PODCAST EZLN

In 1994, the Zapatista Army of National Liberation initiated an armed uprising in Chiapas, Mexico, demanding various rights and reforms. The rebellion resulted in clashes with the military, with the EZLN ultimately retreating to the jungle. In the following years, negotiations and conflicts continued, including the Acteal Massacre in 1997. The government released Zapatista prisoners in 1999 as a sign of goodwill, and in 2000, President Vicente Fox withdrew the army from the conflict zone. Despite initial dialogue, conditions for peace deteriorated due to the disbanding of other armed groups. The Zapatistas continued their activism and mobilizations for their demands. Oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, Oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh In 1994, the first of January of this same date, the Zapatista Army of National Liberation surprisingly and without a previous declaration, initiated an armed insurrection in the state of Chiapas known as the Zapatista Uprising. Once the occupations were produced, they issued the Declaration of the Lacandon Jungle, for which they declared war on the Mexican government, while asking for work, land, roof, food, health, education, independence, freedom, democracy, justice and peace. In the early hours of 1994, they attacked and managed to occupy the municipal headquarters of San Cristóbal de las Casas, Altamirano, Las Margaritas, Yococingo, Cozchuc, Huistán and Chanal. On January 1, the EZLN attacked the 31st Military Zone in a combat that lasted more than 10 hours, despite the fact that the military commander, General Gastón Menchaca Arias, had granted the Franco Alliance several members of its troops for the New Year. Finally, the EZLN did not achieve its goal and retreated to the jungle. At the same time, the battle of Yococingo was carried out, one of the bloodiest battles of those early days of clashes. According to government sources, the Federal Army fought the EZLN with the instructions to take care of the civilian population. In one of these actions, Subcommandant Insurgent Pedro, head of the EZLN Major State, was killed. On January 3, the rebels captured General Absalón Castellanos Domínguez, former governor of Chiapas, and by January 4, the army already had total control of Yococingo and the other municipal headquarters that the EZLN had taken. During the next 8 days, the EZLN's attack capacity was almost zero. The Castrense reports confirmed the defeat of the EZLN at the hands of the Federal Army and its failure regarding the first declaration of the Lacandona jungle in terms of marching to Mexico City, since militarily the rebels did not have the opportunity to go beyond the initially taken municipalities. The attack of the subversives charged a balance of 57 dead and 40 wounded. After the initial surprise, the President of the Mexican Republic, Carlos Salinas de Gortari, directed a first message to the nation on January 6, where he denied that it was an indigenous uprising and offered forgiveness to those who dropped their weapons. Since the government accused the EZLN of receiving foreign support, while the EZLN issued a statement where it rejected these accusations and denounced the abuse of the military fighting against them. In 1995, at the beginning of January 1995, the EZLN launched the third declaration of the Lacandona jungle, where it proposed to society the declaration of the Movement for National Liberation. In mid-March, the Secretary of Government, Esteban Moctezuma, met with a Zapatista delegation and together they committed to achieve a stable ceasefire and reopen the process of political solution. In February, and for three days, the third session of the National Democratic Convention in Querétaro was held. On the 9th, President Ernesto Zedillo announced that the identity of the Zapatista leaders had been discovered and that, in application of the law, the corresponding capture orders had been released against them. Thus, the Mexican federal government identified the leader of the guerrilla, a.k.a. Subcommander Marcos, as the 38-year-old ex-professor and philosopher Rafael Sebastián Guillén Vicente, and issued an arrest warrant against him under the charges of the exclusive use of arms of the terrorist army, among other crimes. In 1996, as every year since its armed insurrection, the EZLN launched another declaration, the fourth declaration of the Lacandona jungle. In it, it proposed its decision to help build a new type of non-partisan policy that does not fight for independent, autonomous and peaceful power based on the EZLN. On January 5, Subcommander Insurgente Marcos abandoned his hiding place in the jungle and traveled to San Cristóbal to participate in the National Special Forum on Indigenous Culture and Rights, which had been initiated two days earlier. On the 10th, the National Indigenous Forum was closed with the proposal of integrating a new organization that would later be known as the National Indigenous Congress. On September 2, the Zapatista Army decided to suspend its participation in the San Andrés Dialogues and proposed five conditions to return to negotiations. The release of all alleged Zapatistas, a governmental commission with political decision-making capacity, but that respects the Zapatista delegation, the installation of the commission of monitoring and verification, a set of serious and concrete proposals by the government for the negotiation on the issue of democracy, justice and the end to the political and military persecution against the indigenous communities of Chiapas. 1997 In view of the rejection, the EZLN met in La Cocopa and rejected the governmental counterproposal. It also stated that they would not return to the negotiating table until the San Andrés Agreements on Indigenous Rights and Cultures were implemented. Immediately, measures of pressure against the government were organized. The Roman Commandant, together with the National Indigenous Congress, participated in a meeting in the esplanade of the university city to demand respect for the San Andrés Agreements. In July, the rebels prevented the vote in several electoral centers in Chiapas, before the presumable victory of the PRI. In September, more than a thousand Zapatistas came by bus to the federal capital to participate in a large meeting. On December 22, an armed paramilitary group murdered 45 Zotzil sympathizers of the EZLN in Acteal, a community located 50 kilometers from San Cristóbal. These events would be known as the Acteal Massacre, and the 8 officers who integrated the acts of violence were impugned. They spent only three years in prison. 1998 In January, a woman was killed by shots from the Chamaneca municipal police when she became nervous at the passage of an Indigenous march in Ocosingo. The following month, a campaign began by the Secretariat of Government to remove thousands of foreign political activists from the conflict zone in Chiapas. On February 25, an interview given to the news agency Rudder's, Vicente Fox, who was running for president of the country for the PAN, stated that if Subcommander Marcos wanted the improvement of Chiapas, the country and the indigenous world, he should not agree in a little while, and added that it should not take more than 15 minutes. Since April, the government of Chiapas began to dismantle principles established in the state by sympathizing Zapatistas, including the municipality of Ricardo Flores Magón, whose municipal headquarters in Taniperlas. In this action, two foreigners from Belgium and the United States of Spain were detained and extradited. A Caspian camp and a police checkpoint were installed in the center of the community and its shelter grew in the area of ​​the paramilitary group called the Anti-Zapatista Indigenous Revolutionary Movement. In March 1999, a national consultation was held on indigenous rights and cultures sponsored by the Zapatistas, but only until June there was a political response. This happened when the governor of Guanajuato said in an interview that he urges him to meet with Subcommander Marcos to talk about the future of the country and reach coincidences. The ZLN fixed its position before the strike in the UNAM in 1999-2000, which began in April. In August, the armed clash between the rebels and the soldiers of the Federal Army in Chiapas was restarted. Both accused each other of having initiated the activities. Nine soldiers were injured, however, it was only an isolated event. Shortly after, the government released Zapatista prisoners in Chiapas as a sign that the renewal of the dialogue was desired. In 2000, in April, Vicente Fox, presidential candidate, sent a new proposal for dialogue to Subcommander Insurgente Marcos. Without getting an answer, in May, a group of civilians attacked two indigenous people from the autonomous municipality of Bolhó Chiapas. Members of the Federal Preventive Police, PFP at the time, were sent to guarantee the security of the area. The Zapatista coordinators and various non-governmental organizations considered them a clear probation to the ZLN. Vicente Fox was elected president and, with one of his first orders, he made the decision to withdraw the army from the conflict zone. So all the military men located in Chiapas began to leave it. After this gesture, Subcommander Insurgente Marcos agreed to initiate the dialogue with the government of Vicente Fox. But little by little conditions for peace were extinguished, especially because the federal government disarticulated the other armed groups, the PRI paramilitary groups. In 2001, at the beginning of the year, Subcommander Insurgente Marcos announced the creation of the Zapatista Information Center, through which information would be exchanged about the delegation of the guerrillas to Mexico City. In the March of the Color of the Earth, I would articulate mobilizations to demand the fulfillment of the conditions of the ZLN for the dialogue. The three calls, the approval of the proposal of the initiative of the indigenous law, promoted from COCOPA in December 1996 and accepted by the ZLN. The release of Zapatista political prisoners and the demilitarization of the Zapatista influence zone in Chiapas. President Vicente Fox urged the ZLN on January 9 to start the dialogue with the federal government to achieve peace in Chiapas. However, the ZLN insisted that it would not return to negotiations until the seven military positions requested were closed. Meanwhile, the federal army withdrew from the community of Cuxulcá, municipality of Conzingo, manifesting the indigenous and support base of the ZLN, happy and not happy about this departure. 2005. The ZLN issued the sixth declaration of the Lacandona jungle and announced that it would leave the weapons and make politics. On August 5 and September 18, 2005, the ZLN held meetings with left-wing political organizations, indigenous organizations, social organizations, non-governmental organizations, cultural groups and collectives, artists and adults, elderly and young people who, on an individual, family, community, street, neighborhood or neighborhood basis, had signed the sixth declaration of the Lacandona jungle. At this meeting, being the most numerous of the organization, groups and artistic and cultural collectives, six points were addressed that served to guide the reflection and discussions, ratification, expansion or modification of the characteristics of the other campaign. Definition that those who were summoned and those who were not, organizational structure of the other campaign, special place of the differences between the other indigenous campaign, women, other loves, young people, children and other positions of the other campaign, in the face of other organizational efforts and unpublished tasks. 2012. On December 21 of the same year, tens of thousands of bases of support of the ZLN marched in silence through five cities of the state of Chiapas, Ocozingo, Las Margaritas, Palenque, Altamirán and San Cristóbal. Hours after the march, a statement of the CCRI-CG, in the form of a poem, signed by Subcommandante Marcos, from the portal Enlace Zapatista, which reads as follows. To whom it corresponds. Did you hear? It is the sound of his world collapsing. It is ours resurfacing. The day that was the day was night. And night will be the day that will be the day. Democracy, freedom, justice. 2015. In June 2015, the ZLN denounced that there was indigenous aggression in the Rosario Chiapas. The report signed by Subcommandante Moisés indicated that the aggressions occurred that same month and year. In addition, there was a complaint by the organization of the civil society Las Abejas, which expressed that an indigenous man was killed on June 23, 2015. 2021. In September 2021, Subcommandante Insurgente Galeano, on behalf of the CCRI-CG of the ZLN, denounced that on September 11 of that year, in the morning, members of the Arcao Organization for the Military at the service of the Government of the State of Chiapas, kidnapped two autonomous authorities of the Junta Buen Gobierno de Patria Nueva Chiapas and released them on the 19th. Thanks to the intervention of the parishes of San Cristobal de las Casas and of Oxchud, belonging to the diocese of San Cristobal, they claimed that Chiapas was on the brink of a civil war. After having seen and analyzed in a very summarized way what the Zapatista Movement of National Liberation is, which has many principles in favor of indigenous minorities within our country, which motivated them to do it in a paramilitary way, in which there has been bloodshed from its birth to very early dates, very current, which has been 2021. These types of movements help our nation to look at these small minorities, who need the support of each one of us and will always be there. And just like the Zapatista Army, there have been other movements, for example, on the same date, Christian movements of religious intolerance, which also arose from the killing of Acteal, which also arose from the movement of the bees. And so the part of the history within our country has been reflected, of what we see, we know, but also how many more stories have not been there in the secret of what we do not know.