[Announce-DAN] Fw: EZLN communique-letter to Fox (fwd)

["Emilie Nichols" <emilie@ix.netcom.com>]

----- Original Message -----
From: "MichaelP" <papadop@peak.org>
To: <unlikely suspects: ;>
Sent: Tuesday, December 05, 2000 9:13 AM
Subject: EZLN communique-letter to Fox (fwd)


>
>
>
> Newly inaugurated Mexico president Fox: = indigenous rights? peace in
> Chiapas? all sorts of promised goodies?
>  The EZLN in Chiapas have other ideas - which don't appear in the
> optimistic pieces published in regular media.
>
> "Some members of [Fox's] cabinet and those close to it are saying that the
> EZLN should understand that the country has changed, that they (the
> zapatistas) have no other recourse than to accept it, surrender, take off
> their ski-masks and make a credit application in order to set up a little
> shop, buy a TV and make installment payments on a compact car."
>
> MichaelP
>
> =====================
> Subject: #4 EZLN communique: letter to Fox
> Sender: irlandesa <irlandesa@compuserve.com>
>
> Originally published in Spanish by the EZLN
> ________________________
> Translated by irlandesa
>
>
>
> December 2, 2000.
>
> Senor Vicente Fox.
>
> Los Pinos, Mexico, D.F.
>
> Senor Fox,
>
> Six years ago we wrote a letter to Ernesto Zedillo Ponce de Leon, your
> predecessor.  Now that you are the new head of the federal Executive, it
> is my duty to inform you that, as of today, you have inherited a war in
> the Mexican southeast:  the one in which, on January 1, 1994, the
> Zapatista Army of National Liberation declared war against the federal
> government in demand of democracy, liberty and justice for all Mexicans.
>
> Since the beginning of our uprising, we have confronted the federales in
> accordance with military honor and the laws of war.  Since then, the Army
> has attacked us without any military honor and in violation of
> international treaties.  More than 70,000 federales (including some 20,000
> so-called "special counterinsurgency troops") have encircled and pursued
> the zapatistas for 2525 days (counting today).  During 2000 of those days
> they have been violating the Law for Dialogue, Negotiation and a Dignified
> Peace in Chiapas, issued by the Congress of the Union on March 10, 1995.
>
> During these almost seven years of war, the zapatistas have resisted, and
> we have clashed with two federal Executives (self-styled "presidents"),
> two Secretaries of National Defense, six Secretaries of Government, five
> commissioners of "peace," five "governors" of Chiapas and a multitude of
> mid-level officials.  All of them have already gone.  Some of them are
> being investigated for their ties to organized crime, others are in exile
> or on their way, some others are unemployed.
>
> During these almost seven years, the zapatistas have insisted, time and
> again, on the path of dialogue.  We have done so because we have a
> commitment with civil society, which demanded that we silence our weapons
> and attempt a peaceful settlement.
>
> Now that you are assuming the head of the federal Executive Branch, you
> should know that, in addition to inheriting the war of the Mexican
> southeast, you are inheriting the possibility of choosing how you will
> have to confront it.
>
> During your campaign, and since July 2, you, Senor Fox, have said time and
> again that you are going to choose dialogue in order to confront our
> demands.  Zedillo said the same during the months which preceded his
> inauguration, and, nonetheless, two months later he ordered a large
> military offensive against us.
>
> You can understand that distrust in all things having to do with
> government, regardless of which political party it belongs to, has
> indelibly marked our thoughts and actions.
>
> If we were to add the series of ill-considered contradictions and
> frivolities, spewed by you and those accompanying you, to our
> understandable mistrust in the face of the words of power, then it is also
> my duty to point out to you that, as far as the zapatistas are concerned
> (and I believe not only with the zapatistas), you are starting from
> scratch as far as credibility and trust are concerned.
>
> We cannot trust someone who has displayed superficiality and ignorance by
> noting that the indigenous demands will be resolved with "'vocho', TV and
> little shops."
>
> We cannot believe someone who tries to "ignore" (that is, "grant amnesty
> to") the hundreds of crimes committed by paramilitaries and their bosses
> by granting them immunity.
>
> We are not inspired to trust someone who, with the short-sightedness of
> managerial logic, has a government plan to turn the indigenous into
> mini-micro businesspersons or into employees of this administration's
> businessperson.  At the end of the day, this plan is nothing other than an
> attempt to continue the ethnocide which, under different methods,
> neoliberalism in Mexico is carrying forward.
>
> That is why it is good for you to know that none of this shall prosper in
> zapatista lands.  Your program of "disappearing an indigenous and creating
> a businessperson" will not be allowed on our soil.  Here, and under many
> other Mexican skies, the indigenous self does not have to do only with
> blood and origin, but also with the vision of life, death, culture, land,
> history, the future.
>
> Those who have tried to annihilate them with weapons have failed.  Those
> who try to eliminate them by turning them into "businesspersons" will
> fail.
>
> Note that I have said that, as for the zapatistas, you are starting from
> scratch as far as credibility and trust are concerned.  This means that
> you have nothing negative, yet, to overcome (because it is only fair to
> point out that you have not attacked us).  You can, then, prove those
> right who are counting on your government's repeating the nightmare of the
> PRI for all Mexicans, especially for the zapatistas.  Or you can, starting
> from scratch, begin to build through acts what every government needs for
> their work:  credibility and trust.  The demilitarization which you have
> continuously been announcing (although it varies from "total withdrawal",
> ""repositioning'" and "reaccomodation", which are not the same things,
> something which you, your soldiers, and we know) is a beginning, not
> sufficient, but indeed necessary.
>
> Not only in Chiapas, but above all in Chiapas, you can prove those right
> who desire your failure, or those who are giving you the benefit of the
> doubt, or who are simply placing in you that which is called "hope."
>
> Senor Fox:  Unlike your predecessor Zedillo (who came to power through
> assassination and with the support of that corrupt monster which is the
> State party system), you reached the federal Executive thanks to the
> repudiation the PRI carefully cultivated among the people.  You know it
> well, Senor Fox:  you won the election, but you did not defeat the PRI.
> It was the citizens.  And not just those who voted against the State
> party, but also those from previous and current generations who, one way
> or another, resisted and fought the culture of authoritarianism, impunity
> and crime built by PRI governments throughout 71 years.
>
> Although there is a radical difference in the way you came to power, your
> political, social and economic program is the same we have been suffering
> under during the last administrations.  A program for the country which
> means the destruction of Mexico as a nation and its transformation into a
> department store, something like a mega "little shop" which sells human
> beings and natural resources at prices dictated by the world market.  The
> veiled privatization projects of the electric industry, the oil and
> education, and the IVA which is trying to be imposed on medicines and
> food, are just a small part of the great "restructuring" plan which the
> neoliberals have for Mexico.
>
> Not only that.  With you, we are contemplating the return of moralina
> positions, whose hallmarks are intolerance and authoritarianism.  It was
> not insignificant that, with the July 2 results, the denominational right
> unleashed an offensive of persecution and destruction.  This has been
> suffered by women (raped or not), young people, artists and playwrights,
> homosexuals and lesbians.  Along with pensioners and retired persons,
> along with the handicapped, along with the indigenous, and along with the
> 70 million Mexican poor, these groups are called "the minorities."  In
> "your" Mexico, Senor Fox, these "minorities" have no place.
>
> We object to this Mexico, and we shall do so in a radical way.
>
> It may or may not concern you whether a group of Mexicans, primarily
> indigenous in addition, are not in agreement with your mercantile plans
> and with the belligerence of the right.  But you should not forget that,
> if the PRI lost power, it was because the majority of Mexicans rebelled
> and managed to throw it out.
>
> That rebellion has not ended.
>
> You and your team, since July 2, have done nothing but insist that
> citizens should return to conformity and immobility.  But it will not be
> like that, your neoliberal program will confront the resistance of
> millions.
>
> Some members of your cabinet and those close to it are saying that the
> EZLN should understand that the country has changed, that they (the
> zapatistas) have no other recourse than to accept it, surrender, take off
> their ski-masks and make a credit application in order to set up a little
> shop, buy a TV and make installment payments on a compact car.
>
> They are wrong.  We ourselves are fighting for change, but for us "change"
> means "democracy, liberty and justice."  The PRI's defeat was a necessary,
> but not sufficient, condition for the country to change.  Many things are
> still missing, you and the little politicians in your cabinet know this.
> Many things are missing, and, most importantly, millions of Mexican men
> and women now know it.
>
> The indigenous, for example, are missing.  Missing is the recognition of
> their rights and culture which, believe me, have nothing to do with offers
> of business promotion.  Missing is the demilitarization and
> deparamilitarization of the indigenous communities.  Missing is the
> release of prisoners of conscience.  Missing are the political
> disappeared. Missing is the reconstruction and defense of national
> sovereignty.  Missing is an economic program which would satisfy the needs
> of the most poor. Missing are citizens being so full-time.  Missing are
> the politicians being held to account.  But peace is also missing.
>
> Senor Fox:  for more than six years your predecessor, Zedillo, feigned a
> willingness to dialogue and made war against us.  He chose confrontation
> and he lost.  Now you have the opportunity to choose.
>
> If you choose the path of sincere, serious and respectful dialogue, you
> will simply be demonstrating your willingness with actions.  Rest assured
> that you will have a positive response from the zapatistas. That is how
> dialogue can be reinitiated and, soon, the true peace will be begun being
> built.
>
> In the public communique which we are attaching, the EZLN announces the
> demand for a series of minimal signals by the federal Executive.  If they
> are made, everything will be ready to return to dialogue.
>
> What will be at stake is not whether we are opposed to what you represent
> and what you mean for our country.  There should be no doubt about this:
> we are your opponents.  What will be at stake is whether this opposition
> takes place through civil and peaceful channels, or if we must continue
> raised up in arms and with faces covered until we achieve what we are
> seeking, which is nothing other, Senor Fox, than democracy, liberty and
> justice for all Mexicans.
>
> Vale.  Salud, and let us hope that there will be a new dawn in Mexico and
> in Chiapas.
>
>
> >From the mountains of the Mexican Southeast.
>
> By the Clandestine Revolutionary Indigenous Committee - General Command of
> the Zapatista Army of National Liberation
>
> Subcomandante Insurgente Marcos.
>
> ======================
>
> *** NOTICE: In accordance with Title 17 U.S.C. Section 107, this material
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>
>
>


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