Chiapas. March 12, 1998 Last Thursday I went to hear Tom Hansen of Pastors for Peace speak on the UW campus. He has recently returned from Mexico where he was deported by the government for being a troublemaker. He had been in the southern Mexican Provence of Chiapas, and came from his home in Chicago to Madison to discuss the current problems in Mexico and gather support for the Zapatista movement. After his introductory remarks about the plight of the poor Indians of Chiapas and their conflict with the Mexican government and the ruling political party (the PRI), he asked for questions. I asked him what is the basic nature of the conflict: is it ethnic as in Yugoslavia and Bosnia? He indicated that yes, of course it is, and his reply suggested the he thought me some sort of dunce for even asking the question. There are also class and wealth differences, but the root of the conflict is ethnic. The "indigenous people" whose first language is an Indian one vs the PRI/white Europeans that speak Spanish, and their dupes. The Zapatistas are the representatives of the "indigenous people", and we should all support them. I asked why? (It seemed like a logical question: in Yugoslavia, why should I support the Albanians or the Croats or the Serbs or the Bosnian Muslims? Give me a REASON why any one group is more deserving of my sympathy than the others) But here the question brought gasps from the group of about 30 present. After a few moments of stunned silence, someone in the group replied "Because they are INDIGENOUS people". Another said "Because they are indigenous PEOPLE". Sensing that this line was not getting anywhere, I asked just what it is that the Zapatista's want. "They want Democracy" someone said. When I asked if they could vote in the Mexican elections, the reply from Tom Hansen was that the government is trying to force them to vote. But there is a split. Some of them say they should vote and since they are the majority in the Provence, they could control the elections, at least locally. But another faction wants to boycott all elections to show their contempt for the PRI. I suggested that people who demand democracy but refuse to vote could have a credibility problem. "They want their RIGHTS!" someone claimed. Their right to what? This resulted in Hansen pointing out that there was an agreement from previous negotiations with the government that the Zapatista claim was not being implemented. What had the government agreed to? I asked. But no one knew. But what ever it was, the government was breaking it. Just what is it that the Zapatista's WANT? An independent country? I asked. No one was clear about this. They want "respect". And autonomy. And to let the world know their story. They plan to have a WWW page soon. And they also want to sell coffee. There was some literature handed out for Equal Exchange. This is a way to buy coffee directly from the growers, and they have a web page at: http://www.equalexchange.com (And I was beginning to suspect that this entire issue was a clever marketing device to sell coffee ;-) But no one would say that this means independence for Chiapas. But someone pointed out that the Mexican government has said that the Zapatista demands would result in a "separate Nation within Mexico". Besides language, much of the conflict centers around the ownership of land. The "indigenous people" want to be able to own land. When I asked if they cannot now, the answer was that now after some changes in the laws "people" can own land but not "the people". By this was meant some kind of collective group ownership. Like the English "commons" of the middle ages? I asked. No one seemed to know the answer to that, but it did sound like what they had in mind. I asked what happened to someone's rights to the common land if they moved from the area, but was told that no one wants to move anywhere else. Each person lives in the same village all of their life and no one wants to move. I learned that there is not a common Mayan language, but that each village has its own, or some variation of 4 different native languages that are in the area. (But these may all be derived from the Mayan language that must have been used all through central America some 800 years ago since the same language is found on all of the Mayan ruins.) This is one reason why no one moves to another region. This is the way they WANT to live. Forever. I suggested two problems with this: genetic inbreeding (what I call the West Virginia Syndrome), and "the Tragedy of the Commons". No one had thought much about the first, and no one indicated that they had ever even heard about the famous Garett Hardin essay. (But you can read it on my web page in the environment section :-) ,,,,,,, _______________ooo___(_O O_)___ooo_______________ (_) jim blair (jeblair@facstaff.wisc.edu) Madison Wisconsin USA. This message was brought to you using biodegradable binary bits, and 100% recycled bandwidth. Subject: Re: AMERICAN ECONOMY - JIM BLAIR IS FULL OF CORPORATE INTEREST HOT AIR Date: Thu, 13 Aug 1998 17:10:46 -0700 To:Richard Foy Newsgroups: alt.politics.economics, uk.politics.economics, alt.politics.equality, alt.politics.misc, alt.politics.usa References: 1 , 2 , 3 , 4 , 5 Richard Foy : >> How about the people in Chiapas? > >jim blair: > >Funny that you should ask. I have two files on that subject in the >Economics section of my web page: "The Peso Crisis", and "Chiapas". >They probably give a different view from what you are used to hearing. >Check it out, and we can talk. Richard Foy wrote: > I finally got around to reading the two files. I understand what you > are saying, much of which I agree with. Especially that one should > not automatically favor one group over another. Although IMO one > should oppose the initiation of force by any group. >It appears to me that you are ignoring one factor that is pertinant >to many of this type of conflict of cultures. It is probably a factor >here. That is that a lot of the people in a subsistance type of culture >are doing more or less OK, in that they have enough to eat etc. What >often appears to happen is that the World Bank comes along and >proposes a project that displaces the people in the subsitance >culture. They then have no land to subsist on the major crops are >export crops, they move to the city and are homeless and scrounging >for food in the dumps. This is admittedly short and dramatized, >However, I think the sceneero is not atypical. >Economic development is not automatically a good thing. >Richard Foy Hi, When I look at the same thing, I see it differently. The population is rising rapidly in 3rd world countries like Mexico. In the past, disease and high infant mortality kept the population low enough to live that way. Now modern medicine has cut the death rate much more than the birth rate. Primative agriculture can not support a high population density, and this is especially true of "slash and burn" farming. Economic development is probably the only solution. Grow coffee to export. Make expensive sport shoes to sell. But that means change, and most people hate to change. -- ,,,,,,, _______________ooo___(_O O_)___ooo_______________ (_) jim blair (jeblair@facstaff.wisc.edu) For a good time call http://www.geocities.com/capitolhill/4834