"Planet Earth: Anti-Systemic Movements"

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"Para Todos, Todo; Para Nosotros Nada"
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SPECIAL REPORT: ANOTHER WAY OF SEEING THE WORLD - ZAPATISTAS: 18 YEARS OF
REBELLION AND RESISTANCE

Hundreds of activists and academics from around the world gathered at the
International Seminar "Planet Earth: Anti-Systemic Movements" to discuss the
importance of the 1994 Zapatista uprising on its 18th anniversary. In the
context of the popular insurrections that have emerged this year across the
globe, the seminar held from Dec. 30 to Jan. 2 in San Cristobal de las
Casas, Chiapas, Mexico, concluded, with Portuguese sociologist Boaventura de
Sousa Santos, that seen in retrospect Zapatista influence has been so strong
that "one cannot view the left or the struggle against capitalism without
this point of reference."

De Sousa Santos stated that the explosion of the Zapatista Army of National
Liberation (EZLN) on the scene January 1, 1994 was the first major moment of
global resistance to neoliberalism. The uprising gave visibility to
indigenous struggles that had been growing since the eighties in Latin
America and soon became the precursor to other movements.

"They taught us another way of seeing the world. They broke with Marxist
orthodoxy by developing a new discourse, a new semantics and new ideas. They
taught us a new organizational logic that had a fundamental influence on the
whole world," De Sousa Santos said in an interview.

Paulina Fernandez, a professor of Political Science at UNAM who has followed
the Zapatista movement since its inception, spoke to Desinformemonos about
the transcendence of the Zapatistas. "It is still not possible to see
clearly the magnitude of the importance of the Zapatista uprising. I track
the news on Internet everyday and the EZLN is cited all over for one reason
or another-it is a permanent reference."

"Despite efforts to silence them, hide them away, marginalize them and
isolate the movement up in the mountains, and without media information
about what they are doing, the Zapatistas are building a real alternative
process on a daily basis. They are proof that this country can function in a
different way when its people are committed and they do it without the
intervention of laws, institutions, parties, politicians and the vices and
practices that official institutions are the ones guilty of the corruption
of this country," added Fernandez.

Representatives of indigenous peoples, among them Salvador Campanur,
Purhépecha from Cherán, Michoacán and Santos de la Cruz, Wixárika from
Bancos de San Hipólito, Durango, agreed that "in all the processes that we
have experienced as indigenous peoples, the Zapatistas have been very
important. Before, indigenous struggles were isolated and not linked up, but
since 1994 we began to realize that we suffered from a common problem and we
began to interact and develop solidarity between peoples, not only in Mexico
but in the world."

Campanur noted "Although the words 'dignity', 'liberty' and 'justice'
already existed it was the Zapatista brothers and sisters who in 1994 taught
us to use them in each one of our struggles."

Javier Sicilia, poet and leader of the Movement for Peace with Justice and
Dignity, said in an interview that "the last 18 years have been fundamental
since the Zapatistas-by revealing the negation of the indigenous world that
had been going on for centuries-also revealed the dysfunction of the State
and the neoliberal system, and gave new content and new possibilities not
only to the nation but to the entire world."

New Movements and the Zapatistas

Many participants linked the Zapatista movement to the new movements in
Spain, Greece, the United States, Tunis, Egypt, Yemen and others. French
historian Jerome Baschet stated that, "The logic of capitalism is causing us
to lose control of our lives and it is time to recuperate that control. The
world movement has arisen as a crossroads of all struggles: the struggle
against the looting of material goods, of land, of ways of life, of the
capacity to decide. It is a movement that calls on everyone who feels
dispossessed." He added that the latest uprisings "reflect a general sense
of injustice and the possibility that a collective awakening could intensify
the reactions of rejection that we've seen so far." 

Feminist anthropologist Mercedes Olivera observed that the Zapatista
communities have developed outside the mercantilist logic, which can be a
viable point of departure for "men and women to dare to experience the
construction of another civilization based on solidarity not exploitation,
to try to recreate the human sense of existence, recover the vital sense of
the land and the sustainability of production for consumption, to be able to
practice new forms of using and caring for natural resources, and in this
way we can change and reorient our strategies toward building a new paradigm
of development and attempt a civilizing process based on life and not on
destruction, like the Zapatistas do in their autonomy."

In the Occupy Wall Street movement in the United States that has spread to
cities throughout that country and the rest of the world "there are many
people who have been strongly influenced by the Zapatista struggle", says
Marlina of the Movimiento por la Justicia en el Barrio (Movement for Justice
in the Barrio), a Latino collective that forms part of the Other Campaign in
New York City and the Occupy Wall Street movement. Marlina asserts that
"what many people of the Occupy movement are trying to do is break the
relationship between capital and humanity", noting that the Zapatistas have
provided clear and inspiring messages for people in the United States. "The
Zapatista resistance encourages us to keep up the struggle to build a
different world," Marlina concluded.

She recounted that "women from the movement came one night to Liberty Plaza
and instead of talking about economic policies and political struggles, they
talked about what it means to be a woman, a mother and a mestiza in the
United States. They talked about their families and their dignity, and I
cried during the talk because for me the discourse on "right living" or
"vivir bien" was something really different from the fancy discourse on
economic policies. And I believe that the power of the Movement for Justice
in the Barrio is to talk about the truth of human experience and the truth
of the devastation of the earth, and that's a discourse that cannot
necessarily be understood in capitalist terms."

Daniela Carrasco attended the seminar in representation of one of the most
important movements of 2011: the Chilean student movement. A Chilean student
from the collective Tendencia Estudiantil Revolucionaria, Carrasco reflected
on the lessons of the Zapatistas for the Latin America student movement.

"The great example that we have taken from the Zapatista movement is the
assembly as a from of organization. For many years, the Chilean movement was
characterized as very bureaucratic and personalist, its was focused on
certain presidents that ended up negotiating with the government and often
betraying the movement. This year this logic was broken, the rightwing that
formed part of the Confederation of Students was kicked out and the assembly
was adopted as the method of validating all decisions we make. We got to the
point where we even voted on building a barricade-yes or no-in an assembly
and this has been really satisfying. All our members vote raising their
hands, knowing that they are participating and not just spectators, in an
act of taking back the struggle in the streets."

"For a long time, it was said that students didn't participate, that they
didn't have political training, that they weren't involved in almost
anything, that they didn't care what happened in society. But this year, the
panel members of the seminar agreed, "has shown the opposite in Latin
American, in the United States, in Arab countries and in Europe, where
youth-sick of a system that produces inequality, poverty, unemployment and
hopelessness-are questioning what is happening and are going beyond
protest," said Carrasco. "We built a Chilean movement that is expanding into
a 'student spring'- in Colombia, in Costa Rica, in Mexico?"

Carlos Marentes, of the Unión de Trabajadores Agrícolas Fronterizos (Union
of Border Agricultural Workers) of El Paso, Texas, told the crowd, "the
Zapatista influence continues to extend among us, especially around the need
to organize from below with other movements and the importance of pushing an
alternative to the industrial model of agriculture that threatens our
planet."

Intellectuals Weigh In

Fernanda Navarro, doctor in Philosophy who has followed the Zapatista
movement since 1994, spoke at the afternoon panel the last day of the
seminar. She told Desinformémonos that the main challenges facing the
Zapatistas "are to continue to build autonomy, strengthening themselves and
to prove that bad governments and corruption and violence cannot uproot the
seeds that have been planted and what is growing in the Chiapan mountains."

The Zapatista movement "was a totally new political phenomenon that broke
the mold and that's why it has become a point of reference for many
movements for social justice for women, small farmers, workers, people who
live on the margins, due to their innovative ways of existing that broke
with class Marxism," Sylvia Marcos, professor and researcher on gender
issues, told Desinformémonos.
Julieta Paredes, of the Bolivian organization Women Creating Community
condemned the way in which social movements usually see women as "just
another sector" and women's issues "as just one among many issues of the
left."

"But women are half of all sectors and half of all issues, and community
feminism-a category of analysis that represents the movement she forms part
of-locates patriarchy as a system that articulates all oppressions,
historically built on the oppression of women. In this sense through the
defeat of patriarchy, "the community can encompass the entire social body to
be able to build relationships of freedom."

Pablo Gonzalez Casanova, a prominent Mexican intellectual, was unable to
attend but sent a message to the seminar stating, "Just consider the immense
mobilization of the indignados and the Occupy movement that struggle for the
another possible world? There has never been a [mobilization] of this
magnitude, and the mobilization began in the jungles of Chiapas with the
principles of inclusion and dialogue." Gonzalez Casanova added "increasingly
throughout the world people are struggling for what in 1994 seemed only 'a
post-modern indigenous rebellion.'"

Marcela Salas Cassani writes for Desinformemonos.org, an "autonomous, global
communications project" and sister organization to the Americas Program,
that covers grassroots movements throughout the world and the ideas and
aspirations behind them. Its team has been in San Cristobal de las Casas,
Chiapas reporting on an international seminar there to commemorate and
reflect on the 18th anniversary of the Zapatista uprising.

======================= 

INDIANS HONOR VICTIMS OF 1997 MASSACRE; FORMER PRESIDENT CLAIMS IMMUNITY

Indian-rights activists and relatives of 45 people slain in 1997 in a
village just north of San Cristobal de las Casas, commemorated the 14th
anniversary of the massacre and expressed fears of renewed violence after
dozens convicted in the killings had their sentences overturned. Marchers
with the Roman Catholic Tzotzil Maya organization known as Las Abejas (The
Bees) carried flowers and religious imagery on their two-day pilgrimage to
Acteal, a community in the southeastern state of Chiapas where the murders
occurred.

There, the Catholic bishops of San Cristobal de las Casas, Felipe Arizmendi,
and of the northern city of Saltillo, Raul Vera, celebrated a Mass in which
the photographs of the 45 victims - 15 children, 21 women and nine men -
were displayed on the altar.

Men armed with assault rifles killed those unarmed members of Las Abejas on
Dec. 22, 1997, as they were praying inside a chapel in Acteal. The Indians
were fleeing violence from groups who opposed the Zapatista National
Liberation Army, whose brief January 1994 uprising brought national and
international attention to the impoverished state bordering Guatemala. After
about a week of minor clashes with police and troops, the Zapatistas began
their transformation into a grassroots political and civic movement that
came to be more or less tolerated by the government in isolated, mostly
indigenous areas of the impoverished state bordering Guatemala.

But even as the Zapatistas largely abandoned armed struggle, those who felt
threatened by the Indian-rights movement created paramilitary groups, the
largest being a faction called Peace and Justice, that drove more than
12,000 indigenous people from their communities in Chiapas between 1995 and
2000. In fact, Vera recalled that the Acteal victims were internal refugees
who took refuge in that town because they were being forced to "join those
armed groups the army was organizing to lay waste to the communities; these
armed groups were attacking the villages, plundering and setting fire to
their homes." The paramilitaries, he said, were "armed and paid for by the
government and trained by the Mexican army as part of a counterinsurgency
strategy." He said these actions were aimed at preventing the communities
from providing any type of assistance to the Zapatistas, whose leftist,
Indian-rights agenda was largely shared by the pacifist Las Abejas.

For his part, Arizmendi said prayers were offered at the Mass to the "Lord
of truth and justice so he grants us what human institutions refuse to
deliver." He said demonstrations will continue to prevent the "real killers"
from leaving prison through "legal trickery." "We cannot remain silent or
forget until there is real justice," Arizmendi said.

The leader of Las Abejas, Mariano Perez, said the gathering was not a
celebration but rather a "commemoration of a shameful act committed by the
Mexican government." The Indians also demanded that those who planned the
killings be brought to justice and they say one of the masterminds was the
man who was Mexico's president from 1994-2000, Ernesto Zedillo.

Perez said the members of Las Abejas are at risk once again after 30 people
convicted of perpetrating the massacres had their sentences overturned two
years ago. The Supreme Court freed the men due to irregularities in their
legal proceedings. "The paramilitaries who burned our houses, stole our
belongings and massacred our parents, brothers, sisters and little brothers
and sisters want to come back and displace us and massacre us," Perez said.

Zedillo is the target of a lawsuit in the United States accusing him of
complicity with the slaughter in Acteal. Brought by a Miami law firm on
behalf of 10 plaintiffs who asked to remain anonymous, the suit was filed in
September in U.S. District Court in Connecticut, where Zedillo, a Yale
University faculty member, now lives. Zedillo said in an e-mail to CNN that
the allegations were "not only false but also calumnious."

The Acteal massacre forced the resignation of Chiapas' then-governor, Julio
Cesar Ruiz Ferro, and the ouster of Mexico's interior minister, Emilio
Chuayfett. Human rights organizations said the killings resulted from acts
of both commission and omission by allies of Ruiz. Some groups went even
further, calling the slaughter a "state crime" and attributing the ultimate
responsibility to Zedillo. The lawsuit filed in Connecticut maintains that
Zedillo's government abandoned talks with the Zapatistas in favor of a
violent crackdown after a report from a U.S. bank cited instability in
Chiapas as a negative factor for the Mexican economy.

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MEXICO DEPORTS NEARLY 50,000 CENTRAL AMERICANS

A total of 46,716 Central Americans were deported from Mexico between Jan. 1
and Nov. 30, 2011, said the National Migration Institute (INM). The majority
of the migrants - 41,215 - were men and nearly half, some 23,560, were from
Guatemala, the INM said in a statement. All of the migrants were deported in
an "easy, orderly, dignified and safe" manner, the INM said.

The Central Americans who were returned to their countries accounted for 74
percent of the foreigners processed at Mexican immigration facilities. The
remaining foreigners were either given asylum, granted humanitarian visas or
sent home using different repatriation systems, the INM said.

An estimated 300,000 Central Americans undertake the hazardous journey
across Mexico each year on their way to the United States. The trek is a
dangerous one, with criminals and corrupt Mexican officials preying on the
migrants. Gangs kidnap, exploit and murder migrants, who are often targeted
in extortion schemes, Mexican officials said.

Central American migrants follow a long route that first takes them into
Chiapas state, which is on the border with Guatemala, walking part of the
way or riding aboard freight trains, buses and cargo trucks. The flow of
migrants has increased markedly in the northern and northeastern parts of
Mexico since U.S. officials increased security along the border in the
northwestern part of the country.
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REPORTS: DRUG-RELATED DEATHS UP IN MEXICO

About 12,000 people were killed in 2011 because of drug violence in Mexico,
with annual data indicating beheadings and the slaying of women increased.
The daily newspaper Reforma reported 12,359 drug-related killings last year,
a 6.3 percent increase from the previous year. Other media reported similar
numbers, The Washington Post reported. For example, the Daily Milenio
recorded 12,284 drug-related deaths last year. A spokesman for President
Felipe Calderon said the government would release its figures later in
January, the Post reported.

Reforma reported 1,079 bodies exhibited signs of torture. Beheadings were
nearly 600, up from 389 in 2011. Reforma also reported more women were
victims of drug violence, with more than 900 slain last year. The newspaper
did not provide a count of the number of children killed. The Post said the
homicide rate seemed to be down by about a third in Ciudad Juarez, Baja
California and Tijuana. However, Chihuahua, Coahuila, Nuevo Leon, Tamaulipas
-- Mexican states abutting Texas -- were the most deadly and violence spread
to the state of Veracruz.