Me, the Zapatistas and NAFTA

We are 13 years old. Young in people years, but a lot older in political years. When I arrived in Mexico in late January of 1994, the Zaps and the North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA) were almost a month old, having burst onto the scene (and into newly elected president Zedillo’s chronic headache) on New Year’s Eve.

I remember that in those very heady early days, just about every Zócalo (town square) was hosting a teach-in, informing the local folks about what was happening in Chiapas, warning of the coming economic collapse that NAFTA would inevitably create, and building a support network that they hoped would keep them from being massacred by the thousands of troops that were pouring into Zapatista home areas.

While I was looking for a long-term living situation and going to language school, the Zapatistas, having pulled back into the mountains, declaring a unilateral cease-fire, had begun a protracted discussion with the “bad Government” (their words).

Meanwhile, President Zedillo was struggling with the legacy of his predecessor, the much reviled Carlos Salinas: a badly overvalued peso, rising inflation, and a population suffering from social and economic dislocation. Although he did his best to avoid it, grumbling all the way (normally, the outgoing president takes “the hit” on devaluation of the peso), by the end of his first year in office he was forced to bite the bullet.

While the peso floated down to one-third of its former value, Diana and I were courting, the first (abortive) internet service came to Oaxaca, and the Zapatistas were deeply into negotiations for a peace agreement. Due to the tariff-removal clauses of NAFTA, making the way for importation of U.S. subsidized beans and corn, hundreds of thousands of small farmers were forced to leave their land and migrate to the cities in search of work. The pace of illegal immigration into the U.S. picked up considerably.

Meanwhile, the middle class, which had swelled during the last few decades, began to shrink. At the same time, small businesses dedicated to the domestic market saw government support withdrawn in favor of large industrial corporations who were geared to export. A record number of businessmen threw themselves onto the tracks in Mexico City’s subway as interest on credit cards used to purchase capital goods at a variable interest rate climbed past 100 percent.

Zedillo, a “technocrat” (he once told a reporter acquaintance of mine that he hated politicians; that if only the “experts” were allowed to rule, there would be prosperity for everyone) and a “globalist” (he took his masters’ degree in economics in the U.S.), mortgaged Mexican oil to U.S. banks for ever larger infusions of cash; cut the social services net; and bailed out the large borrowers who had defaulted on loans to the tune of hundreds of billions of pesos to be paid by taxpayer funds. Mexico lost half of its 26 billionaires, and millions of hard-pressed peasants, hundreds of whom died in the attempt, left to find a new life in other countries.

By the time we were three, the Zapatistas had hammered out an agreement for limited autonomy in indigenous areas, which Zedillo had signed and then put out of sight in a bottom drawer of his presidential desk without ever sending it to Congress for approval; Diana and I were in our second apartment and had begun cooperating on our newsletter; inflation had slowed; the peso was stronger; fewer applicants were being admitted to the supposedly free-for-everyone public universities; and the new superhighway between Mexico City and Oaxaca had been opened, cutting the driving time from nine hours to five, for those who could afford the $30 fee. Housing prices (and rentals) began to skyrocket, as tens of thousands of Chilangos (residents of MexCity) discovered Oaxaca as a tourism site, and a good place to buy land and build a second home. The economy was in great shape, but the people were in agony. There weren’t enough medicines in the public hospitals; labs were unable to perform some simple tests for lack of necessary reagents; demonstrations and occupations of public spaces were an almost daily occurrence.

Our seventh year was one of great change, or no change, depending on how you looked at it. Ernesto Zedillo quietly left office after his handpicked candidate lost to Vicente Fox. For the first time in over seven decades, the “perfect dictatorship” of the PRI party lost control of the presidency. Fox, who had promised during his campaign that he would “solve the Zapatista problem in my first fifteen minutes in office”, was unable to get the accord that Zedillo had sought and then “vanished” through the Congress, in spite of a grand march from Chiapas to MexCity led by Zapatista spokesperson Subcomandante Marcos to support it. The governorship here in Oaxaca went, predictably, from one PRI badass to another. The maquiladora assembly plants on the border with the U.S., which were supposed to fuel the economic recovery of Mexico under NAFTA, began to pull up stakes and relocate to the even cheaper labor markets in southeast Asia and Central America, leaving a gigantic pollution problem in their wake.

The Zapatistas broke off all negotiations with the “bad government,” declared some “autonomous communities” in Chiapas, refused all government aid to those communities, and began training the “second generation” of Zapatista leaders.

Last year we were 12. Vicente Fox, whose lackluster tenure ended, was replaced by an ultra-conservative charismatic Catholic, Felipe Calderon, who many say stole the election at the ballot box (a not-unheard-of tactic down here, although still fairly novel up there until 2000). The Zapatistas held their own “campaign” in the midst of the election fever. They held meetings in each and every state, to listen to the complaints of “those from below,” while organizing a national network of small organizations and emphasizing that none of the “political class,” including leftist candidate Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador (AMLO), who nonetheless probably won the election, was listening to the marginalized peoples. They called it “the other campaign.”

In Oaxaca, the newly installed governor (also accused of massive electoral fraud) used state police to break up a demonstration and occupation by the state’s teachers which had been going on in May for 25 years. The result was a massive popular uprising and the formation of a loosely affiliated council that called itself the people’s congress (APPO). Oaxaca was occupied for over six months, until federal troops and police were called in to bust it up in November using massive force. APPO called for a “punishment vote” against the PRI in the election, and nine of eleven districts voted their PRI representatives out of office; many small towns rebelled and formed new governments; and NAFTA went into overdrive, removing the remaining tariffs on imported agriculture, and enriching the international agribusiness corporations while putting “paid” to the local farm economy.

Now we are 13. The Zapatistas are still with us, stronger than ever. Oaxaca continues to be a more and more costly place to live, in spite of the fact that the “troubles” of this summer destroyed the tourist economy on which so many citizens depend. And we are still here, doing our best to figure out what’s going on at any given moment. Contrary to what the State Department and the mainstream media tell you, Oaxaca is a safe, friendly and interesting place to visit. C’mon