The state of Chiapas is about as remote from the Mexican capital as you can get.
So remote that the uprising here took the government completely by surprise.PTC
This is a story about land... this land whose ownership was the chief cause of the Mexican Revolution from 1910 to 1917. Like so many other revolutions it failed to live up to its promises. But now... improbably its time had come again. Mexico’s turbulent history is being relived by 90’s revolutionaries who call themselves after their forebears... the Zapatistas.
This is Zapatista territory.
Here in Morelia and in other areas under Zapatista control the big cattle ranchers have been driven off their land.
Miguel peres Lopez is a community leader in Morelia.His enemies among the exiled ranchers say he’s a Zapatista.
But Miguel is not an armed rebel...it just happens the zapatistas are fighting for the very thing he and his neighbours want....land.
And now they’re awaiting orders from the Zapatistas to takeover the nearby ranches.
MIGUEL PEREZ LOPEZ (COMMUNITY ORGANISER): The people already want to being working on the lands but we’re waiting for orders from the clandestine committee. If they give the order, we’ll go to work.
REPORTER: If the revolutionary clandestine committee give the word, is that considered to be the word of law now?
LOPEZ: Yes. Yes, that’s exactly it. They’ll tell us what to do from here, they’ll tell us if we can take the land.
REPORTER: The army of course may well retaliate against this community if it takes that land, are the people here prepared to fight for what they want?
LOPEZ: We are prepared for anything, they killed three of our companero. We’re going to get rid of them by force if necessary.
Less than 10 kms away... this military roadblock marks the border between Zapatista and government controlled territory.
It’s here the Mexican army stopped when a cease fire was declared on January 11.
Chiapas has remained divided since then.
Just beyond the roadblock is the town of Altamarano.
One of the most heavily miltarised in chiapas... this is the army’s forward base...
If the government decided to go back to war...it’s from here they’d move into the mountains.
It’s also the headquarters of the dispossessed ranchers.
Their leader in Altamarano is Jorge Constantino...like most of the ranchers he’s of Spanish extraction.
He’s also the president of the local branch of Mexico’s ruling party...the PRI ... or Party of Institutional Revolution
It’s an association that helps explain how power works in Chiapas.
ROGER MALDANADO (Human Rights Co-ordinator): Everybody had to vote for the PRI in the elections. In the 60s, antagonism increased when the cattle ranchers associated with the political party and political and economic power were in the same hands.
Outside the Altamarino Ranchers Association... angry ganaderos are waiting to hear the results of a meeting with government representatives.
They’re worried the government is going to buy peace with THEIR land.
JORGE CONSTANTINO (Rancher; head of Altamarano Ranchers Association): We have a number of demands, the major ones are the return of the stolen cattle and to stop the ransacking of our ranches, properties and communities. They’ve already stolen our belongings. They already destroyed the houses on the ranches.
T-SHIRTED RANCHER: There aren’t any cattle ranchers left here, the only cattle ranchers are Zapatista militants.
JORGE CONSTANTINO: None of us have stolen what we own, that’s why we want fair treatment, fair and dignified treatment. Everybody knows each other here. We know who is Zapatista and who is not. It’s not a simple problem that will be solved by saying ‘land for the peasants’. We need to raise the cultural level. We need to introduce birth control.
To the peasants of Morelia it is a simple problem. Leonardo Lopez points to the rancher’s grazing land... that stretches as far as you can see down the valley.
LEONARDO LOPEZ (Farmer): We only have this hilly broken land. Pure rocks and stones. There is no land to work only patches where we have planted corn fields. that’s where we work to get something to eat.
LEONARDO LOPEZ: The Zapatistas are helping the poor, the many of us who don’t have land. That’s what they’re doing, helping the poor. We have nothing to eat and no land.
PANCHO LUNA SANTIS (Farmer): I spoke to one of the ranchers 15 days ago and he asked me “Pancho what happened to my ranch?” and I told him “forget about it, who knows if you’ll ever get your ranch back.” “And my cattle pancho?” the rancher asked. I said: “forget about it.”
Morelia is the most divided of all towns it’s been like that for a long time. With a split within the community for a long, long time. All non-Zapatistas have been expelled.
REPORTER: Do you know who it is that controls the political situation in the town?
JORGE CONSTANTINO: There are four or five do you what the names. I really wouldn’t want to. It would cause problems for me. I’ve been threatened by them...it’s a physical threat.
Off camera he told us it would be simple matter to solve the problems in Morelia by getting rid of those five... including his former friend Miguel Perez.
MIGUEL PEREZ: When the problems started and the army came in, my friendship with Jorge Constantino ended. Then I got to know him, his attitudes. His character.
Miguel Peres knows he’s a marked man.His community was split between those who remained faithful to the Jorge Constantino and ruling party and those like himself who wanted to break away from the control of the ranchers.
By now the politics of Chiapas had polarised into a pattern more familiar in central America. On the one hand armed Zapatistas...on the other the army and a shadowy paramilitary known as the Guardias Blancas ...or White Guard. Some of the Indians who’d left Moreli were amongst them...
MIGUEL PEREZ: When the army came here the guardias Blancas came carrying weapons and wearing uniforms.
It was the 6th January when the army swept into Morelia.They came with a list of suspected Zapatistas and sympathizers. Miguel Peres was on the list but managed to escape the net and hide in the hills.
ROGER MALDANADO: The military took all the males from 12 to 13 years on and put them with their faces down on the basketball court. The person who dared lift their head were kicked in the head or hit with their weapons.
Three of the older community leaders were singled out for special treatment.
They took them into a little room on the side of the church and eyewitnesses to the torture that subsequently happened say they were hit, they were cut with knives... and later... heavily bleeding... these three men wer last seen taken into a military ambulance.
Roger Maldanado was there with a freelance cameraman the day the remains of the three “disappeared” were found.
TOM CRANE: My name’s Tom Crane... from physicians for human rights. Down on our left we have a human mandible. These pants and a pair of boots belong to one of the three members of the disappeared. This is a small rib here as well. Unfortunately all these bones have been torn apart by animals in the forest.That’s the church over there. It has inside the little room where they tortured the three men. It’s that room over there.
In Morelia, Maldanado gave the widow back photographs of their husbands. (She takes the photo and cries).
MALDANADO: The presence of the Mexican army in the countryside has been a terror for the peasants. They are used as a repressive force by the group in power. In San Cristobal ... the government hoped to avoid civil war by bargaining with the Zapatistas. Protected by the sanctity of the church masked Zapatistas came back to the town they’d first occupied to talk terms with the government. For ten days they used this extraordinary public theatre to address the Mexican people. Repression, displacements, killings, disappearings, torture. That has been the government response to the just demands of our people.
The Mexican press has been galvanised by the story... making up with enthusiasm what they lack in technology...
After 65 years of one party rule the - party of institutional revolution - is facing its most serious challenge.
A great deal now hinged on the peace talks...oddly taking place in the most popular tourist town in Chiapas.
PRESS CONFERENCE: Liberty, justice and democracy, respectfully from the south east of Mexico, the clandestine Revolutionary committee.
After ten days confined inside... the negotiators emerged... with the first stages of agreement...The medias favourite sub-commandante Marcos sat quietly puffing his trademark pipe letting others take the limelight.
He’d never backed down from his demand that President Salinas resign and call fresh elections.
With elections due later this year anyway the government promised electoral reforms.
The did offer a considerable social package for the indians with spending on health, education, roads and housing.
Marcos and his Zapatistas left to take the agreement to the Indian communities.
While the government envoy...a presidential hopeful...Manuel Camcho... appeared triumphant.
MANUEL CAMACHO SOLIS (Government Peace Commissioner): This is a victory of Mexico, its not a victory of one of the parts, of one of the parties its something in which everybody has participated... we all made our decisions... we contributed to the result up to now but that’s important in that out of this comes a greater respect for Indian communities, for the poor and advance for democracy in Mexico.
REPORTER: In the meantime, will the ceasefire lines remain in place?
MANUEL: Things will be as they were but in a much better political climate...all of this will be announced when the right moment comes.. we are moving clearly in the direction of peace.
The Mexican government’s crisis management only won it a reprieve...so in the countryside the PRI was pulling out all stops to regain its power...
The marketplace of Oxchuc in the Chiapas mountains.
Tourists come here... drawn by guidebook descriptions of traditional Indian life.But beneath the surface nothing is as it first appears.
This could have been a fiesta...but none of the audience applauded. .... Nor did they smile.
Behind the musicians - government buildings burnt out by the Zapitistas.
In early January Oxchuc was under Zapatista control... now the ruling party.. the PRI ... are back in charge again. And with elections approaching this was an effort to win back hearts and minds.
Throughout Chiapas local party bosses are trying to reassert their authority by digging into the pork barrel.
In Oxchuc they opened a new medical clinic. But long experience of the party system has bred a scepticism that can’t simply be bought off. And now that scepticism is turning to anger.
So remote that the uprising here took the government completely by surprise.PTC
This is a story about land... this land whose ownership was the chief cause of the Mexican Revolution from 1910 to 1917. Like so many other revolutions it failed to live up to its promises. But now... improbably its time had come again. Mexico’s turbulent history is being relived by 90’s revolutionaries who call themselves after their forebears... the Zapatistas.
This is Zapatista territory.
Here in Morelia and in other areas under Zapatista control the big cattle ranchers have been driven off their land.
Miguel peres Lopez is a community leader in Morelia.His enemies among the exiled ranchers say he’s a Zapatista.
But Miguel is not an armed rebel...it just happens the zapatistas are fighting for the very thing he and his neighbours want....land.
And now they’re awaiting orders from the Zapatistas to takeover the nearby ranches.
MIGUEL PEREZ LOPEZ (COMMUNITY ORGANISER): The people already want to being working on the lands but we’re waiting for orders from the clandestine committee. If they give the order, we’ll go to work.
REPORTER: If the revolutionary clandestine committee give the word, is that considered to be the word of law now?
LOPEZ: Yes. Yes, that’s exactly it. They’ll tell us what to do from here, they’ll tell us if we can take the land.
REPORTER: The army of course may well retaliate against this community if it takes that land, are the people here prepared to fight for what they want?
LOPEZ: We are prepared for anything, they killed three of our companero. We’re going to get rid of them by force if necessary.
Less than 10 kms away... this military roadblock marks the border between Zapatista and government controlled territory.
It’s here the Mexican army stopped when a cease fire was declared on January 11.
Chiapas has remained divided since then.
Just beyond the roadblock is the town of Altamarano.
One of the most heavily miltarised in chiapas... this is the army’s forward base...
If the government decided to go back to war...it’s from here they’d move into the mountains.
It’s also the headquarters of the dispossessed ranchers.
Their leader in Altamarano is Jorge Constantino...like most of the ranchers he’s of Spanish extraction.
He’s also the president of the local branch of Mexico’s ruling party...the PRI ... or Party of Institutional Revolution
It’s an association that helps explain how power works in Chiapas.
ROGER MALDANADO (Human Rights Co-ordinator): Everybody had to vote for the PRI in the elections. In the 60s, antagonism increased when the cattle ranchers associated with the political party and political and economic power were in the same hands.
Outside the Altamarino Ranchers Association... angry ganaderos are waiting to hear the results of a meeting with government representatives.
They’re worried the government is going to buy peace with THEIR land.
JORGE CONSTANTINO (Rancher; head of Altamarano Ranchers Association): We have a number of demands, the major ones are the return of the stolen cattle and to stop the ransacking of our ranches, properties and communities. They’ve already stolen our belongings. They already destroyed the houses on the ranches.
T-SHIRTED RANCHER: There aren’t any cattle ranchers left here, the only cattle ranchers are Zapatista militants.
JORGE CONSTANTINO: None of us have stolen what we own, that’s why we want fair treatment, fair and dignified treatment. Everybody knows each other here. We know who is Zapatista and who is not. It’s not a simple problem that will be solved by saying ‘land for the peasants’. We need to raise the cultural level. We need to introduce birth control.
To the peasants of Morelia it is a simple problem. Leonardo Lopez points to the rancher’s grazing land... that stretches as far as you can see down the valley.
LEONARDO LOPEZ (Farmer): We only have this hilly broken land. Pure rocks and stones. There is no land to work only patches where we have planted corn fields. that’s where we work to get something to eat.
LEONARDO LOPEZ: The Zapatistas are helping the poor, the many of us who don’t have land. That’s what they’re doing, helping the poor. We have nothing to eat and no land.
PANCHO LUNA SANTIS (Farmer): I spoke to one of the ranchers 15 days ago and he asked me “Pancho what happened to my ranch?” and I told him “forget about it, who knows if you’ll ever get your ranch back.” “And my cattle pancho?” the rancher asked. I said: “forget about it.”
Morelia is the most divided of all towns it’s been like that for a long time. With a split within the community for a long, long time. All non-Zapatistas have been expelled.
REPORTER: Do you know who it is that controls the political situation in the town?
JORGE CONSTANTINO: There are four or five do you what the names. I really wouldn’t want to. It would cause problems for me. I’ve been threatened by them...it’s a physical threat.
Off camera he told us it would be simple matter to solve the problems in Morelia by getting rid of those five... including his former friend Miguel Perez.
MIGUEL PEREZ: When the problems started and the army came in, my friendship with Jorge Constantino ended. Then I got to know him, his attitudes. His character.
Miguel Peres knows he’s a marked man.His community was split between those who remained faithful to the Jorge Constantino and ruling party and those like himself who wanted to break away from the control of the ranchers.
By now the politics of Chiapas had polarised into a pattern more familiar in central America. On the one hand armed Zapatistas...on the other the army and a shadowy paramilitary known as the Guardias Blancas ...or White Guard. Some of the Indians who’d left Moreli were amongst them...
MIGUEL PEREZ: When the army came here the guardias Blancas came carrying weapons and wearing uniforms.
It was the 6th January when the army swept into Morelia.They came with a list of suspected Zapatistas and sympathizers. Miguel Peres was on the list but managed to escape the net and hide in the hills.
ROGER MALDANADO: The military took all the males from 12 to 13 years on and put them with their faces down on the basketball court. The person who dared lift their head were kicked in the head or hit with their weapons.
Three of the older community leaders were singled out for special treatment.
They took them into a little room on the side of the church and eyewitnesses to the torture that subsequently happened say they were hit, they were cut with knives... and later... heavily bleeding... these three men wer last seen taken into a military ambulance.
Roger Maldanado was there with a freelance cameraman the day the remains of the three “disappeared” were found.
TOM CRANE: My name’s Tom Crane... from physicians for human rights. Down on our left we have a human mandible. These pants and a pair of boots belong to one of the three members of the disappeared. This is a small rib here as well. Unfortunately all these bones have been torn apart by animals in the forest.That’s the church over there. It has inside the little room where they tortured the three men. It’s that room over there.
In Morelia, Maldanado gave the widow back photographs of their husbands. (She takes the photo and cries).
MALDANADO: The presence of the Mexican army in the countryside has been a terror for the peasants. They are used as a repressive force by the group in power. In San Cristobal ... the government hoped to avoid civil war by bargaining with the Zapatistas. Protected by the sanctity of the church masked Zapatistas came back to the town they’d first occupied to talk terms with the government. For ten days they used this extraordinary public theatre to address the Mexican people. Repression, displacements, killings, disappearings, torture. That has been the government response to the just demands of our people.
The Mexican press has been galvanised by the story... making up with enthusiasm what they lack in technology...
After 65 years of one party rule the - party of institutional revolution - is facing its most serious challenge.
A great deal now hinged on the peace talks...oddly taking place in the most popular tourist town in Chiapas.
PRESS CONFERENCE: Liberty, justice and democracy, respectfully from the south east of Mexico, the clandestine Revolutionary committee.
After ten days confined inside... the negotiators emerged... with the first stages of agreement...The medias favourite sub-commandante Marcos sat quietly puffing his trademark pipe letting others take the limelight.
He’d never backed down from his demand that President Salinas resign and call fresh elections.
With elections due later this year anyway the government promised electoral reforms.
The did offer a considerable social package for the indians with spending on health, education, roads and housing.
Marcos and his Zapatistas left to take the agreement to the Indian communities.
While the government envoy...a presidential hopeful...Manuel Camcho... appeared triumphant.
MANUEL CAMACHO SOLIS (Government Peace Commissioner): This is a victory of Mexico, its not a victory of one of the parts, of one of the parties its something in which everybody has participated... we all made our decisions... we contributed to the result up to now but that’s important in that out of this comes a greater respect for Indian communities, for the poor and advance for democracy in Mexico.
REPORTER: In the meantime, will the ceasefire lines remain in place?
MANUEL: Things will be as they were but in a much better political climate...all of this will be announced when the right moment comes.. we are moving clearly in the direction of peace.
The Mexican government’s crisis management only won it a reprieve...so in the countryside the PRI was pulling out all stops to regain its power...
The marketplace of Oxchuc in the Chiapas mountains.
Tourists come here... drawn by guidebook descriptions of traditional Indian life.But beneath the surface nothing is as it first appears.
This could have been a fiesta...but none of the audience applauded. .... Nor did they smile.
Behind the musicians - government buildings burnt out by the Zapitistas.
In early January Oxchuc was under Zapatista control... now the ruling party.. the PRI ... are back in charge again. And with elections approaching this was an effort to win back hearts and minds.
Throughout Chiapas local party bosses are trying to reassert their authority by digging into the pork barrel.
In Oxchuc they opened a new medical clinic. But long experience of the party system has bred a scepticism that can’t simply be bought off. And now that scepticism is turning to anger.