Mexico: Zapatistas take their struggle to the capital
Tens of thousands of Mexicans, backed by supporters from across the world, have been flocking to the Zapatistas’ March for Indigenous Dignity, which is set to arrive in Mexico City on 11 March.
The march set off from the EZLN’s base in the rebel province of Chiapas on 24 February.
Though the Mexican government has given official "protection", the march has met with serious opposition from reactionary local governors and rightists as it gets closer to the capital.
Brutal police and paramilitary violence flared when the EZLN Caravan passed through Cancun and merged with mass protests against the World Economic Forum being held to plan austerity measures against the Mexican people.
Led by Subcomandante Marcos - the guerilla fighter, poet and radical democrat who has inspired new forms of protest worldwide - the Caravan is aiming to win support for demands on the government, which the EZLN says are preconditions for peace talks. These include a new law enshrining rights for indigenous Indian peoples and the release of EZLN prisoners.
When the march reached Ixmiquilpan, Zapatista leader Marcos delivered an extraordinary improvised speech to the thousands in torrential rain:
"For them democracy has to do with a calendar. On such an hour, on such a day, an election. We are all citizens, and we can all have opinions, but the rest of the time our word doesn’t count for anything. The rest of the time a group of professional politicians makes decisions for us, without asking us if we’re in agreement, without taking into account whether it can do us damage or be to our benefit.
"There’s another difference between their liberty and ours. For them, liberty is the liberty to buy or sell.
"For us, the ones who have it hard, what can we buy or sell? The only thing we can sell is our blood, our hands - and even so, we have to sell them very cheaply. That’s not the liberty we want."
On 27 February 27, nearly 500 activists took the anti-capitalist protest movement to the doorstep of the World Economic Forum in Cancun, in the Mexican State of Quintana Roo.
The demonstrators were attacked by paramilitary police armed with tear gas, truncheons and shields. As a result, 45 people were arrested and several injured - two of them seriously.
The attack took place outside a hotel where Mexico’s president, Vicente Fox, was meeting with bosses and top bankers.
A statement protesting against the police action from the Mexican Trotskyist group the Liga de Trabajadores por el Socialismo-Contracorriente Unificada (LTS-CC) said: "These events show that the Fox government, in spite of its promises to deliver peace and democracy - which some left intellectuals echoed - is continuing with the policies of the PAN-PRI-PRD regime.
"There is no doubt that the government will continue its anti-working class and anti-popular measures.
"The government talks about peace in Chiapas, but the militarisation of the region continues, driving millions of indigenous people and peasants into misery. The government talks about democracy but sends the police to repress the anti-capitalist demonstrators and expels student activists.
"The LTS-CC calls for the formation of a broad committee against the repression in Cancun and throughout Mexico carried out by the Fox government.
"We believe that an important demand is the release of all political prisoners in the country, and we make an appeal to trade unions, and to social, popular and human rights organisations to join this campaign."
Send messages of solidarity to: ltsmex@prodigy.net.mx
Send messages condemning the repression direct to the Fox himself: presidencia@gob.mx
