A-Infos (en) Mexico Beginning to Resent Foreign Meddling in Chiapas

[Tom Burghardt <tburghardt@igc.apc.org>]

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     MEXICO BEGINNING TO RESENT FOREIGN MEDDLING IN CHIAPAS
_________________________________________________________________
 
     Some U.S., European tourists, once welcomed, now considered
     'revolutionary'
 
     THE DALLAS MORNING NEWS
     Sunday, May 31, 1998
     By Laurence Iliff, The Dallas Morning News
     http://www.dallasnews.com/international-nf/int3.htm
 
     SAN CRISTOBAL DE LAS CASAS, Chiapas - For years, foreigners
had the run of this colonial town, playing hackey-sack or
chatting in the main plaza as Indian women peddled their
handicrafts and soldiers from a local base milled about.
   
     Now, outsiders are looked on with suspicion by residents and
officials alike, including President Ernesto Zedillo, who this
month alleged that "revolutionary tourists" are meddling in
national politics by supporting Zapatista rebels.
   
     "Let them come to see the reality of the Indians, but let
them come with an open mind and hopefully not with a preset
agenda on what they should say in order to promote revolutionary
tourism," Mr. Zedillo said in the nearby state of Yucatan, also
dominated by Mayan Indians.
   
     As a result, hardly a day goes by when foreigners - once the
darlings of Mexico's new openness and the saviors of its frail
economy - are reviled in the media. One pro-government newspaper
in San Cristobal suggested they should be shot.
   
     "They want people to come see the Mayan ruins from centuries
ago but not the reality of the Mayan present," said Matt Carlin,
an Oregon native and human rights observer here.
   
     Picturesque San Cristobal, once a placid jumping-off point
to Mayan Indian ruins, is now at the center of the Mexican
government's new strategy to get tough on mostly Europeans and
Americans who come for reasons other than rest and relaxation.
   
     This town is now also at the center of a debate over whether
citizens of nations linked by free-trade agreements should be
allowed to explore the political and social problems of the
allied nations.
 
TIES THAT BIND
 
     "For me, you can't talk about Mexico and the United States
as separate entities after the signing of a major trade
agreement, the training of Mexican troops in the United States
and the growing population of Mexican-Americans," said Mr.
Carlin, who is a volunteer for the U.S.-based group Global
Exchange. "We have a right on a grass-roots level to know the
Mexican people, like our government officials and business
leaders have a right to know their Mexican counterparts."
   
     Even San Cristobal Mayor Rolando Villafuerte, who accepts
the town's dependence on foreign tourism, says he is sick and
tired of green-haired "revolutionaries" telling his people how to
live. Of the 380,000 tourists who visited his city last year, he
said, about 250,000 were foreigners.
   
     Mr. Villafuerte points to the international scandal caused
by a group of more than 100 Italian human rights observers who
forced their way past a government checkpoint recently and
further angered a government already cracking down on foreign
activists in Chiapas.
   
     "They came supposedly as observers, but they were really
just clowns with multicolored hair," said Mr. Villafuerte, who
spoke outside the City Hall that on the first day of 1994 was
briefly taken over during the Zapatista uprising. "And they don't
even help tourism because they come with ready-made sandwiches."
   
     To be sure, neatly dressed foreigners are still likely to be
greeted with open arms. But the new climate here toward anyone
wearing sandals, Indian-made clothes or a bandanna has activists
worried like never before.
 
HARASSMENT
 
     In the Chiapas highlands, where a massacre of 45 Indians on
Dec. 22 shocked the world, politically motivated foreigners are
being harassed by police and the military even as they are given
credit by anti-government rebels for deterring paramilitary
groups.
   
     "Police threatened me with being kicked out of the country,
while soldiers on one occasion pointed their rifles at me while
passing by," said Spanish rights observer Fernando Plaza, who is
stationed outside the rebel community of Pohlo, which does not
recognize the authority of the government. "Mexican officials do
not want us to tell European Union officials of the repression
against Indians on the eve of trade talks."
   
     Indeed, many foreigners said it's impossible to draw the
line in Chiapas between completely nonpolitical tourists and
those interested in the 4-year-old uprising.
   
     Some come on their own. Others come with U.S. groups such as
Global Exchange, which arrange for "reality tours" of Chiapas
Indian villages, just like the ones they do to show labor
conditions in the vegetable fields of California.
   
     But the group insists the numbers of foreigners in Chiapas
at any one time is small. Global Exchange says it has brought
about 200 people to the state in the last three years.
   
     Mexican immigration officials said some 2,000 foreigners
have visited Chiapas to see the Zapatista communities in the last
two years. With the recent wave of expulsions, more than 300 have
been forced to leave.
   
     Still, it is not uncommon to see a few white Americans or
Europeans mingling among dark-skinned Indians in many of the
three dozen "autonomous communities" where Indians have kicked
out the local government.
 
TOURIST VISAS
 
     Before the government crackdown this year, nearly all came
on tourist visas, which prohibit them from political activity.
   
     Take Carlos Guerrero of Los Angeles, who was waiting in the
San Cristobal plaza before taking what was advertised as a
"culturally sensitive" tour of nearby Indian towns.
   
     After visiting relatives in northern Mexico, he continued
moving south, stopping along the way to see Mexico City, Oaxaca
and other sights. But Chiapas held a particular interest.
   
     "I was a sociology major at Berkeley, and I like
revolutionary politics," said Mr. Guerrero, 25. "I am interested
in what's happening, on what is going down here politically, but
only from the sidelines."
   
     The Mexican government says that its new policy toward
foreigners came in response to the Dec. 22 Acteal massacre. The
killings were blamed on paramilitary groups backed by the local
ruling party.
   
     That's when the government realized, one official said, that
it had to restore order in Chiapas by moving troops into areas it
had ceded to rebels under the peace process and by controlling
the movement of foreigners.
   
     Many activists insist that their activities are limited to
observation, although others admit that they participate in
public works and educational projects in rebel communities.
Zapatista officials say aid from national and international
groups plays a key role in their communities' survival.
 
ACTIVISTS CRITICIZED
 
     But some rights observers here also criticized the Italians
and other globe-trotting activists for provoking the government
and being so obviously partisan by wearing vests with the legend
"We are all Indians in the world," a clear play on Zapatista
slogans.
   
     The Mexican government made the Italians examples of its
tough new policy by expelling 40 of them from the country for
life for overstaying their visas.
   
     "I think the strategy is really clear," said Mr. Carlin, the
rights observer from Oregon, who entered the country on a tourist
visa. "If we as observers see rights violations and make them
public, then the government says we're involved in politics. If
they want us out, there must be a reason."
   
     Mr. Carlin, like many rights observers, see themselves as
the only obstacle to paramilitary groups who target Indian
communities sympathetic to the Zapatistas.
   
     The recent expulsions of Americans and Europeans aren't
helping tourism either, some locals said.
   
     Handicraft vendor Margarita del Socorro, 22, said it's no
wonder foreigners are starting to get confused about whether they
should come to Chiapas.
   
     "First, with the uprising, many of our regular tourists
stopped coming because they thought the town was full of
Zapatistas," said Ms. del Socorro. "Now, those who come looking
for the Zapatistas think they are not welcome. It's all the
result of distorted information."
   
     These days, many foreigners are trying to decide just what
they can and cannot do in Chiapas.
   
     "Before, we'd hear there were 1,000 Zapatistas in the plaza
and we, like many other foreigners, would go to check it out,"
said one human rights observer, who asked her name not be used
because she was using a tourist visa. "Now that the government
has said anyone caught on video at such a rally will be deported,
we just run the other way."
   
     The Zapatista rebels, mainly Mayan Indians, rose up on Jan.
1, 1994, demanding an end to 500 years of repression and poverty.
After a week of fighting in which 150 rebels and soldiers were
killed, a truce was called. Last year, the on-again, off-again
talks broke down after the government backed off on a preliminary
accord giving Indians the right to self-determination.
   
     Amid the stalemate, rights observers say, those who suffer
are likely to be neither the foreigners nor the government, but
the ones who always suffer in the middle of Mexico's political
battles: the Indians.
   
     Carleen Pickard, 25, came to Chiapas from Vancouver, British
Columbia, through Global Exchange and planned to go to an
observer camp in Acteal. The camp was set up to prevent another
massacre of pro-Zapatista refugees such as the one that drew
international attention Christmas week.
   
     "There is an element of fear, but I'm going in there by
going in as an observer in a strictly noninterventionist way and
using the privilege of being a foreigner to prevent bad things
from happening in that community," she said. "Human rights is
something that transcends borders."
 
     Copyright 1998 The Dallas Morning News
 
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