| ICE Case Studies
|
Land, Biodiversity, and Exploitation in the Conflict Zone of Chiapas, Mexico by Andrew Willis |
I.
Case Background |
I. CASE BACKGROUND
The indigenous Zapatistas of southern Mexico have struggled with various obstacles to sustainable development and peaceful autonomy, most directly related to a lack of access to land, water and other resources, and compounded by the efforts of elite groups to force the Zapatistas away from the resources they currently control and make use of practices like biopiracy to exploit regional resources for profit. The Zapatistas have responded with a unique mix of political defiance and entrepreneurial innovation, blending passionate persistence in partnership with outside NGO’s to forge a sustainable model of “ground-up”, environmentally conscious development.
CHIAPAS IN MEXICO
The recent history of the indigenous populations of the west of Chiapas in
southern Mexico mirrors that of indigenous groups throughout the hemisphere:
European elites force the indigenous off their lands, to become indentured servants
or sharecroppers, and squeeze as much profit out of the local resources as possible.
Today the elites, along with maintaining control of huge tracts of plantation
and cattle grazing land (and working in concert with government officials),
build hydroelectric dams and “ecotourist” villas and scour the jungle
for potential blockbuster pharmaceuticals. Indigenous groups are forced to squabble
for scarce productive land, and numerous internally displaced refugees (the
second-most in the hemisphere) must make use of the resources around them in
oft-unsustainable ways simply to survive.
In 1994 a rebel army representing several hundred thousand indigenous Chiapanecos
took the first of many steps towards a sustainable solution to this centuries-old
system of exploitation by declaring, among other things, environmental rights
– particularly access to productive land – to be intrinsic to their
own self-determination. In the decade following the uprising the affiliated
communities of the Zapatista Army of National Liberation (EZLN) have developed
sustainable frameworks for serving the needs of vulnerable populations and preventing
regional conflict through cooperative administration of scarce resources and
experimentation with multiple models of community-based development. Their overlapping,
cooperatively-organized administrative bodies – the Good Government Committees,
Autonomous Municipalities in Rebellion and Clandestine Revolutionary Indigenous
Committee, among others – have developed processes for identifying and
settling land disputes; imposed specific limits on environmental resource use,
like harvesting lumber; solicited and improvised development models with external
NGOs, led by and tailored to fit the needs of local communities; and made use
of alternative trade networks emphasizing environmental justice and use of organic,
harm-reduction methods in partnership with international NGOs and fair trade
marketing groups.
The initial preeminence of land as a priority for the EZLN, which briefly occupied
the largest cities in the state in 1994 and currently maintains a presence in
all of the municipalities in the western half of the state, foreshadowed other
environment-related conflicts that have erupted within the conflict zone in
recent years. Once encouraged to leave the highlands for the remote Lacandon
Jungle, indigenous communities are now being evicted from that part of the jungle
abutting the Montes Azules Biosphere Reserve, which has been called the second-most
biodiverse area in the hemisphere. University researchers with pharmaceutical
company grant money, ecotourist developers with ambitious blueprints and industrial
entrepreneurs seeking to install additional dams on the conflict zone’s
several significant rivers – which already produce nearly half of Mexico’s
hydroelectricity – or clear-cut to make way for maquiladoras and so-called
“dry canals” have forced the hand of the long-suffering indigenous
communities, many of whom have banded together under the aegis of the EZLN to
relocate their communities away from this locus of developmental activity and
increased pressure on the part of the local and federal armies. Many communities
maintain that they are also under assault by paramilitary forces connected to
large landowners fearful both of possible land takeovers and the political primacy
of the rebel authorities in many parts of the state where local populations
forego state political institutions for those run by the governments in rebellion.
Chiapas, being by far the most resource-rich state in the country, is important
to agricultural, mineral and petroleum exporters, and government plans call
for it also to become a leading light manufacturer as part of the Plan Puebla-Panama.
The Zapatistas have resisted integration into the neoliberalization of the region,
and have put forward their own plans for development “from the ground
up”. They have taken advantage of the fair trade movement to market goods
ranging from coffee and honey to artesanias internationally, and also work closely
with several capacity-building development NGOs. Still, they are hampered by
the unequal distribution of resources and technology, scarce productive land
and a geography defined by roads paved by the military in the last decade to
facilitate incursions. I will explore how the Zapatistas’ efforts at overcoming
environmental obstacles to sustainable development and peaceful autonomy are
useful in helping academics and practitioners map solutions to intractable,
decades-long, multiple-source conflicts through a focus on empowered, non-hierarchical
community organizing.
Indigenous women demonstrating against threatened displacement
Chiapas indigenous farmers (EZLN) offensive against government: January 1,
1994 - Janaury 12, 1994
Low-intensity warfare by military and paramilitary: January 12, 1994 - Present
Exploitation of indigenous ecological resources: Early 1980s - Present
Regional anti-biopiracy initiatives: 1998 - Present
Continent: North America
Region: Southern North America
It should be noted that Mexicans, particularly those most victimized by neoliberal trade policies, do not consider themselves "North Americans"; norteamericanos are uniformly understood to be from the United States. In terms of a regional comparison, eastern Chiapas is most similar ethnically, politically, militarily and even in terms of climate to Guatemala. Much like Guatemala's indigenous, the million or so indigenous people of the eastern half of the state have been virtual second-class citizens for centuries, and suffer a parade of salutary neglect exacerbated by sectarian religious strife and, most critically, inadequate access to resources such as water and fertile soil. Like Guatemala and much of Central America, huge swaths of productive fields in Chiapas are under the control of large landowners, many of European descent.
Country: Mexico
Within Mexico similar conflicts over resources or other environmental claims are underway in Guerrero, where residents have for years fought against devastating illegal logging; Oaxaca, at the forefront of a national drive for preservation for fragile exurban ecosystems; border regions of Sonora and Baja California, at odds with the Mexican and American governments over access to border waters like the Colorado River; fisheries activists in Baja and Veracruz are attempting to prevent the near-extinction of fish stocks by foreign trawlers and a complacent government regulatory agency; and across Mexico activists are fighting against the subversive contamination of Mexico's corn species by genetically modified varieties.
Mexican government, bioprospecting corporations, research university partners of bioprospectors, environmentalist partners of bioprospectors (Conservation International), Mexican environmental agencies (SEMARNAT), Mexican military, landowner-sponsored paramilitaries, indigenous farmers and indigenous farmers' organizations, Zapatista Army of National Liberation (EZLN), and community-sponsored NGOs like the Network of Community Human Rights Defenders, Traditional Midwives and Healers Cooperative (COMPITCH), Fray Bartolome de Las Casas Human Rights Center.
II. Environment AspectsHistoric access to productive land is clearly the predominant environmental concern for the Zapatistas. Early on the Zapatistas declared themselves the “product of 500 years of struggle”1, but land as a primary conflict motivator has evolved since the uprising. Indigenous populations have for many years settled in the inhospitable Montes Azules Biosphere Reserve, a protected area of the Lacandon Jungle, as the majority of all land in Chiapas is privately owned in expansive latifundias. This jungle settlement has increased as refugees have fled military and paramilitary violence in the conflict zone.
In 2001 Conservation International joined the environmental agency
SEMARNAT in declaring the newest arrivals to the reserve to be a threat to the
jungle itself, and recommended relocation of specific communities it had identified
via satellite 2. At the same time, the Lacandones, a small, logger-friendly indigenous
group that had been given title to the entire jungle by presidential decree
in the 1970s, initiated an army-supported harassment campaign against several
Zapatista communities 3. The conflict came to a head with the forced eviction
of the non-aligned community of Arroyo San Pablo in December 2002, an action
which, as some human rights groups have noted, violated rights guaranteed indigenous
peoples through Mexico’s ratification of ILO Convention 169 4. Recognizing
both the tenuous circumstances confronting the autonomous communities of Montes
Azules – surrounded by military bases, hostile Lacandones, bioprospecting
research stations and start-up ecotourist developments – and the Zapatistas’
own stated desire to avoid damaging the jungle’s integrity, the seven
communities threatened with expulsion voluntarily relocated from March to June
2005 5.
The threat from bioprospecting institutions has also presented challenges. The
California firm Diversa signed an agreement in 2001 with the Mexican government
allowing it to explore Montes Azules for potential new drugs, with the federal
government receiving .5% royalties on any products derived and Lacandon inhabitants
assured nothing but possible expulsion 6. Wary of schemes such as this one,
in 2002 COMPITCH, working in tandem with local and international environmental
groups, defeated a plan by the U.S. International Cooperative of Biodiversity
Groups, the University of Georgia and Molecular Nature Ltd. to document and
patent traditional cures and medicines used by indigenous healers, research
that would have been shared with private pharmaceutical and biotech firms 7.
Still, other such ventures persist, as with the bioprospecting stations in the
region Conservation International has established with Grupo Pulsar, a Mexican
biotechnology giant, in pursuit of potentially lucrative genetic resources.
And while many communities have lobbied in defense of the genetic integrity
of their environments, in March 2005 Chiapas legislators rejected a proposed
biodiversity law supported by state environmental and environmental justice
groups 8.
Many indigenous groups contend that bioprospecting ventures ravage the environment
and force them to the margins of biological “hot spots” like Montes
Azules, and argue that they should be consulted on any projects designed to
exploit traditional indigenous medicines. Many see as a corollary efforts to
genetically “improve” domestic corn stocks, resulting in GE hybrids
of dubious long-term value. Concerned that GE corn may pose yet another threat
to the sustainability of indigenous practices, the Zapatistas have sought to
protect the genetic diversity of native corn stocks from contamination with
transgenic variants through establishment of a seed bank in the town of Oventic,
and COMPITCH and others have begun a process of cataloguing and preserving traditional
curatives 9.
Likewise, several communities have resisted overtures from ecotourism developers
that might jeopardize their environments. In June 2005 the leadership of the
municipality of Roberto Barrios – where residents are divided into pro-
and anti-Zapatista camps – unanimously rejected a proposed government
plan to encourage development of an ecotourist hotel project on the Bascan River,
“because it would benefit no one. The project would only pertain to a
few corporations; it will only bring more divisions and confrontations upon
us” 10. In their statement, the municipal leaders noted that they would
continue to preserve all natural resources, and would not permit anyone to exploit
them.
Native populations of Chiapas and throughout Central America are also imperiled
by other proposed developments, particularly those proposed as part of Plan
Puebla-Panama (PPP), which calls for a series of new superhighways, ocean-to-ocean
pipelines and hydro-electric dams across southern Mexico and Central America
as arteries for global trade and development and to spur creation of maquiladoras.
At least three hydroelectric dams are planned for the Usumacinta River, which
delineates the southern border of the Lacandon Jungle, a development critics
assert will cause thousands of hectares of forest to be flooded and inundate
indigenous communities and at least one archaeological site. Oil exploitation
plans, which would expand south into the rainforest from the municipality of
Ocosingo, are also being developed 11.
Zapatista base communities have forged coalitions to oppose the PPP, and have held several international conferences to coordinate actions with Central American indigenous groups. As one such coalition notes, the plan calls for “a series of ‘dry canals’ (superhighways and high speed railways) running east-west across southern Mexico and Central America” which “threaten to displace rural indigenous people and destroy the ecosystems of the region” 12.
Plan Puebla-Panama: Dams, "dry canals" and
biodiversity exploitation
Many
The environmental origins of the conflict in Chiapas can be traced to a confluence of factors. The Mexican agency SEMARNAT and Conservation International claim that the Montes Azules Biosphere Reserve is under threat from human settlements in the Lacandon Jungle. According to the settlers, however, the real culprit is a regressive state land use policy and lax enforcement of existing laws, which has allowed large finca owners to amass most of the productive land in the state, and to employ paramilitaries (called "white guards") to drive unyielding families from their communal plots. This, coupled with the federal army's eleven-year campaign of "low intensity" warfare has created an internal refugee population second only to Colombia's in the Western Hemisphere. As a result, thousands of families have fled to the jungle - an exodus which has brought some indigenous groups into conflict with the Lacandones, a tiny tribe long ago given title to the jungle by presidential decree. Nevertheless, to reduce conflict and stress on the environment the Zapatistas relocated several communities away from Montes Azules in April.
Chiapas also rivals Guerrero as the country's leading source of illegal logging, with the Lacandones facilitating some of the unchecked damage in Montes Azules, but on the whole a result of lax enforcement. In response to this situation communities affiliated with the Zapatistas have enacted strict regulations on firewood harvests, and enforce harsh penalties on violators.
As discussed above, bioprospecting corporations and research universities have entered sensitive areas of Chiapas primarily seeking sources for pharmaceuticals; in one case, a researcher sought a patent for an enzyme found in pozol, a traditional corn drink that has been produced in Chiapas for centuries. This has caused traditional healers and other groups to mobilize to defend their intellectual and historical heritage.
A lack of land has also brought communal farmers into conflict with cattle herders, whom often compete for grazing land with exiled farmers. Many grazing plots have been seized by farmers during various stages of the Zapatista uprising, although most seizures are not affiliated with the uprising itself.
The production of oil and other minerals and forty percent of Mexico's hydroelectricity has hardly benefited indigenous people in the eastern half of the state. Chiapas remains the country's poorest state, and fully 80% of indigenous communities lack access to electricity, and most are also generally without potable water. The extraction of resources without reciprocal reinvestment has long fueled tensions in the state.
NAFTA effectively eviscerated domestic agriculture markets, hitting corn and coffee particularly hard. Many Chiapas farmers have left the state entirely as a result to look for work in the United States, while others have attempted to eke out subsistence in resistance, sharing meager resources in municipal cooperatives.
Today the Mexican government also actively promotes Chiapas as a venue for ecotourist developers and maquilladora manufacturers, seeking to install Chiapas as the next low-wage manufacturing hub and tourist destination. Several communities - and the population statewide - have organized to defeat parts of the Plan Puebla-Panama and proposed developments.
Tropical
The eastern half of Chiapas ranges from small pockets of temperate mountain highlands to wide-ranging tropical jungle. Much of the population is concentrated in mountainous regions with very little productive farmland, while jungle soils are also inhospitable to long-term monoculture.
Act Site: Mexico
Harm Site: Mexico
III. Conflict Aspects
Intrastate/Civil War
In 1994 thousands of communal farmers allied with the EZLN launched an attack against the Mexican government, but in the process they also captured local politicians and landowners and "sentenced" them to provide restitution in the form of access to productive land they controlled. While largely protected from massacre at the hands of the military or paramilitary by the clandestine insurgent threat, indigenous chiapanecos practicing self-government have still at times had to repel armed incursions and attempts by various groups to expel them from their land or force them to accept official government authorities. In recent years, opponents of the uprising have waged a campaign to assasinate elected autonomous authorities. Some communities have also been divided by the conversion of many indigenous people to a pro-government Protestantism, adherents to which have often demanded that anti-government Catholics leave the community; such demands have provoked violent clashes. The PRD party, in control of the Chiapas government since 2000, has also provoked clashes with a campaign to buy political loyalty in order to undercut EZLN support.
Intrastate, Low
The number of people killed as a direct result of military or paramilitary action has numbered in the dozens each year since 1998; many more were killed prior to this. Hundreds also die in and out of refugee camps from curable disease, lack of access to potable water and medical clinics, or malnutrition. Measuring the level of the conflict as a function of political stability, the level is still quite high; human rights organizations issue denouncements of basic rights by sectarian groups on a daily basis, and many citizens have boycotted official elections for years.
Areas with active paramilitary groups and displaced refugees (Nov. 1998)
The level is 2 or 3 (between 20 and 200 deaths per year), although counting death as a result of forced displacement - which can cause severe malnutrition and illness - the number is closer to a thousand per year.
1(1) = 1
1(2) = 10
1(3) = 100
1(4) = 1,000
1(5) = 10,000
1(6) = 100,000
1(7) = 1,000,000
1(8) = 10,000,000
1(9) = 100,000,000
IV. Environment and Conflict Overlap
Sub-state
Although the conflict itself is confined to Chiapas, on the Guatemala border, it should be noted that USA has taken a keen strategic interest in its outcome, boosting military aid and frequently soliciting reports from intelligence agencies on its development. European governments have also been spurred to action by citizen mobilizations; in is estimated that at any time nearly a quarter of the Italian parliament has visited Chiapas, and the EU continues to provide critical aid to refugee communities. The EZLN also precipitated an unprecedented array of global activist networks which continue to manifest solidarity with the EZLN and opposition
Ongoing
No part of the multifaceted conflict has today been resolved. The government - both state and federal - remain at an impasse with the EZLN and autonomous communities, and continues to promote the exploitative Plan Puebla-Panama in spite of fierce opposition. Ecotourist developers and bioprospectors still haunt the Montes Azules Reserve, and landowners take advantage of NAFTA's property laws to take private ownership of communal landholdings that are the foundation of the traditional community structure in many settlements.
V. Related Information and Sources
Endnotes
1. First
Declaration of the Lacandon Jungle. December 1993.
2. John Steinbach, Philip Wheaton, Milton Shapiro, Access of
Evil: Genocide in Chiapas in CovertAction Quarterly #76 (Fall 2004).
3. Hermann Bellinghausen, En
marcha, programas de esterilizacion y ecoturismo en la selva Lacandona,
La Jornada, March 25, 2002.
4. “Indigenous
Communities in Montes Azules Integral Biosphere Reserve in Chiapas Threatened
With Forcible Eviction”, Social Justice Committee.
5.
Montes Azules Communique, EZLN CCRI-CG, May 25, 2005.
6. Bill Weinberg, Biodiversity,
Inc. in In These Times, August 21, 2003.
7. Ibid
8. Isain Mandujano, Rechazan
iniciativa de ley para la conservacio'n de la biodiversidad en Chiapas,
Proceso, March 9, 2005.
9. Saving
Mayan Seeds, Schools for Chiapas.
10. Isain Mandujano, Repudian
en Chiapas proyecto ecoturi'stico, Proceso, June 7, 2005.
11. Biodiversity, Inc.
12. Brendan O’Neill, Plan
Puebla Panama: The InterAmerican Development Bank Paves Latin America, ACERCA.
Bibliography
ACERCA. 1999. Action for Social and Economic Justice. 5 June 2005. <http://www.asej.org/ACERCA/ppp/ppp.php>
Biopiracy in Chiapas. CEIPAC. 5 June 2005. <http://www.ciepac.org/bulletins/ingles/ing213.htm>
Centro de Derechos Humans Fray Bartolome de las Casas. September 1996. FRAYBART. 5 June 2005. <http://www.laneta.apc.org/cdhbcasas/>
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Collier, George Allen. Basta! Land and the Zapatista Rebellion in Chiapas. Oakland, CA: Food First, 1999.
Enlace Civil. June 1996. Enlace Civil. 5 June 2005. <http://www.enlacecivil.org.mx/>
Forced Evictions in Montes Azules. May 2005. SIPAZ. 5 June 2005. <http://www.sipaz.org/documentos/mazules/mazules_eng.htm>
Holloway, John and Pelaez, Eloina. Zapatista!: Reinventing Revolution in Mexico. London: Pluto Press, 1998.
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Rus, Jan. Mayan Lives, Mayan Utopias: The Indigenous Peoples of Chiapas and the Zapatista Rebellion. Lanham, MD: Rowman & Littlefield Publishers, Inc., 2003.
The Human Bean Coffee Company. Human Bean. 5 June 2005. <http://www.thehumanbean.com/>
Related Websites
Organization of Indigenous Physicians of the State of Chiapas
Council of Traditional Indigenous Midwives and Healers of Chiapas
International Service for Peace
Maps
http://www.ciepac.org/maps/categoryindex.htm
http://www.nadir.org/nadir/initiativ/agp/free/mexico/2002/0929lacandon_Jungle.htm
http://www.nadir.org/nadir/initiativ/agp/free/colombia/puebla/map.htm
[8/2005]