Tourism in Chiapas has become part of the strategy of big business and the government to break the resistance of the Zapatista communities in rebellion, and facilitate their dispossession from their territories. Hermann Bellinghausen, a correspondent in Chiapas for the newspaper La Jornada, talks about the increasing development of tourism in the State and its various implications.
Four representatives from Rarámuri communities have made the long trip from their remote communities to Washington, DC, to appear before the Inter-American Human Rights Commission, where they will appear today at 5pm. It is expected the four representatives, who are backed by 41 Indigenous governors, will testify about logging, tourism, and other issues impacting their communities.
The changes to the farming sector in Mexico unleashed by NAFTA represent more than a trend of people eating hamburgers and fries instead of tacos and drinking Pepsi instead of a traditional Jamaica juice. Along with changes in Mexico’s food system, NAFTA has caused a series of shocks to the Mexican countryside, forcing many farm workers to abandon their lands and look for work in cities or in the US or elsewhere. It has turned Mexico into a food dependent country, which is no longer able to feed its population without imports.
Marking international women’s day, mothers and families of disappeared and murdered women marched in Mexico City’s center to demand justice for the victims and an end to the systemic roots of femicide. The country has suffered a contagious effect over the last several years, with femicides and violence toward women rapidly spreading to regions that had previously never seen such violence.
Indignant over the police and government’s inability or unwillingness to reduce violent drug-related crimes, citizens in Mexico’s rural, mostly indigenous, southwestern state of Guerrero have (once again) organized armed self-defense groups to ensure their own public safety and security. The spark that ignited the recent wave of dozens of communities to declare the formation of their own policing groups occurred on January 6, 2013 with the kidnapping of a local community leader in the municipality of Ayutla de los Libres, in the region known as the Costa Chica.
San Cristobal has changed more in the last two decades than in its entire five hundred year history. A once small town that barred indigenous peoples from staying overnight has been transformed into a city that is half indigenous. Tzotzil and Tzetzal-speaking Mayans from the rural highlands of Chiapas today constitute a powerful political and economic force that demands the attention of political parties, even some that have long ignored them.
“We want to introduce to you one of our many selves, our compañero Subcomandante Insurgente Moisés. He watches over our door and with his voice is the voices of all of us. We ask you to listen to him, that is, to look at him as we look at ourselves, ” stated Subcomandante Marcos in an announcement on the new appointment.
The Zapatista Army of National Liberation (EZLN) ended “a phase on the path” of the Sixth Declaration of the Lacandon Jungle and announced the start of its next political steps, which include upcoming meetings (encuentros) in its territory and the explicit selection of those who will accompany future initiatives, that will have as its main objective: “to be in direct contact with the Zapatista support bases in the way that, in my long and humble experience, is the best: as students,” said Subcomandante Marcos.
The representative of the National Indigenous Confederation of Ecuador (CONAIE), Severino Sharupi, assessed that the entry of his organization into state institutions and electoral processes had weakened them, even though they have achieved a new constitution and have ousted three presidents. Now, however, they have reactivated nationwide resistance against the extractive model promoted by President Rafael Correa.
Like many other indigenous peoples in the state, Consuela believes Mexico’s national REDD program is designed to fold Chiapas’ indigenous populations into international markets, thereby “modernizing” the state. In this way, indigenous peoples, most of whom do not generate revenue for their governments, can become “productive members of society.” By agreeing to plant African Palms, Consuela believes indigenous farmers are effectively cut off from an identity based on the land they cultivate, the cyclical nature of agriculture and the maize seeds they once planted.
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