-Caveat Lector- [radtimes] # 171 An informally produced compendium of vital irregularities. "We're living in rad times!" ----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Send $$ to RadTimes!! --> (See ** at end.) ----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Contents: --Union membership in US at lowest level in 60 years --US Said To Export Torture Weapons --The torture trade spreads while governments fail to act --ID, Registration and DNA, Please --Zapatista rebels play to the people --Mexican Rebels to Lead 'Zapatour' to Capital =================================================================== Union membership in US at lowest level in 60 years <http://www.wsws.org/articles/2001/feb2001/afl-f26.shtml> By Jerry White 26 February 2001 The US Bureau of Labor Statistics reported last month that trade union membership in the US had fallen by another 219,000 workers in 2000, bringing the percentage of union members in the workforce to the lowest level in six decades. Union membership fell to 16.3 million, down from 16.5 million in 1999 and a peak of 22.2 million workers in 1975. The number of union members in the US today is the same as it was in 1952, although the workforce has more than doubled over the past five decades, from 50 million to 121 million. The decline in 2000following a small increase in 1999resumes a trend that has seen a yearly decline in union membership for 15 of the last 20 years. The percentage of unionized employees also fell last year, from 13.9 in 1999 to 13.5 in 2000. The current rate of one union worker for every seven to eight employees compares with a high point of nearly one-in-three (32.5 percent) in 1953, and one-in-five (20.1 percent) as late as 1983. The rate of unionization in the private sector is even lower, where fewer than one out of every ten workers, or 9 percent, were union members in 2000, compared to a high point of 35.7 percent in 1953. AFL-CIO union leaders cannot point to recession, high unemployment or other adverse economic conditions to explain the continued plunge in membership. In the 1990s the US experienced nearly a decade of economic expansion, the longest period of uninterrupted growth ever. Official unemployment levels in recent years have stood at near-record lows, and tight labor markets have forced employers to compete for new workers. Nor can union officials point to a hostile administration in Washington. For the most part the AFL-CIO enjoyed the closest relations with the Democratic Clinton administration, which it supported politically. Moreover, AFL-CIO President John Sweeney has made organizing new members a central theme of his five years in office. When they took control of the union federation, Sweeney and his top lieutenants, such as former United Mine Workers (UMWA) President Richard Trumka, presented themselves as a militant new leadership that would revitalize the unions and end the conservative policies of outgoing AFL-CIO President Lane Kirkland, whom they blamed for the union's dwindling membership. One of Sweeney's first acts was to set up an Organizing Department with a $20 million budget. None of this has reversed the AFL-CIO's trajectory of decline and decay. On the contrary, on Sweeney's watch union membership has fallen from 14.9 percent to 13.5 of the workforce. Perhaps the most telling signs of the AFL-CIO's moribund character is its failure to recruit large numbers of younger workers or employees in the fast growing high-tech and service industries. Among 16- to 24-year-old workers, only 6 percent are union members, compared to 20 percent of workers between 45 and 65 years of age. Highly publicized campaigns such as the organizing drive at Amazon.com have been all but dropped in the face of the resistance by the dot.com industry. After Amazon announced it was laying off 1,300 workers, including hundreds who signed petitions for a union, the Communications Workers of America (CWA) had nothing to say except to demand a better severance package. Attempting to sum up the advantages of AFL-CIO membership, Erin Poh, a representative of the CWA-affiliated Northern California Media Workers Guild, boasted that with a union contract Amazon workers would be in a position to offer to take a wage cut as an alternative to layoffs. Only 10 percent of workers in technical, sales and administrative support, 7 percent of all part-time employees, and 4 percent of those employed in sales occupations are unionized. In other significant sectors of the economy the percentage of union workers is negligible, including finance, insurance, real estate and agriculture, where only 2 percent are organized. Even in traditionally organized industries, union membership has plummeted. In coal mining, for example, the rate of unionization has fallen to 10.6 percent, with only 57,000 out of 531,000 employees belonging to unions. Two decades ago, when Trumka was elected mine workers' president, the UMWA alone had 120,000 active members. The United Auto Workers (UAW) has lost half its membership since the mid-1970s. The UAW now represents only 23 percent of workers in independent parts factories, down from 51 percent in 1981. The union's attempts to recruit new members at Japanese and German-owned transplants have been a dismal failure, as seen in the 2-to-1 vote against the UAW at Nissan's Smyrna, Tennessee plant in 1998. Meanwhile, the UAW continues to lose tens of thousands of older workers who are retiring or losing their jobs as a result of downsizing by GM, DaimlerChrysler and other UAW-organized employers. There is one "growth industry," however, where the AFL-CIO has concentrated its resources and had some success. According to the Bureau of Labor Statistics, the occupational group that has the highest unionization rate39.4 percent, is "protective service workers." While firefighters make up a portion of this group, the majority are police officers, sheriff's deputies, criminal investigators, correctional officers, jailers, detectives, security guards, bailiffs and gaming surveillance officers. This says a great deal about the social character of the AFL-CIO. The more it has lost its base in the working class, the more it has turned to the most socially backward elements to sustain its membership. The unions, which were built by militant workers who opposed the violence of strike-breaking policemen, have now come to champion the cause of cops and prison guards. AFL-CIO-affiliated unions now lobby for the construction of new prisons, enthusiastically support the hiring of new police officers and routinely oppose the prosecution of "fellow union members" facing indictment for police brutality, including the beating or even murder of minority youth or other working people. The decline of the American trade unions has been a protracted process that spans decades. This degeneration accelerated from the mid-1970s on. Until then the unions still functioned to pressure the economic elite to increase the share of the national wealth going to workers. But a fundamental change took place that coincided with the decline in the global position of American capitalism and the mounting challenge to US economic dominance by Japan and Europe. Beginning with the 1979-80 Chrysler bailout, the AFL-CIO unions embraced the outlook of corporatism, which holds that the interests of workers and capitalists are identical, rejects any conception of class struggle, and generally opposes any independent form of working class organization. In the name of making US firms more competitive internationally, the unions collaborated with big business to reduce the share of the national wealth going to the working class. Today, after more than two decades of such collaboration, accompanied by a growth of bureaucratism and the further suppression of internal democracy, the unions can no longer be regarded as organizations of the working class. They have become organs of, by, and for the labor bureaucracy. The stench of corruption and betrayal surrounds these organizations. Some of the most recent and egregious examples of corruption have occurred in New York City. In AFL-CIO President John Sweeney's Service Employees International Union (SEIU), Gus Bevona, the president of SEIU's New York Local 32B-32J for nearly two decades, was forced to leave office in 1999 amid scandal over his $530,000-a-year salary and his private penthouse on the top floor of the union headquarters building. The local represents 55,000 New York City janitors, doormen, elevator operators and other building maintenance workers, many of them immigrants, whose earnings average $30,000 a year. New York's District Council 37, the largest single affiliate of the American Federation of State, County and Municipal Employees (AFSCME), is under investigation by the Manhattan district attorney's office for fraud, corruption and gangsterism. One bureaucrat, who entered a plea bargain for stealing more than $50,000, testified that AFSCME officials were involved in stuffing ballot boxes during the 1996 city workers' contract vote in order to obtain ratification for a wage freeze sought by Republican Mayor Rudolph Giuliani. The AFL-CIO unions have severed any connection to the militant traditions of struggle upon which they were built. The loss in union membership parallels the virtual abandonment of the strike weapon. In 1999 there were only 17 major work stoppages, involving just 73,000 workers, the lowest number of strikes or lockouts affecting 1,000 or more workers since 1947. This compares to a high point of 470 strikes (involving 2.7 million workers) in 1952. Over the past three decades, the average number of major strikes has fallen from 289 in the 1970s, to 83 in the 1980s, to 35 in the 1990s. Most of the strikes that are called are isolated and betrayed, after workers languish on picket lines for months, if not years, as the recent settlement of the five-year Detroit newspaper strike demonstrates. As the trade union leadership has entered into joint labor-management committees in every industry and at every level of economic life, workers' wages and living standards have stagnated or declined, the working day has lengthened and job security has evaporated, while corporate profits and executive pay have skyrocketed. With the US economy now heading into recession, the unions have made it clear they will do nothing to oppose plant closings, mass layoffs or other cost-cutting measures. The figures on the decline in union membership were issued shortly before the AFL-CIO Executive Board convened in Los Angeles for its annual winter policy-making meeting. During the three-day gathering Sweeney acknowledged the loss of members and promised to do better next year. But, he said, all was not lost because the AFL-CIO had demonstrated its vitality in the political influence it exerted in the 2000 elections. While Sweeney presents the AFL-CIO's efforts on behalf of the Democratic Party as an expression of strength, in reality it epitomizes the bankrupt political perspective that underlies the disintegration of the unions. The labor bureaucracy's alliance with the Democratic Party is based on their mutual defense of the profit system. As a privileged upper-middle-class stratum, whose perks and privileges are derived from capitalism, union bureaucrats have always been hostile to the political independence of the working class and socialism, and sought to prevent the emergence of a political movement of working people that would challenge the profit system. Today Sweeney boasts of supporting a political party that is so indifferent to the democratic rights of working people that it essentially handed the election to the Republicans, who installed George W. Bush by means of fraud and the suppression of votes. Since Bush's inauguration, the Democrats have been working as virtual coalition partners with the Republican president. To the extent that the Democrats have come to rely more heavily on the AFL-CIO bureaucracy for electoral support, even as the unions have become increasingly irrelevant in the eyes of workers, the Democrats have revealed their own isolation from the broad mass of working people, and the erosion of the Democrats' base of support in the general population. The removal of Kirkland and the ascension of Sweeney in 1995 had far more to do with in-fighting over positions and perks in the labor bureaucracy than with any change in the direction of the labor movement. Since coming to power Sweeney has essentially followed the same failed policies as his predecessor: corporatism, economic nationalism and support for the Democratic Party. The latest figures on the loss of union membership are a devastating confirmation that organizations based on such reactionary policies are doomed to extinction. The globalization of capitalist production has undermined the unions not only in the US, but throughout the world. The ability of transnational corporations to exploit workers in the most far-flung regions of the world has fatally undermined the trade unions that are based on a nationalist orientation and reliance on a national labor market. Union membership has also fallen sharply in Britain, Germany and other Western European nations, as well as Japan, Australia and New Zealand. Where the growth of unions has occurred, such as in South Africa, they have functioned to suppress labor unrest, cut labor costs and boost productivity in order to attract investment capital. The revival of the workers movement must be based on an entirely new perspective, the political independence and international unity of the working class, and the struggle for socialism. To fight for such a perspective, the working class will have to overcome the retrograde influence of the AFL-CIO and build new organizations of industrial and political struggle. =================================================================== The Associated Press - February 26, 2001 US Said To Export Torture Weapons Dozens of U.S. companies sell weapons and other equipment used overseas for torture, Amnesty International said Monday, calling for a ban on the sales. The items include high-tech electroshock weapons, leg irons and serrated thumb cuffs designed to tear flesh if a detainee tries to get free, said a report by the U.S. chapter of the London-based human rights group. ``No U.S. company should profit from torture,'' said William F. Schulz, head of the chapter. ``The global manufacture, marketing and export of the equipment for torture is a moneymaking business that turns a blind eye to the suffering it causes,'' said the report, ``Stopping the Torture Trade.'' Although it is illegal to own some of the equipment in the United States, Amnesty International said the Commerce Department has granted export licenses for sales valued at $97 million since 1997 under the category of ``crime control equipment.'' It said some 80 American companies were involved in the manufacture, marketing and export of the items. An analysis of Commerce data shows Saudi Arabia, Russia, Taiwan, Israel and Egypt as the major recipients of the U.S. equipment, Amnesty said. The report said the group has documented that torturers in those countries use such technology. The equipment could also be used for legitimate law enforcement reasons, including to restrain or subdue detainees. But Amnesty spokesman Alistair Hodgett said the group still believes some of them - such as the flesh-tearing thumb cuffs and a belt that emits electric shocks - are ``inherently cruel'' and their export thus should be banned outright. Other devices have not been tested for their medical effects, and their export should be suspended, he said. Amnesty released the study as the State Department was issuing its annual report on human rights around the world. ``It is unconscionable that while the U.S. State Department promotes human rights, the U.S. Department of Commerce has approved export licenses to countries that our own government documents as committing torture,'' Schulz said in a statement. Hodgett said there are relatively few manufacturers of the equipment, but they sell to an increasing number of suppliers and marketers. ``Once they roll off the production line there's no followup to show where these things end up,'' he said in an interview. ``Despite improved government regulation of exports, weapons are being sold and resold into the hands of torturers,'' Schulz said. ``In the absence of stringent worldwide controls to prevent this ..., export should be immediately halted,'' the Amnesty International report said. The report is part of a yearlong campaign by the human rights group to document torture around the world. It also has launched an Internet program in which supporters can send messages quickly to officials where torture is taking place and demand an immediate end to the abuse. =================================================================== The torture trade spreads while governments fail to act * News Release Issued by the International Secretariat of Amnesty International * 26 February 2001 ACT 40/009/2001 30/01 Torturers are arming themselves with increasingly sophisticated equipment, and -- according to a new report released today by Amnesty International -- the trade in these devices is growing. The equipment includes high voltage electric shock stun weapons and chemical crowd control devices, while torturers continue to abuse old-style equipment such as restraint devices. Amnesty International's report, "Stopping The Torture Trade", reveals that the international trade in high voltage electro-shock batons, shields, stun guns, and stun belts has been expanding throughout the 1990s. This includes 'tasers', which can shoot 'fishhook' darts on wires into victims up to thirty feet away, and stun belts, which are strapped to prisoners and operated by remote control devices. The belts have been known to set off accidentally thrusting about 50,000 volts through the prisoners' kidneys for up to eight seconds. This technology began in the United States, and has spread to Asia, Europe and South Africa. "In the 1970s there were only two companies known to market high voltage electro-shock stun weapons, and now there are over 150 world-wide," said Brian Wood, one of the Amnesty International researchers who worked on the report. "In the absense of stringent controls to prevent this equipment ending up in the hands of torturers, responsible governments must ban its export immediately," he added. In the last two years, over 150 companies operating in 22 countries have been making or marketing electro-shock weapons. Now, Taiwanese, South Korean and Chinese companies probably manufacture more electro-shock stun weapons than companies in the USA. German, French and Israeli companies are also amongst the key manufacturers, and recently Polish, Russian, Czech, Mexican, Brazilian, and South African firms have joined in. The German government does not allow the weapons to be used in German prisons or by German police on German residents, but allows German companies to market and sell them for use abroad. The South African government is now actively promoting the sale of electro-shock belts in Asia, as well as using them on prisoners at home. In one case cited in the report, Mohammed Naguib Adu-Higazi was arrested in Alexandria, Egypt, in 1997 by a State Security Investigations officer. While held at the SSI office, he was stripped of his clothes and given electro-shocks from a "cylinder-shaped stick with a spiral metal wire." He was reportedly deprived of food for three days, kept blind-folded throughout his nine-day detention, and threatened with sexual assault. Between 1997 and March 2000, the United States approved the export to Egypt of shock batons, stun guns and optical sighting devices valued at more than $40,000. "Stopping the Torture Trade," one of a series of reports to be released in Amnesty International's year-long campaign to Stop Torture, also highlights the trade by more than 40 companies in more conventional security devices that can be used for serious abuse of human rights, such as mechanical restraints and chemical sprays. A British company, Pains-Wessex, made tear gas grenades used on peaceful demonstrators -- many of them women and children -- in Zambia in 1997. Despite this, the UK Government's most recent annual report on arms exports reveals that in 1999 the UK granted licences for the export of CS grenades and tear gas/irritant ammunition to Zambia. When UK tear gas was misused in Kenya and its supply was suspended, the Kenyan police were supplied from France. Some chemical weapons such as pepper gas sprays have been associated with many deaths in the USA and their international transfer must be suspended pending proper independent tests. A US company has supplied police with bursting pepper gas projectiles, used for the first time on protesters in Seattle in 1999. Military, security and police expertise taught internationally has also been used for torture, according to the new report. Hundreds of graduates of the US School of the Americas have been implicated in human rights violations in South America. This military school is one of over 150 centres in the USA and abroad where foreign officers are trained. Public information on the human rights content of the training is minimal. Amnesty International's report also cites French security training used in Togo for torture and intimidation of the civilian population. A high-ranking officer in the Togolese gendarmerie, accused by Togo's National Commission for Human Rights of ordering the torture of four people in August 1990, was subsequently awarded the decoration of the National Order of Merit by the French government. In another case, Israeli security officers paid and trained the guards and interrogators in the notorious Khiam detention centre in southern Lebanon until it was closed in May 2000, and the Israeli officers then used the information extracted under torture. " Unless security training is strictly controlled and independently monitored, there is always a danger that it will be used to facilitate human rights violations," said Amnesty International. "There is a crying need for concrete changes to be made to the way governments licence and monitor the manufacture, transfer and use of security equipment and know-how," added the organization. In particular, Amnesty International calls upon governments to: 1) Ban the use of police and security equipment whose use is inherently cruel, inhuman or degrading. Ban the manufacture and promotion of this equipment and its trade to other countries. This should include leg irons, electro-shock stun belts and inherently painful devices such as serrated thumb-cuffs; 2) Suspend the international transfer of electro-shock, leg-cuffs, thumbcuffs, shackle boards, restraint chairs and pepper gas weapons pending the outcome of a rigorous and independent review into the effects of these devices. Suspend the use of high voltage electro-shock weapons pending the outcome of this review; 3) Ensure that the training of military, security and police personnel of another country does not include the transfer of skills, knowledge and techniques likely to lend themselves to torture. =================================================================== ID, Registration and DNA, Please <http://www.wired.com/news/technology/0%2C1282%2C41969%2C00.html?tw=wn20010226> by Amy Hembree Feb. 26, 2001 The man who discovered DNA fingerprinting, Sir Alec Jeffreys, told the BBC recently that a DNA database should be created for all 60 million citizens of the United Kingdom. In a small region like the U.K. or Iceland, which last year sold the genetic records of its 275,000 citizens to a private company, collecting a national DNA database isn't such a chore. But what about the United States? The ultimate barrier to the creation of a national DNA database isn't technology, experts say, but time, money and political obstacles stemming from privacy issues. The Rand Corporation's 1999 "Handbook of Human Tissue Sources," estimated that more than 307 million tissue specimens from more than 178 million cases are stored and are accumulating at a rate of more than 20 million per year. So the database is growing. But costs are prohibitive and logistics daunting. Then there's politics, which may be the ultimate barrier to the creation of a comprehensive national DNA database. The Genetic Privacy Act, written as a proposal for federal legislation, stipulates donors' written authorization to collect or analyze DNA samples. Roche says that while several states have adapted portions of the act for DNA privacy laws, there's no federal law regulating the growing collection of samples. Barry Steinhardt, associate director of the ACLU, said not only would there would be a great public resistance to a national DNA database, there's the "frightening prospect" that it would lead to genetic discrimination and determinism." "There are very vocal groups of people who oppose it on privacy grounds," said Dr. James Crow, emeritus professor of genetics and medical studies at the University of Wisconsin, Madison. Crow also served on the National Commission on the Future of DNA Evidence. Dr. Mark Dantzker, associate professor of criminal justice at the University of Texas Pan American, compares it to police fingerprinting systems. "We have available the ability to take everybody's fingerprint in the country and put that on file," he said. "Yet, the logistics of doing that are tremendous." One major source of DNA is in the form of blood taken from newborns to check for genetic diseases. Since the mid-1960s, the blood has been dried on "Guthrie cards" and stored in state laboratories. Some keep the cards for a few weeks, others up to 25 years. DNA samples are also taken from military recruits. According to the Coast Guard website, samples are stored for 50 years, and DNA tests are conducted only to identify a soldier's body. A third major source is the FBI's Combined DNA Index System (CODIS), which compiles DNA profiles of people convicted of felonies and from evidence collected at crime scenes. In 1998, the National Commission on the Future of DNA Evidence was commissioned to explore the use of DNA in the criminal justice system. At a 1999 commission meeting, Dr. Philip Reilly (then executive director of the Shriver Center for Mental Retardation, now CEO of Interleukin Genetics) said, "We have actually arrived at universal DNA databanking. It's just no one's talking about it." But although millions of samples are being gathered, the databanks aren't linked, the samples aren't contained in a single database, and no one's looking for DNA in them. They're simply bits of tissue on laboratory shelves. That's one reason the samples don't threaten personal privacy, said Patricia Roche, assistant professor of health law at Boston University and co-author of the 1995 Genetic Privacy Act. "Stuff is being banked," she said. "Whether it's being banked with the intent to look at the DNA in it is a different question. Until somebody ... tries to take some real content information out of it, there's no privacy issue triggered." CODIS, which began operations in 1998, already has a huge backlog of unclassified DNA samples. According to a November report in The Washington Post, untested samples are stacking up by the thousands. The DNA Analysis Backlog Elimination Act of 2000, which former President Clinton signed into law in December, has provided $40 million over the next four years just to clear that backlog. So, although millions of samples are available, collating them and the information they contain about individuals would be a Herculean task. "It is technologically easy to do," Crow said. "It isn't technologically cheap to do. One thing that would keep this from happening in the near future is just the expense of doing it." =================================================================== Zapatista rebels play to the people by PAUL KNOX Monday, February 26, 2001 The Globe And Mail <http://www.globeandmail.com/> TUXTLA GUTIERREZ, MEXICO - Trading guns for flowers, Zapatista rebels in ski masks took their Indian-rights message out of the southern Mexican highlands yesterday and welcomed the support of farmers, workers and teachers for their cause. Crowds hailed Zapatista commanders in this capital of impoverished Chiapas state on the second day of the rebels' 16-day caravan to Mexico City, saving their loudest cheers for the charismatic Subcomandante Marcos. "You are not alone," supporters in a crowd of 4,000 chanted as the strategist of the Zapatistas' 1994 New Year's Day uprising stood before them along with 23 rebel commanders, all wearing ski masks and some in traditional Indian garb. "We were never alone," Marcos replied. "But we didn't know it until Jan. 1, 1994." It was the second rally in as many days for the Zapatistas, who hope to gather support as they wind their way through southern and central Mexico. In a bid to rally support for an Indian-rights law, Marcos left his jungle bastion near the Guatemalan border Saturday morning along with several commanders of the Zapatista National Liberation Army (EZLN) after handing over his rifle, pistol and bandolier to a rebel who stayed behind. They joined other rebel leaders for a Saturday-evening rally in San Cristobal de las Casas, 80 kilometres east of here. More than 1,000 Mexican and foreign supporters joined them early yesterday as they set out for Tuxtla Gutierrez, leading a convoy of 35 buses and dozens of other vehicles. They included 250 Italians in white jump suits who call themselves "white monkeys" and say they like the Zapatistas' cause and style. Hundreds of police accompanied the caravan after the Roman Catholic diocese in San Cristobal said it had received a threat to kill Marcos in neighbouring Oaxaca state, where the caravan was scheduled to spend the night in the town of Juchitan. After arriving March 11 in Mexico City, the rebels plan to press Mexico's congress to implement an agreement they reached four years ago with a legislative commission. It would entrench indigenous rights in Mexico's constitution, and give local autonomy to Mexico's 11 million Indians. "We don't want to secede from this country," a commander known as Tacho told yesterday's noon-hour rally. "We want to be taken into account, to be recognized for who we are and to be respected. . . . We're not looking for compassion or pity just because we're Indians." President Vicente Fox Quesada has given broad support to the demands, but they are expected to meet opposition from some congressmen because they include the granting of collective land rights to indigenous groups. The EZLN has never posed a serious military threat to Mexican authorities, but has widespread support among Mayan Indian groups in Chiapas. Some have set up rebel municipal councils and refuse contact with the central government. If yesterday's rally was any indication, the personable, right-leaning Mr. Fox has a rival in the charm department at the other end of the political spectrum. The non-Indian Marcos, who has spent 18 years helping Indians organize their rebellion, is famous for his lyrical writings in defence of the downtrodden and his mastery of Internet publicity techniques. The Mexican government has identified him as Rafael Sebastian Guillen, a native of Tampico in northeastern Mexico. "Marcos, Marcos," the crowd chanted after a welcoming speech by a local community leader. "Hug himgo for it," shouted one man as several women who took the stage to present each rebel commander with white flowers reached Marcos. Before leaving, Marcos tossed his flowers into the crowd. "We want to present these flowers to the ones who deserve them," he said. "I really admire him," said Maragaret Cepedea, a Chiapas state employee, after the rally. "No one from Chiapas dared to do what he has done. Even though he's an outsider, he got to work and helped the Indians. He's an excellent fighter." The many faces of zapatismo were on display on Saturday in San Cristobal, a lively destination for tourists in search of Mayan culture, spectacular scenery or political stimulation. Hundreds of Indians clad in black ski masks, some of whom had walked for hours from mountain villages, waited quietly at a junction on the city's outskirts to greet the rebels. Most were planning to return home yesterday. Some appeared to be under instructions not to talk to reporters. Lucio, a 30-year-old farm worker from the town of Zinacantan who attended primary school for just two years and earns about $5 a day, wore no ski mask. But a red bandanna covered the lower half of his face. "As Indians, we don't have rights, and that's what we wantthe right to our indigenous culture," he said. "We don't have our own land," said a masked young man who refused to give his name. "We don't have enough food. That's why we're in this struggle, and have to fight the government." Earlier, in a courtyard behind a feminist bookstore where supporters were signing up for the caravan, Paulina Lopez Gomez of the village of Oxchuc said she supports the Zapatistas even though their rebellion has brought few improvements. "We want the support that the government hasn't given us," she said. A block or so away, the pungent smell of dark-roast coffee wafted through a café where a pro-Zapatista community representative was giving a news conference. An Italian-made espresso machine dominated the room, and small jars of locally produced jam were on sale for $3.20. The Zapatista rebellion has attracted supporters from Europe, Canada, the United States and Latin America, who see it as a challenge to the globalization of markets and the homogenization of culture. Luca, one of the jump-suit-clad Italians who accompanied the caravan to Tuxtla Gutierrez yesterday, declined to give his surname but said his outfit was designed for acts of civil disobedience. As a uniform body covering, it is akin to the Zapatistas' use of black ski masks, he said. The rebels say their masks underscore the denial of Indian identity in Mexico. Asked why he supports zapatismo, Luca said: "It's the idea of a world that aspires to dreams, to hope, to happiness. It's not a dogma. It's something new, and something old as well." =================================================================== Mexican Rebels to Lead 'Zapatour' to Capital by Kevin Sullivan Washington Post Foreign Service Sunday, February 25, 2001; Page A20 SAN CRISTOBAL DE LAS CASAS, Mexico, Feb. 24--A young Indian woman sells woven trinkets to feed her two children, who have never been to school or a doctor. Just across from the park bench where she sits, a twenty-something American guitarist with expensive sunglasses and hiking boots wails his angst in a Bob Dylan voice. Planes landing at the tiny airport here in southern Mexico disgorge Italians and Germans carrying cameras and Californians toting books on Zen Buddhism and Mexican history. Just beyond the town square where the new arrivals find espresso, Mayan Indians cook tortillas on open fires inside homes with dirt floors. Together, this confluence of worlds and experiences makes up the collective face of the "Zapatour," a national display of anger and hope that is being likened to the 1960s civil rights marches in the United States. Starting Sunday, two dozen masked Zapatista rebel leaders, who have been in hiding from the government for seven years, will come out into the open to lead a caravan of thousands of sympathizers, including impoverished local Indians and anti-poverty activists from around the globe. The caravan, at its core, is a plea for Mexico to confront the marginalization of its Indian population. Riding to Mexico City in buses, cars and trucks, the Zapatistas hope to bring attention to the sad statistics: Mexico's 10 million full-blooded Indians live largely in poverty. More than 44 percent are illiterate. Three-quarters of them have not completed primary school, and many have had no schooling. Almost 60 percent of Indians live without running water, and nearly 90 percent have no sewers. Indian infant mortality is 70 percent higher than the national average. Led by the pipe-smoking rebel leader known as Subcomandante Marcos, the colorful parade will start here in Chiapas, in Mexico's far south near the Guatemalan border, where four main Indian groups, the Tzotzil, Tzeltal, Chol and Tojolabal make up 1.2 million of the state's 4 million people. The tour will wind through 12 states over the next two weeks, culminating in several days of rallies in the capital. Marcos and 23 other rebels, all wearing their trademark black ski masks, plan to meet with Congress to push for greater Indian rights. President Vicente Fox has called the march a "bridge for peace." "If we all want peace, it will come soon. If the real fight is for the restoration of indigenous rights, we're fighting the same battle," he said Friday. Fox supports the march because he says it could lead to better lives in Chiapas and the end of a rebel uprising that began on New Year's Day 1994 when Marcos led a raid on this city that lasted two weeks and resulted in 130 deaths. The struggle has been at a stalemate since, although the Zapatistas have kept their cause alive with a Web site and a network of supporters in the United States and Europe. But critics fear the march could lead to violence and disruptions; one governor has threatened to arrest the rebels because he considers them criminals for their armed uprising. Tens of thousands of police are preparing to guard the group and control crowds as the Zapatour takes over the highways. Massive crowds of supporters and the curious are expected to attend rallies along the way and welcome the marchers into Mexico City in one of this country's biggest public spectacles in years. "This is a crucial moment," said Lauro de la Cruz, a respected local Indian leader. "Everyone wants the monster of guerrilla warfare to go away." As many as 25,000 people were gathering in San Cristobal today to prepare to see off the caravan. Winding mountain roads outside the city were filled with people walking or rumbling toward town in open trucks. Civic associations sent trucks deep into the jungle to bring Marcos and his comrades into town. Many Americans and Europeans joining the march see the plight of Mexico's Indians as another way that an increasingly global economy has left millions of poor even further behind. The presence of hundreds of foreigners has turned the march into a sort of Woodstock on wheels, a global howl against global economics. "This struggle is not only a state issue within Chiapas. We recognize the globalness of it, and it is everybody's duty to do so," said Phil Coburn, 21, a college student from Idaho who paid about $110 to ride a bus in the caravan. "They had to use arms to gain the world's attention, but now their power is in their words," said Lindsay Daehlin, 22, of Spokane, Wash. The Zapatistas have been eloquent and effective in bringing international attention to the fact that Chiapas, Mexico's poorest state, is also one of its richest in natural resources. While the government takes oil, lumber and electric power from the region, Indians feel it has given very little back. Fox, who took office in December, has made economic development and peace in Chiapas a top priority, in part because of the embarrassing high profile the situation has had abroad. Indians in Chiapas say that Mexico, where people speak 62 different Indian languages, celebrates Indian art and heritage while discriminating against Indians – and has done so since the Spanish arrived 500 years ago. Indians say they still find it difficult to walk into a store without being eyed suspiciously – even though almost all Mexicans have some Indian blood. "It's something that happens in the heart of Mexicans; they know they are Indians in their heart, but they hate that part of themselves," said Manuela Santiz Hernandez, an Indian woman cooking tortillas with her mother in their home in San Andres Larrainzar, a 45-minute drive through the mountains from San Cristobal. San Andres is like thousands of little communities in Chiapas and other poor Mexican states with large Indian populations. Santiz has no running water and barely enough electricity to power her family's five light bulbs. With a small plot to grow corn and a few chickens and pigs running around the yard, they are better off than most here. Santiz's brother, Alfredo Santiz Hernandez, said that the poverty and lack of decent schools, health care, electricity and sewers are a result of government discrimination. "The government does not give us what we need," he said, standing in his doorway in muddy work boots. "We would like help so that Indians can educate ourselves. I would like to feel like an equal in the eyes of the government, not a lesser being." Rosa Lopez Mendez, 23, a vendor, lives in a two-room concrete-block house in La Hormiga, a neighborhood of shacks on a steep hillside on the outskirts of San Cristobal. She never went to school, and she can't afford to send her children. Even though there is no tuition, she doesn't have the money for notebooks, pencils and other supplies. As she spoke, she wore a bright blue traditional Indian sweater and black woven skirt, with 2-year-old Cristina feeding at her breast and 8-year-old Angelina sitting at her side.. "I'd like Angelina to have a car, to have a house and a nice kitchen when she grows up," Lopez said of her 8-year-old daughter, as Zapatour marchers from abroad wandered past her, photographing the pretty colonial buildings of San Cristobal. "But she's not going to get anything, because the government doesn't help Indians." =================================================================== "Anarchy doesn't mean out of control. It means out of 'their' control." -Jim Dodge ====================================================== "Communications without intelligence is noise; intelligence without communications is irrelevant." -Gen. Alfred. M. Gray, USMC ====================================================== "It is not a sign of good health to be well adjusted to a sick society." -J. 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