New president, new dawn for Mexicos
indigenous people
By GARY MacEOIN
Special to the National Catholic Reporter
There will never be a Mexico again without you,
Vicente Fox told his indigenous fellow Mexicans in his inauguration address as
president of Mexico Dec. 1. There will be a new dawn.
The promise of peace implied in those words -- received at first
with deep skepticism -- is coming to fruition, bringing hope of an end to seven
years of conflict in the southern state of Chiapas.
Within hours of the presidents speech, the Department of
Government instructed the armed forces to dismantle 53 checkpoints in Chiapas.
These checkpoints had been set up to monitor and harass communities sympathetic
to the rebels, the Zapatistas, and to cut them off in the Lacandon Forest from
their source of food and supplies.
The elusive leader of the rebels, Sub-Comandante Marcos, said the
day after Foxs speech that he would be willing to participate in peace
talks in February if Fox continued to make good on his promises. Peace talks
between the indigenous rebels and the Mexican government have been suspended
since they broke down in 1996, two years after the Zapatistas, rural Indians
demanding political and social reform, declared war on the government. The
surprise 1994 attacks in Chiapas by the rebels, calling themselves the
Zapatista National Liberation Army, provoked a swift counterattack by
government troops that left more than 100 people dead and drove the rebels into
the jungle, where, under siege by the army, they have remained ever since.
Government troops conducted a massacre of Zapatista supporters in 1997.
An extremely poor region of Mexico, Chiapas is marked by lack of
adequate housing, food and education.
Fox declared in his speech that his first action as president
would be to send to Congress a law implementing the San Andrés Accords,
an agreement negotiated in 1996 by Samuel Ruiz García, then bishop of
San Cristóbal de Las Casas, between the Mexican government and the
Zapatistas. The agreement committed the parties to basic respect for the
diversity of the indigenous population of Chiapas, conservation of natural
resources within the territories used and occupied by indigenous peoples,
greater participation of the indigenous communities in the control of public
expenditures, participation in determining their development plans, control
over their administrative and judicial affairs, and autonomy or
self-government.
The government never implemented the accords.
U.S. Secretary of State Madeleine Albright was present at the
speech, as were Cubas Fidel Castro and 11 other Latin American heads of
state.
Jesuit-educated Fox has broken sharply with the anti-clerical
tradition that has marked all Mexican presidents since the 18th century. Before
his inauguration, he visited the shrine of Our Lady of Guadalupe and spent
several minutes in silent prayer. He then went to breakfast with children in a
Mexico City slum in work shirt and jeans. Before leaving for the inauguration,
he switched to a suit and tie in a slum hovel.
In October, as president-elect, Fox had made public overtures to
resume dialogue with the rebels. Zapatista leader Marcos had repulsed them,
insisting that negotiations would be impossible until the checkpoints were
eliminated. Informed that they were gone, Marcos expressed his delight.
The war is not over yet, he said, as he announced his intention to
travel to Mexico City to urge Congress to pass the bill to implement the San
Andres Accords, but the door is open.
Bishop Felipe Arizmendi Esquivel, the new bishop of San
Cristóbal de Las Casas, has joined in approval of the developments. In a
statement sent to NCR by his diocesan press office, he said that the
majority of Mexicans welcome the new promise for Mexico and for Chiapas.
We are tired of anxiety and doubt, of instability and
confrontations. ... We want peace, justice, liberty and reconciliation. We
condemn the misery and marginalization of so many million Mexicans,
particularly campesinos and indigenous. ... We greet the plans of the new
federal government, which we hope will be progressively implemented, and also
the readiness shown by the Zapatistas to renew dialogue.
The bishops of Chiapas and the Bishops Commission for
Reconciliation have always insisted on the need for a meaningful reduction of
military presence. ... The indigenous are entitled to respect for their
culture, their lifestyle, their languages, their way of ensuring justice, their
community organization, their reverence for nature, the enjoyment of the lands
that are rightfully theirs.
President Fox has also indicated that he will sign a technical
cooperation agreement with Mary Robinson, U.N. High Commissioner for Human
Rights (and former president of Ireland). Former President Ernesto Zedillo had
rejected the agreement after Robinson had publicly criticized his
governments human rights record.
A draft of the accord calls for strengthening government agencies
dealing with human rights, for training forensic doctors capable of
investigating incidences of torture, and for a national dialogue on the plight
of indigenous Mexicans.
Gary MacEoins e-mail is gmaceoin@cs.com
National Catholic Reporter, December 15,
2000
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