State terrorism in Chiapas: Fazio Via NY Transfer News * All the News That Doesn't Fit source - amanecer@aa.net Wed May 17 23:38:08 2000 Originally published in Spanish in La Jornada Translated by irlandesa La Jornada Monday, May 15, 2000. Provocation * Carlos Fazio * People are the masters of words and they can, and often do, make them mean very different things. In Chiapas, for example, government propaganda insists there is no war. But President Zedillo is maintaining an army of 60,000 men there, in addition to weapons, and he has created 600 positions of territorial occupation and control and registration of the population, covering the entire chiapaneco landscape. He has also created an enormous network of armed civilians, the semi-clandestine paramilitary groups, as part of a para-institutional violence aimed at creating terror and at annihilating zapatismo's civilian support bases. In order to complete the picture, last week the government sent another paramilitary - this one indeed official - group, the Federal Preventive Police, to try to clash with the zapatistas. First it staged the provocation in Chenalho, then it lay siege to the Polho Autonomous Municipality and stepped up the harassment of zapatista villages which are established along the sides of the Montes Azules biosphere reserve. Now they are after the spark that will set the grasslands on fire. The government is on a war footing, and it is preparing a surgical strike. It could be a feint. The systematic, calculated and rational use of violence by the government has been an instrument for exercising power. The regime administers the times. It has more than enough experience. What cannot be denied is the militarization of the geographical areas and the parallel attempt to militarize the minds of the chiapaneco population, as part of a predatory counterinsurgency strategy designed to thwart the collective violence created by discontent. Since 1995, the Mexican Army's Manual of Irregular Warfare has defined a series of offensive, psychological and intelligence tactical operations designed to break the support relationship between the people and the EZLN. "The people are to the guerrilla as water is to the fish," the Sedena manual quotes Mao. From that time on, the Army has been agitating the water in the fishbowl, and it created "self defense groups (the paramilitaries) in order to control the civilian population and to break up the community social fabric. The military offensive was combined with a socialization of violence and with the control of land looking towards expansion. The plan has been being carried out step by step. At a tactical level, it has sought to destroy and to disrupt the insurgent group's political-military strategy. In the arena of strategy, it has wanted to destroy the zapatistas' will to fight and to isolate them. For those in command of the counterinsurgency, there are only friends and enemies. Although, in the beginning, the civil population was part of the "internal enemy." Under this perception, zapatista municipal autonomies and mass organizations are "cover groups." They form part of the unarmed subversive apparatus. From there will emerge the new actors of "social disorder." They are a source of supply for militants and potential urban commandos. They are, therefore, a target that must be destroyed. That is the purpose, now, of the government attempt to dismantle the Autonomous Council of Polho, as well as of the publicity campaign for the dislocation of zapatista communities from Montes Azules. At the same time it is about cornering the EZLN command in the deepest part of the Selva Lacandona, while elite Army commandos are combing the region and narrowing the circle of annihilation. The old technique of the slipknot. The rope that is closed around the neck of the zapatista comandancia. The government is covering up the war with different excuses. Just a little while ago, they sought to justify the military occupation of indigenous lands under the facade of reforesting the Selva or the construction of roads. Today they are sending federales to "put out" fires in Montes Azules. It does not matter if there are no fires: the propaganda invents them, or the soldiers can start them. Remember Vietnam. In December of 1997, the Acteal massacre was a prepared strike in order to militarize Los Altos of Chiapas, and to divide up the entire region with checkpoints and barracks. Three years later, the silent war continues its course. The provocation of Chenalho is in keeping with that same military logic. The new military offensive is preparing the final strike. The question which Lewis Carroll put in Alice's mouth some time ago has several answers in Chiapas. One possible one is that the sum of an occupation army plus the dirty war and the phenomenon of paramilitaries equals State terrorism. The world is full of examples where State terrorism is combined with a formally democratic regime. The other side of the coin of the dirty war is impunity: it is well known by everyone in Mexico. However, the military escalation could mean, for the government, a simple campaign offer: the vote of fear. Or, as Humpty Dumpty would say, a desire to make it known who is in charge--period. ================================================================= NY Transfer News Collective * A Service of Blythe Systems Since 1985 - Information for the Rest of Us 339 Lafayette St., New York, NY 10012 http://www.blythe.org e-mail: nyt@blythe.org ================================================================= nytcamer-05.18.00-13:23:31-15758