Chiapas: ‘The Cause Is Just’ : EYEWITNESS: PAUL NADOLNY

I’ve been working in the Diocese of San Cristobal de las Casas for four years. We hear a lot of criticism of the church in Chiapas. We’ve been blamed by the cattle barons and other large landowners, and by the state government for whatever conflict arises; we seem to be their scapegoat.

What has happened is that in the church we’ve taken seriously the documents of the Second Vatican Council and the documents produced by the bishops of Latin America. Around 1975, with the leadership of Bishop Samuel Ruiz Garcia, the church in Chiapas made a radical change, deciding that our mission is to be with the people, to live with them in their situation. Since then, we have organized communities led by catechists, lay Bible teachers drawn from the local population. So now the church is not so much the central temple in the town, but is instead centered in the small villages scattered throughout the area.

I’m living and working in the northern part of the state, an area where the cultural group is one of Mayan descent. And in the few years that I’ve been there, I’ve seen their suffering.

We’ve had cholera in our area, tuberculosis, yellow fever; most of the children have diarrhea because of malnutrition. The other day, there was a young indigenous couple in town. They have a small child who’s dying of diarrhea and vomiting, so they bring the child to town. Well, they go to the doctor and the doctor charges 20 pesos, which is like two days’ wages for them, just to see the child. Then the medicine they are prescribed is two or three times as much.

They are small farmers who work from sunup to the hottest part of the day to raise the corn and the beans that are the mainstay of the culture there. They farm in the hills--in rocks!--because the best land, the flat land, is where the big cattle ranches are. The indigenous people will have community-owned land, an ejido, and then little by little, through all kinds of methods that are so difficult to understand, the big landowners get the best land.

The small farmer raises his crop and he carries it down to his village on his back. Recently, he’d be getting about 80 centavos for 2 1/2 pounds. It’s just horrendous, when you think that to buy a Coke, you pay a peso. So he gets less than a Coke for 2 1/2 pounds of hard-earned corn.

For the catechists, the Bible is their inspiration. So, with the word of God theyhave been inspired to look for ways of helping themselves. And it’s incredible, the numerous ways it has sprung up--the formation of small cooperatives and popular organizations, health promoters that teach about the herbs, preventive measures, hygiene, things that have come out of their desire to take care of themselves.

But self-help has its limits, and many, many forms of protest have also been springing up. Processions, protests, hunger strikes in the jails protesting human-rights violations. Then the repression comes, which is the answer from the government.

The high level of human-rights violations is a continuing, spiraling problem. It’s mostly the impunity with which the government officials or the police can get away with things and are never brought to trial.

With the North American Free Trade Agreement coming into effect on Jan. 1, those taking up arms have apparently seen the insurrection as the only way out for them.

Article 27 of the Mexican Constitution, which deals with land ownership and land rights, was drastically reformed last year, and we think this was connected to the passage of NAFTA. The constitution, which was written in 1917 by revolutionaries like Zapata and Pancho Villa, put in the ejido system, which meant that land would be divided among the indigenous people--the farmers. Once ejido land was divided, it could not be sold, only passed on to another peasant.

Now, they can sell their little plot of land. What happens is that when an Indian gets sick or his wife is sick, he’ll do anything to cure her. I was with a sick person a couple of months ago, and his family said, “We had to sell so many hectares, so much of our land, to look for medicine and carry him to the hospital.” Well, he died, and they’re left without land.

NAFTA was part of that process of privatizing land. Well, this was seen by many people as the last straw. And evidently those who took up arms thought that there was no other way.

The church is against the violence. But the cause is just, and Don Ruiz has come out and said that we’ll accompany those who have decided to take this route, although we do not agree with it. And we will continue to denounce the general injustice in Chiapas.