Zapatista Uprising in Chiapas
Masked rebels took several towns in Chiapas on 1 January 1994, the day the North American Free Trade Agreement came into force. The timing was the message. The Zapatista Army of National Liberation had been organising in the Lacandón jungle for a decade among Tzotzil, Tzeltal and Ch'ol communities, and it declared war on a government that had just amended article 27 of the constitution to end the land redistribution guaranteed since the revolution. Chiapas produced a large share of Mexico's coffee, cattle and hydroelectricity and had among the worst indicators for literacy, water and infant mortality in the country. The fighting lasted twelve days, killed perhaps 300 people, and stopped under a ceasefire produced by demonstrations in Mexico City rather than by anything in Chiapas. What followed was a different kind of campaign. The movement's spokesman, Subcomandante Marcos, wrote communiqués with poetry, jokes and a talking beetle in them and issued them to the international press; the phrase used for it afterwards was the first postmodern revolution, and it was among the earliest political movements to use the internet as its principal weapon. Negotiations produced the San Andrés accords on Indigenous rights in 1996, which the government signed and did not implement. The Zapatistas withdrew into the communities they hold, and have run their own schools, clinics and councils in autonomous municipalities ever since, without recognition and largely without violence. The movement's demands were also not for independence. It asked for recognition, autonomy and land within Mexico, which is what distinguishes it from most armed movements and is a large part of why it has survived thirty years without being destroyed.
- Year: 1994 CE
- Category: Political
