NATIONAL INDIGENOUS CONGRESS: Follow-Up Commission

21 January 1997 Statement by EZLN, Zapatista Movement in Mexico [based in Chiapas, Mexico's southermost state]
TO THE PEOPLE OF MEXICO:
TO THE COMMISSION ON CONCORDANCE AND PACIFICATION:
TO ERNESTO ZEDILLO, PRESIDENT OF MEXICO:

Mexico today is living through a decisive moment for indigenous peoples. The process of dialogue and negotiation, initiated two years ago, opened up the alternative and the hope for finding solutions to age-old problems and for responding to the aspirations of justice, democracy, and liberty, not only for the indigenous peoples, but for all of Mexican society.

For many years, and even in recent days and months, our Indian peoples, from the north to the south of the country, continue suffering repression, the persecution of their natural representatives, and military and police harassment by way of incursions, installation of roadblocks, military encampments and barracks, even in community territories without the consent of our peoples and their local authorities.

Following a very broad process of discussions and the achievement of important consensuses among innumerable indigenous communities, peoples, and organizations, as well as with social and political organizations and high-profile personalities of national life, the signing of the San Andrés Accords on Indigenous Rights and Culture between the Zapatista Army of National Liberation and the federal government, on February 16, 1996, once again impelled greater confidence for the achievement of a peaceful transformation of our country. Over the course of 1996, hundreds of organizations representing different indigenous peoples from across the country, having come together in the Permanent National Indigenous Forum as well as in many other national, local, and regional bodies, and with the support of specialists, lawyers, and constitutional experts, profoundly analyzed the different alternatives for the rights of our peoples, as expressed in the San Andrés Accords and which have been denied us for centuries, to be placed within the Mexican Constitution.

As a result, legislators from all political parties represented in the Congress of the Union, under the mandate of both Congress and the Law of Concordance and Pacification, and integrated as a Commission of Concordance and Pacification so as to contribute to the process of negotiation, elaborated an intiative of constitutional reforms to the Articles 4, 115, 18, 26, 53, 73, and 116, in which the principle elements of the San Andrés Accords are recollected, and brought into accordance with the current Constitutional text.

President Ernesto Zedillo's rejection of the initiative elaborated by members of the Legislative Power, as manifested by his counterproposal made public a few days ago, reveals the contradiction which exists between the discourse and the actions of the federal government. For weeks, it has carried out a costly propogandistic campaign utilizing all the means of communication available, exalting the president on the one hand for his participation in the signing of peace in Guatemala, while on the other hand attacking the EZLN and its just cause, represented by the struggle of indigenous peoples and communities throughout the country. The federal executive's counterproposal has made the work of the legislators more difficult, and its arrogant propogandistic remarks create confusion about what is really being discussed and proposed in the constitutional reform intitiatives. It is not the posture of the EZLN, nor that of an isolated group of Mexicans, which supposedly attacks and disqualifies the government and its adherents, but rather the initiative elaborated by legislators from the Senate and the Chamber of Deputies who have followed the whole process of dialogue and negotiation very closely, and who are familiar with the profound meaning of the Accords which are about to complete their first year of having been signed. This initiative has received the backing of hundreds of thousands of Mexicans, as has been made clear by the public pronouncements of lawyers, intellectuals, social organizations and a high number of traditional and municipal authorities, representatives of indigenous communities, peoples, and organizations, as well as the more than 1500 Mexicans who signed the document published in the national press this past December 20th, and which we tried to deliver to the Interior Minister during a public action which was impeded by nearly five hundred armed riot police.

The struggle for the recognition and defense of our peoples' rights is not only an indigenous struggle, but rather forms part of a wide process of national transformation demanded by all of Mexican society. What is worrisome is the methodology used by the government in order to resolve these popular demands. In the badly-achieved electoral reform, the problem of the Tabasco street-sweepers, as well as in the Zapatista case, to name just a few, the government has taken on negotiations, and then has reached agreements and accords which in the end are ignored or reinterpreted by the government itself, in order to move backwards and achieve a resolution by force. The President should govern for all Mexicans, not only for "his majority", mechanically unsensitive to the demands of the Mexican people and subject intolerably to a single boss.

Our identity as indigenous peoples is the sustenance of the multicultural character of our country, as is recorded in Article 4 of the Constitution. The recognition of our collective rights at the constitutional level will be the guarantee of tolerance and enrichment of the national identity of all Mexicans, as well as being a way to begin paying off the immense historic debt owed by the country to its original inhabitants. It would never be the motive for the promotion of separatism or "balcanization", as predict some soothsayers of the present system.

For all of the above, we once again expressly demand:
That the accords signed on February 16th, 1996 by the federal government regarding Indigenous Rights and Culture be carried out in letter and spirit, as much in terms of current legislative reforms as with the institutional transformation necessary for the creation of a new relationship between the indigenous peoples, the State, and the rest of national society.

That the Executive respect the work of the Commission of the Congress of the Union; that it withdraw its counterproposal that is not based on the San Andrés Accords, and that it not attempt to use "its majority" in order to impose its very particular point of view.

That the Legislative Power assume its faculties with respect for a democratic coexistence and an authentic division of the Powers of the Union.

That, in accordance with the commitments signed at the negotiations table in San Andrés, the rights of free determination and autonomy for the indigenous peoples be recognized in the Federal Constitution, within the bounds of the Mexican State, as well as a recognition of our political rights and our rights to participation and representation in accordance with our normative, traditional, and territorial systems.

That there be an immediate cessation of the hostilities and repression against our organizations, social leaders, and members of the National Indigenous Movement, which now have claimed their most recent victim in the person of the Purepecha lawyer Lic. Efrén Capiz, general coordinator of the Emiliano Zapata Commoners Union, who was kidnapped today, January 21st, en route from Morelia to Mexico City in order to participate in a meeting of this Follow-Up Commission of the Natinal Indigenous Congress, in which he is responsible for the Land and Territory Working Group. Lic. Capiz, 73 years old, was intercepted by presumed agents of the Judicial Police, beaten, and tied up only to appear later in a Pátzcuaro jail cell, under supposed warrants dating back to 1991 when the case was dismissed by the tribunals. We pronounce ourselves against repression and the growing presence of the army, police, and paramilitary groups in all the different regions of the country, as well as in favor of a peaceful solution to the demands for recognition of communal lands and traditional authorities across the country.

We call upon all the indigenous organizations in the country, as well as organized civil society at a national and international level, to work together in the National Mobilization Campaign for the recognition of indigenous rights, and to participate in and be attentive to all of the actions and happenings in the coming days.
HONOR THE PROMISES!
NEVER AGAIN A MEXICO WITHOUT US!