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---------- Forwarded message ----------
Date: Thu, 12 Apr 2007 09:24:01 -0500 (CDT)
From: dr.woooo <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
To: [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Subject: En;osag list ) Inside the paramilitary offensive :an eyewitness
    view by Liam Frost

Plan Puebla Panama - update on what's happening in Chiapas
Inside the Paramilitary Offensive: an eyewitness view
BY: Liam Frost*
http://groups.yahoo.com/group/oaxacastudyactiongroup/messages

For the first week of March, the small Zapatista town of Emiliano
Zapata had planned a full week of collective work in the milpa
(cornfield) to make up for the consumption of a cow they had eaten a
few days previous. They had killed it as a small reward for the
amount of river snails they had gathered so arduously the week
before and were now preparing to clean fields ready to plant next
season's maize.
But like many other communities across the municipality of San
Manuel at the beginning of March, and indeed across Chiapas, work in
the milpa had been suspended. Instead the men of Emiliano Zapata
were gathered outside the home of the person in charge of the
community, listening intently to loud, muffled voices emanating from
his two-way radio. Though the voices streamed constant information,
the gist was that paramilitaries were mobilizing.
By Tuesday morning the information from the muffled voices had
become clearer and, indeed, visible. At around eight o'clock a
caravan of at least seven cargo trucks rode through on the dirt road
that bisects this small town, and reports were filtering through of
a large demonstration in the market town of Ocosingo three hours
away.
The demonstration had been organized by the Organization for the
Defense of Indigenous and Campesino Rights (OPDDIC, its initials in
Spanish), an organization long characterized as having close
paramilitary links. Over the last few years, the OPDDIC has grown
rapidly in Chiapas, directly challenging the authority of the
Zapatistas. By the end of the day the result of the demonstration
was that twenty six of the demonstrators were in jail for beating up
two Zapatista cameramen who were documenting the protests and a much
higher profile, although somewhat negative, for the OPDDIC.
It was the beginning of a strange time in the ca~adas (canyons),
even the weather appeared to sense the sudden shift in mood,
switching from dry, baking heat to foreboding storm clouds that only
managed to threaten but never materialized into a rainstorm. The
usual laid back pace of Emiliano Zapata had reclined to almost a
complete halt and all people could do was wait for developments and
do what they could in their own homes.
During the night it was not unusual to hear the deep timbre of the
conch shell, normally only reserved to call men for the planning of
collective work, but now used to alert them of new developments and
plan shifts to guard the town. By the end of the first week of
the "threat," the number of guards for the night had increased from
the usual two to thirty causing the vast majority of the town's male
population to walk around like zombies during the day. Even the
boisterous noise of different accents and languages that usually
color the communal kitchen had disappeared, as Fray Bartolome' de las
Casas Human Rights Center, a Chiapas human rights organization,
suddenly pulled all their human rights observers from the area.
In fact, the only constant was the mischief of the children here
who, with the added freedom of a canceled school week, punctuated
the slow days loudly barging in and out of rooms, announcing, in no-
uncertain terms, that there was a war.
There was, of course, no war but the situation here in Chiapas is,
undeniably, tense. Since Marcos' bellicose February communique', in
which he labeled the OPDDIC an out and out criminal organization,
the heat has been rising and the tension palpable.
Whereas before, the OPDDIC had been treated with a cautious
disregard by the Zapatistas, it is now recognized as a legitimate
threat to reclaimed campesino land. Indeed, on March 25 during the
inauguration of the second phase of the Other Campaign in San
Cristobal, the first half of the gathering was dominated by reports
on OPDDIC. Marcos illustrated the gravity of the situation saying
that in addition to the Other Campaign "there is a new offensive and
that it is OPDDIC."
What really underscores the tension here is how inextricably linked
each side is to the other. Whole families are split between
Zapatistas and OPDDIC, and usually within a few miles of each other.


Just across the river from Emiliano Zapata is Rafael Moreno, a
smaller community that also uses the wide river to fish, bathe and
scour for river snails. Unlike Emiliano Zapata, however, where
everyone is loyal Zapatista, Rafael Moreno is deeply divided. It is
a village where every single one of the OPDDIC supporters that
reside there were once Zapatistas who lived in Emiliano Zapata, thus
intensifying relations and loyalties.
The threat to Zapatista supporters in Rafael Moreno was deemed so
great in fact that Zapata began sending twenty four men a night by
kayak to secure their safety. However it was clear the OPDDIC
members were far from intimidated by this presence.
On 16th March, as Zapata geared up to celebrate the completion of
the building for the municipal Pharmacy Warehouse by killing a pig
to the fiesta sound of a marimba, huge flames burned in the evening
sky across the river. A whole milpa, one campesino's supply of corn
for the whole year, was being incinerated by the OPDDIC.
In addition, further demonstrating just how close to home the OPDDIC
threat is for Emiliano Zapata, one of those arrested at the March 7
demonstration in Ocosingo was not only a resident of Rafael Moreno
but also a brother-in- law of those in charge of Emiliano Zapata.
Indeed it seems every family here has some relative in the OPDDIC.
One former guerrilla told me that last week he walked a mile down
the road to visit his cousin, a loyal "OPDDICa." He had gone to his
cousin's to talk over the situation and explain that OPDDIC has no
ideology other than allegiance to government money. Apparently the
conversation concluded with a goodbye to his cousin and an offer
that there would always be a place for him to return or otherwise
always someone to fight, presumably his cousin, the guerrilla
warrior.
Over the past decade La Lucha has evolved from the military fight
for land to a peaceful, if not more complex, fight for autonomous
health and education. But a decade is not such a long time, and if
this recent episode with the OPDDIC has proven anything, it has
proven that the Zapatistas are as ready to fight as they were in
1994.
When I asked an elderly woman recently if she was worried about the
current threat, she seemed almost offended by my question and curtly
replied, "Not at all, we're totally organized."
-------------
* Liam Frost is currently living and working as a volunteer in San
Manuel, the Chiapas Support Committee's partner autonomous
municipality.


-- 
the ankle bone, connected to the thigh bone ;)

http://del.icio.us/dr.woooo

http://www.aut-op-sy.org
http://narconews.com
http://www.eco.utexas.edu/~archive/chiapas95/
http://noborder.org
http://slash.interactivist.net/
http://ainfos.ca
http://www.metamute.org
http://lists.perthimc.asn.au/pipermail/blackgreensolidarity/
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Precarity
http://www.metamute.org/en/Precarious-Reader
https://lists.resist.ca/pipermail/ipsm-l/2005-July/000781.html
http://www.deletetheborder.org
http://www.nettime.org
http://www.pochanostra.com/dialogues/
http://www.aspaceoutside.org/wp-content/uploads/Space_Outside_Reader.pdf
http://www.prol-position.net/
http://stateofemergency.nomasters.org/
http://www.infoshop.org/inews
http://www.eco-action.org/dod
http://www.16beavergroup.org/drift/overview.htm

------_Part_35449_29454211.1176387835792
Content-Type: text/html; charsetISO-8859-1
Content-Transfer-Encoding: quoted-printable
Content-Disposition: inline

Plan Puebla Panama - update on what's happening in Chiapas



Inside the Paramilitary Offensive: an eyewitness view
BY: Liam Frost*
http://groups.yahoo.com/group/oaxacastudyactiongroup/messages
 (http://groups.yahoo.com/group/oaxacastudyactiongroup/message)

For the first week of March, the small Zapatista town of Emiliano
Zapata had planned a full week of collective work in the milpa
(cornfield) to make up for the consumption of a cow they had eaten a
few days previous. They had killed it as a small reward for the

amount of river snails they had gathered so arduously the week
before and were now preparing to clean fields ready to plant next
season's maize.
But like many other communities across the municipality of San

Manuel at the beginning of March, and indeed across Chiapas, work in
the milpa had been suspended. Instead the men of Emiliano Zapata
were gathered outside the home of the person in charge of the
community, listening intently to loud, muffled voices emanating from

his two-way radio. Though the voices streamed constant information,
the gist was that paramilitaries were mobilizing.
By Tuesday morning the information from the muffled voices had
become clearer and, indeed, visible. At around eight o'clock a

caravan of at least seven cargo trucks rode through on the dirt road
that bisects this small town, and reports were filtering through of
a large demonstration in the market town of Ocosingo three hours
away.

The demonstration had been organized by the Organization for the
Defense of Indigenous and Campesino Rights (OPDDIC, its initials in
Spanish), an organization long characterized as having close
paramilitary links. Over the last few years, the OPDDIC has grown

rapidly in Chiapas, directly challenging the authority of the
Zapatistas. By the end of the day the result of the demonstration
was that twenty six of the demonstrators were in jail for beating up
two Zapatista cameramen who were documenting the protests and a much

higher profile, although somewhat negative, for the OPDDIC.
It was the beginning of a strange time in the ca~adas (canyons),
even the weather appeared to sense the sudden shift in mood,
switching from dry, baking heat to foreboding storm clouds that only

managed to threaten but never materialized into a rainstorm. The
usual laid back pace of Emiliano Zapata had reclined to almost a
complete halt and all people could do was wait for developments and
do what they could in their own homes.

During the night it was not unusual to hear the deep timbre of the
conch shell, normally only reserved to call men for the planning of
collective work, but now used to alert them of new developments and
plan shifts to guard the town. By the end of the first week of

the "threat," the number of guards for the night had increased from
the usual two to thirty causing the vast majority of the town's male
population to walk around like zombies during the day. Even the

boisterous noise of different accents and languages that usually
color the communal kitchen had disappeared, as Fray Bartolome' de las
Casas Human Rights Center, a Chiapas human rights organization,
suddenly pulled all their human rights observers from the area.

In fact, the only constant was the mischief of the children here
who, with the added freedom of a canceled school week, punctuated
the slow days loudly barging in and out of rooms, announcing, in no-
uncertain terms, that there was a war.

There was, of course, no war but the situation here in Chiapas is,
undeniably, tense. Since Marcos' bellicose February communique', in
which he labeled the OPDDIC an out and out criminal organization,
the heat has been rising and the tension palpable.

Whereas before, the OPDDIC had been treated with a cautious
disregard by the Zapatistas, it is now recognized as a legitimate
threat to reclaimed campesino land. Indeed, on March 25 during the
inauguration of the second phase of the Other Campaign in San

Cristobal, the first half of the gathering was dominated by reports
on OPDDIC. Marcos illustrated the gravity of the situation saying
that in addition to the Other Campaign "there is a new offensive and

that it is OPDDIC."
What really underscores the tension here is how inextricably linked
each side is to the other. Whole families are split between
Zapatistas and OPDDIC, and usually within a few miles of each other.



Just across the river from Emiliano Zapata is Rafael Moreno, a
smaller community that also uses the wide river to fish, bathe and
scour for river snails. Unlike Emiliano Zapata, however, where
everyone is loyal Zapatista, Rafael Moreno is deeply divided. It is

a village where every single one of the OPDDIC supporters that
reside there were once Zapatistas who lived in Emiliano Zapata, thus
intensifying relations and loyalties.
The threat to Zapatista supporters in Rafael Moreno was deemed so

great in fact that Zapata began sending twenty four men a night by
kayak to secure their safety. However it was clear the OPDDIC
members were far from intimidated by this presence.
On 16th March, as Zapata geared up to celebrate the completion of

the building for the municipal Pharmacy Warehouse by killing a pig
to the fiesta sound of a marimba, huge flames burned in the evening
sky across the river. A whole milpa, one campesino's supply of corn
for the whole year, was being incinerated by the OPDDIC.

In addition, further demonstrating just how close to home the OPDDIC
threat is for Emiliano Zapata, one of those arrested at the March 7
demonstration in Ocosingo was not only a resident of Rafael Moreno
but also a brother-in- law of those in charge of Emiliano Zapata.

Indeed it seems every family here has some relative in the OPDDIC.
One former guerrilla told me that last week he walked a mile down
the road to visit his cousin, a loyal "OPDDICa." He had gone to his

cousin's to talk over the situation and explain that OPDDIC has no
ideology other than allegiance to government money. Apparently the
conversation concluded with a goodbye to his cousin and an offer
that there would always be a place for him to return or otherwise

always someone to fight, presumably his cousin, the guerrilla
warrior.
Over the past decade La Lucha has evolved from the military fight
for land to a peaceful, if not more complex, fight for autonomous
health and education. But a decade is not such a long time, and if

this recent episode with the OPDDIC has proven anything, it has
proven that the Zapatistas are as ready to fight as they were in
1994.
When I asked an elderly woman recently if she was worried about the
current threat, she seemed almost offended by my question and curtly

replied, "Not at all, we're totally organized."
-------------
* Liam Frost is currently living and working as a volunteer in San
Manuel, the Chiapas Support Committee's partner autonomous

municipality.

-- 
the ankle bone, connected to the thigh bone ;)

http://del.icio.us/dr.woooo (http://del.icio.us/dr.woooo)

http://www.aut-op-sy.org
 (http://www.aut-op-sy.org)
http://narconews.com (http://narconews.com)
http://www.eco.utexas.edu/~archive/chiapas95/ 
(http://www.eco.utexas.edu/~archive/chiapas95/)
http://noborder.org
 (http://noborder.org)
http://slash.interactivist.net/ (http://slash.interactivist.net/)
http://ainfos.ca (http://ainfos.ca)
http://www.metamute.org (http://www.metamute.org)

http://lists.perthimc.asn.au/pipermail/blackgreensolidarity/ 
(http://lists.perthimc.asn.au/pipermail/blackgreensolidarity/)
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Precarity (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Precarity)
http://www.metamute.org/en/Precarious-Reader
 (http://www.metamute.org/en/Precarious-Reader)
https://lists.resist.ca/pipermail/ipsm-l/2005-July/000781.html 
(https://lists.resist.ca/pipermail/ipsm-l/2005-July/000781.ht)
http://www.deletetheborder.org
 (http://www.deletetheborder.org)
http://www.nettime.org (http://www.nettime.org)
http://www.pochanostra.com/dialogues/ (http://www.pochanostra.com/dialogues/)

http://www.aspaceoutside.org/wp-content/uploads/Space_Outside_Reader.pdf 
(http://www.aspaceoutside.org/wp-content/uploads/Space_Outsid)
http://www.prol-position.net/ (http://www.prol-position.net/)
http://stateofemergency.nomasters.org/
 (http://stateofemergency.nomasters.org/)
http://www.infoshop.org/inews (http://www.infoshop.org/inews)
http://www.eco-action.org/dod (http://www.eco-action.org/dod)
http://www.16beavergroup.org/drift/overview.htm
 (http://www.16beavergroup.org/drift/overview.htm)

------_Part_35449_29454211.1176387835792--

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