). To this we can add the situation in the Northern zone, where there are still denunciations of the existence of communities besieged by Peace and Justice, of the control of roads and the entrances and exits to the town: none of which have been addressed by the relevant authorities.
- Military control. The presence of the military camps in the places of displacement is in response to the enforcement of the federal Firearms and Explosives Law, to give security to the displaced and to the social work campaigns.
From January through the month of July, there have been approximately 30 military and police operations (the chronology of which was covered in Bulletin No. 120), without counting the installation of new military camps. In none of these operations has there been any entrance into, or search of, any of the houses or communities where the existence of paramilitary groups, or their possession of weapons, has been denounced. On the contrary, all the incursions have been into communities belonging to independent and opposition organizations. In fact, in Chenalho, despite the existence of several open investigations by the PGR [Attorney General's Office of the Republic] and by the Public Ministry, and despite the presence of approximately 20 military and police installations and camps, not one single paramilitary weapon has been discovered, nor have those responsible for the massacre of December 22, 1997 been captured.
In this same regard, many denunciations exist of the controls of the military checkpoints at the various entrances to the locations of the displaced. (and other places in the State). The inspections are more of a police interrogation, where they are more interested in who one is, where one is going and what one is doing, than what one might have in one's backpack. In fact, they barely check at all for the alleged carrying of weapons.
In another arena, it is hard to believe in the effectiveness of the social work, in places where the displaced population has rejected official humanitarian aid. It is certain that all the aid and consultations which the SEDENA (Secretary of Defense) has announced it has dispensed and carried out, have not gone to the population of the displaced organizations.
As for security, other bulletins and press releases have already demonstrated the harassment by law enforcement agencies of the population, including the firing of shots into the air at night, harassment of women, etc_
Because of all of this, the presence of the federal Army promotes the sense of a lack of freedom, and the perception of control of the population. Nor do the displaced feel secure, in any way due to their presence: rather, they have the enemy present in an official way. Fear is maintained, and it is experienced day after day. The feeling of impotence is exacerbated by not being able to remove the soldiers from their lands; their presence and treatment perpetuates the humiliations they experience. The entrance of the army into the camp of X'oyep in Chenalho is sufficient to demonstrate the imposition on, and humiliation of, the displaced population.
"Fear [_], when it is experienced in a continuous and sustained fashion, shatters a person's emotional security, producing an important affective and physical exhaustion, and inhibits their free and productive development".
(Maria Teresa Almarza)
- The destruction of independent initiatives. "They destroyed the organization's stores, they robbed the supply storeroom in Polho, they closed 8 of our churches, thousands of military personnel came into our communities, we lost our work in the Majomut cooperative, they destroyed three clinics". (8)
The women of Las Can~adas denounced their losses in a document. On January 1, the adult women were in Nueva Esperanza (municipality of Altamirano), where the community had fled to the mountain: the soldiers ate 50 hens from the women's' collective, from which they also stole a television, a video player and 20,000 pesos; sacks of maize, beans, sugar, rice and salt were scattered on the ground and sprinkled with gasoline; the fuel contaminated the water drums; they stole record players, machetes, hatchets and money from the houses, throwing clothing and dishes on the floor, defecating on them, dousing them with gasoline. They stole two chainsaws, sound equipment, medicine, livestock and 17,000 pesos from the cooperative. On January 2, women from 13 communities hurriedly arrived, children in their arms, in support of their compan~eras from Nueva Esperanza. They were threatened with being "raffled off" and raped. (_) In the Can~adas there is no food, but there is one soldier for each family. (Castellanos, L. Voyage to the Center of Rage. Doble Jornada. La Jornada, 3/2/98, p. 11) (9)
The dynamics of destruction in the dislocation operations, and in the paramilitary attacks, have been systematic. It is obviously not the same as in those areas where the population has been displaced, but it is equally significant.
The closing of churches, the occupation of cooperative storerooms, the destruction of the cooperatives' artisan shops, the destruction of community dispensaries and clinics, the occupation of the schools, the destruction of the organizations' symbols_All exacerbate the feeling of defenselessness, impotence and, above all, of deep loss, the loss of which we spoke previously.
It is not just one more theft, it is the destruction of all that which is independent, of that which came about from the peoples own efforts, which cost months and years of work and hope, which they did themselves, without government aid, and, from one day to the next, in a matter of minutes, it is destroyed. It is the destruction of the self, of part of the person and of his life project. It is the destruction of the symbol of independence and of a more just future, of the symbol of what was achieved by organizing themselves. The message is very clear: nothing exists outside of the established, anything else is impossible.
It exacerbates the feeling of impotence and frustration, it introduces the fear that everything which would be rebuilt, would be destroyed again, and, with that, comes hopelessness, which also paralyzes. It exacerbates the lack of the vital reference of one's own land, what they had left is no longer the same place.
Along with the destruction, the new "reality" is imposed, physically and overwhelmingly present, such as in the invasion of 5000 military troops to a municipality, such as in the occupied school, such as in the Kaibil mask (half assassin, half devil), which was left in Taniperla, occupying the space where the Life and Dreams of the Perla Can~ada mural had been. As Eduardo Galeano wrote, " [_] To obliterate all evidence that there was something in the region other than silence, jails and tombs. It is forbidden to remember_".
There is also the entrance into the communities of official aid - which distributes what it destroyed - , which provides the necessary means for being able to enter into the communities. We will return to the issue of control.
- Impunity. "It is absolutely clear that the Army does not protect the displaced. The fact that the army and paramilitaries are thick as thieves is hidden only to those with no do not wish to see or to understand. Acts such as Acteal can only occur with the Army's blessing. There would be nothing simpler than for the Army to identify the paramilitaries and to disarm them. If they do not do so, it is because they do not want to do so. Logic exists, and it must be respected; if not, we are accomplices to those fabrications with which they wish to deceive us". (Jose Saramago, writer, 1998 Nobel Prize for Literature, 3/17/98) (10)
If we look in the dictionary, "impunity" means: "for something or someone to go without punishment, who deserves it". Punishment has been historically used as an exemplary measure, as a means of correcting behavior, as a definition of what can be done and what cannot. When something goes without being punished, it is legitimized as being permissible.
In Chiapas, while they continue filling the jails with members of the EZLN and of independent organizations, the paramilitaries in the Northern Zone continue to act freely, and everything seems to indicate that those in jail for the Acteal massacre could be released due to lack of evidence. By remaining unpunished_it is legitimized.
Impunity, however, is not based only on concealing the guilty and strengthening specific sectors, it, above all, establishes a particular reality for the majority of the population, and it exacerbates the victims' injuries.
"In our welfare practice, we have observed how, with each new political or legal measure related to impunity, anxiety or the previously described symptoms are intensified in our clients, or a new wave of demands for assistance is generated [_]" (11) The lack of justice and social recognition reinforces the trauma.
Fear, anxiety, impotence and defenselessness are experienced again, with every measure of impunity; it strengthens the omnipotent and arbitrary behaviors, and it ignores a sector of society which demands the recognition of their truth. The truth of the displaced, their causes, their experiences, their attackers, are not recognized by society, or, at least not by large sectors of society, and this makes the recognition of the traumatic experience difficult, relegating it to a personal or fragmentary truth. They are part of another country, of another world, of another reality, they are outside the societal mainstream.
- Calling things by another name. Intimately related to impunity and to the lack of societal recognition, we are referring to the speech which denies events as and how they occurred, and which gives them another name and another meaning. They are not what they are, they are not denied, but they are transformed into something else: "Acteal is the result of an inter-community conflict", "it is a confrontation between families", "the EZLN is the primary paramilitary group", etc_ It is also applied to actions, for example, a massacre is a "confrontation", the arbitrary application of force is "the establishment of the state of law", etc_ The lack of societal recognition deepens the damage and hinders its resolution.
Almarza adds: "The population is made to live [_] with contradictory and alienating messages concerning reality, causing wide social sectors to suffer confusion and perplexity, by having the keys for the resolution of a correct analysis of this kept from them".
And, nonetheless, the fortitude and capacity for resistance of the people do not cease to surprise history and to alter its plans. In response to the destruction of the mural in Taniperlas, other cities in other countries brought it back to life, and signed it with good wishes; in response to fear, the public denunciations; in response to hunger, community gardens and solidarity caravans; in response to massacre, sanctuary; in response to siege, the word which leaves and travels the world; in response to the attempts to separate, the shared prayer; in response to injustice, political clarification; in response to humiliations, new gestures of dignity...
All of this capacity renews hope, drives resistance and opens the possibility of new paths in the struggle for respect and equality, for the right to give their word and to demand their rights. These give demonstrations of solutions, where it seemed that only suffering could be seen and they hinder the attempts to wear down and to annihilate. This is what saves, and which, the same as the wounds, are sometimes seen in the small things, from the nearby experiences, and from steps which are taken little by little. Sometimes it is not large acts which inform the world, but they are those which give life and meaning to the continuation of defending that which one believes in, to overcoming defeat.
There are many other aspects related to mental health (such as the impact on the community life) which equally deserve to be mentioned and to be explored, however, and in order not to simplify them, we shall leave them for other bulletins.
Gustavo Castro Soto
|Center for Economic and Political Investigations of Community
Action, A.C.
CIEPAC
(1) Peter Watson. War, Persona and Destruction. Nueva Imagen, Mexico 1982.
(2) Testimony of the Chenalho displaced.
(3) Elizabeth Lira, Eugenia Weinstein, and col. Psychotherapy and Political Repression. Siglo XXI, Mexico, 1984.
(4) Ibid.
(5) Ibid.
(6) Psychosocial Aspects of Repression Under Dictatorships. CINTRAS, Serie Monografias, Chile, 1994.
(7) *Excerpt from the document, "The Unbearable Lightness of the Law: Impunity; Three Months from Acteal", by "Alternative Popular Communication, Working Group" from 4/11/98
(8) Testimony of a displaced person from Las Abejas organization, Chenalho.
(9) *Excerpt from the document, "The Unbearable Lightness of the Law: Impunity; Six Months from Acteal", by "Alternative Popular Communication, Working Group" from 4/11/98
(10) *Excerpt from the document, "The Unbearable Lightness of the Law: Impunity; Six Months from Acteal", by "Alternative Popular Communication, Working Group" from 4/11/98
(11) "Impunity: Reliving the Psychological Trauma". Lucila Edelman, Diana Kordon, Dario Lagos. Revista Reflexion, CINTRAS, December 1995.
ENGLISH VERSION OF "CHIAPAS AL DIA" BULLETIN No. 135 CIEPAC CHIAPAS, MEXICO (November 7, 1998) ****************************************** TRANSLATED BY irlandesa FOR CIEPAC, A.C. ****************************************** Note: If you use this information, cite the source and our e-mail address. E-mail: ciepac@laneta.apc.org Centro de Investigaciones Economicas y Politicas de Accion Comunitaria ___________________________________________________ NUEVO AMANECER PRESS-N.A.P.To know about us visit: http://www.nap.cuhm.mx/nap0.htm (spanish)