Members of the EZLN in the town of La Garrucha, in Chiapas, in a file image. Eduardo Verdugo (AP)
The Zapatistas are retreating in Chiapas, in southern Mexico, as they search for their new form, a structure that responds to the crisis situation facing the region. In a statement released Sunday, Subcomandante Moisés, spokesman for the Zapatista Army of National Liberation (EZLN), announced "the disappearance of the Zapatista Rebel Autonomous Municipalities and the Good Government Juntas," known as caracoles, the movement's civilian bases. "We will explain to them what the new structure of Zapatista autonomy is like and how it has been conceived," said the leader of the movement, successor to Subcomandante Marcos.
Moisés' statement is part of a series of writings that the Zapatistas have released in recent months, four so far, in which they recognize and denounce the crisis that the Mexican southeast is experiencing. "The main cities of Chiapas are in complete chaos," says the deputy commander. "The municipal presidencies are occupied by what we call 'legal hitmen' or 'disorganized crime.' There are blockades, assaults, kidnappings, extortion, forced recruitment, shootings. This is the effect of the sponsorship of the State Government and the dispute over the charges that is in process. It is not political proposals that are being confronted, but criminal societies," he adds, referring to the 2024 electoral process.
The Zapatistas, who between December and January celebrate the 30th anniversary of their armed uprising against the government, have tirelessly denounced the situation in Chiapas. Already in September 2021, the EZLN denounced that the state was on the verge of a "civil war," after the kidnapping of two members of the Good Government Junta of the town of Patria Nueva. The movement blamed the situation on state authorities, mainly the governor, Rutilio Escandón, of Morena, and the Regional Organization of Coffee Growers of Ocosingo, for the kidnapping. Finally, the two Zapatista authorities were released.
Violence in Chiapas is unleashed, no matter how you look at it. Mexico's poorest state suffers from confrontation between criminal organizations on the border with Guatemala, in the Lacandon jungle, in the Los Altos region, in the Palenque area. There are disputes between political groups in municipalities in different regions. Self-defense groups and paramilitaries appear and disappear, defending varying causes, all in the face of the incapacity or complicity of the authorities. Last week, border residents reported the appearance of bodies bagged in the waters of the Suchiate River, on its way to the ocean.
The tone of the four messages that the EZLN has released in recent months confirms the desperation of the population. In the third, Marcos, who recently demoted himself to an "insurgent captain," collected the content of a conversation between Zapatistas, mainly himself and Moisés, in which they wondered about the future of their children 120 years from now. "The storm is upon us. The same one we warned about almost 10 years ago. The first thing we see is that destruction is coming faster. What we thought would happen in 10 years is already here," said Moses.
"The monster, the hydra, capitalism, is like crazy, stealing and destroying. Now he wants to steal what he didn't care about before and continues to destroy what little is left. Capitalism now produces misery and those who flee from it: migrants," the subcomandante said. "There are many misfortunes, wars, floods, droughts, diseases, and in the midst of collapse we have to look far away. If the migrants are now in the thousands, soon they will be in the tens of thousands, then hundreds of thousands. There are fights and death between siblings, between parents and children, between neighbors, between races, between religions, between nationalities. The great buildings will burn and no one will be able to say why, or whom, or for what. Although it seems like it doesn't anymore, but yes, it's going to get worse," he added.
In the fourth writing, the tone is similar. "The federal, state and local military and police forces are not in Chiapas to protect the civilian population. They are with the sole objective of curbing migration. That is the order that came from the U.S. government. As is their way, they have turned migration into a business. Human smuggling and trafficking is a business of the authorities who, through extortion, kidnapping and buying and selling of migrants, shamelessly enrich themselves," Moisés denounces.
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