Conflict in Chiapas: Understanding the Modern Mayan World [Anglais] [Broché]

Mexico's southernmost state, Chiapas, is a land of towering myths and extravagant beauty. Home to the largest concentration of indigenous people in the Americas, its history is marked by brutal oppression and bloodshed that extends to this day. Veteran journalist and author Worth H. Weller, who has covered conflict in Central America for two decades, breaks through the fogs of time in this book of rare insights and photographs to explore the reality of the modern Maya and their unique Zapatista revolutionary movement. An eye-witness epilogue draws a startling parallel between the cultural and economic issues that face the Maya and those that face their Sioux brethren in South Dakota at the close of the millennium.

Years of extensive travel have fueled Worth Weller's quest for knowledge and understanding of the triumphs and struggles faced by people with different cultural backgrounds. The Contra War in Nicaragua, the aftermath of the civil war in El Salvador and the ongoing conflicts in Chiapas were captured in prize-winning photographs by Weller. His affinity for the people of Central America is a result of the events he witnessed during that time. Weller is an accomplished writer and photojournalist who has received numerous honors for his articles from the Hoosier State Press Association and the Indiana Society for Professional Journalists. His photo series on the modern Ku Klux Klan received the top journalism prize in Indiana in 1996. He started his journalism career as a United States Army Signal Corps photographer, covering the Cold War in Europe in the early '70s. A graduate of Duke University with majors in Sociology and English, Weller and his family currently reside in North Manchester, IN, where he has served 25 years as editor of an award-winning aggressive weekly newspaper.

Beneath the shimmering surface of San Crist--bal de las Casas--the heart of the Mayan Mundo--there is a reality that the casual tourist carefully knows nothing about.

The sprawling, heavily fortified military base on the southern fringe of this historic Old World city gives only a hint of the recent escalation of the centuries-long conflict in the remote villages of the Mayan highlands.

On the losing side of this conflict are the indigenous people of Chiapas, Mexico's southernmost state. Tzeltal and Tzotzil Indians of direct Mayan descent, the women still wear dresses of colored ribbons and cook in mud huts with thatched roofs. As they have for a thousand years, the men grow corn, squash and beans in small plots (milpas) throughout the jungle that crawls across these narrow valleys with their cloud-tipped peaks.

On the winning side are the ranchers, miners, oil interests and timber barons in their fancy haciendas. With a wink and a nod from the provincial government, they push the Maya higher and higher into the mountains where the land is less productive.

But the nature of the battle changed dramatically on New Year's Day, 1994. New players appeared on the field. Led by pipe-smoking subcommandante Marcos and diminutive Ramona in her brilliant skirt and embroidered white blouse contrasting starkly against her black ski-mask, the Zapatista National Liberation Army (EZLN) has won few battles since they burst onto the Mexican political landscape. Instead, they have skillfully attracted international attention with their poetically worded communiqus demanding land for their Mayan brethren and equal rights for all Mexicans.

Forcibly opposing the Zapatista guerrillas is the Mexican Army. Teenagers drafted from the modern cities of Veracruz, Tampico, Tuxtla. Thrust into the unfamiliar jungle with their flak jackets, steel helmets and German made Hekler and Koch 7.62mm assault rifles, they are a grim-faced lot behind their dark glasses as they gun their American-made Humvee troop carriers through the deep, black mud.

Standing between these two armed forces one sweltering hot day, were two Nebraska farmers--an unlikely occurrence if there ever was one.

Carl and Bob Epp, dairymen from Henderson for the previous 35 years, have spent much of their retirement criss-crossing Central America, living out their Mennonite faith as peacemakers. In Chiapas, recently, they served not as bible-thumping evangelists, but as part of an international presence to exert a cautionary influence on the Mexican military.

On more than one occasion the Army has been accused of committing atrocities in the remote villages which provide food and recruits for the Zapatistas. "Jesus was always on the side of the poor and the oppressed," said Carl Epp, age 77, as he lifted his eyes to the green hills tumbling into Las Tacitas, a Tzeltal village literally at the end of the road where the mountains plunge into neighboring Guatemala just 30 miles away. "If I can contribute in that way, what little I am doing here I am glad to do."

So what was farmer Epp doing at the end of a muddy mountain road passable in its final miles only on foot or horse? The nearest town with a market and paved roads is Ocosingo, a grueling two-day journey away, by autobus, truck and foot.

This is it.

A sleepy afternoon marked only by the squeal of pigs is interrupted when a coffee-skinned Tzeltal dashes through the mud to the schoolhouse that is our home for ten days. "Pst, compa, los militares estn aqu'." Companion, the soldiers are here.

Out dashes Epp. Four heavily armed soldiers, escorting a cadre of pistol-toting officers and two female nurses, have materialized out of the jungle.

Hatless and breathless in the torrid sun, Epp speaks Spanish well enough to bring the soldiers to a halt before they enter the village proper. That's his job. Facing down armed soldiers. The officers tell Epp they are on a medical mission. We think otherwise, and the villagers clearly are not anxious to have them stay. Faced with Epp's obstinance, the soldiers don't press their point and soon fade back into the jungle.

On his ninth working visit to Latin America, this trip he was a volunteer representative of Bishop Samuel Ruiz, president of the Catholic Human Rights Commission of Chiapas. Sent here by Christian Peacemaking Teams, a Mennonite-based peacekeeping force working in the Middle East, Bosnia, Haiti, Mexico and South Dakota, the Epps are prosperous but simple, joke-telling farmers. They feel that their faith has led them to encounters such as this. Rather than milking cows, Carl Epp's job on this day is to tell the soldiers that they must obey the law. He explains that the Mexican constitution forbids their entry onto private property. It works. Obviously displeased to have Mexican law interpreted for them by gringos, they soon disappear into the jungle.

Later that evening Zapatista militiamen visit to ask what occurred. It's been months since the military has approached this village. These dark-eyed young men with their red bandannas around their necks are clearly concerned. "If the peace talks fail, then our differences will be settled by lead," their leader somberly reports. So while world attention focused on the peace talks in far-away San Crist--bal, the Epps were out in the jungle, walking with the Maya, who want nothing more than adequate land to continue their centuries old traditions.

"My hope is that the Mexican government will continue to hesitate, continue to negotiate, in the face of world opinion," said Bob Epp, Carl's younger brother. At age 73, this was Bob's third trip to Chiapas in the past twelve months, so keen was his desire to live out his faith among the oppressed. "I'd like to think that the presence of international peacemakers in these villages will force the government to resolve the issues here without the scorched earth policy that is so often used in these cases."