4-07-08, 9:56 am

On November 13, 2006 the community of Viejo Velasco Suárez in Chiapas, México was attacked by paramilitary forces reinforced by approximately 300 agents of the state police. The result was four dead, four missing, and 31 persons displaced. Among the dead was a pregnant women and the missing included a disabled women and her elderly father, whose body was later found. Two other men remain missing. This massacre forms part of the state’s low-intensity warfare against the peoples of Chiapas. What is at stake is nothing less than México’’s rich biodiversity and natural resources sought after by multinationals and private landowners.

In 1972 the government granted 614,321 hectares of the Lacandona jungle to 66 Carib (now called Lacandones) families, ignoring the more than 1500 Tseltal, Chol, Tojolabal, and Tzotzil indigenous groups who inhabit the area. Later in 1985, 7,627 additional hectares were granted to the Lacandones. Furthermore, in 1978 president Echeverría signed a decree setting aside over 300,000 hectares of land within the Lacandona as a bio-reserve (Montes Azules). Again, the inhabitants were not consulted. For decades, these groups had been requesting that their land rights be recognized with little success. These two decrees engendered a conflict that is still raging in the area. It has, also, been a strategy of divide and conquer, pitting group against group while the federal and state governments slowly dismantle the progressive rights gained after the Mexican Revolution of 1910-1920.

The contrasting worldviews that the indigenous and the government hold come to a clash in Montes Azules. For the many groups of indigenous who have inhabited the area for decades and even centuries the land is sacred. Their ejidos are communal lands that have seen their birth, lands that feed them and support their families; lands that will witness their death. As a member of the Flores Magón community said, “we have another way of understanding life, land, work . . . we have a form of culture which is not useful for world money interests, the world of the powerful . . . These lands and territories will be cared for and utilized with intelligence and respect for nature . . . All the cultural and natural wealth which exist [in Montes Azules] will be for the collective benefit of our indigenous peoples, for the people of México and for humanity, not for the benefit of a few who oppress the world, not so the wealth can be privatized”.

My visit to the area in December of 2007 revealed to me that both federal and state governments are complicit in the increasing efforts to privatize Chiapas’ natural resources. The move towards neo-liberal policies began with Institutional Revolutionary Party (PRI) president Carlos Salinas de Gortari in the 1980’s. After his gutting of article 27 of the Mexican Constitution, privatization was formally ushered in with the passage of NAFTA and later its intensification (NAFTA Plus). New mega development projects, like the Puebla-Panamá Plan (PPP), have followed as well as the privatization of the energy and telecommunications sectors, and more recently an effort to begin privatizing the national oil company, PEMEX. Montes Azules, then, represents yet another front in the battle to privatize. Of course, this is not something illegitimate president Calderon will admit to.

According to the government’s National Commission of Protected Natural Areas (CONANP), Montes Azules contains 20% of the plants in the country (4300 species), 25% of the birds (345 species), and 27% of the mammals (114 species). Among the most prominent of the mammals found are the primate species Ateles geoffroyi (spider monkey) and Alouatta pigra (howler monkey). Montes Azules is also the primary source of water for the Usumacinta River and makes up 25% of México’s above ground water. Moreover, 45% of the nation’s electricity is generated by this water. The natural resources and services generated by the bio-reserve are invaluable: woods (mahogany, cedar, the silk-cotton tree), fuels, ground formation, carbon absorption, organic compost, and much more. It is no wonder national and international environmental groups as well as local inhabitants and civil organizations see the urgency of preserving it. It is also clear why this region is coveted by multinationals and those interested in profiting from nature.

Both the federal and state governments have attempted to divorce the indigenous inhabitants from the land claiming their presence is damaging the very thing that needs protection. They argue that inhabitants are destroying the natural environment by their settlements in area. The government’s plan is to have a bio-reserve devoid of humans except for paying tourist, of course. Reports from the CONANP, for example, point to the deforestation and contamination of water and air as some of the most serious threats to Montes Azules and to México in general. However, what is not mentioned is that deforestation has been caused by logging companies which in turn has caused erosion. While speaking with Maderas del Pueblo, a local organization in San Cristobal, they pointed out that water sources contamination, for example, is not only a consequence of the dams, but of multinationals like Coca-Cola that use crucial river basins for their bottling plants.

What is not acknowledged, too, is the long history of stewardship these indigenous communities have provided for the land. Their traditional form of agriculture, for example, uses the least amount of land to grow a number of crops. Squash, beans, and corn (the holy trinity for Mesoamerican cultures) are grown together as each crop nourishes the other. Their form of agriculture also diminishes soil erosion and avoids using chemicals that harm the land. In many indigenous cultures the land and its creatures are connected thus everything affects everything else. This worldview leads to a high respect for nature. Their knowledge of the medicinal properties of the jungle flora is extensive and is another sought after resource by pharmaceutical companies. According to Bill Weinberg reporting for In These Times in 2001, for example, the U.S. pharmaceutical company Diversa signed a Montes Azules bio-prospecting contract with the Mexican government for royalties between .3-.5 percent of net sales from products derived from their findings. In contrast, Diversa’s contract with the U.S. Department of the Interior over Yellowstone National Park offered royalties between .5-10 percent, $15,000 for equipment and a $100,000 fee up front.

A similar deal was in the works in 2002 between the Mexican government and the International Cooperative Biodiversity Group (ICBG) composed of the University of Georgia, Molecular Nature Ltd., the National Science Foundation, the U.S. Department of Agriculture, and private pharmaceutical and biotech firms. This project hoped to “draw on indigenous healers’ wealth of knowledge on tens of thousands of curative plants in the region” according to Weinberg. It was to be a $2.5 million deal spanning over five years until the Chiapas Council of Traditional Indigenous Midwives and Healers (COMPITCH) organized a campaign against it. The multi-billion dollar a year agribusiness sector is another key player in the Montes Azules saga. For example, “Conservation International brokered a debt-for-nature [deal in 1991] to establish a genetic research station in Montes Azules” reported Weinberg. The deal was headed by Alfonso Romo Garza who owns Grupo Pulsar a seed stock company. Displacing communities off the land has been a successful strategy to then exploit the land and its resources.

The tragedy that occurred in the Viejo Velasco Suárez community mentioned above is not an isolated case. On August 18 the communities of Nuevo San Manuel and Buen Samaritano suffered an attack by government forces. According to some of the victims, after their refusal to hand over their land deeds to the government, the office of the Secretary of the Environment and Natural Resources (Semarnat) along with other federal agencies sued them for ecological damage and sent out the federal police forces to remove them from their homes. The victims claim government personnel and armed militaries forced them onto helicopters without notice or a chance to gather their belongings. Approximately 40 people were rounded up from each community and taken to a shelter. Government agents proceeded to destroy and burn the homes and milpas (agriculture land) in these two communities. The heads of households (six men) were transferred to jail and charged with despojo (settling on private land) and ecological damage. Amnesty International later released a report claiming the government had committed human rights violations in these cases noting that the shelter where the displaced were taken had been a brothel at one time and was inhospitable. Furthermore, no food, water, or medical attention was provided. La Jornada newspaper reported that among the displaced were two pregnant women and a teenager with chicken pox or mumps whose health was at risk from lack of medical care by government officials. More than a month later the situation was yet to be resolved.

Amnesty International was not the only or even first organization to call attention to communities being displaced. The Fray Bartolomé Human Rights Center, Sipaz, Maderas del Pueblo and many other local and international ngo’s reported and brought attention to the matter. According the UN charter on the rights of indigenous peoples, article 10 “indigenous communities will not be subject to displacement off their lands and territories by force . . . no transfer will take place without their previous, informed, free consent or without previous mutual agreement on a just and equitable indemnity“. Articles 11, 24, 25, and 26 all speak to the right of access of indigenous peoples to their traditional lands and territories. They have the right to practice their traditional beliefs, to their own medicine and its access and conservation; the right to maintain a spiritual relationship with the land, water, coastal areas, and other resources that they have traditionally possessed. The Organization of American States has also called attention to México’’s human rights violations in Chiapas. In 2007 its Interamerican Commission on Human Rights (CIDH) issued a press release calling on all OAS members to respect indigenous rights and to renew their commitment to the OAS‘s American Declaration of Indigenous Rights created in 1990. México is a signer on both the UN and OAS documents. México’s own constitution gives indigenous peoples rights to self-determination and their land. Needless to say the government has not followed these.

My visit to Chiapas taught me that in spite of all the battles that have and continue to occur, México’s indigenous peoples continue to fight. Their spirit is resilient. The myriad of local organizations and community groups they have formed to fight for their rights attest to this. The potential of our humanity is epitomized in the caracoles of the EZLN. There I found humility, integrity, respect and love for nature, and resistance. México is at a crossroads. Will it choose neo-liberal policies that have demonstrated their power to devastate whole social and ecological systems or remember its revolutionary past and reinstate just and equitable policies? The answer is not yet clear. I am hopeful, however, that our indigenous brothers and sisters will help us remember who we are.

--Alejandra Juarez is a contributing writer for Political Affairs.