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Date: Sat, 10 Apr 1999 15:01:27 -0400
From: irlandesa <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
Subject: La Jornada: Chiapas and Kosovo
Sender: irlandesa <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
To: chiapas-l <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>, 1-NAP <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>,
chiapas-i <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>, harry <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
Originally published in Spanish by La Jornada
_____________________
Translated by irlandesa
La Jornada
April 10, 1999.
>From Kosovo to Chiapas
- Luis Gonzalez Souza
A great distance is maintained between the Serbian province of Kosovo
(Yugoslavia) and the chiapaneco municipality of San Andres Larrainzar
(Mexico) due to geography. But both places are appearing to be much closer
together due to the typical barbarism of the "new" world of the post Cold
War. A barbarity that is surfacing there completely, where both pincers
have closed: on the one hand, a globalization that tramples identities in
the name of uniformity; and, on the other, governments that are incapable
of guaranteeing national identity and, with greater reason, the identity of
those communities making up the nation.
At first sight the brutality that Yugoslovia is experiencing today appears
greater than that in Mexico. Kosovo is now suffering the worst ravages of
open warfare: foreign intervention, bombings of the worst sort, hordes of
displaced, death and despair en masse. On the other hand, Chiapas also has
displaced, although fewer in number. There are foreign interferences, even
if less direct and visible. There are deaths, but they are more 'silent,'
not so much from gunfire as from attacks against the smallest attempt to
live with dignity, with autonomy. The latest of such attacks has just
occurred (unsuccessfully, for now) in the Autonomous Municipality of San
Andres Larrainzar. It happened before in the municipalities of Ricardo
Flores Magon, Tierra y Libertad, Nicolas Ruiz and San Juan del Bosque. And
a little before that, the Acteal massacre took place, that one indeed with
the marked stench of Kosovo.
But, down deep, or at second glance, the brutality is greater in Mexico
than in Yugoslavia. This is not just because the war elites are
squandering the time that still remains to them for preventing the war in
Chiapas from turning into a war like that in Yugoslavia. But also, and
above all, because these elites have not even been capable of noticing the
essential difference between a conflict like that in Kosovo and that in
Chiapas; between the Kosovo Liberation Army (ELK) and the Zapatista Army
of National Liberation (EZLN).
That essential difference has to do with the two basic kinds of reactions
brought about by the thrust to uniformity of the current globalization, as
exclusionary as it is mercantilist. On the one hand, prevalent today, are
the reactions, we could say primitive, that, due to the simple survival
instinct, culminate in fundamentalism and fanaticism of all types. Such is
the case in Kosovo, where complete separation from Serbia is promoted, in
the name of the ethnic purity of the Albanians, by a recently, and
suspiciously, created ELK (February of 1998): exactly when the US decided
to stop pulverizing Tito's former Yugoslavia, which never wanted to align
itself with NATO or the former Warsaw Pact.
Still very few in number, on the other side are the reactions, let us call
them visionary, to globalization. This is accepted as an historical
process, but it seeks to reorient itself to the globalization of justice
and solidarity, for which it is necessary to not just preserve, but also to
enrich, each one's identity, beginning with the most profound: the
identities of the Indian peoples. We have what is perhaps the most
advanced case of this visionary reaction, neither more nor less, in the
EZLN, here in Mexico. Instead of separation, it seeks inclusion. Far from
terrorism, it favors the weapon of the political, and not the old politics,
but rather the only kind with a future: that which, irretrievably tied to
the ethic of dignity, draws sustenance from moral force above all else.
>From this, the singular brutality of Mexico's governing group. Instead of
creatively channeling one of the most advanced struggles in the world, it
sets itself to crushing it. And it does so with extremely primitive
methods, as if the objective were the 'yugoslavization' of Mexico.
There is much to be learned, then, from the paths being travelled in
Chiapas and in Kosovo. The future, not just of Mexico, but of the entire
world, is at stake in this learning process. For now, the destruction of
Yugoslavia and the 'non-politics' of Chiapas must be stopped. Not one more
bomb in the Balkans, nor one more outrage against the zapatista indigenous.
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