March for Indigenous Dignity
12/03/2001
- Opinión
If all follows as planned, the March for Indigenous Dignity, lead by 23
commanders and Subcommander Marcos of the rebel Zapatista National
Liberation Army (EZLN), will arrive at the Mexican capital on Sunday March
11 after traveling through 12 states in two weeks. The mass receptions
registered in the route were endorsed in the Third National Indigenous
Congress (March 2-4), which agreed to carry out a "peaceful national
indigenous uprising" to back up the initiative.
After a long period of silence, the Zapatista command decide to carry out
its first public appearence in 7 years of conflict in order to hold
dialogue with indigenous peoples and civil society, as well as with
Congress, about the approval of the initiative of constitutioanl reforms on
indigenous rights and culture elaborated by the (Parlamentary) Commission
of Concord and Pacification (Cocopa), November 29, 1996.
Legislative approval of this legal body consititues one of the three
"signs" that the EZLN has given the new government presided by Vincente Fox
for returing to the peace talks. The other two are the demilitarization of
7 military positions, of the 252 that the Federal Army has in the area of
conflict, although this in no way implies a change in the correlation of
forces and the liberation of the Zapatista prisioners.
In a letter to the media, Marcos explained the importance of indigenous
issues to his organization, in these terms: "The EZLN is an organization
with an indigenous majority that has taken up arms for Democracy, Liberty
and Justice for all Mexicans. Of the Mexican people, the indigenous person
is the most forgotten, and because of this the EZLN demanded the
recognition of indigenous rights and culture. This demand has aroused a
great deal of interest throughout the entire country and the world. For
the EZLN, the indigenous issue is a pending debt of Mexico and there should
be no more delay in finding a solution. We do not want independence from
Mexico, we want to be a part of Mexico, to be indigenous Mexicans. Until
now we have been viewed as second-class citizens and as a nuisance to the
country, we want to be first-class citizens and part of the country's
development, but without giving up being indigenous peoples."
Although during the electoral campaign Vincente Fox promised that upon
election he would push for the constitutional approval of the Cocopa
proposal, until now he has only sent this body of law to Congress, with the
particularity that it is the first time in recent parlamentary history that
a legal initiative has been sent without the presentation of presidential
motives. That is to say, through this slight formal gesture, the leader
has not publically established any commitment to push for or defend the
postulates of this law.
Peace on the Small Screen
Since the march was announced, the government's attitude has been
ambiguous, but its intentions clear: to retrieve and exploit if for its own
ends, counting on the support of the media. In this way, the topic of
peace has suddenly been placed in the center of the dispute of opinions.
While for the marchers the recognition of indigenous peoples as collective
subjects with full rights, which implies looking to the past and assuming
responsibility of this historical debt, is a basic condition for a real and
lasting peace; for the government and the elites it is about nothing other
than establishing some assistance programs to correct the most extreme of
the situations that this population suffers. For lack of proposals, the
move has consisted in closing off the area of debate, superimposing the
media circus.
The most obvious expression of this strategy was the concert "United for
Peace," put on by Televisa and TV Azteca. The show served not only to
lower the profile of coverage of the Zapatista mach, taking advantage of
the event's self-promotion, but also to renew criole indigenous thinking,
which vaules the indigenous person only as a past phenomena, without a
sense of the present, much less the future.
Under this tendency, banalizing the march, nullifying its content, the
elites hope to use the artifice of the media to impose the spectacle of a
popularity contest between Marcos and Fox.
From here, the insistence is in highlighting the abilities of the
contendors to deal with the media, although without signaling that the
force of the former lies in his ethical position, while that of the latter
in his public relations consultants.
In this context, the consolidation of unity between indigenous peoples that
characterized the Third National Indigenous Congress (Nurío, March 2-4),
where the 24 Zapatista delegates exchanged with over 3,300 delegates,
opened up new perspectives that exceeded official calculations. Among
their resolutions was the decision to carry out a peaceful national
uprising through permanent mobilization until the legal initiative
elaborated by Cocopa and the agreements of San Andrés are established in
the Constitution.
https://www.alainet.org/en/active/1189?language=es
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