EZNL and the Massacre of Acteal

Neoliberalism has made Mexico the place it is today: a corrupt, conformist country that has had the possibility of becoming an international super power, but due to the extreme amounts of corruption that have done nothing but rape the indigenous people of that land, that made the rich richer while the poor poorer it has instead become almost a third world country full of violence. “Dictatorships” such as El PRI have done nothing but made a few richer by exploiting the indigenous and poor of its own country, by privatizing and selling off its home companies in the name of progress, destroying all kinds of homemade companies, and worst of all destroying any kind of possible progress for the indigenous people of Mexico.

A year after, Mexico agreed to NAFTA, a guerrilla rebellion sprung out in the wild jungles of Chiapas. ( http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/americas/country_profiles/1210779.stm) The group was called the Zapatista National Liberation Front (EZLN), named after a historic Mexican revolutionary Emiliano Zapata. Like Zapata, they shared ideals such as “the land belongs to he who works it,” protecting the Indigenous people from NAFTA. 

The leader of this rebellious group, Subcomandante Marcos, began organizing all kinds of indigenous people and began to gain power. Every village that belongs to the EZNL had Ernesto “El Che” Guevara portrayed in a mural symbolizing a state or rebellion against the Mexican Government. The EZNL saw what would be the outcome of NAFTA. It would be going back in time where the indigenous person had their land stolen by the rich. Now, a new government on the Basis of Neoliberalism that was supposed to benefit society as a whole, had once again forgotten about the indigenous people of Mexico by creating laws that made legal the disposing of indigenous people in order to take their land, just like the Spanish did justifying it with religion.

The Mexican government did not take kindly to this uprising, and took harsh action against the EZNL using paramilitary gunmen. Yet, no paramilitary act was more violent than the Massacre of 45 indigenous people in Chiapas. (http://www2.gwu.edu/~nsarchiv/NSAEBB/NSAEBB283/)

Indigenous people such as children and pregnant women belonged to an organized pacifist group called “Las Abejas”, who like the EZNL, stood up against the new Neoliberalism economic ideas. They were brutally murdered by hired gunmen, who many believed were civilians trained by the Mexican armed forces and were fully armed by them as well. Many believed that this attack was fully organized by the political party that ruled the land during this time El PRI.

A lot of the bullet casing found at the scene of the crime were only from guns that only belonged to personnel of the Mexican army during that time. A lot of sources believe that this was an organized “terrorist attack” on the indigenous people of Chiapas by El PRI in order to intimidate the indigenous people that wanted to join rebellious groups such as EZNL. Events such as this made the EZNL movement even stronger than it was before. It created an uprising; it brought out cries for justice.

A massacre that till this day has not been solved and eventhough in 2009, twenty other indigenous people were brought to trial as the murderers. Many still believe that their own President at that time Ernesto Zedillo, and former President Carlos Salinas were the ones who fabricated this attack.