Peace with Justice and Dignity

By Mr. Guillermo Michel

Violence and Non-violence : On November 17, 1983, in the depths of the Lacandona Rainforest, a small group of three Indians and three mestizos planted a black flag with a five-pointed red star, the symbol of proud humankind, with arms crossed1. The acronym EZLN summarizes the name of this minute group: the Zapatista National Liberation Army, an army which, over the years, would announce "something new":

The idea of a fairer world, with everything that was Socialism in outline,' yet digested and enhanced by humanitarian, ethical and moral elements... The revolution suddenly became something moral or ethical. Rather than the distribution of wealth or the expropriation of the means of production, the revolution began to emerge as the possibility of a human being having a sphere of dignity. Dignity started to become a very powerful word. It was not something we contributed...It was contributed by the [Indian] communities. The aim for the revolution was to guarantee that dignity should be achieved and respected.2

Little has been understood of the "moral revolution" embarked on by the Zapatistas and disseminated over the years, since their first violent, public appearance on January I, 1994 when a resounding "That's enough!" erupted like boiling lava in six municipal capitals in the state of Chiapas, in the south-east of Mexico, penetrating the most sensitive fibers of the heart in dozens of countries throughout the world.

From the ancient colonial capital of Chiapas-San cristobal de las Casas-the Clandestine Indian Revolutionary Committee-General Headquarters (CCRI-CG) of the EZLN, issued its first Declaration of the Lacandona Rainforest, denouncing the genocidal war that the dictators had declared against them, and demanding that the people join their struggle: "for work, land, a roof over their heads, food, health, education, independence, freedom, democracy, justice and peace." And concluding with: "We shall not stop fighting until we achieve the fulfillment of these basic demands of our people... "3 Basic elementary rights, the respect of which determines one's access to a decent life, or even, life itself.

Obviously, the response of the "guardians of order" was not long in coming. Particularly in the region of Ocosingo ("the martyred city") the confrontation between insurgent militiamen and the federal army left a trail of death and destruction. Bombardments of the civilian population were denounced south of San Cristobal. Thanks to the mobilization of civil society-both national and international-the federal government was obliged to declare a cease-fire on January 12, to make it appear as though the, "violence" would cease. Nevertheless, the Secretariat of State for National Defense declared that land and air patrolling would continue and that they would not abandon their strategic positions, in addition to preventing movements by the Zapatista insurgents.4

However, criminal violence, denounced from the outset as "genocidal policy" began long before the armed conflict that broke out in early January.

Institutional violence is expressed in death caused by hunger and curable diseases (such as parasitosis, diarrhoea, measles, whooping cough, etc.). Likewise, being subjected to badly-paid, menial labour on the lands of farm-owners and cattle-breeders, national and foreign ranchers, who own large stretches of land, with indentured labourers in their service, rather like the Spanish colonists who were granted Indian labourers by royal degree, can also be regarded as a form of violence. Having to humiliate oneself before these "lords" in order to obtain a crust of bread with which to feed one's wife and children can also be seen as a form of violence, as can the fact of having to "sell cheap and buy at a high price" at those urban markets where all the Indians "bring something: wood, coffee, cattle, cloth, handicrafts, fruit, vegetables, maize",[And] all come away with something; disease, ignorance, mockery and death... Here, everything can be bought and sold, except Indian dignity."5 This traditional, perhaps even age-old violence, has failed to be eradicated by any political system, economic model or religious utopia. As if all violent people-those who feel entitled to appropriate everything, even if the rest of humanity has nothing-were a sort of parasitic beings, whose strength and power always impose themselves by fire and sword on the weak, the nameless and the faceless.

For this reason, one of those extraordinary beings who have walked along the paths of the world, with his ingrained belief in nonviolence, realized that this omnipresent injustice must be resisted. "The nonviolent way." said Mahatma Gandhi, "is undoubtedly the best; yet when this is not possible, the violent way is both necessary and honorable. In this case, inaction is merely cowardice and pusillanimity, which must be avoided at all cost." 6 It is not that Gandhi wished to justify armed rebellion, since all his "armies" for liberating India always faced the British imperial army unarmed and virtually naked; yet often, given the structural violence implanted under the mask of "social peace," "order and progress" or the "rule of law," the only way open to the defense of dignity to oppose the genocidal policies of tyrants is the armed way.

This was in fact acknowledged by one of the EZLN insurgents, comandante David, who, in his address to the over four thousand attendees of the First Intercontinental Encounter for Humanity and against Neoliberalism, organized by the Zapatistas in July-August 1996 and attended by representatives of over forty countries, openly declared:

The world we have today is a world where brothers are forced to kill or die; the social system that exists in many parts of the world is an unjust system, a system of death rather than life, because it involves oppression and exploitation. We, the Indian peoples, have suffered over five hundred years of humiliation, subjection and the plundering of our wealth, slavery and death. Those who have always misgoverned our peoples have tried to eradicate us from history, and denied our existence. Those who believe they are the lords and masters of all, in other words, the powerful, have condemned us to live and die in marginalization and forgetfulness, they have sought to destroy our faith and our culture, and they have tried to destroy our lives and our Indian roots. 7

This is a profound appreciation of our world, this globalized world, where the so-called New World Order has been undemocratically imposed as though the Zapatistas had trained a powerful telescope from the moon or Mars on the lacerating injustice of an economico-political system that condemns them to die in life, not only as individuals but as a culture, as a people, in order to be converted into the "automated robots" of the "factories of progress" or into propitiatory victims, ready to be sacrificed on the altars of "modernity." "Progress" and "modernity" they have never known or enjoyed, as David himself points out:

Only poverty, hunger and misery reign in our peoples, only pain and death have walked with our steps; we, the Indians, have no history or future, we are the nameless and the faceless ones.

Yet this is even more true now, with the neo-Liberal Project, which is a project of death and destruction for the poor of the world, because through this project, they will attempt to destroy and plunder the wealth of our peoples (Idem, ibid.).

All of us who have in some way experienced the wars waged by mankind know that armed violence leads to greater suffering, death and destruction. Yet the Indian peoples grouped around what we now call "Zapatismo" also know this since, following the declaration of a ceasefire on January 12, 1994 not so long ago, they have not fired a single shot. Particularly since, in deference to civil society, consulted first in 1995 and more recently in 1999, they decided to "rule by obedience" and walk the path of nonviolence. Moreover, even before any referendum, since the beginning of the fight, in the midst of a military skirmish, they expressed their willingness to have a dialogue with the "bad government," with the "supreme government," as they call it, provided this dialogue leads them (and us, in Mexico and the rest of the world), to a fair, decent peace," to "a world where everyone fits," on an equal footing.

Nonviolence Against Institutional Violence : With a great deal of pain and suffering, the Indian peoples of Chiapas-the Zapatistas-have paved the way for civil society to make the transition to a "new peace," Not the peace of tombs, not that hypocritical "peace" of the established order which conceals misery, humiliation, plundering, death, the assassination of dissidents, and the illegal and unjust imprisonment of supposed "law breakers," Not the peace that should be called what it is, namely "structural violence."

Violence that is never practiced by the weak, but by the strong, by the owners of power and money-the violence of a tyrannical minority over a defenseless population, which is often unaware of the power exercised by the "dictators" of the world over entire peoples and countries, by imposing genocidal policies and suppressing any attempt at rebellion in the interests of "democracy" or "the stability of the markets" or, once again and again, "social peace". In response to this violence, those who call themselves "professionals of hope" have taken up arms since the Zapatistas have effectively created the hope that it is indeed possible to build a new world, a world that can accommodate all worlds.

Inspired by this hope, they have, with a great deal of effort and collective work, built five cultural centers known as Aguascalientes,8 their meeting places with civil society, With this hope, they invited the people of Mexico to meet at the first Aguascalientes in Guadalupe Tepeyac, to hold the so-called "National Democratic Convention" in August 1994, which would flounder in the tempestuous sea of envy and resentment of opposing groups within civil society itself," With this same hope, they once again invited civil society to create the National Liberation Movement in January 1995, and following the failure of this new initiative, a year later, without having lost hope, they once again encouraged society to organize the Zapatista Natio\1al Liberation Front, which currently comprises hundreds of "Civil Dialogue Committees," This new project was inaugurated by the symbolic number of 1,111 Zapatistas ("support bases") which, breaking through the military, economic and informational siege imposed on them by those who have remained in power, travelled from Chiapas to the capital of the country where they were received with great demonstrations of joy, admiration and solidarity.

Buoyed by this same hope, they attended the discussion sessions that were eventually held in the Tzeltal community of San Andres Sacamch'en de los Pobres where, after months of negotiation, the first Agreements on Indian Rights and Culture were signed on February 16, 1996. These Agreements, however, were virtually ignored and rejected by the same Power that had signed them, when they were about to be enforced. and whose project had already been accepted by the EZLN and the Zapatista communities.

This same hope encouraged them to organize the First International Encounter for Humanity and against Neo-liberalism (mentioned earlier), whose conclusions were accepted by all the participants. At the end of this meeting, at the Aguascalientes at La Realidad (August 3, 1996), subcomandante Marcos, on behalf of the CCRI-CG, proclaimed what would later be called The Second Declaration of La Realidad, in which the Zapatistas energetically declared themselves...9

Against the international scheme of death, against the globalization of war and arms.

Against dictatorship, authoritarianism, repression.

Against the policies of economic liberalization, against hunger, poverty, theft and corruption.

Against the patriarchy, xenophobia, against discrimination, racism and crime, against environmental destruction and against militarism.

Against stupidity, lies and ignorance.

Against slavery, intolerance, injustice, against marginalization and forgetfulness...

If these were the phenomena which, now globalized, have oppressed all mankind, it should not strike us as strange that millions of human beings, the most ethically aware, should also reject them with all their might. This Declaration contains no call to arms to combat those who encourage these ills. On the contrary, in the same spirit of nonviolence (ahimsa) that animated Gandhi in his gentle fury against the British Empire, the Zapatistas went on to declare themselves:

For the international scheme of hope, for a new, fair and dignified peace.

For a newform of politics, for democracy and for political freedom.

For justice, for life and for decent jobs.

For civil society, for full rights for women in all aspects, for respect for the elderly, youth and children, for the defense and protection of the environment.

For intelligence, culture, education and truth.

For freedom, tolerance, inclusion and memory.

For humanity.

This Desire to humanize the world corresponds perfectly with the "law of love," thanks to which, as Mahatma Gandhi states, humanity has not become extinct. Even though "what is tragic about this is the fact that so-called civilized men and civilized societies behave as though the basis of society were violence" (Merton, op. cit. p. 93). How, then, can one overcome structural, dehumanizing violence with nonviolence-ahimsa-in the fulfillment of which men such as Christ or Gandhi or many others, millions of them anonymous, have died, such as the martyrs of Acteal in Chiapas, who fell victim to paramilitary insanity as they were praying for a fair and decent peace on December 22, 1997? How can one, as Paulo freire proposed, raise the awareness of the thousands of oppressors who currently subdue millions of marginalized people who abound in Indian and peasant villages around the world or who become pariahs, or untouchables-harijan, the dregs of humanity, dehumanized social waste and whose presence is increasing daily in our major cities? 10

Encouraged by this Utopian hope, in the same Declaration of La Realidad, the Zapatistas suggested that the whole of mankind, (in other words, we) should first build and weave "a collective network of all our private struggles and resistance. An intercontinental network of resistance to Neo-Liberalism, an intercontinental network of resistance for humanity. This intercontinental network of resistance will, while acknowledging differences and recognizing similarities, seek to find other forms of resistance throughout the world... Secondly, they invited others to create "an international network of communication between all our struggles and forms of resistance. An alternative communication network... This intercontinental network of communication will seek to establish channels so that truth will walk all the paths of resistance...[Because] the network comprises all of us who resist, all of us who speak and listen..." (Op. cit., pp. 276-277).

The task of these weavers, these builders of hope, is obviously far from simple. It can only be achieved through a great deal of pain, and sacrifice, and by relinquishing the belief that one possesses the absolute truth and the only true way. It demands actions of non-cooperation and effective resistance to unfair laws or standards issued by the centres of world financial power. It requires us to be "tiresome," "rebellious" and "combative," since, as Mahatma Gandhi remarked with great wisdom and hope, "the first condition of nonviolence is to expand justice in every sphere oj life. This may be expecting too much from humanity. However, I do not think this is so. No one should be dogmatic about human nature's capacity for either degradation or exaltation" (Merton, op. cit., p. 126).

We may perhaps be barely on the verge of humanization. We may not have fully undertaken the task of making both others and ourselves aware, in order to consider all the possibilities that could arise in our world, just as it is, in order to "expand justice in every sphere of our lives, " in order to free ourselves and humanity from the chains that bind us all to greed and the fear of fighting for liberation. Invisible (yet perceptible) chains bury us in despair, apathy, conformity and inaction. These chains, it must be admitted, are also inherent in our being and in our social body, as history has shown.

The Colour of Hope : In Fact, paradoxical though it may seem, it is in the response of the oppressed to the violence of the oppressors that we shall find the gesture of love. Whether consciously or unconsciously, the act of rebellion of the oppressed...can restore love.

Whereas the violence of the oppressors turns the oppressed into men who are forbidden from being, the response of the latter to the violence of the former is instilled with the quest of the right to be. (Op. cit., pp. 49-50)

As Paulo Freire saw it, the struggle waged by the Zapatistas (by which I mean not only the militiamen but the men, women, children and elderly who constitute their "bases of support") is a response by the oppressed to the structural violence imposed by Power, for at least five hundred years, on the American continent. This battle, the most recent among many, has managed to influence civil society-urban, cosmopolitan, sensitive to pain and supportive-despite the informational siege, the lies and the falsehoods that have been spread about the Zapatista cause.

Over two thousand days later, however, conscientious witnesses of this phenomenon-that asserts the right to be, to live, to enjoy a fair, decent peace-we have been able to prove that the Zapatista population-including the civil population which supports them in the Chiapas Indian communities -have fired nothing more than words, precisely those words that they have used in full view of all those who wish to see that their non-violent struggle is aimed at the structural violence that seeks the extermination of all the Indian peoples and, more generally, of the world's poor, through the "globalization" of the so-called "New World Order," These words, aimed at the "Peoples and governments of the world" (and Mexico), so that anyone with ears can hear them, just as they were said in the Fourth Declaration of the Lacandona Rainforest, whose forcefulness, however, does not prevent one from noticing the kind of love described before by Paulo Freire:

The flower of the word will not die. The hidden face of the person by whom it is uttered today may die, but the word that emerges from the depths of history and the earth will no longer be able to be uprooted by the arrogance of Power.

We were born of the night. We live in it and die in it. Yet the light will be tomorrow for the majority, for all those who mourn the night, for those to whom the day is denied, for those to whom death is a gift, and for those to whom life is forbidden. There will be light for everyone. There will be everything for everyone. For us there will be pain and anguish, for us the joyful rebellion, for us a future that will be denied to us, for us insurgent dignity. For us there will be nothing.11

I think that it is not difficult to perceive the spirit embodied in this fragment of a far more extensive document, that recalls the reasons that gave rise to the rebellion of dignity and that can be summarized in a single word: injustice, This injustice that makes them be born and die in "the night," in obscurity, and that forces them cover their faces with balaclavas, not only to avoid being recognized, but so that we can recognize ourselves more easily in this mirror of the faceless, At the same time, it is possible to understand the generosity of those who confess, without pedantry and without pride and with absolute sincerity, "Everyone has everything, yet there is nothing for us...All that is left to us is pain and anguish."

I have thought fit to quote this series of announcements and denunciations to show how Zapatista thought and ethics reflect what Mahatma Gandhi regarded as the essence of satyagraha or the adhesion to truth, namely "sacrificing one's own life to what is regarded as correct" (Merton, op. cit, p. 67). From my point of view, what shines through is not merely this willingness to sacrifice one's own life but the fact that this attitude remains firm despite the fact that the "bad government" apparently leaves no opportunity for triumphing in the struggle. It is precisely this that colors their hope which, in this case, no longer appears in various shades of green and is instead tinged with the red of love and blood. The text can also be understood from the viewpoint of what Paulo Freire called the "Utopian factor," since, from his perspective, "Utopia is the dialectization of the acts of denouncing and announcing; the act of denouncing the dehumanizing structure and announcing the humanizing structure. This is why Utopia is also a historical commitment...And [for this very reason], only Utopians can be prophetic..., bearers of hope. "12

A small flame burns in the mirror of our history. Our human history of all time, of all languages, of all colors. This history which, like a "memory of the future," anticipates what will come and what is about to happen, almost in the same way as, in the darkness of the night, we anticipate the luminous proximity of dawn. During these long days tinged with the dark blood of the Mayan Indians of Chiapas, this small flame has not been extinguished. So it appears, at least in a far more recent "communique," where subcomandante insurgente Marcos-on behalf of the Clandestine Indian Revolutionary Committee, recalls an ancient Mayan myth-the Popol Vuh-which tells how, in silence, darkness and night, Man emerges clearly at dawn.

Together with this firm hope, which shines through this speech, Marcos once again revindicates the value of the true word, of the satyagraha, which seeks everyone in the wish to find him. Moreover, it is already present in our hearts...Suffice it to listen to what our hearts tell us...Perhaps we shall once again hear that, "the flower of the word will not die...the word that emerged from the depths of history and land, will no longer be able to be uprooted by the arrogance of power... "

Because I am certain that this multicolored flower is born and grows on the tree of hope, a tree that sinks its deep roots into the innermost part of our history and into the heart of Gaia, our Mother Earth. And it is precisely for this reason that it is possible to build a peace with justice and dignity against all hope.

-----------------------------------------------------

Author : Mr. Guillermo Michel, is Professor of Philosophy at Universidad Autonoma Metropolitana-Xochimilco, Mexico. He is an author of several books on communication, Education and Hermeneutics.

Article Source : Anuvibha Reporter ( Special Issue : Dec. 2000 )
Ahimsa, Peacemaking, Conflict Prevention and Management Proceedings and Presentations
Fourth International Conference on Peace and Nonviolent Action ( IV ICPNA )
New Delhi : Nov. 10-14, 1999

-----------------------------------------------------

Mail to : Ahimsa Foundation
www.jainsamaj.org
R210704