Zipolite to San Cristobal De Las Casas
May 8th 1995
On the Monday, me and Paula had to go to the bank to change some travellers' cheques. This involved a major expedition to a town called Huatulco, forty or fifty kilometres away. First we had to catch a crowded and uncomfortable bus to Pochutla. Then in Pochutla we had to catch another bus to Huatulco. This journey was an interesting one in a way. It took the best part of an hour, but the bus was large and fairly comfortable, so it wasn't too bad. On the way, the road passes through some pretty seriously degraded countryside with small scrubby trees growing almost everywhere, in a kind of semi-desert soil
At Huatulco, we had a half hour walk to the bank, which was near a strange little harbour that seemed to be dedicated solely to tourist boat trips. There was a Club Med near Huatulco and the whole purpose of the town seemed to be servicing the tourist industry. It wasn't a pleasant place, like all exclusively tourist towns, and i was happy to be leaving when we eventually got on the bus back to Pochutla.
At Pochutla we bought tickets for the bus that evening to San Cristobal and then got another bus back to Zipolite. By the time we got back to the beach, we were completely buggered, but we had a good few hours to recover before we had to head back to Pochutla to catch the overnight bus to Chiapas, the next state to the east.
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We arrived at San Cristobal at seven o'clock the next morning and it was absolutely freezing! We'd climbed a long way up into the mountains since we'd left the coast and the climate had changed drastically as a result.
From the Cristobal Colón bus station, we walked up Avenida Insurgentes towards the Zócalo, the square in the centre of town. It felt strange in a way, walking through the chilly San Cristobal streets, early in the morning. But it was an indefinable strangeness. It was strange on a physical level, because, apart from a few hours that first morning in Mexico City and a brief stop during the bus journey from Oaxaca to Pochutla, i hadn't experienced much in the way of cold for quite a few months. At least, not this sort of cold, the hard, stone cold you only get in town. It had been chilly in Moni, in Indonesia, but in the country the cold isn't quite so solid, so deep and powerful.
It was strange in another way, a sort of architectural way. Avenida Insurgentes reminded me of Spain in a certain sort of way. There was something slightly incongruous about the buildings around me. Maybe it was the age of the town. Maybe it was a feeling of it being displaced somehow. It certainly wasn't spanish - but it certainly wasn't mexican either.
But i think more powerful than either of those was the feeling of having arrived in a special place. San Cristobal de las Casas was a name i'd only ever heard of in relationship to the Zapatista uprising. And i'd first heard of it in a "Letter from Marcos", one of the spokespeople for the EZLN - the Zapatista National Liberation Army - which i'd received via email in January that year. That particular letter - one of many which Marcos had written over the period of a year and a half between the uprising and when i arrived in Chiapas - had moved me so much i'd published it myself in booklet form, in spanish and english, not long after i first read it. Somehow i'd been drawn to this place. From the moment i read that article, it had been inevitable that i would end up there. And here i was...
Despite the cold and the long bus ride, i felt good. The morning mountain air was fresh and clear, despite the flow of cars up that street, and somehow i felt a flow of energy cutting through the exhaustion caused by too much travelling and chronic lack of sleep.
I had a quick look at the menu outside Madre De Tierra, which is
described as a vegetarian restaurant in the
Lonely Planet
guidebook. But it wasn't very inspiring as it included meat dishes.
We ended up at "Casa Margarita", a
guesthouse on Avenida Real De
Guadalupe (all the streets seem to be called 'avenues' in San
Cristobal)
Casa Margarita was a very pleasant spot. You went in off the street through a large doorway and came out into a paved courtyard, with a kind of stone veranda, or covered walkway around the outside. There were a few tables in the middle, with thatch-covered umbrellas over them, and plants scattered around here and there. The three of us (me, Paula and Dominique) took a triple room, which worked out reasonably cheap. It had a door onto the courtyard and was clean and comfortable.
San Cristobal was founded by the Spanish colonizers in 1528, right in the middle of the state of Chiapas and two thousand two hundred metres above sea level. It's quite a big town, with a population of a hundred thousand, but it had an open and friendly feel to it, which seemed unusual in that sort of a place. It was visually pleasant - for a town - although i couldn't say what gave it that effect, but i felt comfortable there right from the start
However, my first impression of San Cristobal wasn't very inspiring, but i was really exhausted. I still hadn't recovered from the flight and i hadn't slept well at Zipolite at all - as i can't sleep in a hammock and, sleeping on the sand, i was constantly being bitten by sand fleas and the odd scorpion. So after going out for a bit of breakfast, i went back to the hostel to bed and ended up sleeping most of that day and right through the night.
- - -
The next day, i bought a copy of Tiempo, which was a local San Cristobal daily paper. It was magazine size and only about six pages, but it ran some interesting stories, with a pretty radical political perspective. They always printed the EZLN communiques in full too. That day, it had the following story in it, which i translated sitting at one of the tables in the courtyard at Casa Margarita:
Sierra Madre Peasants Armed To Repel Agressions
(from Tiempo, Wed, 10th May, 1995.)
El Triunfo (AEI) - The armed peasants that operate in the Sierra Madre mountains of Chiapas and are in control of a number of coffee estates are prepared to repel "any attack actions" on the part of "white guards or police elements".
They say they don't belong to the Zapatista National Liberation Army (EZLN), although they cover their faces with scarves and balaclavas so as not to be recognized.
Taking refuge behind barricades built from sacks of sand and gravel under huts of timber and corrugated iron, from which hang camouflage trousers and shirts and army-style boots, the peasants, who don't wear a uniform and say they belong to the Emiliano Zapata Peasant Organization National Plan of Ayala Co-ordinating Committee (OCEZ-CNPA), received a group of journalists to explain to them that their struggle is for land, not political power.
(Translator's note: the National Plan of Ayala was initiated by the original Zapatistas and was a land reform program, giving the land back to the peasants.)
They explained that they are awaiting the dialogue on the 12th of May, in San Andres Larrainzar, between the government and the EZLN in order to decide what action to continue with. "We back the civil resistance actions called by the EZLN, but we're not militants of that group. If we were, we would be in the Lacandon forest."
A committee of approximately thirty people - who didn't give their names "because there are no leaders here" - with reservations towards the correspondents, from whom they demanded clear identification, with name, telephone number and address, said that Abel, who the small landowners of the region and the civil authorities refer to as Commandante Abel, isn't in the area. "He's probably in Frontera Comalpa, San Cristobal or Las Nubes."
Before arriving at the site of the interview, after a two and a half hour journey through the depths of the Chiapan mountain range, we came to a board with black writing on it: "No entry for trucks between 9pm and 4am. EZLN", with a rifle painted below it. On the other wall it said: "Respect to the taking of land" and the face of subcommandante Marcos, to whom they offer their support.
Since the 10th of April this group has been in possession of the properties San Luis Andes and Buenos Aires, both owned by Mario Garcia Trevino, who's also landlord of the Gavilancillo, Bandera Argentina, El Recuerdo and La Fortuna estates. The peasants announced that they will initiate the occupation of other estates if their demands for agrarian reform are not listened to.
From the top of a large rock, a lookout pointed out directions to the local and national media representatives. Meanwhile, passing along the road unmolested, there were trucks of the Conasupo Solidaridad, which supply basic products to rural shops in San Antonio Miramar and Hoja Blanca, in the Chiapan sierra.
The peasants are accused of being Zapatista guerillas by the propietor of the Las Nubes estate, Manuel Ferrara Gutierrez, who's asking for the intervention of the Mexican army. Holding rifles, shotguns and some sort of machine gun, the peasants are momentarily agressive. They point out that they work in the civil resistance and they "intend to take some coffee estates if the government will not solve the agrarian problems by means of dialogue".
A total of about 150 peasants, all armed, keep watch over the 500 hectares which comprise the San Luis Los Andes and Buenos Aires estates. They say they come from San Antonio Miramar, Jamaica (a village, not the island - translator), San Joaquin, Cabañas and other extremely poor communities in the municipalities of Escuintla, Acacoyagua and Motozintla.
At the site of the interview there was a white three ton truck with the legend "This unit is property of the EZLN" on the sides. We were refused access to a building constructed of material which stood out among the huts.
"Abel is one of us but he's not here now. They say he's the commander of the group, but he's only one more comrade who's struggling for land, dignity and justice for the peasants."
Before saying goodbye, the men warned the press that they would come looking for them if they didn't "tell the truth".
When i read this story, i felt excited. This was going on not far away from where i was. I wanted to go there and see what was happening, make contact with the occupiers somehow and maybe spread their story internationally somehow. I looked at a map of Chiapas, which was hanging on the wall of the covered walkway round the courtyard at Casa Margarita, and found the area where it was, but i couldn't find the exact place. I held the idea in my mind all that day, of going to try and find it, but it seemed like it might be difficult, a bit like groping in the dark.
The next day's Tiempo, however, had another story which led me in a different direction completely. There were several articles about the "dialogue" which was due to start the next day, between the EZLN and the government. One of the articles mentioned there was a "peace cordon" being organized and fifteen hundred people had been signed up for it already. The paper didn't give any details about how to get involved, but i happened to have noticed a sign about it pasted up on the wall of the church near the zócalo.
I went out and had another look at this notice. It gave the address of Conpaz, the organization doing the accreditation and directions on how to find it. The name stands for Coordinadora de Organizaciones Non-gubernamental de la Paz - or Coordinating Committee of Non-government Organizations for Peace. I didn't realize then, but the wall the notice was pasted up on was the Fray Bartolome Human Rights Centre, which was in some way related to the catholic cathedral in San Cristobal - at any rate, it was in part of the cathedral building.
I followed the directions on the notice and arrived at an ordinary looking house in an ordinary street. But when i went through the street door and walked into the internal courtyard, there were quite a few people around and a desk with a couple of people sitting behind it in one corner. One of these, a woman from Madrid - Blanca, who i got to know later on - told me they needed foreigners to act as observers at the peace talks. All that was required was two photocopies of your passport and twenty pesos to cover the costs of accreditation and transport to San Andres Larrainzar, where the talks were being held. I went off to get my passport photocopied and went straight back.
The house was a fairly typical San Cristobal house, with the door in the street wall leading into a courtyard. Around the courtyard were roofed, open-air passageways, with the rooms off them.
I handed over my photocopies and twenty pesos and that was about it. I was given a sheet with a bit of information on it. I asked about transport and somebody told me to come back at midday for a meeting to find out about that.
I met Jabi and Joserra, a couple of men from Bilbao and Ana, a canadian woman and we talked a little bit. I hung around a while longer and then went.
I returned at midday and hung around for a while, but there was no sign of anything happening or about to happen. But now there were sheets of paper for names of people wanting transport. I put my name down for the next day and left again.
It was cold at night there, in those tropical mountains, and it was likely to be raining, so there were a few things i needed to get before i went to Larrainzar. The first thing was a raincoat - or rather a plastic sheet, with a hole in it for your head and a hood. I can't remember the name of this garment now, but they're a common form of rain gear in rural areas of Chiapas. It just hangs down over your front and back, leaving your arms completely free inside or outside it. Then i got a couple of blankets and a length of rope to tie up my bedroll with. I was a bit confused in the hardware shop at first, as they quoted my a price for the rope by the kilo. But it turned out i didn't have to specify how much i wanted by weight, that was just how they charged you. I got four metres to be on the safe side - there's nothing worse than trying to tie your bedroll up with a bit of rope that's too short! It was fairly stiff and bright yellow, but it would do the job. I needed to get food, but that could wait till tomorrow.
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The following is an extract from a report i wrote for the community radio station, 4ZZZ in Brisbane, during my stay in Chiapas. Hopefully it will explain concisely a bit of the background to what was going on in Chiapas at that time:
At the beginning of January, 1994, a new chapter began in the five hundred years long struggle of Mexico's indigenous people against colonization. Under more and more pressure - now mainly from U.S. imperialism - the indigenous Zapatista National Liberation Army (EZLN) rose up and succesfully created an autonomous zone in the Lacondon Forest in the Mexican state of Chiapas. This zone covered a large number of indigenous villages in what is one of the last remnants of forest left in Mexico. (Like everywhere else in the world, the imperialist agenda of total environmental destruction is nearing completion here.)
This autonomous zone existed and flourished all through 1994, giving everyone living there equal control over the running of their communities. But in February 1995, under extremely powerful economic and political pressure from the U.S. goverment, the mexican army was sent in to destroy it. Realizing that the high price of defending the zone would be paid for in indigenous blood, which has been considered cheap for far too long, the EZLN decided against a fight.
The Mexican army took control of the area, using standard and well-tested colonial techniques. With beatings, rape, torture and murder, they drove the indigenes out of their villages and forced them to seek refuge deeper in the forest. Then they completely destroyed all the villages and poisoned the water supplies to prevent them from returning. They also set up their own camps and occupied the area themselves.
In April, May and again in June, the government and delegates from the EZLN held peace talks, which they call "dialogues", in the Tzeltal indian village of San Andres Larrainzar (or San Andres Sacamch'en), which is near San Cristobal de las Casas, a small city over 2000 metres up in the Chiapas altiplano. A fourth dialoge there is scheduled for the 4th of july.