This is a text of the Mexican Solidarity Commitee (in
dissolution). This incomplete attempt to evaluate our activities and
viewpoints throughout 4½ years of being active is the product of the
current three remaining members of our Commitee. It does not
necessarily reflect the thoughts of all of those who have been active
in the past.
From 1994 until 1998 we have been
informing interested people in the Netherlands about the situation in
Mexico via different media (e-mail, website, magazine, info evenings,
radio programmes etc.). Our commitee was founded shortly after the
start of the uprising of the Zapatista Army for National Liberation
(EZLN) in the Mexican state of Chiapas. It started life as a platform
organization but after only three months (April 1994) developed into
a group of independent and anti-authoritarian individuals. Throughout
the last 4½ years this small group has not interpreted solidarity as
a mere form of humanitarian action or as a fellow traveller-like
blind solidarity, where there is no place for a personal opinion. We
tried to express our own opinions on the developments in Mexico, the
declarations issued by the leadership of the Zapatistas (EZLN), and
the way the European solidarity network was functioning.
At the start, in 1994, we were
attracted by a certain anti-authoritarianism that emanated from the
communiques of the EZLN. Also we appreciated its refusal to attain
power for themselves and its refusal to become part of the
materialistic world in which everything and everyone is reduced to
its economic value and its capacity to create profit. We saw a lot of
our own ideas and opinions reflected in the way that they looked at
the present globalized society and the way that they thought about
making politics and taking decisions at a grassroots level. Some of
us were however more sceptical than others about the Zapatista credo
of "mandar obeciendo" [governing obeying] and such contradictions as
their devotion to the Mexican flag and nation and the appeals that
they made to the governments of the world that they made in a lot of
their communiques. But at least we all believed in their potential to
trigger radical change.
Starting from 1995 we began to
participate in the European solidarity network for the Zapatistas,
which had just been founded, and we attended various inter-European
meetings of this network. From the fall of 1995 onwards doubts began
to arise amongst us. We heard stories at the European meetings about
groups who tried to monopolize solidarity work in their various
cities/regions/countries. For example the Union of Mexicans in Exile
in Switzerland [(UMES), from Zurich] threatened another group
[(Solidaridad Directa) from the autonomous scene], from the same
city, that was also doing solidarity work. Strangely enough the
people from the autonomous group who told us of the threats and other
authoritarian acts that had been going on but did not really want to
put the 'membership' of the UMES of the European network onto the
agenda of European meetings.
Also we saw, in September 1995, the
failed coup d'etat by some of the Italian groups. They
organised a European meeting in Brescia (Italy) three months before a
previously agreed upon date, in order to create a European central
secretariat that would coordinate the solidarity campaigns and in-
and out-going information. Most of the rest of the European groups
did not attend the meeting in Brescia because they either could not
or did not want to go. The non-Italian groups that were present did
not understand very much because almost all of the discussions were
in Italian, whereas Spanish is the usual lingua franca at
these kind of meetings. Three months previously this same proposal
had been rejected by almost all of the groups present at the European
meeting in Barcelona (June 1995). After a cascade of furious
reactions from all over Europe the central secretariat died a quiet
death. But strangely enough, this attempted coup d'etat was
not criticised openly afterwards at the European meeting in Paris
(January 1996). All the internal differences had to be buried for the
sake of the greater good (the solidarity work for the
Zapatistas). You could ask yourself whats the use of supporting an
anti-authoritarian struggle when you have to take part in a network
where a bunch of completely authoriatarian and centralist groups try
time and time again to impose their ideas and plans upon everyone
else.
Some months later in March 1996 the
same thing almost happened again, when the European Continental
Encounter for Humanity and against Neo-Liberalism was being planned
and prepared by the European network. Although groups in Germany,
especially Berlin, were already preparing this encounter (as agreed
upon at the European meeting in Paris), suddenly an Italian network
(the same one as mentioned before) attempted another coup d'etat, by
announcing that the Encounter was going to take place in Milano
(Italy). The argument that they put forward to continue organising
the encounter in Italy was that everything had already been announced
and that there was no way back. The European network did not let
itself be intimidated and all groups from outside of Italy (and some
of the non-stalinist groups from Italy) declared unanimously that no
Encounter was going to take place in Italy. The Stalinist Italians
stepped down, and remarkably almost no Italian Stalinist was to be
seen at the Encounter that, after all, took place in Berlin (31st May
until 2nd June 1996).
Then, in July-August 1996 the EZLN
organised the Intercontinental Encounter for Humanity and against
Neo-Liberalism that took place in the heartland of the Zapatistas,
the Lacandon jungle. The way that this Encounter was organised and
took place was the cause of a lot of criticism among the
participants. But as ever, almost only verbally and within the
solidarity groups. Criticism seems to be something that is not to be
expresed openly. We saw very few critical analyses of the Encounter
among the publications and magazines published afterwards by
solidarity groups who had attended.
Before, during, and shortly after the
Encounter there had been a lot of critique of the bureaucratic
organisation, the authoritarian moderators of the workgroups at the
Encounter, the lack of discussion during the workgroups because of
the imposed programme of reading endless and repetitive essays, the
absolutely mainstream and superficial summaries (denying the
existence and presence of dissident opinions within the workgroups)
and the spectacular machinations that the people present were
subjected to by the Zapatista organisation (sitting for hours in the
blazing sun waiting for the arrival of the new messias,
subcommandante Marcos). It was shocking to see how people lost their
minds as soon as Marcos appeared anywhere. Whole groups would start
running with their cameras ready to shoot that ONE photo that they
had perhaps come for. Also a lot of the participants had doubts about
the prescence of EZLN representatives in the workgroups. During most
of the workgroups they did not really seem to be present. They took
little part in the discussions, they just sat there and some fell
asleep (as did a lot of others because it was so boring to sit for
two days listening to everyones formally written speeches) and they
read their speeches out (had they been given them?) A lot of the time
they did not seem to understand what the discussions were about. Had
they just been sent there as decoration? Did the other (non-EZLN)
participants in the workgroups consider the fact that they should
have expressed themselves comprehensively, without a lot of
intellectual concepts so that people with little or no education
would also be able to follow and take part in the discussions.
Questions and more questions. A lot of critique but there was no one
who published it.
We have attempted, as well as we could,
to venture our own opinions and those of other compañeros
throughout Europe about the ongoing developments in Mexico and in the
solidarity network. Our irregularly published magazine ZAPATA,
Mexico Nieuwsbrief developed from a simple source of news about
grassroots struggle in Mexico and that of the Zapatistas in
particular, into a magazine that did question a lot of developments
and that criticized openly certain opinions and manoeuvres of the
EZLN and developments within the European solidarity network.
We saw ourselves faced with problems
and embarrassing situations. Of course we also made mistakes. We
spread information based on what we had heard from Mexico and
elsewhere. From time to time the information that we have given in
articles afterwards appeared to be incorrect, partly because we
didn't check it ourselves, partly because we didn't let our own
political opinions prevale, and partly because we were disinformed by
the people or group in question.
In the first year of our existence we
collaberated with a Mexican who put us in contact with "Carlos", a
self proclaimed representative of an organisation called Movimento
Democrático Independiente (MDI), [Independant Democratic
Movement]. After little less than a year this MDI turned out to be a
phantom. MDI did not exist in Mexico. MDI was nothing more than the
European faÁade for the PROCUP, a shadowy dogmatic
Marxist-Leninist urban guerilla organization from Mexico, which is
seen by a lot of Mexicans as a puppet of the Mexican intelligence
services. Although some of us had doubts about particular information
received from "Carlos", we had never actually questioned him about
it. When we found out what his real agenda was we broke off all
contacts with him. The lack of trustworthy information from other
sources, and our own naivity or uncritical attitude meant that we
collaborated for almost a year with somebody whose political ideas
were completely contrary to our own.
Another example of how some of us put
aside their criticism occured in August-September 1995 when we took
part in organising the international Zapatista referendum that the
EZLN had called for. A part of our group thought that the questions
posed in the referendum were completely absurd, vague or irrelevant.
But nonetheless we did send the referendum forms to Mexicans in
Holland and a translated version to subscribers to our magazine and
our sympathisers. It was a completely insane situation, because the
majority of the members of our committee thought that the referendum
was bollocks and did not take part in it. Why organise something that
you do not see the use of? We acted in the same way that a lot of
'militants' do: we put aside our own feelings, doubts and criticisms
for the good of the 'cause'. Afterwards we knew that we had made a
big mistake. This is one of the mistakes we have learned from, but be
sure, we made more.
Quite soon we criticised the haphazard
way that the EZLN dealt with the Mexican left (including the
centre-left Party of the Democratic Revolution [PRD], the trotsky-ist
Revolutionary Labour Party [PRT] and others). One day they rejected
them, to embrace them the day after (such as the courting of
PRD-leaders such as Cuauthémoc Cárdenas and Manuel
López Obrador). The same accounts for the birth of the
civilian branch of the EZLN, the Zapatista Front for National
Liberation (FZLN). Already in April 1996, four months after its
birth, we published a critical analysis of this third attempt by the
Zapatistas to create a network of sympathising civilians in Mexico.
The questions that we raised in that analysis, the fact that we had
the impression that the FZLN was being flooded by people from the
old left who were trying to regain their lost ground in the
Mexican political arena on the wave of the popularity of the FZLN,
were answered during a visit of one of our members to the FZLN
headquarters in Mexico City. A lot of former militants from the
Trotsky-ist PRT were to be found occupying key positions within the
FZLN. Up until this point (October 1998) the FZLN has not decided
whether it will, under certain circumstances, form alliances with
political parties (such as the afore mentioned PRD) or whether it
rejects taking power as a political aim.
Our discontent grew and grew. In
November 1996 Javier Elorriaga and his life companion Gloria
Benavides (two former political prisoners who were arrested in
February 1995 as presumed Zapatista leaders) visited Paris (France)
as representatives of the FZLN and as officially appointed
representatives of the EZLN. They were invited by the crème
de la crème of the French vested centre-left political
parties, unions and cultural elites. They visited Mitterands former
top advisor Régis Debray, chatted with Mitterands widow
Danielle and visited the `socialist' mayor of the city of Montreuil.
This same mayor had, some weeks before ordered the riot police to
evict, with the violence that accompanies such evictions, some houses
squatted by sans papiers (illegal immigrants who do not have
the required residence permits). Then, when these sans papiers
broke into a meeting of these two FZLN/EZLN representatives with the
radical chique from France in the famous Odéon theatre, the
two representatives were not interested in talking to those without
face and voice from France. This tragic spectacle led to a split in
the Parisian solidarity comitee. Outside Paris the conflict was not
taken seriously. Almost nobody expressed any opinion about the
misconduct of the FZLN/EZLN representatives. Neither did the EZLN
react in any way to what had happened in Paris. That was to become
their structural policy.
The EZLN accepted, and still does
accept all support (that does not come from the Mexican government)
without any scruples. In the spring of 1996 they received Danielle
Mitterend, with a great deal of media spectacle in their stronghold
La Realidad (in the Lacandon jungle). During the International
Encounter for Humanity and against Neo-Liberalism in July/August 1996
they had Alain Touraine as one of their guests of honour. Touraine, a
French sociologist, had strongly rejected the wave of wildcat strikes
that had paralized Paris and France in December 1995. Upon strong
protests, from some of the French and German participants, against
Touraine's prescence, Marcos replied that the meaning of the
encounter was to discuss Neo-Liberalism, and the ways to fight it,
with everybody, "even with our enemies as we also talk with our
enemies" [the Mexican government]. The French backed out because they
could not agree among themselves to criticise Marcos or the EZLN
openly at the Encounter. Some French participants even went so far as
to argue that it should not be criticised because "it would damage
the image of France and the French support groups" (sic). But also
the German groups who had been critical of the conduct of the EZLN
backed out, because the French participants did not stick to their
initial criticism. The criticism that the EZLN normally expresses
against most of the Mexican old left, was and is omitted when it
concerns foreign old leftists or sympathising pseudo
leftists.
This same pattern can be seen in their
contacts with the `reformed' Italian communist party Refundazione
Comunista. The EZLN accepted a project paid for by the Venitian
(Italy) city council (in which the Refundazione Comunista has a key
position) for the electrification of the Zapatista village of La
Realidad. We can only see that as a selective acceptance of
authoritarian ideology and political parties. This selectiveness is
surely the result of an opportunistic way of dealing with offers of
help, which the Zapatista support bases do need in order to survive
in certain parts of Chiapas.
Back to Europe once more. In the summer
of 1997 the Second International Encounter for Humanity and against
Neo-liberalism took place in Spain. The organisation also came in for
a lot of criticism. Even with the preparations it became clear that a
small group of apparatchiks, mainly from Madrid and Zaragoza
had imposed their idea (which was an almost identical copy of the
First Encounter in 1996) of how the Encounter should be organised.
Groups with a more critical view and different ideas were not given
any space to venture their opinions, but strangely enough most of
these critical groups did in the end drop their criticisms and
participate. This Encounter included the same ridiculous show of
accreditation and ausweis-like identification papers that were
compulsory during the first Encounter. The two Zapatista delegates
were almost completely sealed off from the other participants, as if
they were visiting heads of state who needed bodyguards to watch over
their safety. Once again the organisers behaved like dictators who
treated volunteers who came to help with the preparations as
voiceless labourers. Anyone who dared to criticise the way things
were organised could expect to be treated as if they were spies,
there to sabotage the Encounter.
Day by day the European network is
becoming an ever more bureaucratically organised humanitarian aid
organisation, that will do anything in the aid of the good
cause. It seems to have lost its grip on how things are going in
Europe. It ignores the existence of an ever more powerful European
Community moloch which excludes non-European people from its
territory, which is homogenising day by day on a military and
internal security (police) level and which is creating an enormous
economic block where people only count when they adopt the role of
production generating wage slaves. The main focus of the European
solidarity network has become putting pressure on the European Union
and Parliament not to accept the preferential treatment treaty
between the European Union and the Mexican government. The other
focus is to pressure the United Nations to intervene in Chiapas (as
either a mediator or human rights observer). Both the European Union
and the United Nations are instruments of the goverments of the
world, and we see no reason to ask them favours. Asking them for
favours is to passively accept their authority and existence. We do
not accept that and never will. The same accounts for asking mayors
and city councils to sign petitions against the human rights abuses
in Mexico. The solidarity work that is carried out in Europe seems to
be confined to talking about human rights. Maybe they should go and
join Amnesty International. Amnesty has been known to do good work,
but still always evades taking political standpoints, and questioning
the legitimacy of any political systems. That is what the human
rights focussed activities of the European solidarity network look
like.
Maybe you have received the impression
that our work has been only horrible and disillusioning. This is of
course not true. We have met scores of magnificent, intelligent,
warm, combatative, and humourous people from all over the world. All
of whom, each in their own special ways, have tried to find ways of
thinking and acting. Collaborating with them we have found out that
there are many forms of solidarity work possible. One example of a
more mutual though not perfect solidarity action in which we
participated was a project that was carried out during 1997 and 1998.
This was mainly carried out by the more critical groups from France,
Belgium, Spain and the Netherlands. The original idea was thought up
by some unemployed people who were familiar with the world of fishing
boats and dock workers in the towns of Rouen and Le Havre (France).
The idea was launched at the European Encounter in Berlin in 1996.
The central aim was to go with a sailing boat from Europe to Mexico
and to get directly in touch with different grassroots campaigns
along the way and in Mexico. The idea was to mutually exchange
experiences about social struggles both here and there.The mutual
exchange of ideas and experiences would then replace the ingrained
mechanism of one- way communication that so often (also in the case
of the solidarity work with the Zapatistas) characterises solidarity
campaigns. In March 1997 the French boat Le RÍve
d'Absolu left the port of Marseilles (France) and reached the
Oaxacan (Mexican) coast two months later. Contacts were made with
grassroots movements in Mexico City, Oaxaca and Chiapas. Although the
communication between the boats(wo)men and those of us in Europe was
not always as complete as we would have wished we received
interesting letters from the sailors. Unfortunately the idea that
more boats would leave for Mexico and further develop the contacts
that we have made has not yet come to full fruition.
Whilst we suspended our activities as
the Mexican Solidarity Commitee in March 1998, some of the old
members will keep themselves informed about the developments in
Chiapas and Mexico. For the time being one member will keep updating
our website with current information (in Dutch) and run an e-mail
newsletter (also in Dutch) to which people can subscribe. It is also
possible that some of us will compile an information pamphlet from
time to time (such as this one), as people continue to be interested
in the developments in Mexico and Chiapas. One of us will also keep
in contact with other autonomous groups within the European network
in order to develop ideas for solidarity campaigns with the Zapatist
bases without having to go through the institutional channels.
Our archives, with a lot of printed and
e-mail information about Mexico, Chiapas and the Zapatistas will, for
now at least, remain accessible to those interested. The same is also
true for our extensive video archive (a list of which can be found in
our archive and on our website. We no longer ask for financial
contributions as at the moment we no longer know of any project that
we wish to support. We would also like to thank everyone, who made a
donation or gave us a hand, for their support.
Special thanks to B. for his corrections to the English
language versions of the introduction.
Comité de Solidaridad con México (en
disolución)
Mexico Solidarity Committee (in dissolution)
Solidariteitskomitee Mexico (in ontbinding)
Postbus 16578
1001 RA, Amsterdam, Holland
fax: ++-31-20-6203570
tel: ++-31-20-6258979
(woensdag/wednesday/miercoles, 11-18.00 hrs)
email: zapata@noticias.xs4all.nl
internet:
http://www.dds.nl/~noticias/prensa/zapata