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A LAST GREAT CRUSADE?

Like some latter-day International Brigade hundreds of volunteers annually are journeying to a far-off land to help in a revolution. But unlike their forebears who took up arms in defence of the Spanish Republic these volunteers from all walks of life are taking up hammer and nails to build schools and hospitals, spades to lay pipes to supply fresh water to villages, and screwdrivers to repair old computers and put the villages ‘online’. They are also lifting binoculars to monitor and log troop movements as human rights observers. With foreign observers present the paramilitary killers and federal troops are less likely to attack in this bloodied state of Chiapas in the mountains and valleys of Southeast Mexico. The volunteers journey to help the Zapatistas in their indigenous revolt.

Mike was 50 when he decided to make the long trip from Edinburgh to Mexico. As a human rights observer he watched and recorded military incursions in the Zapatista ‘autonomous zones’, areas where the landowners and authorities have been booted out and the native peoples now govern themselves through a system of grassroots democracy based on recallable delegates. Everyone over 16 gets a vote. Mike swiftly recognised the importance of foreign observers.‘When I was there,’ he recalls, ‘theZapatista villagers of Morelia, menaced by paramilitary attacks, put out an urgent emergency call for observers. A group of foreign human rights observers responded at once and the murderous attacks were thwarted. They’re not so keen to murder with the eyes of the world watching.’ Mike later joined a water project, working alongside Maya villagers to build a rain catchment system to supply fresh drinking water. There are similar projects all over Chiapas where foreign volunteers work alongside the Zapatista natives.

Larry twice made the shorter but no less committed trip to Chiapas from North Carolina. A computer buff, Larry helped to repair and set up computers at the Autonomous Secondary School in Oventik. With the indigenous revolt in 1994 not only the landowners were expelled but also the government-employed teachers who taught in Spanish. The Zapatistas now have their own home-grown education system where bright local youths are trained as promotores - native teachers. And with the help of these foreign volunteers Chiapas is going online.

Alana was involved in the Athens-Chiapas Solidarity Committee. She travelled to Mexico from Greece with the funds raised by the group. The funds were used in the building of an education centre to train young promotoreswho now teach in the local Mayan dialect which, like Gaelic and Scots here, was once banned and anathematised, and is now being rediscovered. And she was naturally interested in the new lives of the Zapatista women who, once mere chattels, now take their place at the forefront of the rebuilding work. Alana is visiting Edinburgh.

‘It’s inspiring to see ordinary people running their own lives,’says Mike. ‘Without any high heid yins overseeing them they successfully run their own education system and health service. But they need help,’ he emphasises. Chiapas is no utopia. ‘We have nothing,’ the Zapatista Declaration of War declared back in 1994 when the fighters in black balaclavas swept from the Chiapan hills. ‘Absolutely nothing. Not even a roof over our heads, no land, no work, no health care, no food nor education.’ On that New Year’s Day the long-dispossessed natives, ‘the ones without faces, theones without voices’ stepped directly into the media spotlight, making front page news around the world. Speaking with new words and fresh ideas the Zapatista rebellion has highlighted how the native Mayan peoples of Chiapas experience some of the worst poverty in Mexico. Infant mortality is twice the national average. 67% of the population suffers from malnutrition. Two years before the revolt about 30,000 people in Chiapas died of hunger and malnutrition-related diseases.

Larry wonders about the media preoccupation with the balaclava-clad guerrillas. ‘Whatever their role,’ he says, ‘the most important work is being carried out by villagers and townsfolk of the Autonomous Zones. It is doubtful if any foreign volunteer has even clapped eyes on a guerilla. They’re still in the hills, a presence, but to us the term ‘Zapatista’ means not a black balaclava, but a native people struggling for their rights - their right to run their own lives.’ That right is being eroded. In 1996 the Zapatistas hammered out an agreement with the Federal Government, the San Andres Accords, that gave them the legal and political right to self-government and to their own communal lands. But last summer the government reneged on the deal. Chiapas is rich in natural resources and huge US-owned multinational corporations are perched like hungry vultures, ravenous to get into the Chiapan interior.

Since late summer reports have been coming out of Chiapas of renewed paramilitary murders and military incursions. Over 12,000 native Chiapans are now displaced persons. The Federal Government says lamely that the escalating murders are the result of ‘indigenous squabbles.’ Foreign observers have noted however that the paramilitary death squads are usually accompanied by scores of federal troops, and most of the evictions and murders are happening in the Montes Azules area, an area much sought after by the huge corporations. A recent Zapatista communiqué describes the military incursions as a blatant attempt to destroy the autonomous zones for the benefit of the multinational corporations. The Zapatista villagers want the San Andres Accords recognised and are demanding the withdrawal of troops from seven military bases. The situation is deteriorating and observers are predicting another massacre like the one that happened in Acteal in 1997 when 45 villagers were shot in the back by troops. 29 of the dead were women, 4 of them pregnant.

Which is why supporters and sympathisers in Edinburgh have formed an Edinburgh-Chiapas Solidarity Committee. On Sunday 1 December they will be holding a multi-media gathering at the UCW building in Brunswick Street, 7.30pm. Mike and Larry will recount their experiences as volunteers in Chiapas, illustrated by slides and video.

Zapatista arts and crafts will be on sale, and there’s music, food and a bar. ‘We only hope we can shine a spotlight into this darkly forgotten corner of the world. No one who’s been there can forget the dignity and decency of these native people who are being attacked and murdered in the name of globalisation. I want to go back…’

EDINBURGH-CHIAPAS SOLIDARITY COMMITTEE c/o 17 W. Montgomery Place, EH7 5HA. E-mail: edinchiapas@yahoo.co.uk. Phone: 0131 557 6242