MEXPAZ Chiapas Bulletin 139 Via NY Transfer News Collective * All the News that Doesn't Fit MEXPAZ: Bulletin 139, Chiapas-eng BAD STATE OF THE UNION FOR PEACE By Miguel Alvarez Gandara September 3, 1997 Why is the omission of Chiapas from President Zedillo's State of the Union Address worrisome, but hardly surprising? Because Chiapas, and all that it implies, is not considered a priority by the federal government, as confirmed by its strategy of militarization, designed to wear down opponents. The government is attempting to achieve a solution other than that previously agreed upon in San Andres. The model of dialogue and negotiation established in Mexico has drawn together experiences of similar processes in other countries, especially in Latin America. This model seeks to promote an inclusive social process that would substitute military confrontation with political dispute via negotiations oriented toward a process of pacification --understood as solving the causes of a conflict. The San Andres negotiating table would become the regulatory space for this political struggle between equals, working fundamentally on the search for commitments and agreements toward a real and profound solution to the conflict. This process, then, includes various dimensions: the strictly internal dynamic expressed at the negotiating Table by the parties; the link between the Table and other grounds and stages of action on the part of the parties; and the true connection between the Table and the parties' strategies toward general pacification, that is to say, to other conflicts and actors implicated in the causes and solutions of the main conflict. Thus, this model requires solutions of military detente in the measure that political consolidation advances; civil participation and co-responsibility in the negotiation and peace process; and simultaneous fulfillment and verification of the agreements throughout the seven agenda items to be touched upon successively. That is, the negotiation model must be articulated with a vision of the whole in which all is inter-related along a political path oriented toward solving the causes of the conflict. Nevertheless, to the extent which civil participation, military detente and fulfillment of the agreements haven't occurred, the model as a whole has been bogged down. Thus, the political dispute is once again related to methodological problems, and the model is newly at stake. Two postures are already beginning to peek out: If the problem is the model itself, or if the problem consists in the conditions to guaranty fulfillment of the model. This would mean that, in the first case, the model, method, procedures and schedule for negotiations must be renegotiated if talks are to be resumed. In the second case, also before recouping the negotiating dynamic, the parties should agree upon adjustments to guaranty fulfillment of the model established. Although the government seems to want another kind of dialogue, another San Andres, the difficulties we are suffering are due to an end phase crisis similar to that experienced in other countries after signing the final agreement, once the scaffolding of negotiation between parties has been taken down. Nevertheless, in the case of Mexico, this crisis is taking place within the framework of a negotiating process given full priority and backing by the parties. This possibility of recomposing and recovering the negotiating dynamic by accord of the parties is one of the chief elements in the CONAI's confidence in and hope regarding dialogue. In any event, complications for peace lie not only in the negotiation between parties. Unfortunately, the negotiation has lost its ability to influence and control the whole of the peace process, which instead of advancing has degenerated into violence and intensified other conflicts which co-inhabit the state of Chiapas and, indeed, the country. Given armed conflicts and the indigenous rebellion, the governmental delegation is digging its heels in with a logic of State, hard and calculated. The present strategy of State is founded on military hegemony and is evidence of a limited will to negotiate. In addition to dismissing the representativeness and importance of the Chiapas conflict, the governmental strategy has stepped up actions to disjoin and weaken other actors and proposals. A logic of State of this kind can't promote the political dynamization necessary for peace and fulfillment of the San Andres agreements. In the first half of 1997, there have been notable signs that the government is attempting to substitute dialogue with the EZLN through its relationships with other actors in Chiapas. The government is seeking to isolate the EZLN politically and weaken its social base, not only by diversifying its interlocutors but also by searching for other models of negotiation that don't obligate the State to act as a party to the conflict nor commit itself to solving its causes. During disputes over key moments in the process, the State is attempting to increase its strength over that of disjointed actors and demands; it is, in some fashion, looking to manufacture its own space and model to administer the conflict, without being bound by the implications and commitments of San Andres. Because of the foregoing, the conclusion is inevitable that the crisis is the result of one of the parties' strategy. The exhaustion of the communities and the military solution currently taking place seem to have assured the Chief of State that Chiapas is a problem that has already been resolved both politically and militarily, a problem that no longer deserves priority: a lamentable local problem. To marshal supposed "reasons of State" to deny negotiations to Indian people and attempt to arrive at a solution that favors the government, given the low quantitative weight of the EZLN at the moment, now seems to be the government's unspoken expectation. This contrasts with Congress's rescue, in the words of Munoz Ledo, of the meaning of peace as linked with indigenous peoples' rights and democracy. The Congress will also have a preponderant place in rebuilding political conditions that favor negotiation. The key point will once again lie in the diagnosis and conception of peace. There is no room for doubt here. Indian peoples must become protagonists of a proposal irreducible to territorial or sectoral dimensions, and of a peace process that can advance only if it is inclusive and thorough, oriented to the causes of all conflicts in the state born of violent injustice. ********************************************************************* Secretariado Internacional Cristiano de Solidaridad con los pueblos de America Latina "Mons. Oscar A. Romero" SICSAL Patricio Sanz 449 Col. Del Valle Mexico, C.P. 03100, D.F. MEXICO. Tel-Fax (525) 523 95 82 Correo-E: sicsal@laneta.apc.org ================================================================= 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-09.15.97-23:26:17-19999