We turned off the main highway and onto a rocky dirt road. The rainy season hadn't started yet, and so the driver was fairly certain that his old truck would make it up to the remote ejido sitting on top of the mountain. He explained that when the rains came the road was reborn as a mudslide. There was jade in the red clay soil and when the rains came the jade washed down into the river. As the road climbed upward, mountains and tiny valleys stretched out in all directions. Green pine trees covered the mountainsides and red vermilions grew on the trees. The air was cold, crisp and clean.
As we approached the ejido on top of the mountain the driver filled us in on some of the history of the place. The entire area--"until you can't see anymore"--used to belong to just one man. Then the land had been seized and carved into an ejido after the Mexican Revolution. We had come to this ejido because we had been told that the indigenous campesinos here were sympathetic to the January 1 uprising and were themselves involved in an intense struggle over expanding their land.
Once inside the ejido itself it was even slower driving than coming up the mountainside. Farm animals wandered across the road and the driver was very careful about giving them a lot of room. Slowly we made our way to the prearranged meeting spot with one of the driver's friends, a peasant activist in the area.
After exchanging greetings, Miguel, the activist from the ejido, led us into the woods--to a small, hidden and locked cabin where he felt safe to talk. He explained that the situation with the ejido and the recent uprising had polarized the community and some people had begun to act as government spies. Miguel was joined by Pablo and a few other friends. Miguel started out by telling us the story of the ejido.
"An ejido means that before it belonged to a `latifundio' that had many hectares. But in 1910, there was a revolution, so there was support for the indigenous peasants with the independent agrarian reform. So in those days our grandfathers took advantage of that to ask for this land. They fought for it, they waged a struggle, and they succeeded. Since there was a land program, they formed an ejido. So this is now ejido land.
"And these ejidos, as our grandfathers told us, were not gotten peacefully. People got together with rifles--not real sophisticated ones--to defend themselves in case the latifundistas were to attack our grandfathers. So this was how this ejido was formed.
"Our grandfathers got this ejido, but now there is no more land for us. So we got another piece of land, and in a peaceful way we asked the government to give it to us. But the government has refused. They say the land is theirs. They say we already have a lot of land. So we organized ourselves and invaded the land by force. It wasn't peaceful, because the government didn't want to give it to us. Right now, we are petitioning for this land. But for 12 years we have been on the same land, and the government hasn't wanted to deal with us. Now, with what has happened, maybe the situation will change a little."
Pablo was quiet and shy. But as he spoke his anger grew and his voice bounced off the walls of the cabin. "The big rich landlords in the city have a lot of land. They are joined together with the powerful. They say that there's already a land reform, they say there's a political decree in effect to support us that says the countryside is for the peasants. But it's a big lie. It's only to blindfold us so that we don't know what the real situation is. That's why we've suffered over the land. And it's not just us. Many of our compañeros have been fighting for our land and have never gotten it. This is a community that has encountered death. Why? Because the landlords have people who have weapons that will kill the peasants.
"This is normal. This is known all over Chiapas. Everyone knows how Chiapas is. Because if you could tell all the stories of what has happened in Chiapas, you would never finish. There are always deaths over the land. That's why the Zapatistas rose up, because it's no longer possible for Chiapas to stay this way. Even though everyone knows that there is extreme poverty, there's marginalization, the government only deceives people. We weren't part of those uprisings, but we recognize their work, their struggle. Because there's no other way to do it. The marginalization here is very great, it's indescribable. We, as indigenous peasants, are used to nothing but manipulation and tricks.
"When it's election year, they say that there's democracy, that there's justice, that there's freedom, but that's a lie. They come to manipulate us, to use us, they say we have to vote for a particular party. And we don't know who the person is, what kind of person they are, if they are capable or not, if they are a good person or a bad person. They just come so that we will mark our ballots however they want. We are waiting and waiting."
Originally formed off of the Mexican Revolution, the ejidos were supposed to answer the peasant demand for land. The huge latifundias belonging to the rich landlords were supposed to be broken up and distributed among groups of peasants who wanted to lay claim to the land. Under the ejido system, the individual peasants did not own the land, but they had rights to use the land. The Mexican state became the landlord and the peasant families making up the ejidatorios were free to work tiny individual plots within the communal territory.
From the beginning, however, the ejido system failed to resolve the land question in the countryside. In many places, especially Chiapas, the rich landowners managed to keep their land holdings intact--using open terror and legal tricks against the campesinos. But over the years, even where the ejidos became a reality, semifeudal landlord oppression continued in the Mexican countryside. Through the agricultural banks, the control of seed and fertilizer, and a system of brutal enforcers and political bosses--the Mexican ruling class has dominated the peasants on ejido lands. Local powerbrokers and landowners swindled the peasants through the ejido system.
As the population of the ejidos grew, campesinos were chained to already tiny and ever-shrinking plots of land. Government-provided services--like credits and supplies--proved to be extremely difficult to get. Peasant families found it impossible to grow enough crops to feed themselves. And when the lucky few did manage to grow enough to sell, the government bought their crops at very low prices as part of keeping food prices down in the cities. Many found it impossible to survive on the ejido and left, only to be exploited for low wages in the cities or in the U.S.
Over the last 30 years, Mexican agriculture has been greatly damaged by being even more deeply integrated into the world market. Under pressure from the World Bank, the Mexican government promoted crops that could be sold on the world market to pay off its debt. Land and resources were shifted away from basic food production, and the results have been a disaster for the peasants. In Chiapas most peasants used to grow corn and beans, but over the years many switched to growing coffee for export. When the price of coffee fell on the world market in 1990, thousands of peasants were ruined. The misery of the Mexican peasants is an indispensable part of the world imperialist system that dominates Mexico's economy and politics.
Miguel spoke about the conditions in the ejido. "There aren't the economic resources to build houses, for health care, education. Most of us indigenous people have houses made of straw, thin slats of wood, with walls made from boards or with mud on top. Many times, many years, we have asked for credits for housing but the government never responded. Our food is very different from the city. If we have beans, it's like eating meat. But most of us only eat corn, the corn that we grow ourselves. That's the life of indigenous people.
"In urban areas they can build highways, theatres, luxury houses, things like that. We haven't had anything like that. That's the inequality that we see. They say, `Bring your petitions here, and we will get them to the governor.' We get our petitions to the governor, and they take them, and they file them away. And we come again, and they say, `Bring us your petition,' and they do the same thing. We're tired of all these petitions and requests. And we're seeing things for what they were. That's inequality. Lack of attention.
"Since we're indigenous peasants, they think we don't know how to think. Like the way they did to our people a long time ago, the way they came to oppress people and control people, they continue controlling our community the same way."
An older man sitting in the corner of the room asked Miguel to continue speaking about the land they had seized 11 or 12 years earlier in order to expand the ejido. Miguel continued. "Around 1983, when we saw that the land was completely fallow--that it wasn't being cultivated--we took that land by force. There was no other solution, no answer from the government. The government threatened us with Public Security, but we didn't give up and we still occupy the land. We just have to legalize the papers. From 1983 until now, we still don't have the papers in our hands.
Pablo joined in, "Even though our grandfathers gave us good land, there's not enough.
"The land that we found borders on this ejido, that's how we knew about it. We could see that it was abandoned land. So we went to look at the papers and we could see that we were missing some land. They still needed to hand over land from the Presidential Decree. So we began to question it.
"So some surveyors came out to measure how many hectares we had, and how many hectares were missing. And the surveyor said, `That land over there is yours too'. But then the owner came, the landlord, and he said, `No, this land is mine.' And we said, `No, we have papers! It says here--and our grandfathers knew--that the ejido goes to here.' So the surveyor became aware that this land was still free. `It's your property. But don't tell my boss, because he'll fire me. Keep it a secret. Take this land, and maybe you'll have a chance.' He said, `Take it down as far as the ravine [the border] with the owner.' And we did that, and that way we realized that the land was fallow, like the Agrarian Reform Law says. The law says, `If the land is fallow, or abandoned, the peasants have the right to make an ejido out of it.'
"So we made our request, and probably they just didn't pay any attention to it. But with the force of the peasants, we took it over, we planted it, we put fences around it, and that's as far as we've gotten with it."
The government has never acknowledged the petition to legalize the ejido's claim to the land. Meanwhile, the owner has schemed and plotted various actions to force the campesinos off of the land. The owner has even attempted to generate a war between the campesinos on the ejido and another group of peasants the landowner brought into the picture.
As Pablo tells it: "The owner sold the land to some other group of peasants. What happened is really unfortunate. He knew that we were already there in possession. But he began to use these other people, educated people and judges, and they joined together with some peasants, and they began to buy the land. And they told the peasants: `Go onto the land, just do it. Put up your houses. Here are your papers. It's already legal for you.' So these peasants trusted the supposed owner, and did what he told them to do. And we went to look over our land, and we saw people building their houses. And we began to ask: `What's going on here? What are you doing?' And they didn't say anything. They took up their weapons, machetes and some firearms, and we had to respond.
"So there was a confrontation. Many people were wounded on both sides. But since we were first in making the applications, the authorities were against us. And when our wounded compañeros went to get medical attention, they were taken and sent to jail. And that's how it ended. The owner got his money and he left. And the other peasants were completely deceived."
In many ways the campesinos in Chiapas are still hoping to make the promises of the Mexican revolution--and the ejido system--work for them. Their aim is to take the land by whatever means necessary. They do not express a vision of a whole new revolution to put state power in the hands of the workers and peasants. But new developments in the Mexican countryside have brought things to a head in a new way.
In 1991 new threats to the peasants' land came down as the Mexican ruling class moved to make the agricultural system more profitable for foreign investment. The government changed the constitution, amending Article 27--which has governed land tenure since 1917. According to Article 27, the state was supposed to redistribute land to all those petitioners who can fulfill certain legal requirements. But with the new amendments, the state no longer has to provide petitioners with land, and for the first time ejido lands can be sold. The changes in Article 27 threaten to drive the peasants off the land and concentrate the land in the hands of international agribusiness, the big Mexican capitalists, landlords and political bosses.
Together with the new ejido laws, the signing of the North American Free Trade Agreement--which could destroy the livelihood of some two million small corn growers in Mexico--was a double blow to the peasants. In many ways, these changes were the catalyst for the January uprising.
Miguel said that some of the people on the ejido were initially afraid after the uprising that the government was going to massacre indigenous campesinos. He said that some people were afraid that it would be like Guatemala. But others felt differently.
"Those people that rose up then got tired of waiting. That's why they rose up. Even though we weren't part of it, we agree with what they did--because now we are seeing and hearing in the media that there are many peasants who have seized land since that time. The government says there are many `invaders,' but they are not invaders, they took their own land. Because the real invaders are the latifundistas. It's been 501 years since they came to take our land."
The older man sitting in the corner wanted to clarify some points. "I think that with this uprising, we do have a lot of hope that things will change. We've heard that there are going to be changes, support for indigenous communities, so we hope that through the negotiations the problem will be resolved. It remains to be seen.
"We'd like to get to a total change. But, who knows.... the problem, like I said, is that we feel all alone. It's just a minority of us that think like this. But to make a total change, like I said, it's a lot of work. There's some communities that are taking over the land. That's the change, that's the beginnings of it. It's not the whole thing. But we saw that they struggled, they took the land, and that's the hope that we have--that the land can be taken. Because before there were threats and death, the Public Security Forces always killed people and took everything violently. But now, over the last 20 days, land has been taken in so many parts. So we hope that can be the solution to the problem...."
The encampment was a little difficult to see. Military trucks and cargo trucks roared down the highway without ever seeing it. We were within ten feet of it before we noticed the plastic tarp that served as a tent. A slingshot for hunting birds dangled from a tree branch. Seven indigenous men, including three teenagers, were sitting around a small campfire. The camp was set up just outside a wall that marked the boundary of an ejido.
Most of the men spoke Tzotzil. Only one spoke Spanish and when he was satisfied that we were on the side of the peasants, he filled us in on what was happening. The land behind the wall was their ejido and they wanted to expand it. The man swept his arm out to a narrow strip of land bordering both sides of the highway. He explained that this was the land they were seizing and why. "There is a creek that runs through the land there and we want the water and the land. We are a lot of people already and many don't fit any more. That's why we want to expand and it has been 16 years already that we have been trying to expand." With a smile on his face the campesino explained that the Zapatista uprising had inspired the ejido members to set up camp and seize the land.
As is often the case, the ejido lands they were given were not very fertile. The campesinos had a very difficult time surviving. "We have sheep, some cows, some goats and they go to drink water in the creek and there is some other water over there. We want the land so we can work it. The land is narrow but long. There are about 450 people on our ejido. We can't grow too much on our land. One part is really stony ground and not good for cultivating. And another part is forest and we can't knock it down. So we can't grow enough, and we want to expand. It is prohibited to knock down the forest. They say that the water sources will dry up and the land will all become dry.
"Some of us on the ejido don't even have any land. This young guy, he doesn't have any land. People who have been there longer than we have only have one or two hectares. But these young guys, they don't have anything. There is nothing left and that's why we want to expand the land.
"We have gone to look for work but there is no more work. I was working in Tuxtla, I was firefighting. The wages are decent but you only work there for like five months out of the year. They brought other new people in and I was left without work. I looked for work elsewhere and there wasn't any work. So we want to work a little bit of land."
While the campesinos have had a hard time finding work off the ejido, the government and local political bosses have forced them into government labor. "Here in the community the government comes to offer work, to plant trees. And they don't pay us. They say that the World Bank is going to support it but there is no pay. We go and plant trees every year--in June and July every person plants a hundred trees. You go for two days trying to plant, risking our lives, and the ground is hard and the work is hard. Maybe they give you food but they don't pay you. They say that they will give you help but it is minimum wage and they really don't give you anything.
"We have planted 60,000 trees since 1981. The first year they paid us but the next year they didn't pay us. This work is forced. We don't want to do it but it is obligatory. The Commissioner says that we have to do it. They say it is so we don't lose water. It is orders from the government.
"People on the ejido have been arrested for knocking down trees. They don't let us knock down any trees. It is prohibited.
"We grow potatoes, corn, beans. We grow potatoes and at the time of the harvest the price goes down. We grow cabbages, radishes and there is no market for it, the price goes down. So we can't eat. It is a very hard life here. We ask for credits and they just put it in the files--they don't give it to you. If you ask for work they give you low wages. They lay you off. We went to work on a fire they couldn't control. We wanted to stop it. The fire was burning our shoes off. That's the way people from the countryside work.
"We are asking for this land so we can get it. We would be willing to fight for it. The people are willing to fight."
It was one of those hill roads that just keeps going up. Our destination was one of the poorest towns in the highlands. Mountain peaks pierced clouds while herds of sheep grazed along the sides of steep hills. Backstrap looms--used by local women to produce some of the most beautiful weavings in the country--laid on porches.
One man we met along the road described the area as a place where "the land is just in little plots. We don't even talk about hectares anymore. There are some people who have plots that are 30 by 50 meters, 10 by 15 meters."
A youth riding his beat-up old bike down the road told us, "We don't even talk about poverty here. That would mean that some of us have while others don't. Instead, we all live in misery."
On our way up to the town we met another young man on the road. I noticed he had a baseball hat with a logo from a factory in Milwaukee on his head. As we approached him I asked about the hat. He said his name was Juan and he was 23 years old. He was born on an ejido down the road, and he rented a house there now. But he had no land. His father died when he was a baby and from the time he was a very young child he had been forced to seek work on the ejido and on plantations and fincas throughout the region. Juan explained that he had been recruited by one of the labor recruiters who visits the ejido.
"I started working when I was seven years old--cleaning out the cornfield, things like that, cutting coffee for those that had coffee, planting cabbage--whatever they felt like. When I was little, they didn't pay me. They just gave me food for working.
"Once I went to Tabasco. But there's no work there. Once I went to Huixtla. But there wasn't any there either; I was there for a year and seven months. They paid me 3 pesos when I got back. They were rich people there, they were mestizos. On another job I got 12 pesos for the whole two months because I didn't know how to speak Spanish. In those days I didn't know. I said, `Thanks for the pay.'
"I learned Spanish about two years ago when I was in jail. From the time I got to prison, I began to study. One year and eight months. I more or less learned everything. That was the first opportunity I had to study. So now I more or less know how to read. But only a little writing. In jail, everybody speaks Spanish. No one spoke in our language there. Our language here is Tzotzil."
According to official figures, Chiapas has the fourth highest number of indigenous people imprisoned in the country. In Chiapas indigenous people are routinely jailed for cutting down trees, burning fields to clear them for planting and, as in Juan's case, for offending the local caciques and PRI political bosses.
"The Public Administrator and the judge in San Cristóbal accused me of four crimes. They accused me of crimes against health. They accused me of trafficking, they accused me of rape when I was in jail without any charges. They gave me a sentence of eight years, without even knowing the charges. When they picked me up--me and my friend--we were on our way to change political parties and leave the PRI. That's the only crime. They accused me of four crimes because I wanted to change my political affiliation.
"I was in jail for a year and nine months. I was in Cereso #5 [Centro de Readaptación Social/Center for Social Rehabilitation]. I was a representative. I was in charge of all peasants so that the mestizos couldn't harm them--because the mestizos harass the peasants. They call us Indians, they call us stupid. The mestizos talk together with the guards. The director, the comandante, orders the mestizo prisoners to beat up the Indians. Some people were stabbed there. And some people died; they made them drink muriatic acid.
"I got to the jail without having committed any crime, and I suffered a lot. One meal a day, because I don't have any money. You have to buy meals in jail. If you don't have any money, you get tired of going hungry and you die--because the director-general in Tuxtla gave an order: If the Indians there die, then let them die.
"The comandante beat me--he was ordered to do it by the Minister [government official], so I would say what my job was--if I cultivated drugs or who knows what. He said: `What kind of vices do you have?' And I said, `none.' When I told him that, he got mad and sent the commander to torture me. They beat me in the stomach, and all over my body. They left me for 72 hours without anything to eat or drink, and said that was punishment. I was sick there for six or seven months, and no one visited me, no one even gave me a glass of water. I was almost dead."
Just shy of two years into his sentence, Juan got an unexpected early release when the Zapatistas stormed the prison and set the prisoners free. Juan was laughing as he told this part of his story. "When the Zapatistas arrived, they had to shoot some to get into the prison. They just took shots at the towers. They came about six in the morning. They shot and the guards fled. Some guards changed into clothing like ours--they were really afraid--and the guards escaped with us.
"I talked with the leader and they said they wanted education, work, and to free the innocent people. That's what they told me. `You're free. Leave if you want.' When they arrived they said, `You guys can go!' There were a lot of families, women and children and older people. When they said, `You can go now,' everyone left. And when we left, there were some that took the weapons.
"I want to change my life. But what's the best way? That's what I want to know. What road do I take to find some kind of help for my life?"
This article is posted in English and Spanish on Revolutionary Worker Online
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