The indigenous revolt
A central part of the Latin American revolution
The Indian peoples' struggle for autonomy is a central part of the revolutionary project in Mexico. On the following pages we reprint the resolution on this question which was passed at the recent congress of Mexico's Revolutionary Workers Party (PRT). It is an ambitious attempt integrate the indigenous struggle into a revolutionary project for a Latin American country. (Extracts from the introduction] THE ZAPATISTA RISING HAS AGAIN EMPOWERED the Indian peoples' struggle and substantially increased its political importance. In this way, the propositions we made before the Zapatista rising about the autonomy and rights of the Indian peoples have been relaunched at the propositional level and especially at the interlocutory level by the Indian peoples confronting the totality of society and the state.
The PRT congress did not want to simply reaffirm the necessary solidarity with and endorsement of the Indian peoples' struggle. With the presence and proposals of PRT militants among the Indian peoples, especially but not solely in Guerrero, a special resolution was submitted to the congress. The PRT has thereby become the first party to adopt a specific resolution in favor of autonomy for the Indian peoples. It is, moreover, an effort to focus on the issue from a revolutionary Marxist perspective. It is the first document of the congress to be published, precisely because of its importance and the need to study and distribute it.
It is our contribution to the debate that has opened on the subject, which should also find expression in the legislative branch, as well as a contribution to the National Indigenous Forum, initiated by the EZLN, and the ANIPA (Multinational Indigenous Assembly for Autonomy), for both of which the PRT congress reaffirmed its support and participation.
As a result of this resolution, the demand for the autonomy of the Indian peoples has been incorporated into our strategic perspectives, in our declaration of principles and the program revised by the congress. This was compared during the congress to the adoption by the PRT of its role as a feminist party more than fifteen years ago, that is, integrating feminism into the party program as approved by the congress and now, incorporating the struggle for the autonomy of the Indian peoples on this level.
This latest renovation is part of another that historically closes a part of the cycle of crisis opened some years ago in the party by currents that opposed and denounced the development and growth of the PRT in the peasant movement (and now, we can clearly say, among our country's Indian peoples) as an adulteration of the Bolshevik party project. It is among the renovations we have made since then on the need to build the revolutionary party among other revolutionary subjects like the peasant movement and the urban popular movement. The delay can be located in our slowness to recognize that this growth among the peasantry was basically among the Indian peoples. This
Mexico * delay can also be explained but not justified by the pressure of the "red professors" who condemned our supposed deviations in building a proletarian party. Having transcended this debate, it is now possible to dedicate more balanced energy and effort for the construction of the party in the working class and among workers in general. New opportunities for struggle here are certainly opened with this crisis, though it may be more slowly than in the countryside.
Some try to be "bigger Zapatistas than the Zapatistas themselves." But we stress the need for a national political party, taking into account the imbalance between the levels of consciousness and struggle in the countryside and in certain regions (basically Chiapas) and the rest of the nation and the situation of the workers in the big cities. *
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* Mexico The Eighth National Congress of the Revolutionary Workers Party (PRT) was held in Mexico City from June 19-21, 1996. Along with other resolutions, the Congress passed this resolution on the right of the Indian peoples to autonomy. I. General Considerations 1. Contemporary society is based upon the capitalist economy as a dominant system, but its reproduction and functioning is only possible in articulation with precapitalist and semi-capitalist forms of production through the world capitalist market. There is no country that is not articulated in the world market, whatever its level of development. The continued existence of a series of "backward" countries and other highly developed ones, interdependently related, can only be explained on the basis of the law of unequal and combined development. 2. Mexico is a capitalist country - disadvantageously integrated and subordinated to the plans of North America imperialism through NAFTA - which is losing its national sovereignty and leaving to its fate the larger part of the Mexican population, among whom non-capitalist or uncompetitive (in this type of market, because of their technological backwardness) capitalist economies 3. The model of neoliberal development imposed since the De la Madrid presidency has not and will not succeed in levelling our country with its North American allies, but has been successful in the massive production of poor people, who in the context of their insertion into international capitalist accumulation, precisely fulfill their function as consumers of commodities and in lowering of the costs of production through abundant 4. The economy of the Indian peoples of Mexico and Latin America functions with precapitalist forms of production, or in some cases semi-capitalist ones, but is related to the capitalist economy through the market. The latter, as the predominant form, attempts to eliminate the former ones, but as it does not succeed, it accepts coexistence with them, giving them the characteristics of dominated, subjugated and superexploited economies. It conditions them as a function of the interests of the global reproduction of 5. The Mexican state, in its efforts to homogenize the nation, hoped to destroy the culture of the Indians. From the colonial era until the present, different paternalist 12 International Viewpoint indigenous policies have been orchestrated with the premise of incorporating or integrating the Indian peoples into "national development," based on an intensive process of acculturation and mixing, leaving the values of pre-Hispanic culture only to the rhetoric of speeches projecting pride in the nation's roots or to exhibit the richness of Mexican folkways to foreign tourists. All this has been merely a prop for capitalist rule. 6. Capitalist development by its nature introduces inequality and favors certain social classes such as the different sections of the bourgeoisie (commercial, agricultural, industrial and financial) to the detriment of other classes such as the working class and the peasantry, and among these, the Indian peoples. Thus, just as on the international level there are oppressor and oppressed nations, on the national level, besides exploiting and exploited classes, an oppression exercised by sectors of all social classes has developed alongside large populations oppressed for being Indians. This is what some intellectuals have called a situation of internal colonialism, especially as related to the manner in which the Indian people live. 7. As the present millennium ends, at the dawn of the 21st century, a minority is dying from eating too much, while the immense majority dies for lack of food. This is where decadent neoliberal capitalism has led humanity. Meanwhile, socialism, which emerged with such vigor at the beginning of the 20th century and promised to end the system of exploitation of human by human and inaugurate a free and democratic society, "failed" with the fall of the Soviet Union, due more to the bureaucratic degeneration of the workers' states than the supremacy of the reign of capital. 8. While Mexico argues over a decrepit and anti-democratic regime, the oppressed Indian people, who have nothing to lose, are attempting to democratize this country and save a national sovereignty trampled upon by the current corrupt, sellout government. 9. The Indian peoples, after more than 500 years of resistance and struggle against death and extinction, are now the worthiest allies of the working class in the coming Mexican socialist revolution. In their origins and their Mesoamerican civilization, so long negated, are the seeds of the truly egalitarian society 10. With the completion of the 500th anniversary of the Spanish invasion and conquest, the Indians are no longer presenting only demands for survival, but a central demand that is clearly political: indigenous autonomy, a demand that synthesizes the difficult problematic in which they find themselves and the alternative that they propose to resolve it. Its content is qualitatively superior to federalist schemes and theory that still dominate because of the rule of the despotic PRI regime. Its form can be a unique model for the exercise of democracy and free association for the first time, after 504 years of discrimination, racism and humiliation. 11. The inauguration of a regime of autonomy exceeds the capacity and possibilities of a "semicolonial" bourgeois society like Mexico. Because of its anticapitalist and national character, its full realization will not come under capitalism, but it can be advanced in a limited form, as long as a class perspective and the socialist objective are not abandoned. 12. The demand for autonomy is for the Indian peoples to establish their own government with the purpose of freely designing a strategy of integral development. That is, it is a form of government that allows them to choose their own destiny. A Mexican government based upon a regime of autonomy would allow the development of a new, more Just relation with all peoples, without risking national integrity and unity. Moreover, it would be the best formula for a harmonious national concert based on respect and support for the cultural diversity that permeates the country. It is the path to erasing the differences between the "hidden Mexico" and the "imaginary Mexico" that has so punished the most unprotected sectors, especially those in rural areas. Thus, autonomy for the Indian peoples is nothing more than the freedom to govern themselves with 13. The conquest of autonomy will be the product of the national democratic movement. This is why the Indians are so enthusiastically in the ranks of the democratic struggles that are led today by the different popular sectors, especially the Mexican peasantry. There will be no autonomy without democracy in our country, but neither will there be a democratic state unless it recognizes the right to an autonomous regime to all those peoples that demand it. 14. The Indian peoples are situated in the poorest sectors of the class structure; attempts to proletarianize them have failed. While there is an important sector of Indians who have migrated to the big cities, they have been integrated, more than into the working class, into the larger and larger informal sector of the economy or the lumpen proletariat (declassed elements). Yet, within the indigenous communities, there is also a quite distinct class stratification. Not all Indians are equal. There are a handful of rich rural bosses and an immense majority of the poor. Relations of exploitation exist within these communities because capitalism has penetrated Indian life, with all its structural and superstructural baggage, to such an extent that it has imprinted the fundamental characteristics of the consumer society. In Mexico, the most important transmission belt has been the state party system itself. 15. Before the incapacity and crisis of the dominant system, not only in resolving the basic problems of the Indian people, but also in its insistent criminal policies toward them, the EZLN (Zapatista Army of National Liberation), a political-military organization appeared on the scene on January 1, 1994, declaring war against the neoliberal PRI government just when the North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA) was going into effect. This ended the comprehension of
the Indian struggle as one for survival; it was now becoming a resistance struggle to win a life of dignity with justice, freedom and democracy. War had to be declared to reach a peace. With this came, most outstandingly, the demand for autonomy as a political alternative to the Indian problematic. This will not be resolved merely with money handed over like alms, but with democracy. Autonomy is the Indian contribution to the democracy that all Mexicans desire, because we understand it as a process of the appropriation of politics, the economy and culture by the people themselves, Indian or non-
16. When the Indians' enemies say that they are separatists, they either have no idea of what they speak, or are hoping to fool national public opinion. Since the beginning of the 20th century, the most outstanding
Marxists such as Lenin, Trotsky and others have come to the conclusion that all internationalist revolutionaries should support national liberation struggles, both by people and nationalities, such as different ethnic groups, under the principle of the right to self-determination of all the world's peoples, including the right to form independent states. Nevertheless, at no time has the separation of the Indians from the Mexican
Republican been posed, but rather the creation of a new level of government (the autonomous regions) within the context of national sovereignty. The autonomous regions must not be on a lower level than the municipalities; on the contrary, they should be above the municipalities and at the same level as the states. In some cases they could be similar to municipalities inside the states; this would depend on the concrete situation. That is, even new multiethnic states could be created through the integration of indigenous 17. The viability of indigenous autonomy is based on the very fact that the indigenous peoples, despite everything, still maintain the fundamental aspects of collective organizational forms. Their economy, while one of subsistence, is of an integral character, because they produce almost all of what they consume, at least their basic products and those of primary necessity. That is, its relation with the market is supplementary. Therefore, a Law on Autonomy and the inclusion of the right to autonomy in the constitution, on the one hand, will only be the legal sanction of a persisting reality, but, on the other hand, would finally offer a real strategic and political solution to one of the 18. The autonomy we demand is not the legalization of backwardness, nor the constitution of reservations. It demands a governmental regime where, in the context of a real democratic federalism, the autonomous regions receive an annual budget from the federal government sufficient for the exercise of their functions. As a new level of government, they should have the right to the same treatment as the federal entities. But they will have the advantage, upon their assimilation of all the advanced science and technology that humanity has currently created, combined with their communitarian and collectivist forms of government, of being able, with greater speed, to attain a more democratic society without waiting the amount of time that other peoples have needed. More precisely, they will in this way enter into a process of permanent revolution.
19. The current struggles for autonomy are of a strategic and historical character as they accumulate the most valuable of the contributions of the Latin American peoples such as the Nicaraguans, of Marxist thinkers like
Mariategui and other contemporary revolutionaries and intellectuals like the EZLN's
Subcommandante Marcos himself. But they will also value the positive and negative experiences of the world's other peoples, like the Basques in the Spanish State in Western
20. Today, the essential characteristics of the regional autonomy regime needed in Mexico are contained in the Project for a Decree
Initiative for the creation of Autonomous
Regions proposed by the indigenous organizations grouped in the Multinational Indigenous Assembly for Autonomy (ANIPA). This document foresees in a more developed manner the powers of this new level of government, its relations with the Federation, the states and the municipalities.
It moreover assigns a fundamental role in the autonomy process to the indigenous woman. There will be no free and democratic autonomy regime if it does not recognize the equality of rights between men and women. 21. The adoption of an autonomy regime will be by the free decision of the peoples. As a democratic right, it must be of a voluntary character in the sense that it cannot be imposed, and while it is a political necessity today, it cannot be of a forced nature. The forced implantation of any autonomy statute would only lead to failure, like the attempt at forced collectivization of the peasantry in the 1920's in the former Soviet Union and other historical experiences that teach the same II. Axes of Political Action Any diagnosis of the situation of the Indian peoples of Mexico will reach the same conclusion. They live in extreme poverty. They suffer the results of history at almost every level. They live in marginal areas where basic public services (such as health care, roads, water and light) are scarce; their economy uses traditional technology, their agricultural and artisan activities are at a subsistence level, and extensive agricultural practices, are prevalent, with their strongly negative effects on the ecosystem. NAFTA has no viability for the indigenous economy, which is uncompetitive and of little profitability. Agricultural problems are many and attempts to solve them have created victims. There is a high level of emigration in the dry season, with prejudicial effects upon the education of children. This very poverty and measly wages lead to malnutrition, while mortality and morbidity are alarmingly high in various regions. The people live in indis-
Mexico * criminate and overcrowded conditions. There is a glut of statistics to prove these judgements. Moreover, the phenomena of alcoholism, illiteracy and other social ills sharpen in these times of crisis, expressing themselves in various forms from family disintegration to the loss of cultural identity. In addition, they experience policies of racism. discrimination, "bossism " and anti-democratic practices in the greater number of our Nevertheless, all the problems that the indigenous peoples suffer are the product of and emanate from a political regime of exclusion. Indigenous peoples as still treated as children unable to solve their own problems and paternalistic governments preserve the essentials of these conditions, at best. But in the face of the new assault by the neoliberal model, the Indian future is increasingly uncertain, to say the least. Facing such a complex problematic among Mexico's Indians, who represent more than 10% of the total population, grouped in 56 peoples with their National Indigenous Congress THE NATIONAL INDIGENOUS CONGRESS (CNI), an independent assembly of Indian peoples, met in Mexico City in the second week of October, with 680 delegates from 45 ethnic groups in 23 states participating. The highlight of the event was the arrival of Comandante Ramona, a Tzotzil woman from Chiapas, who came as the official representative of the Zapatista Army of National Liberation (EZLN).
The Congress was convened by the Zapatista National Liberation Front (FZLN), the political arm of the EZLN, in order to try to break the military encirclement and political isolation of the EZLN. It became something more: a major convention of indigenous peoples to put forward solutions to the problems of Mexico's Indian peoples.
The Indigenous Congress opposed the militarization taking place throughout Mexico, and called for reform of 14 articles of the Mexican Constitution. The CNI adopted a final resolution titled "Never Again a Mexico Without Us." Among the most important points raised by the final resolution are the following
• The Mexican Army should leave the indigenous communities which it occupies in several states and release political and indigenous prisoners.
• The government should fulfil its agreements with the EZLN.
• The Mexican government should give legal and constitutional recognition to the existence of the indigenous communities, and should grant them the right of self-determination in the form of autonomy. The government should recognize the indigenous peoples' customary practices and create a pluralistic legal system. *
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* Mexico own officially registered languages who live throughout the national territory (not only in Oaxaca, Guerrero or Chiapas - but this is not merely a question of numbers or minority status) and starting from the fact that this is a problem ot political exclusion, we make the tollowing proposals as our main axes of 1. Demand the fulfillment of the San Andres Larrainzar, Chiapas agreements, both by the national executive and their formalization by tinued strengthening of in the context of political great national problems with other sectors. At the same time, also demand the creation and strengthening of the national commission of verification of the agreements from the Working Group on Indigenous Rights and Culture. 2. Establish alliances with other oppressed sectors and especially with the peasants to struggle in a united way for a real political reform of the state that will allow the attainment of a democratic and inclusive government. This implies reforming the national constitution, local constitutions, as well as other laws that emanate from them, so that the Indian peoples will have all of their political rights recognized and may exercise them freely. 3. Guarantee the equal representation of indigenous women in all popularly elected Christian Base Communities THE CHRIST BASE COMMUNITIES (CEBS) celebrated their 25th anniversary in Mexico in the second week of October with a congress in Tehuantepec called "Way of Life, Resistance and Hope, Toward a Society of Justice, Fraternity and Solidarity." The 2,500 religious and lay delegates from about 50 dioceses of Mexico called for a church that "takes the side of the poor."
Led by Arturo Lona Reyes, Bishop of Tehuantepec, the delegates called for a rejection of economic neoliberalism, "the way of death." Over the last 25 years, Lona Reyes has been accused of being a Marxist, of organizing guerrilla movements, and of joining the left-wing Worker, Peasant, Student Coalition of the Isthmus. (COCEI). There have been several attempts on his life. The Bishop criticized the Catholic Church for its "authoritarianism" and lack of democracy.
The Christian base communities have. been committed to work in poor urban communities, among poor farmers, and among Mexico's 10 million Indians. Theyalso organize groups to defend human rights, raise political consciousness, and take up workers rights and labor union Issues. * 14 International Viewpoint offices and in public administration through the establishment of effective mechanisms designed and controlled by women them4. Inaugurating an autonomy regime for the Indian peoples and other peoples that demand it, as the basis of a new federal pact and the support for a new, just relationship between the state, national society and the Indian peoples. 5. Recognition of the autonomous regions and municipalities decided upon by the Indian and non-Indian peoples, making a reality of the accords on this matter between the EZLN and the federal government taken in the Working Group on the Peace Dialogue in Chiapas. This obliges a territorial reordering of the country, the states and the municipalities. 6. Guarantee the political representation of the Indian peoples in the federal and local congresses and local councils in a proportional manner conforming to their percentage in the population. 7. Freedom for all Indian peoples to choose their own authorities and popular representatives, whether in accord with their own customs or through a party system. This means that indigenous customs would also be officially valid as the mechanism for the election of delegates, commissioners or municipal officers or presidents as well as deputies and other popularly elected offices. Nevertheless, we support the validity of custom only when they do not threaten individual guarantees and rights, especially those of indigenous women. 8. The registration of independent candidates to give non-party social organizations access to spaces of popular representation. 9. A redistribution of electoral districts, reorganizing the indigenous municipalities to create indigenous electoral districts, mainly to constitute new, multi-member districts to ensure the political representation of the Indian peoples. This means carrying out a remunicipalization and redistricting taking into account the new demographic reality with the criteria of social justice. 10. Assigning budgetary resources to the commissioners and municipal authorities, rural commune commissioners and other traditional authorities of the Indian peoples so that they may carry out their functions with enthusiasm and in an efficient manner. 11. Creating a parity commission between the federal government (the executive and the indigenous organizations to elaborate a constitutional reform that lays the basis for a new national project. This implies creating a relation of forces favorable to the Indian movement so as to force the government to 12. To help organize a National Congress of Indian Peoples, as well as regional and state congresses, in order to define for all the Indian proposal for the nation and government that we want, and at the same time place it before the consideration of all of Mexican society. 13. Struggle for a new model of rural, regional and integrated development in which the Indian peoples elaborate their own proposals that will allow them to converge with the rest of rural and urban society. 14. Continue participating in the construction of the unity of a plural indigenous movement, as well as continue supporting the dialogue for peace taking place in San Andres Larrainzar, Chiapas. 15. Fight for the implementation of a program of national public security that officially recognizes the communal security forces as one of the mechanisms that guarantees justice on the basis of customary law among the Indian peoples. 16. The formulation of programs by cultural and development offices and institutions in coordination with indigenous organizations. 17. The official adoption of indigenous languages on the same level as Spanish by the national educational system, as well as the constitution of a Secretariat of Indian Peoples with its own organizations and qualified personnel that can develop a plan of national, integrated development giving priority to professional education, including the creation of indigenous universities. 18. The administration of the INI and other offices serving the indigenous population by the organized Indian peopies themselves so they can give an opportune response to their most urgent affairs such as carrying out a program of rural employment, nutrition and supply of basic foodstuffs for women and 19. Establish agreements between the government and the organized Indian peoples to make use of radio, television and the press to regularly inform about national indigenous 20. For a new Article 27 in the constitution that guarantees the territorial integrity of the Indian peoples and avoids any new form of marginalization. There must be a real regional autonomy regime that gives real powers to the Indian peoples. Ernesto Zedillo's proposal is very limited and insufficient as it only recognizes communal and municipal autonomy, which already legally exist, though are dead letters in practice. We do not want this type of autonomy. The autonomy we demand must have resources or it will not be. Only in this way can we really move toward democracy in this country. 21. Distribute and carry out the resolutions of both the National Indigenous Forum and the project for an autonomy law formulated by the ANIPA. Moreover, we must continue to strengthen the spaces for national and international coordination of the Indian movement, respecting the rights of all to free party affiliation and their own religious and ideological beliefs. The only guarantee for advancing toward a pluralistic unity of the movement is practising internal tolerance of political and ideological differences in these organizations based upon a convergence toward common objectives: the struggle for democracy, justice, freedom and peace with dignity. For us, this is part of the project for a Translation by Michael Pearlman