For Humanity and Against Neoliberalism : Chiapas 1996 Zapatista action! An International of hope? 4,000 people meet in Chiapas 'for humanity and against neo-liberalism' In July of 1994 people from Ireland travelled to an international conference called by the Zapatistas in Chiapas. This is a report on the conference from one of the Irish delegates. A much longer version of this report with pictures and documents from the encounter can be found at http://www.geocities.com/CapitolHill/3102/ >From their emergence on New Years Day, 1994 the EZLN have talked about wanting to open up a space in which civil society could meet and discuss Mexico's problems. They have put this forward as their alternative to seizing power. The EZLN's alternative of the 'political space' was at first unclear but has been clarified in action over the past few years. The indigenous communities have put huge amounts of resources into constructing conference centres in the jungle and mountains and inviting Mexican 'civil society' to come to these centres and find ways of changing Mexican society. They have been called Aguascalientes in reference to the town where Zapata and others met in 1914 to draw up the Mexican constitution. The solution to Mexico's problems cannot just be on the Mexican level. The US has showed itself to be opposed to even the most moderate of reforms and willing to use or sponsor armed force in order to prevent those advocating reform coming to power. There is no need here to go into the history of Latin America, of intervention in Chile, Cuba, El Salvador or Nicaragua here. The EZLN have created these spaces therefore not just for Mexican civil society but also for the indigenous people of the continent of America and indeed everyone on the continent. In the "First Declaration of Realidad" this was carried to the next logical step with an invite to everyone in the world. Unlike many previous liberation movements that saw liberation in national terms alone the EZLN have identified the enemy they face as not just unjust local rulers and their imperialist master but the entire ideology and system of global capitalism. In Latin American and many other areas of the world this has been called 'neo-- liberalism' but in Ireland it would probably be most familiar under the name of 'Thatcherism'. The first declaration described this system in universal terms "Instead of humanity, it offers us stock market value indexes, instead of dignity it offers us globalization of misery, instead of hope it offers us an emptiness, instead of life it offers us the international of terror." and called people together so "Against the international of terror representing neoliberalism, we must raise the international of hope. Hope, above borders, languages, colors, cultures, sexes, strategies, and thoughts, of all those who prefer humanity alive." It was proposed to hold an 'Intercontinental Gathering for Humanity and against Neo-liberalism' in Chiapas in July of 1996 to start the process of constructing this 'international of hope'. This was obviously very ambitious and apparently there was considerable debate within the communities over whether this was a good use of resources. Was it reasonable to suppose that any number of people would go through the difficulty and expense of travelling from their own countries to Mexico and then down to Mexico's most isolated state. In Ireland only a small number of people around the Irish Mexico Group heard this call. We met with very limited interest in this project, but there was a small gathering which produced a statement defining what neo-liberalism meant in the Irish context. There was also sufficent interest to motivate a couple of people to go to the European gathering in Berlin and the Intercontinental gathering in Chiapas. It only became clear that considerable numbers were likely to turn up with the holding of the continental gatherings. Just under 1,000 people turned up in Berlin to discuss what neo-liberalism meant in Europe. Although mostly composed of people involved around various Mexican solidarity groups people also turned up from outside these circles. In July the Irish delegation travelled to Mexico city via Madrid and then by plane and car to San Cristo'bel the largest of the towns seized in 1994 and the gathering point for people to be accredited and transported to the various sites. It was hard to get firm number of who was there but it appears between 3,000 and 4,000 people travelled to Chiapas from Italy, Brazil, Britain, Paraguay, Chile, Philippines, Germany, Peru, Argentina, Austria, Uruguay, Guatemala, Belgium, Venezuela, Iran, Denmark, Nicaragua, Zaire, France, Haiti, Ecuador, Greece, Japan, Kurdistan, Ireland, Costa Rica, Cuba, Sweden, The Netherlands, South Africa, Switzerland, Spain, Portugal, The United States, The Basque Country, Turkey, Canada, Puerto Rico, Bolivia, Australia, Mauritania, Mexico, Norway, Colombia. One of the largest delegations was from France, about 300 people for the strike wave of December 1995 against the French states implementation of neo-liberalism played a considerable role in motivating people to come. The actual meeting were held in five different venues marking out the edges of Zapatista territory, each beside an indigenous community which had built and would service the site. Getting to them involved long bus rides, through day and night on jungle and mountain roads. There was a certain low level of police and military harassment, one convoy was held up for three hours at a migration police checkpoint but for the most part they kept away or contented themselves with silly stunts like flying planes at tree top level over some of the meeting places. Each Aguascalientes consisted of a central stadium surrounded by sleeping huts, toilets, eaten and cooking facilities, showers, information and medical centres and the equivalent of school tuck shops selling biscuits, coke and cigarettes. The indigenous people staffed all these facilities and the EZLN militia posted lookouts on the perimeter, the gates and surrounding countryside. There commitment to this vague project of building an 'international of hope' was all the more impressive when you considered these host communities lived in desperate poverty on a diet of beans, tortilla and rice for every meal. We had of course paid for our accommodation and transport but obviously the construction and purchase of provisions for the week had to be carried out before they knew whether anyone would actually turn up. In the event we came and after opening welcoming ceremonies settled down in our respective sites to discussion. There were five sites each discussing a different theme of neo-liberalism (e.g. economics) and each of these sites in turn divided into four or five tables. Many people had come with prepared pieces and these and the discussions around them were used to draft statements form each of the tables. Coming from 43 countries the range of issues covered were as you might imagine vast. Sometimes we were talking about being at different stages of the same neo-liberal process, for instance the hard drug trade which commonly mean's virtual enslavement for those growing the crops in one place, the militarisation and corruption of those whose countries they are transported through in another and the death and destruction in the communities where they are sold. From Bolivia, through Mexico to the inner cities of America and Dublin neo-liberalism had created a common thread of misery. We heard how the problems cause by attacks on social spending ran from, Chile to Japan, from Mexico to France, from Ireland to Australia. But we also heard of how these attacks, the attempts to write off whole communities as uneconomic were being resisted. We began to feel we were part of a global struggle but one on which we had yet to recognise each other. Alongside this identification of problems was an exploration of why previous attempts at getting rid of capitalism had failed. Those coming to the conference had many different political backgrounds but common themes came to be identified. In particular the way in which many previous opposition movements had become obsessed with seizing power as a means of transforming society. In talking about constructing a new international of hope we began to think of ways that we could fight for change that would not end up dependant on a new state to enforce them. An interesting discussion took place around how economic control could be taken out of the hands of the multi-nationals and regained at a local level without this being mediated through a state. Other discussions followed about the inability of parliamentary democracy to represent people. Definite conclusions were hard to come by. In general we identified the need for each community to determine its own struggle and for these struggles to form national and an international network from below. For the most part the EZLN stayed out of the discussion but between two or four Zapatistas from the Indigenous Revolutionary Clandestine Committee sat in on each session and it would appear reported back and discussed what was happening in each one. In any case at the end of the conference the EZLN were able to present an overall declaration which took many of the core ideas from each of the table discussions. This is the "2nd declaration of La Realidad". The core section of the declaration was a proposed consulta that each national group would carry out in their country in the first weeks of December. The consulta declares opposition to neo-liberalism and its effects and the intention to create two networks, the first a network of struggles in resistance to neo-liberalism. The second a network of communication that will carry the news of these struggles to each other. The rest of the document pointed out that the state could not isolate us and stop us talking despite the barriers that it had created in our way. That we were not abut creating another pretend international organisation but rather that the network if it arose would not be declared into being by those at the meeting but rather would be created by many people in the aftermath of it. For those of us in Ireland implementation of the ideas in the consulta is a difficult task. There is almost no tradition of politics from below in this country, almost all opposition movements have based themselves on the need for a strong party or individual leader to show the way forwards. There is little concept of changing society on the basis of communities and workplaces determining their own future. So our first barrier is to get out the idea that this is a possibility. There are major movements involving thousands of people around what are called 'single issues', most notable at the time of writing the anti-water charges campaign and the anti-heroin campaign. Both these involve thousands of people in Dublin and there are other examples throughout the country but there is very little belief in the possibility of a complete transformation of society. We cannot create such a belief but what we can do is encourage the national formation of networks which are the equivalent of the international networks talked about in the "2nd declaration of La Realidad". A much longer version of this report with pictures and documents from the encounter can be found at http://www.geocities.com/CapitolHill/3102/ This report is from Mexico Bullitin No 1 -- +-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+ Find out about the Revolution in Mexico http://www.geocities.com/CapitolHill/3102/ This summer 4,000 people from 43 countries met "for Humanity and against neoliberalism" there http://www.geocities.com/CapitolHill/3849/gatherdx.html