Procede y Fanar, Government Strategies for Grabbing Indigenous Lands

** Adherents to the Otra Campaign Denounce that they want to make a new Cancun in Chiapas

By: Hermann Bellinghausen, Envoy

San Cristóbal de las Casas, Chiapas, January 21, 2012

A dozen Tzeltal, Tzotzil and Chol communities, adherents to the Other Campaign, declared this Friday that in Chiapas “the strategies of plunder represented by Procede/Fanar against communal and ejido property have been the fundamental goal of Juan Sabines and Felipe Calderón in this six years.”

The indigenous maintained: “With the megaprojects for the supposed sustainable development, rural cities, ecotourism, Prodesis, the Development Strategy for the Southern States (EDES, its initials in Spanish), agreed on in the Chamber of Deputies for implementing the biological, tourist and eco-archaeological corridor, they want to de-populate and re-populate indigenous territories, until achieving a new Cancun in Chiapas, consolidating the Mesoamerican Biological Corridor to put all the natural wealth of our lands and territories in transnational hands.”

That explains, according to residents of Zinacantán, Chilón, Venustiano Carranza, Ocosingo, Tenejapa, Teopisca and Villa las Rosas why the political parties (PRI, PRD y PVEM) and the three levels of government “have enlarged the ranks of the traditional shock and paramilitary groups like Paz y Justicia, Uciaf and the Orcao, that today keep the Zapatista bases in the five autonomous Caracoles encircled and threatened.” That has occurred since 2010 in communities of all five Caracoles: San Marcos Avilés (Oventic), Nueva Purísima y Nuevo Paraíso (La Garrucha), San Patricio (Roberto Barrios), Patria Nueva and Mártires (Morelia), and Monte Redondo (La Realidad).

To the UNAM investigator, Dolores Camacho, Procede has been a “factor of conflict in ejidos and among organizations.” The division of lands in ejidos lands and communities began in 1995, after the modification of Article 27 of the Constitution. “All the independent organizations, and even the National Campesino Confederation Nacional (CNC), were not in agreement and did not permit the start of the process. That meant that the new administrative measures were not applied with the expected quickness.”

Even so, conflicts emerged due to the attempts at imposition by “small groups allied with the government.” Agrarian authorities and the governments of all levels initiated processes for convincing ejido commissioners so that they would obtain support from the assemblies in favor of the project, Camacho adds in an interview. “Pressured by the PRI, the CNC impelled the program, although the people did not easily accept the leadership’s decisions.” There was a time period established for carrying out the demarcations. Then the pressures and offerings begin.”

Durante 2000, the Agrarian Prosecutor, the Agrarian Tribunal and the Agrarian Reform delegation pressured the indigenous to accept Procede. “Organizations previously close to Zapatismo like the Orcao and the Cioac attempt ‘to convince’ their members to ‘legalize’ their lands, at the mercy of negotiations of their leaders with the new government of Pablo Salazar Mendiguchía.”

Those “agreements” modified the commitment of the pro-Zapatista organizations “and caused a struggle in ejidos and territories recuperated jointly with the risen up Zapatistas.” The EZLN support bases respected previous agreements and their Revolutionary Agrarian Law. “The ‘independent’ organizations preferred to create legal possession.” That brought about internal problems that as of this date favor conflicts, according to the investigator.

“The little clarity with which the conflict over land was resolved left spaces, now taken advantage of for confronting the Zapatistas with organizations previously close.” The Revolutionary Agrarian Law directs that the recuperation of land is for appropriating a violated right, throughout the history of the population of indigenous zones. According to the analyst, to the non-Zapatistas the taking of land was exercising a right “originating from the laws that promote the use and possession of land individually.” In Zapatista territories, “that ought to be collective and be dedicated to preferentially to products basic to sustaining the Communities.”