4) Mexico Cheers Chiapas Caravan
by [EMAIL PROTECTED]
5) Why We Must Support Rebels in Colombia
by [EMAIL PROTECTED]
6) U.S.-NATO Occupation is Colonialism
by [EMAIL PROTECTED]
-------------------------
Via Workers World News Service
Reprinted from the March 22, 2001
issue of Workers World newspaper
-------------------------
AS 250,000 FILL ZOCALO: MEXICO CHEERS CHIAPAS
CARAVAN
Historic March for Indigenous Rights
By Bill Hackwell
Mexico City
The long march for the rights of the disenfranchised and
neglected Indigenous peoples of this country, led by the
Zapatista Army of National Liberation (EZLN), roared into
Mexico's capital on March 11.
At 2:15 p.m. a caravan that had begun in the Lacondon jungle
amid the highlands of Chiapas was received in the famous
Mexico City Zocalo square by a wildly enthusiastic crowd of
over 250,000 people.
"We are here to demand democracy, liberty and justice,"
proclaimed Subcommander Marcos. "The government thinks that
today marks the end of an earthquake, but after today the
people who are the color of the earth will never be
forgotten again."
The route of the caravan had been carefully crafted.
Beginning its last leg in Xochimilco on the south side of
Mexico City, it then traced the path of Mexican
revolutionary heroes Emiliano Zapata and Francisco Pancho
Villa, who in 1914 briefly took over the city to push for
land reform for the peasants and poor of Mexico.
Disregarding security measures, the 24 Zapatista leaders
rode on an open flatbed truck that moved slowly through
middle and working-class districts. They were greeted by
tens of thousands of people along the way. Signs of welcome
and solidarity were evident throughout. Chants of "You are
not alone" and "Zapata lives, the struggle goes forward"
could be heard above the engines and horns of the caravan
that followed. A popular banner slogan read, "Everything for
everybody, nothing for us!"
DOZENS OF RALLIES ALONG MARCH
The caravan that had begun 16 days earlier had wound 2,100
miles through 12 states, stopping in small agricultural
communities along the way as well as in large industrial
cities like Puebla, Toluca and Morelia. The Zapatista
demands for Indigenous recognition and autonomy were raised
at 35 actos or rallies. A total of over 300,000 people
attended these rallies and an untold number lined the roads
cheering on the caravan.
Each stop had its own particular flavor and emphasis. In
Oaxaca, where the population is over 80 percent Indigenous,
25,000 people came out, many with signs against political
repression there. Local leaders talked about the struggle to
stop the federal government from privatizing the historical
archaeological site of Monte Alban, the famed city of the
Zapotec Indians.
Another significant stop was at Anenecuilco, Morelos, where
Zapata's daughter Ana Maria and son Diego greeted the
caravan in the town of their father's birth. As the EZLN
leaders laid flowers on Zapata's monument, the crowd began
to chant, "If Zapata were alive, he would be with us!"
On March 8, International Women's Day, the four women
commanders--Esther, Susana, Yolanda and Fidelia--conducted
the program in Milpa Alta. Commander Esther told the crowd
of 10,000 there that, "We remember the anniversary of our
sisters in New York who were fighting for a just wage. They
showed that without women the world won't change."
NATIONAL & INTERNATIONAL SUPPORT
The Zapatistas became known to the world when they captured
six towns on Jan. 1, 1994, the first day of the North
American Free Trade Agreement. In the 12-day war that
followed, 145 people were killed.
NAFTA, imposed on Mexico by the International Monetary Fund
and the World Bank, has spelled economic disaster and
increased poverty for the Indigenous people as well as other
Mexican workers and peasants. But the Zapatista rebellion
also signaled the opening salvo of the anti-capitalist
resistance movement to globalization worldwide. It was an
inspiration to militant struggles in Seattle, Prague and
Geneva. Now it will give added impetus to the protests
against the FTAA in Quebec on April 20.
More than 1,000 people from other countries--including
Italy, Spain, France, Britain and India--traveled with the
caravan. Over 200 came from the U.S., including
representatives of Pastors for Peace, Mexico Solidarity
Network, Schools for Chiapas, Chiapas Support Committee, San
Francisco Zapatista Committee and the International Action
Center.
Trade union banners appeared as the march got closer to
Mexico City. The Union of Mexican Electricians and the Union
of Mexican Telephone Workers called for defending the
dignity of the Zapatistas. The National Union of
Agricultural Workers brought 5,000 members to the rally in
Mexico City.
But the real backbone of the caravan was the 1,000 Mexican
activists who traveled the entire way. Many were youth whose
imaginations have been captured by the Zapatistas and the
possibility of a revolutionary movement against U.S.
imperialism. Large images of Che Guevara were everywhere.
University students kept joining the closer we got to Mexico
City.
When the caravan began in San Cristobal de las Casas it had
90 vehicles, 25 of them buses. By the time it entered the
Zócalo it had swelled to 300 vehicles and 50 buses.
MEDIA FRENZY & THE FOX GOVERNMENT
Throughout the entire 16-day trek media and government
helicopters followed overhead. Camera people in ninja
outfits riding motorcycles raced after the comandantes' bus,
followed by swarms of press cars and media vans. It was the
top news story in every newspaper every day. The entire
population of Mexico got to follow the journey on
television. The struggle of the 15 million Indigenous people
was center stage of Mexican politics.
Of course, some coverage has been negative. The reactionary
media conglomerate TV Azteca has given a lot of time to
representatives from the Federation of Employers of the
Republic of Mexico, who called Subcommander Marcos an
"irresponsible, ignorant demagogue." The Indigenous people's
poverty is their own fault, said these exploiters, and they
need help in determining what is good for them.
For the newly elected government of President Vicente Fox of
the right-of-center PAN party, this spotlight on the
forgotten and neglected Indians of Mexico presents a major
problem. This former Coca-Cola executive has tried to
portray himself as inclusive. The Zapatista leadership
refuses to meet with him, however, and instead has demanded
to address the Mexican legislature directly.
Fox has been careful not to criticize the march. He even
welcomed the Zapatistas to Mexico City. It was obvious that
the orientation of the Federal Police and other security
agencies on the route was to get the caravan to Mexico City
without provocation or incident in an attempt to limit
sympathy and support for the growing movement.
The president went so far as to invite the Zapatista leaders
to Mexico's White House, Los Pinos, but they refused, saying
it was a trap to make Fox appear in control of the
situation.
While the Fox government has met some of the Zapatistas'
demands, they have said that they will not leave Mexico City
until all 60,000 troops are pulled away from the area around
the autonomous Indigenous communities--in particular the
huge military bases at La Garrucha, Guadalupe Tepeyac and
Río Euseba.
The day before the rally at the Zocalo, Fox released 14
political prisoners. But another 19 Zapatista leaders remain
in prison. The EZLN is also demanding that the San Andreas
Accords signed in 1996 by the COCOPA, a congressional body
representing all the capitalist parties, be ratified into
the Mexican constitution. This agreement says that the
Indigenous of Chiapas have the right to their land and to
determine its future.
The Fox government is afraid that giving in to the Zapatista
demands will open up similar demands from other Indigenous
people representing 54 different groups. This is the real
sticking point. Who will control the land--the people who
have lived there for thousands of years or the multinational
corporations that, using the crafty Fox as their agent, want
to exploit the rich resources of Chiapas? In direct
reference to this, Commander Moises said, "Those who want to
exploit Mother Earth have no mother at all."
- END -
(Copyright Workers World Service: Everyone is permitted to
copy and distribute verbatim copies of this document, but
changing it is not allowed. For more information contact
Workers World, 55 W. 17 St., NY, NY 10011; via e-mail:
[EMAIL PROTECTED] For subscription info send message to:
[EMAIL PROTECTED] Web: http://www.workers.org)
From: [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Date: torstai 15. maaliskuu 2001 12:34
Subject: [WW] Why We Must Support Rebels in Colombia
-------------------------
Via Workers World News Service
Reprinted from the March 22, 2001
issue of Workers World newspaper
-------------------------
MESSAGE TO THE ANTI-WAR MOVEMENT: WHY WE MUST
SUPPORT REBELS IN COLOMBIA
By Teresa Gutierrez
Plan Colombia has placed U.S. intervention in Colombia on
the front burner for the progressive and anti-war movement
in this country. And even though the U.S. government's
strategy is still being formulated, the struggle in Colombia
and how the anti-war movement here relates to it is crucial.
When Plan Colombia was first initiated, the U.S. government
attempted to sell it to the people of this country as a war
on drugs. Now that phony campaign is failing and the pundits
are beginning to talk about "nation building in Colombia,"
such as strengthening the Colombian judicial system.
It is not known if or when the Pentagon will send combat
troops to Colombia, but the stakes are high nonetheless as
the U.S. is preparing one way or the other for all-out
domination of not only Colombia but the entire region.
GOALS ARE SAME AS IN VIETNAM
When President Andres Pastrana traveled to Washington for
the umpteenth time in February, he stated that U.S.
intervention in his country was not going to be like the war
in Vietnam.
But while there are many important historical differences,
U.S. intervention in Colombia is very much like what the
U.S. ruling class tried to do in Vietnam.
Their aims are the same: to suppress a movement by a people
struggling to free themselves from the yoke of imperialism.
One of the same techniques Washington and the Pentagon used
in Vietnam is also being used in Colombia. An intense
disinformation campaign organized by the U.S. government is
being propagated by all the corporate media.
Disinformation campaign hatched in Pentagon
What is the real U.S. role in Colombia? Who are the players,
what are their interests and what do they want? The purpose
of this intense disinformation campaign is to obscure the
answers to these questions.
The word "narco-guerrillas" does not appear in any
dictionary. But it has come into vogue.
It has been coined by the Pentagon to confuse people about
the issues in Colombia. As has been done so often before,
the military's public relations people invented this term to
discredit the movement there.
In every U.S. news account, narco-guerrillas is used to
describe the movement in that country, specifically the
insurgents.
People are told that the Revolutionary Armed Forces of
Colombia-Peoples Army (FARC-EP) and the National Liberation
Army (ELN) are narco-guerrillas. They are described as drug
traffickers, a charge the U.S. has failed to prove. Even
Colombian President Andres Pastrana said again in February
that there's no evidence to sustain this charge.
YET THE SLANDER CONTINUES.
The media distorts the situation in Colombia in other ways
as well. Whenever there is an incident, they immediately
blame the rebels. The Washington Post becomes the judge and
jury in a single mouse click, long before any evidence has
even been gathered.
This kind of disinformation points to the Vietnamization of
Colombia.
No one who remembers Vietnam would think it far-fetched to
accuse the Pentagon of being responsible for this campaign
against the Colombian people.
THE REAL TERROR: THE U.S./PASTRANA ALLIANCE
Hardly anything is written about the real horror going on in
Colombia today and who is responsible for it.
A war of repression and terror of horrific proportions has
been raging in Colombia. That terror is institutionalized
and state sponsored. It is decades long.
For over 40 years, the Colombian people have waged a heroic
battle against this repression. They have struggled to free
their country from domination by U.S. capital and themselves
from the resulting poverty and exploitation.
The first half of this century was filled with mass
resistance--but mass repression as well. By the late 1950s
over 50,000 people had been killed in Colombia.
In the 1980s the insurgent movement put aside its weapons
momentarily to participate in the electoral process through
a mass organization called the Patriotic Union (UP). Its
program was so popular that thousands of its members were
elected to local and national offices. How did the
government and right-wing paramilitaries, backed by
Washington, respond?
By killing more than 4,000 activists, including many mayors
and other elected officials.
This kind of terror continues. Gustavo Gallon, director of
the Colombian Commission of Jurists, says his organization
estimates that from October 1999 to October 2000 there were
160 separate massacres in which 1,084 people were killed.
(New York Times, March 4)
Eighty-two percent of the deaths came at the hands of the
paramilitaries, specifically the so-called Self-Defense
Units of Colombia (AUC).
A report by Winifred Tate in the Feb. 16 Foreign Policy in
Focus magazine says that the precise number of people who
have died at the hands of the right-wing paramilitaries will
never be known. But it is known that over the past decade
more than 35,000 Colombians have been killed, the vast
majority by the death squads operating in collusion with the
Colombian military. The military provides the intelligence,
personnel and logistics to the paramilitaries and blocks
human rights activists from reporting the situation.
The repression is incredible, but daily life is also a
grind. International banks, big business and the Colombian
oligarchy have brought untold misery to the Colombian
people.
While unemployment is officially over 20 percent, the actual
figure is much higher. Austerity policies imposed by the
International Monetary Fund have deepened the suffering.
The March 6 Hoy, a Spanish-language newspaper published in
the United States, reported that Colombia spends $134
million every month to pay just the interest on its huge
foreign debt.
Another act of war is aerial fumigation. Supposedly a
measure to eradicate coca plants, it is used against the
peasants and their rights to the land.
The meager plots of land worked by thousands of Colombian
peasants are being eradicated by deadly mycoherbicides. Food
crops are being destroyed in many areas of the country.
Florida's Department of the Environment has deemed some of
these chemicals too dangerous to use in the state of
Florida. But they were sent to Colombia anyway to be sprayed
in areas where there is believed to be guerrilla activity--
just as the Pentagon used Agent Orange and other herbicides
in Vietnam.
Over 2 million Colombians have been displaced by the
internal conflict. With decades long repression, with
miserable economic conditions, is it any wonder that
Colombia has produced the oldest guerrilla movement in Latin
America?
The FARC-EP has been in existence since 1964 and the ELN was
formed not long after that.
Together, these guerrilla groups control 40 percent of
Colombian territory.
Although the horrific war now under way in Colombia began
long before Plan Colombia, the U.S. government's infusion of
$1.3 billion for military hardware is intensifying it,
strengthening repression and bringing new misery to the
people.
The money is going to a military that, according to Jack
Nelson-Pallmeyer, author of "School of Assassins," was
trained in the art of killing at the Pentagon's School of
the Americas. "More than 100 of the 246 Colombian officers
cited for war crimes by an international human rights
tribunal in 1993 are SOA graduates."
A U.S. disinformation campaign about the Colombian army and
the AUC seeks to legitimize and prettify them.
SUPPORT THE GUERRILLA MOVEMENT
In face of the destruction of human life and the environment
in Colombia, it is long overdue for the anti-war movement to
raise its powerful voice in mass protest--not against just
one aspect of the plan but all its aspects. Whether taken
piece by piece or altogether, the plan is an act of war.
Fortunately, the movement in this country against Plan
Colombia is growing. Organizations and individuals are
holding forums, conferences and demonstrations.
But much more must be done.
One of the most important tasks ahead is to raise the level
of understanding of what is happing in Colombia today, and
about the U.S. role.
The avalanche of disinformation about the struggle in
Colombia must be turned back by an avalanche of resistance
against Plan Colombia and in support of the struggle there.
One of the ways resistance can be built is by uniting to
support the rebels in Colombia and all those who are
fighting back in that country.
The Pentagon and Wall Street would prefer to see the
movement in this country confused and paralyzed on this
issue. It would prefer that we put an equal sign between the
right and the left or put "all the armed actors" in the same
basket.
TWO SIDES IN A STRUGGLE
Whenever a union is on strike or in an intense organizing
drive, the bosses turn up the anti-union rhetoric to a fever
pitch. They put the union under a microscope, distorting or
falsifying this or that incident in order to break
solidarity.
Union leaders become targets of scrutiny. They are slandered
as corrupt or sell-outs, as if the bosses really cared about
that. The anti-union rhetoric aims to confuse the workers,
to make it look as if there are many sides, when there are
really only two: the side of the workers and the side of the
bosses.
Unfortunately, the disinformation campaign sometimes works.
Workers get confused, start questioning the union, support
is derailed and unity dissolves. They start turning away
from the union instead of defending it to make it stronger.
What the U.S. government is trying to do with regard to
Colombia is not so different.
When the media talks about the civilian population being
caught in the middle between the right and the left, the
Pentagon is elated. Why? Because it blurs the distinction
between the two sides in the struggle.
When the media equates the institutionalized state terror of
the paramilitaries and the Colombian military with the acts
of those defending themselves from that state terror, it
means to confuse the issue.
In the case of Colombia, no matter what Bush says, it is
clear that the U.S. government is on one side: the side of
the paramilitaries and the Colombian government. The
Colombian people being terrorized by them are on the other.
It is understandable that the people of Colombia do not want
war. They are exceedingly tired of the repression.
That makes it even more urgent for the movement in this
country to unite and turn full attention to the real source
of war in Colombia: the Pentagon, Wall Street, Washington
and the oligarchy that does their bidding.
That's why a mass movement to stop Plan Colombia is urgently
needed. So we can raise our voices loud and clear to demand
that the U.S. get the hell out of Colombia. So we can demand
self-determination for the Colombian people so that this
devastated nation can finally win the peace it so yearns
for. The Colombian people must finally be left alone to
build the kind of society they want, free of IMF and
Pentagon interference.
If the anti-war movement here and in Colombia grows and is
successful, that in turn will tremendously help other
struggles. It will help push Bush back and strengthen the
movement to free Mumia Abu-Jamal and Leonard Peltier, for
unions, for women's rights, for lesbian/ gay/ bi/trans
rights and against racism.
When the oppressed and exploited of Colombia win against the
U.S. imperialists, we will be able to claim a victory for
our side. Now is the time to build a movement in solidarity
with the heroic people of Colombia.
- END -
(Copyright Workers World Service: Everyone is permitted to
copy and distribute verbatim copies of this document, but
changing it is not allowed. For more information contact
Workers World, 55 W. 17 St., NY, NY 10011; via e-mail:
[EMAIL PROTECTED] For subscription info send message to:
[EMAIL PROTECTED] Web: http://www.workers.org)
From: [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Date: torstai 15. maaliskuu 2001 12:34
Subject: [WW] U.S.-NATO Occupation is Colonialism
-------------------------
Via Workers World News Service
Reprinted from the March 22, 2001
issue of Workers World newspaper
-------------------------
KOSOVO AND MACEDONIA: U.S. -NATO OCCUPATION IS
COLONIALISM
By John Catalinotto
The 21-month occupation of Kosovo by U.S. and NATO troops
has turned the region into a Western colony without bringing
it either economic progress or stability. Washington's
support for the right-wing nationalist KLA army now
threatens to unleash new wars in southern Serbia and in
Macedonia as this group carries out its plan to fight for a
"greater Albania."
Formerly part of Yugoslavia, Macedonia is now a small
country of 2 million people with a large ethnic Albanian
minority and a U.S. military base on its soil since 1992.
Firefights there between KLA commandos penetrating the
border and the weak Macedonian army have led to deaths on
both sides and threaten a wider war.
Articles in a number of British newspapers and in the New
York Times have raised fears that the NATO forces have "lost
control" of the KLA. This group was originally financed by
Berlin and Washington and then unleashed to provoke a war
against Yugoslavia.
Like the reactionary Taliban in Afghanistan, the KLA would
never have become an important factor in the life of this
region had it not received the full backing of U.S.
imperialism. The U.S. poured billions of dollars into the
Taliban, Osama Bin Laden and other reactionary forces in the
1980s to bring down the progressive Afghan government and
weaken its Soviet allies.
In response to this new crisis in the Balkans, NATO has even
begun to discuss the use of Yugoslav troops with the pro-
Western government of Vojislav Kostunica in Yugoslavia. They
are to enter the "buffer zone" known as Presevo bordering
Kosovo in southern Serbia. Belgrade is considering such use,
though it puts Yugoslav troops under NATO command and could
turn them into cannon fodder.
NATO's armies occupy Kosovo under a United Nations cover
called K-FOR. According to the accord that ended the 78-day
bombing attack on Yugoslavia in June 1999, Kosovo is still
officially part of Serbia.
But the KLA-dominated local regime has driven out 250,000
Serb residents of the province plus another 100,000 Roma,
Gorani, Turkish, Jewish and other peoples who lived there in
1999. The right-wing KLA carried out this ethnic cleansing
of Kosovo without interference from the U.S., German,
French, British or other occupation forces in K-FOR. The KLA
lost local elections in Kosovo, but its armed force
intimidates the civilian ethnic Albanian population.
Along with its right-wing nationalism, the KLA is known for
running the illegal drug commerce in Europe and directing
prostitution and other rackets in Kosovo.
Non-U.S. officers in K-FOR have complained that the U.S.
military encouraged the KLA to make incursions into southern
Serbia in order to destabilize the then Socialist Party-led
government of Yugoslavia. More recently the U.S. has used
the threat of the KLA to pressure the Kostunica government
in Belgrade to persecute Socialist Party leader Slobodan
Milosevic. It wants Kostunica to turn him and others over to
the NATO-backed court in The Hague.
An article in the March 11 issue of the British newspaper
The Observer quotes a European K-FOR battalion commander as
saying, "The CIA has been allowed to run riot in Kosovo with
a private army designed to overthrow Slobodan Milosevic. ...
Most of last year, there was a growing frustration with U.S.
support for the radical Albanians. U.S. policy was and still
is out of step with the other NATO allies."
During the 1999 war all of the NATO allies backed the KLA
against Yugoslavia. They used claims of "genocide" against
the ethnic-Albanian population to justify the murderous air
war against Yugoslavia and demonized Milosevic. Major media
outlets like the ARD network in Germany have now exposed
these claims as war propaganda, and this new crisis has
obviously nothing to do with Milosevic.
Now there are differences among the NATO allies about how to
handle the KLA's threat to bring a new round of war to the
Balkans. What makes the situation especially dangerous is
that the NATO allies are also imperialist rivals for
economic and strategic control of the Balkans and the region
to the East in what was the former Soviet Union.
If its KLA clients threaten U.S. interests in the region,
Washington is perfectly capable of turning on them. But up
to now U.S. forces in Kosovo have done nothing that really
stops armed KLA forces from entering either Presevo or
Macedonia.
In his latest article on Macedonia, Balkans expert and
Belgian author Michel Collon points out that a vital oil and
natural gas pipeline from sources in Central Asia to the
Adriatic Sea is supposed to pass from the Black Sea port of
Burgas through Bulgaria, Macedonia and Albania. Washington
thus has strong interests in maintaining cooperation with
the KLA gangsters.
The struggle among the imperialist powers over oil and gas
from Central Asia gives added weight to any conflict in the
Balkans. Combined with Washington's impulse to rely on its
military predominance to enforce its authority on both enemy
and ally, it raises the threat of new wars.
- END -
(Copyright Workers World Service: Everyone is permitted to
copy and distribute verbatim copies of this document, but
changing it is not allowed. For more information contact
Workers World, 55 W. 17 St., NY, NY 10011; via e-mail:
[EMAIL PROTECTED] For subscription info send message to:
[EMAIL PROTECTED] Web: http://www.workers.org)
