Text originally sent by Mauricio Banda to mexico2000 on November 2nd,1995.
"El Norte", Section Analysis, Wednesday, November 1st, 1995 (File
source: http://infosel.com.mx/elnorte/notas/TEXTOS/nana0000.HTM)
During the last interview agreed upon by Subcommander Marcos before
declaring a red alert in the Chiapas conflict zone, and taking refuge in the
mountains, the Zapatista leader predicted a "new treason" of the Federal
Government, and a future of warlike tension.
Carlos Fazio and Samuel Blixen
Twenty four hours before the arrest of Eduardo Ya'~ez Mu~oz,
accused of being commader "Germa'n" of the EZLN was broadcasted,
Subcommander Marcos stated, during the first hours of dawn, on Sunday,
October 22nd, that "We are expecting a new betrayal. The Government is
not interested in dialoguing, it is only interested in gaining time."
In what constituted the last interview granted before imposing the "red
alert" in the conflict zone of Chiapas, the Subcommander predicted a
future of warlike tension.
He said that, under pressure from the U.S. Government, "Ernesto
Zedillo will apply a policy of annihilation. Our response will be a
guerrilla war, on several fronts and with autonomous commands."
Subcommander Marcos attributed the deployment of a counterinsurgent
strategy to the strategic needs of the U.S., linked to oil.
Under the light of a single candle, in the darkness of the ejido
house of La Realidad, that is how Marcos reasoned bout the future, while
in San Andre's Larrainzar, "Commander Tacho" was signing, on Saturday the
21st, together with the Government's delegation, the synthesis of the
consensus to the finalization of the first round of talks in the group
which debated Indigenous autonomy.
Marcos described Zedillo's Government as being "stupid, awkward,
unable to reason," obstined in the implementation of a policy which,
according to him, will lead to the establishment of a regime of state
terrorism in Mexico, "with a Fujimori-like Government, which is cheaper,
from a political standpoint, than a military coup.
"Yes: We see before us a very powerful enemy and we see a very
large blow coming", Marcos said, as he explained that the politics of
counterinsurgency were deployed by Zedillo the moment he took office and
inaugurated his presidency by setting up a trap.
The Subcommander revealed that in September, 1994 he set up contact
with Zedillo,then president elect, through a video producer, Javier
Elorriaga, who has been in prison for the past 11 months accused of
allegedly having links with the EZLN.
"It was Elorriaga who brought us the letters from Zedillo and took
ours backto him. He arrived together with the video team he worked with,
and said that he had volonteered himself as a liaison of good will towards
peace and that he was bringing a message from President Zedillo. I
ignore what kind of a mechanism he used to have our letters reach
Zedillo. But we did verify that he was indeed a liaison of the then
triumphant PRI candidate."
The goal of the February 9th offensive was to decapitate the EZLN,
"that is to say, to get me."
We had set up a meeting with the Interior Ministry's liaison for
February the 8th. (Then secretary of the Interior) Esteban Moctezuma had
sent us word that it was necessary that we meet in order to clarify
everything. We met with Elorriaga at 11:00P.M. He took the message with
the date of the meeting set for between February 15 and 20. Elorriaga
left at dawn on February the 9th. At that moment, we were to learn
later, his wife was being arrested in Mexico City, and other arrests were
been carried out in Veracruz and the State of Mexico, he says.
Marcos reiterates the accusation: "Esteban Moctezuma knew that on
that day I was going to be contacted in Guadalupe Tepeyac. That I was
there. And the main offensive, the immediate one, was the taking of
Guadalupe Tepeyac. We are convinced that it was a trap. They surrounded
it. A column of airlifted troups was parachuted. They closed Nueva
Providencia and San Quinti'n, which was our line of retreat. That way
out was no longer possible. They had closed the trap. They thought that
Guadalupe and Prado were my points of contact. And they went against the
first, because they knew that was where I had to be contacted by
Elorriaga. It was an ambush, what can I say..."
The plan failed, according to Subcommander Marcos, because the army
was not aware of it. "It was taken by surprise; since December it was
deployed to defend cities, not to throw a siege, to comb and advance."
They took too long, and that enabled Marcos to escape.
Subcommander Marcos attributes to Zedillo a whole counterinsurgency
strategy conditioned by "the lack of willingness to deploy an alternative
strategy to the one he was forced to follow by the U.S. Government.
According to Marcos, Carlos Salinas de Gortari's insistence, first,
Zedillo's insistence later to modify the legal rules for the exploitation of
the subsoil, has a direct relationship with Chiapas' oil fields.
It happens that the largest above soil oil stratum on earth is
located in Valle Amador, under the "ejido" of Pichucalco, inside the
Lacandon jungle, 40 kilometers from here. That study was conducted by
the North Americans in 1985-86 and they kept it secret. It is very high
quality oil, and very inexpensive to exploit, because it is under your
fingertips. You can practically smell the gas. Salinas' government
knew that when it started in 88, he and the North Americans, and noone
else."
In Marcos' opinion, "Zedillo's awkwardness provoked the economic
crisis explosion 20 days after he took office."
Clinton's Government finantial help had a condition: "Here is the
money but I want the oil. You have a guerrilla there. Get rid of it for
me," that was the transaction, according to Marcos.
The general counterinsurgency plan inevitably leads to the physical
elimination of the Chiapanecan Indigenous communities.
"Neoliberalism has decided to promote a process of re-conquest of
the land," declares Marcos.
"Of course: the land conquest is not going to follow the pattern
of the Spanish conquest. It is going to follow the process of the
conquest of the American West. It implies the physical, cultural, and
historical annihilation of the peasantry."
In this scheme, the Subcommander foresees the proliferation of the
paramilitary commandos until State terrorism takes over. The EZLN, he
announces, is decided to resist.
We already are with a people who resisted the most powerful
military might of its time: Spain. These people have the experience of
having faced under extremely poor conditions , under the worst conditions
in military terms, Spain, and then England, France, Germany. All the
great military powers that were coming in. When you face someone who is
more powerful, you don't necessarily have to fight with him. You can
resist against him, looking for a means to weaken him," he expressed.
Marcos maintains that Zapatismo is a strong military force, in
spite of the fact they have questioned the fact that it has not fought in
battle since January 12, 1994. But he reiterates: "To survive under these
circumstances, without losses, with a 60.000 men army against you, we
know, as soldiers, that it is a success. But we are not bragging about
it, because otherwise we may be accused of being militaristic."
Beyond the irony, he explains: "A regular army which des not win,
loses; a guerrilla which does not lose, wins. That was said by Henry
Kissinger, not Che Guevara."
Nevertheless, Marcos estimates that the deployment of the
counterinsurgency strategy is conditioned "because the group in power is
being led by internal rancours and settling of accounts
and not by intelligence. We are before a stupid and awkward government
which does not reason."
Once the plot to decapitate the EZLN fails, the Government's
priority, in Marcos' opinion, was "to take away our main weapon: our
words, our voice. In order to achieve that, the objective was to get us
out of the canions and throw us into the mountains. They tried to
prevent me from speaking. Don't let the Zapatistas speak."
In that context, Subcommander Marcos locates, as part of the
counterinsurgency attack, the book by historian Carlos Tello Di'az "The
Rebellion of the Canions" ("La rebelio'n de las ca~adas".)
Marcos claims that the book was aimed at generating doubts among a
sector of the intellectual elite which had supported from the start an
effort at negociation.
"I have Tello's information sources", says Marcos: "It is a
report from CISEN, the intelligence services of the Ministry
of the Interior (Gobernacio'n.) A CISEN deserter passed it on to us. In
that report you find everything Tello claims is the product of his
interviews with people. In reality, all he did was transcribe that
report and render it coherent; he aded literature about the evil Marcos,
how they fouught among themselves, and how they killed Rodrigo."
Marcos thinks" the book is a fraud to the Nation, it is simply a
transcript of police files. The aim of the libel is to create an
intellectual ambiance to keep on bashing Samuel Ruiz's Diocesis and to
isolate the EZLN in the only success it has had; its media politics."
Convinced that the book was, even "written by novelist He'ctor
Aguilar Cami'n, and signed by Tello."
Subcommander Marcos said that the publication of the "Rebellion of
the Canions" is also a simil of what is now happening in real life.
Carlos Tello, grandson of Porfirio Di'az, the dictator, wants to do away
with Emiliano Zapata's grandchildren. But one should remind Tello that
Di'az lost with Zapata like he is goig to lose with today's Zapatistas."
Javier Elorriaga, the video producer accused of belonging to the
Zapatista Army of National Liberation, confirmed Subcommander Marcos'
version accordig to which the day he was captured in the Highlands of
Chiapas (Altos de Chiapas,) on February 9th, 1995, he had just performed a
liaison mission between the Zapatista leader and the Secretary of the
Interior, Esteban Moctezuma.
Elorriaga, who had been named as an advisor to the EZLN for the
first round of talks begun on Wednesday the 18th in San Cristo'bal de las
Casas, Chiapas, has already completed 11 chapters of a book he is writing
on a portable computer and which describes his detention, and analyses
the characteristics of the trial against 20 alledged members of the EZLN.
Elorriaga admitted that on February the 8th he had met with
Subcommander Marcos in Guadalupe Tepeyac to set up a date for a meeting
that the leader of the guerrila and Secretary Moctezuma would have in the
middle of the month. But he clarified that he acted as a liaison,
although he did not maintain a direct contact with Secretary Moctezuma or
with Zedillo.
I connected with someonne who had direct contact with Moctezuma.
The meeting between Marcos and Moctezuma was for the signing of a
permanent truce. Moctezuma knew that I would meet Marcos in Guadalupe
Tepeyac, he said.
Elorriaga was detained at the army road block located at the
entrance of Gabino Vazquez, a town close to Las Margaritas, on the
morning of February the 9th, when he was returning from Guadalupe
Teepeyac after having contacted Subcommander Marcos.
"President Zedillo had not yet broadcasted his message announcing
Marcos' alledged identity," he recalled in his cell of Cerro Hueco prison.
translation.ML.