Sunday, October 30, 2005
the living and the dead in San Cristóbal
I've been in town for over a week now. I suppose I've used the time fairly productively, writing up and emailing out an appeal for funds to support the autonomous schools (see previous blog post), revising a journal article that just got accepted (trying to juggle incorporating all the helpful comments while keeping it within the page limits), even successfully battling the electric company over an excessive bill (sometimes you CAN fight city hall!). But as I've commented before, I get nudgy in town. San Cristóbal is a pleasant town, but the tourists are just passing through in their little home bubbles, and the small collection of people doing really interesting things here generally spend most of their time out in the communities and only occasionally touch base in town. That's why the Zapatista red alert when I first arrived in July created an unusual atmosphere, since all the folks who normally work in the communities were temporarily grounded, so there were some great parties.
The Zapatistas called on their wider network of supporters to commemorate the Day of the Dead (November 1, All Souls Day) with meaningful activities remembering all the politically related deaths, disappearances, and political prisoners. So things are actually happening in San Cristóbal. A few days ago someone covered a bunch of the street signs with paper replacements imitating the lettering of the originals, but with new street names like "Acteal Massacre" or "Insurgent Subcommander Pedro" or "Women of Juárez," marking individual and collective deaths.
Then some large Day of the Dead altars appeared next to the cathedral, colorfully decorated with images and text remembering the victims of everything from poverty to paramilitaries, and with a large cloth doll of an indigenous woman with her fist in the air.
It's interesting to see even mainstream-looking coletos and puzzled tourists stopping to check out the display. I wonder what the reception will be like for Marcos when he shows up in town on January 1, the anniversary of the Zapatistas' dramatic public appearance in 1994.
Some of the local artistic/cultural groups have also gotten into the spirit with experimental theater and photo exhibits and the like, and neighborhood committees have been putting on events in the barrios. The government response has been very muted, though I'm
sure they've got their plainclothesmen and photographers circulating. Meanwhile Frecuencia Libre, the low-power pirate radio station, has been covering everything, interspersed with old recordings of speeches by Marcos and political music. Last night there was a costume party at La Pera, a kind of upscale-bohemian hangout, which was jam-packed with the entire NGO crowd decked out in a surprisingly creative array of costumes, including a very realistic tree (presumably representing the death of the environment) and Sancho Panza wheeling in a found-art statue of Don Quixote on his horse (OK, bicycle). The party was still going strong when I called it a morning at 2 a.m., which was actually only 1 a.m. because daylight saving just ended. So not only did we all get an extra hour to catch up on sleep, but now when I go from San Cristóbal to the communities I won't have the confusion of switching from "Fox's time" to "God's time," as daylight saving is regarded in the rural areas as the kind of harebrained scheme that only politicians and city-dwellers could come up with.
The plot to interview Martha Cecilia, the "Special Representative for Chiapas" of the Secretariat of Agrarian Reform, continues. Mariana and I had an appointment to go to Tuxtla (the state capital, two hours away) to talk with her on Monday, and in preparation we talked with Ana from one of the local NGOs that has interacted with her. The "communications office" of agrarian reform keeps asking us to specify our questions so they can exclude topics that are "not in their department," like good bureaucrats. Now the p.r. flack just emailed to say that the Señor Secretary is coming to Chiapas and they have to go with him to the coast to see about reconstruction after Hurricane Stan, so they have to reschedule. This could be complicated as Mariana and I are both out of town a lot, but we'll keep at it. Meanwhile, the conversation with Ana was quite interesting. She has very much of a global view, and sees Martha Cecilia's main mission (whatever she may claim her official role is) as securing the Montes Azules Biosphere Reserve for global capital. We talked about a World Bank report that we had downloaded on Mexican agricultural policy, and Ana made an interesting distinction between the somewhat more multilateral/softer approach of the European Union (which launched a 31-million euro program for "conservation" in the Montes Azules region in 2003) and the more unilateral U.S.-dominated approach favored by the World Bank, involving more heavyhanded eviction of peasant settlements. Probably the current state and federal governments would prefer to just sow divisions and isolate and starve out the pesky communities that are in the way of profitable global investment, but they haven't been averse to using the army in the last 3 years; and presumably things would tilt more in that direction if hardline PRI candidates Roberto Madrazo and Roberto Albores Guillén win the 2006 presidential and gubernatorial elections, respectively.
We also discussed the PROCEDE program, part of the agrarian counterreform since 1992, when Article 27 of the 1917 revolutionary constitution was "reformed" to end the historic redistribution of land to peasants. PROCEDE allows individual members of the existing agrarian reform units (collectively managed communities known as ejidos) to get a land measurement and a document certifying which individual plot of land would correspond to them if it were private property (unlike ejido land, which can't be sold). Those certificates can be a prelude to using the individual parcel as collateral for loans, or eventually pulling it out of the ejido and converting it to private property which can be sold. Since global market conditions since NAFTA have not been kind to Mexican peasant agriculture, and government policies such as public infrastructure investments have long favored agribusiness over small producers, the economic pressure to disband the ejidos and sell out would seem intense. The government has also stepped up the pressure by conditioning other programs and benefits (illegally) on acceptance of PROCEDE. Yet interestingly, peasants have been highly resistant to PROCEDE, and the program has made least progress in some of the most marginalized areas such as Chiapas. Zapatistas of course reject any participation, but even many non-Zapatistas either refuse outright, or coyly enter into the first phase of certification but stop short of individual titling. Even the World Bank evaluation, which of course is ideologically bound to sing the praises of peasants abandoning social property and embracing the market, acknowledges quietly that PROCEDE has not in fact led to new productive credit using the land as collateral. The report also admits that there is no positive impact on agricultural income for those entering PROCEDE, an admission which it quickly dismissed by noting the positive impact if "off-farm income" is included. Apparently some who parcel their land end up renting it out and going off to do other work (including migration to the U.S.!), but the report doesn't pursue the implications of this. Anyway, it'll be interesting to see the government representative's views of some of these issues, if we can pin her down.
So this is the kind of stuff I chew on when I'm in town, in the world of abstraction. I'll probably head back to the jungle on Thursday. I'd like to be in El Conejo for the opening of the next session of the teacher training school, and try to talk with some of the trainers and education promoters about their views of autonomous education.
Meanwhile in other news, Bohtil had her pups!!
Six live (five boys and a girl) and one that didn't make it. Perra y cachorros are resting comfortably.
The Zapatistas called on their wider network of supporters to commemorate the Day of the Dead (November 1, All Souls Day) with meaningful activities remembering all the politically related deaths, disappearances, and political prisoners. So things are actually happening in San Cristóbal. A few days ago someone covered a bunch of the street signs with paper replacements imitating the lettering of the originals, but with new street names like "Acteal Massacre" or "Insurgent Subcommander Pedro" or "Women of Juárez," marking individual and collective deaths.
Then some large Day of the Dead altars appeared next to the cathedral, colorfully decorated with images and text remembering the victims of everything from poverty to paramilitaries, and with a large cloth doll of an indigenous woman with her fist in the air.
It's interesting to see even mainstream-looking coletos and puzzled tourists stopping to check out the display. I wonder what the reception will be like for Marcos when he shows up in town on January 1, the anniversary of the Zapatistas' dramatic public appearance in 1994.
Some of the local artistic/cultural groups have also gotten into the spirit with experimental theater and photo exhibits and the like, and neighborhood committees have been putting on events in the barrios. The government response has been very muted, though I'm
sure they've got their plainclothesmen and photographers circulating. Meanwhile Frecuencia Libre, the low-power pirate radio station, has been covering everything, interspersed with old recordings of speeches by Marcos and political music. Last night there was a costume party at La Pera, a kind of upscale-bohemian hangout, which was jam-packed with the entire NGO crowd decked out in a surprisingly creative array of costumes, including a very realistic tree (presumably representing the death of the environment) and Sancho Panza wheeling in a found-art statue of Don Quixote on his horse (OK, bicycle). The party was still going strong when I called it a morning at 2 a.m., which was actually only 1 a.m. because daylight saving just ended. So not only did we all get an extra hour to catch up on sleep, but now when I go from San Cristóbal to the communities I won't have the confusion of switching from "Fox's time" to "God's time," as daylight saving is regarded in the rural areas as the kind of harebrained scheme that only politicians and city-dwellers could come up with.
The plot to interview Martha Cecilia, the "Special Representative for Chiapas" of the Secretariat of Agrarian Reform, continues. Mariana and I had an appointment to go to Tuxtla (the state capital, two hours away) to talk with her on Monday, and in preparation we talked with Ana from one of the local NGOs that has interacted with her. The "communications office" of agrarian reform keeps asking us to specify our questions so they can exclude topics that are "not in their department," like good bureaucrats. Now the p.r. flack just emailed to say that the Señor Secretary is coming to Chiapas and they have to go with him to the coast to see about reconstruction after Hurricane Stan, so they have to reschedule. This could be complicated as Mariana and I are both out of town a lot, but we'll keep at it. Meanwhile, the conversation with Ana was quite interesting. She has very much of a global view, and sees Martha Cecilia's main mission (whatever she may claim her official role is) as securing the Montes Azules Biosphere Reserve for global capital. We talked about a World Bank report that we had downloaded on Mexican agricultural policy, and Ana made an interesting distinction between the somewhat more multilateral/softer approach of the European Union (which launched a 31-million euro program for "conservation" in the Montes Azules region in 2003) and the more unilateral U.S.-dominated approach favored by the World Bank, involving more heavyhanded eviction of peasant settlements. Probably the current state and federal governments would prefer to just sow divisions and isolate and starve out the pesky communities that are in the way of profitable global investment, but they haven't been averse to using the army in the last 3 years; and presumably things would tilt more in that direction if hardline PRI candidates Roberto Madrazo and Roberto Albores Guillén win the 2006 presidential and gubernatorial elections, respectively.
We also discussed the PROCEDE program, part of the agrarian counterreform since 1992, when Article 27 of the 1917 revolutionary constitution was "reformed" to end the historic redistribution of land to peasants. PROCEDE allows individual members of the existing agrarian reform units (collectively managed communities known as ejidos) to get a land measurement and a document certifying which individual plot of land would correspond to them if it were private property (unlike ejido land, which can't be sold). Those certificates can be a prelude to using the individual parcel as collateral for loans, or eventually pulling it out of the ejido and converting it to private property which can be sold. Since global market conditions since NAFTA have not been kind to Mexican peasant agriculture, and government policies such as public infrastructure investments have long favored agribusiness over small producers, the economic pressure to disband the ejidos and sell out would seem intense. The government has also stepped up the pressure by conditioning other programs and benefits (illegally) on acceptance of PROCEDE. Yet interestingly, peasants have been highly resistant to PROCEDE, and the program has made least progress in some of the most marginalized areas such as Chiapas. Zapatistas of course reject any participation, but even many non-Zapatistas either refuse outright, or coyly enter into the first phase of certification but stop short of individual titling. Even the World Bank evaluation, which of course is ideologically bound to sing the praises of peasants abandoning social property and embracing the market, acknowledges quietly that PROCEDE has not in fact led to new productive credit using the land as collateral. The report also admits that there is no positive impact on agricultural income for those entering PROCEDE, an admission which it quickly dismissed by noting the positive impact if "off-farm income" is included. Apparently some who parcel their land end up renting it out and going off to do other work (including migration to the U.S.!), but the report doesn't pursue the implications of this. Anyway, it'll be interesting to see the government representative's views of some of these issues, if we can pin her down.
So this is the kind of stuff I chew on when I'm in town, in the world of abstraction. I'll probably head back to the jungle on Thursday. I'd like to be in El Conejo for the opening of the next session of the teacher training school, and try to talk with some of the trainers and education promoters about their views of autonomous education.
Meanwhile in other news, Bohtil had her pups!!
Six live (five boys and a girl) and one that didn't make it. Perra y cachorros are resting comfortably.
# posted by Richard Stahler-Sholk @ 11:48 AM 
