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Acción
*** MEXICO *** URGENT ACTION *** MEXICO *** URGENT ACTION *** MEXICO ***
March 25th, 2002 #987
INDIGENOUS COMMUNITIES IN MONTES AZULES INTEGRAL BIOSPHERE RESERVE IN
CHIAPAS THREATENED WITH FORCIBLE EVICTION.
Dear Friends:
This is an urgent action in response to the very serious situation in and around the Montes Azules Integral Biosphere Reserve in the Selva Lacandona. There have been extremely alarming reports, in the newspaper La Jornada and from the affected communities themselves, to the effect that the Mexican government is planning to use the military and police forces to evict the residents of the indigenous communities living inside the Montes Azules Reserve.
THE GENERAL SITUATION IN MONTES AZULES:
On March 24th, the organization Global Exchange (a U.S. nongovernmental organization with United Nations consultative status ) reported the results of its ten-months-long monitoring of the human rights situation in Chiapas. According to Global Exchange's report, since April 2001 there have been no less than 259 military operations in Chiapas. Thirty-five per cent of these operations were concentrated on the Ricardo Flores Magón (Zapatista) Autonomous Municipality. The RFM Autonomous Municipality encompasses communities in the north-western part of the Montes Azules Integral Biosphere Reserve.
During the past month, there have been what appear to be very well-founded reports that the communities within the Montes Azules Reserve are in danger of being forcibly evicted. At this time, thirty-two communities face a possibly immediate crisis. Twenty-six of these are Zapatista communities (Zapatista civilian supporters) which are part of the Ricardo Flores Magón Autonomous Municipality and of the Tierra y Libertad Autonomous Municipality (in the south- southeastern edge of the Montes Azules Reserve). Six of the communities reportedly belong to the independent campesino producers' organization ARIC-Independiente (It has been estimated that about forty per cent of the persons affected by an eventual eviction are linked to ARIC-Independiente.) There are also reports of three other communities being affected; two of these are communities of PRI (the Party of the Institutional Revolution - the former governing party in Mexico and Chiapas) supporters and one community has ties to the independent campesino organization CIOAC.
The majority of the residents of these communities are unwilling to leave. Many of the communities have ejidal land titles which antedate the 1978 creation of the Montes Azules Reserve. Others have titles which were issued during the years from 1986 to 1989, in a governmental response to campesinos' demands for land. Still others are displaced persons, with land elsewhere, who have fled from their homes because of military and paramilitary violence. Although the government has talked about sending the persons whom it plans to evict back to where they came from, it is only a small minority who would in fact have land to go back to - if conditions in their original communities were such as to permit their return The longer-established communities date back to the colonization of the Selva Lacandona during the 1960s and 1970s, when the government encouraged settlement of the area by landless campesinos not only from other parts of Chiapas but from other Mexican states.
The ARIC-Indendiente communities in question have been willing to engage in negotiations with the government. On February 21st, hundreds of members of a section of ARIC-Independiente, the Union of Unions of the community of Agua Azul, forcibly detained five government representatives from PROFEPA (the federal agency responsible for enforcing environmental laws and regulations) who were travelling through the area. The need for negotiations was at the forefront of the demands of these ARIC-Independiente members. As an organization, ARIC-Independiente has repeatedly proposed that, rather then being evicted from the Montes Azules Reserve, the indigenous residents of the region should assume the responsibilities of forest conservation and management.
The Zapatista communities are taking an even firmer stand. The following passage is an extract from their February 24th statement:
"We state clearly that at the centre of all of this, concealed behind the masks of the environmental foundations, lie the economic interests of large multinationals involved in the exploitation of bio-genetic resources. There is also the interest of the Mexican government and foreign governments in the other natural resources, such as fresh water, oil, uranium, etc. In addition, there are the interests of the many entrepreneurs who view the displaced indigenous populations as cheap labour for maquiladora factories...And there is the Mexican government's interest in extending its low intensity warfare through different means, in order, once and for all, to get rid of the Zapatista communities in resistance and rebellion...
In other words, this is the Plan Puebla Panama (tr. the PPP is a mega-development plan, promoted by the government of Mexico and supported by the Inter-American Development Bank and private investors as well as foreign governments, involving the southern states of Mexico and all of the countries of Central America) and its interests, for which we indigenous communities are an obstacle - because we have dignity and because we have a different understanding of life, of the earth, of land, and of work... We demand that the federal and state governments bring to an end, once and for all, their lies, their projects and plans for the eviction and relocation of our communities, their war of extermination against our indigenous communities. We insist that they get used to the idea that in these lands and territories there will be not be a Plan Puebla Panama. There will be no bio-prospection projects, or eco-tourism projects, or exploitation of freshwater sources, oil, uranium, wood, wild animals, genetic resources, or anything that they have already promised to national and international entrepreneurs and foundations. These lands and these territories will be looked after and used, intelligently and with respect for nature, by our indigenous peoples. All of the cultural and natural wealth that is to be found in them will be for the collective benefit of our indigenous peoples, of the people of Mexico, and all of humanity - not for the benefit of a small group of people who are oppressing the world."
It is important to note that both the Zapatista and ARIC-Independiente communities have set up their own regulations for the protection of the environment; they cultivate the land by the no-till method. Furthermore, the few campesinos who are continuing to use the slash and burn method do so in a controlled and careful manner, on land that has already been cleared.
THE FEDERAL GOVERNMENT'S DECLARATIONS
For several weeks beginning in April 2000, the previous federal administration made strong public statements regarding environmental damage in the Montes Azules Reserve. Alleging that there were major forest fires in the Reserve, the government appeared at that time to be about to undertake a major police operation, sending in the Federal Preventive Police to carry out wholesale evictions. However not only were these allegations subsequently disproved; the fires were elsewhere, but major political events (the July federal elections and the changes of government in Mexico and Chiapas) took precedence over regional concerns. The threatened police operation did not take place.
Since mid-September 2001, Montes Azules has again become the object of federal government attention. On September 12th, three Lacandon indigenous communities charged that members of other indigenous peoples living in the Montes Azules area had usurped their lands and were causing damage to the environment. (Since 1972, when their six small communities were granted over 600, 000 hectares of land, after having requested 10,000 hectares, the Lacandon indigenous peoples have been close allies of the federal government.) The very serious charges of dispossession and damage to the environment relate to federal crimes punishable by up to eight years in jail. Following the laying of charges by the Lacandon communities, an official investigation was opened. Also, a negotiating table was set up and entitled "The Environmental Table to Settle the Charges of Dispossession and Environmental Damage and for a Possible Agreement with the Settlements with regard to Relocation and Compensation".
Although some of tho government officials taking part in the Table, in particular Porfirio Encino, the Chiapas State Minister for Indigenous Peoples (Secretario de Pueblos Indios), are in favour of a negotiated settlement, the majority of government participants, especially the federal representatives, are calling for the summary eviction of the communities in the Montes Azules Reserve. In other words, the legal charges by the Lacandon indigenous peoples have served as a means of refocusing national political attention on the environmental damage allegedly being caused by these communities and on the supposed need to remove them. Given the fact that Porfiro Encino is a former ARIC-Independiente leader and that state governor Pablo Salazar Mendiguchía received important support from that organization in his election campaign, reaction at the state level has been mitigated (although there are some state officials who definitely support an eviction).
Four months ago, the head of PROFEPA, Ignacio Campillo, stated that there were nine geographic points of "ungovernability" in National Protected Areas (areas designated for environmental conservation). Out of the nine, he regarded the Montes Azules Reserve as one of the two most important. He stated that he would accept the possible participation of the Mexican army in operations to expel the persons causing the "ungovernability" as well as in subsequent surveillance of the area. Sr. Campillo has also stated that Mexico must offer a strong infrastructure with a legal framework of proper inspection and surveillance, so that national and international investors are ready to put more resources (into National Protected Areas - among which he especially mentioned Montes Azules.) He said that it was a "matter of providing security to possible investors and of not letting down President Fox, who is waiting for a visible gesture in favour of the environment." In the latter connection, it is worthy of note that, at Mexico's request, on March 15th, the United Nations Security Council (of which Mexico is at this time a member) stated that the world's forests are a matter of international security. Mexico's Ambassador to the United Nations and former Coordinator of National Security, Adolfo Aguilar Zinzer, has reportedly gone so far as to qualify cutting down the forest as a terrorist activity to be responded to with military force. According to newspaper reports, Victor Lichtinger, the Minister of the Environment, is also in favour of the forcible removal of the communities.
In the Selva Lacandona and the Montes Azules Reserve there are some fifty Mexican army positions, with a total of about 30,000 soldiers. In addition, some weeks ago, a detachment of Federal Preventive Police was sent to San Cristóbal de Las Casas, ostensibly to crack down on the marketing of pirated tapes and cassettes within the city.
ENVIRONMENTAL PROTECTION FOR PRIVATE PROFIT:
The Monte Azules Integral Biosphere Reserved was set up in 1978 by a presidential decree, without public consultation. More recently-enacted legal requirements for community participation with regard to National Protected Areas have been ignored, and the local communities have never been given the opportunity of taking part in decisions regarding the Reserve.
In an article on the strategic resources of Chiapas published in 1995, Mexican analysts Andres Barreda and Ana Ester Ceceña remarked that capitalist interests, in order to appropriate the biological wealth of Chiapas in an efficient way, would need the involvement of the local population, but that, at a certain moment, this population would also represent an obstacle. According to Barreda and Ceceña, international institutions were already (in 1995) taking part in the economic and ecological development of protected areas, with projects enabling them to study the demographic and social obstacles which might impede their access to these reserves. (One of the institutions to which Barreda and Ceceña referred may well be Conservation International, an organization which includes family planning as part of its environmental work and which is present in the north-western area of Montes Azules.)
Since leaving office, the former Minister of the Environment, Julia Carabías Lillo, has become president of a more recently formed environmental non-governmental environmental organization, CEIBA., which operates in the Chajul region in the Tierra y Libertad Autonomous Municipality.
It has been reported that in October 2001 a delegation from the United State Embassy in Mexico, including the military representative and the economic affairs and trade representative, visited the local office director of Conservation International in Montes Azules. The trade representative reportedly also had a meeting with COMPITCH (the organization of traditional medical practitioners and midwives which has successfully opposed a major bio-prospection project in Chiapas) to talk to them about the economic importance of Chiapas' biological resources for United States pharmaceutical companies.
The U.S. Embassy delegation returned in November for a meeting with state and federal officials in the area. Leaked accounts of that meeting tell of insistent questioning regarding the Selva Lacandona and the activities of the EZLN. Also in November, the Los Angeles Times and the Houston Chronicle both carried special supplements on Montes Azules alleging that the environmental damage there is worse than in any other forest from Alaska to Panama, and saying that the only solution is to relocate the campesino communities, which are, according to the newspapers, to blame for the damage.
In January 2002, during a press conference, the President and Director General of Conservation International, Peter A. Seligmann, proposed that there should be an alliance between government and the private sector to respond to the serious general deterioration in the Selva Lacandona. He also announced that his organization planned to set up an environmental monitoring station there.
ADDITIONAL OBSERVATIONS:
From a global perspective, the state of Chiapas is an area of mega-biodiversity.
Its forests are of great interest, to pharmaceutical companies and others,
as a potential source of plant resources (including plants that have not
yet been "discovered" by academic scientists).
It must be recognized that there is widespread agreement that there has
indeed been environmental damage to the forest of the Selva Lacandona.
Among the causes of environmental degradation are commercial logging,
cattle ranching, and oil exploitation - all of which have taken place
under government auspices or with government approval. It seems very likely
that campesinos have in the past contributed to this damage - through
small scale cattle ranching and by clearing land for farming. Furthermore,
it must be remembered that most of the colonists of the 1960s and 1970s
had no previous experience of jungle conditions and that when they arrived
in the selva they had virtually nothing but their own physical strength
to count on. Since that time, however, they have acquired both a new environmental
awareness and a determination to recover their indigenous cultural tradition
of respect for the natural world. They have, as stated above, established
their own regulations for the protection of the forest.
THE PLAN PUEBLA PANAMA
In the light of all of the above, it is important to remember that the Plan Puebla Panama mega-development programme includes the "protection" of the environment, the centralization of indigenous populations, the establishment of maquiladora factories, major infrastructure investments in highways and a transnational electricity grid (as well as eucalyptus plantations, shrimp farms and other environmentally damaging activities). It has been reported that a corridor of maquiladoras is to be established between Benemérito de las Américas and Paleque, all along the northern edge of the Selva Lacandona. In addition, the new four-lane border (Mexico-Guatemala) highway will pass within a few kilometres of the Montes Azules Reserve.
Described very briefly, the Plan Puebla Panama is an economic programme for removing indigenous peoples and campesinos from their lands, so that the wealth of those lands can be used for the benefit of large corporations and so that the campesinos and indigenous peoples can become low-waged industrial or plantation workers.
RECOMMENDATIONS:
Please write to the Mexican government to express your alarm over the government's recent statements with regard to the situation in the Montes Azules Integral Biosphere Reserve. Please stress that the forcible eviction of the communities from the Reserve would constitute a violation of the rights of indigenous peoples that are guaranteed under ILO Covenant 169, which Mexico has ratified, and would cause major violations of the social and economic rights of the members of the affected communities. Moreover, there is a grave danger that a physical confrontation of this kind could lead to very serious violations of civil rights.
Please request the Mexican government to agree to the proposal of the indigenous communities to the effect that it be the communities themselves who assume responsibility for the protection and management of the Reserve.
Please remind the Mexican government of the importance of complying with the San Andres Accords on Indigenous Rights and Culture on the basis of the COCOPA proposal, noting that the San Andres Accords, if incorporated into the Constitution, would provide a proper legal framework for the resolution of situations such as the one that now prevails in the Montes Azules Reserve.
Please write to the Canadian government requesting that they do all that is diplomatically possible to persuade the Mexican government to avoid a physical confrontation between the security forces and the indigenous communities in the Montes Azules Integral Biosphere Reserve. Please ask the Canadian government if it would be possible for them to share with the appropriate branch of the Mexican government any useful knowledge that they may have acquired with regard to the role of government in promoting and respecting community-based forest management and protection.
ADDRESSES:
Lic. Vicente Fox Quesada
Presidente de los Estados Unidos Mexicanos
Residencia Oficial de Los Pinos
Col. San Miguel Chapultepec, Mexico D.F., C.P. 11850, MEXICO
FAX: 011 52 55 522 4117 or 516 9537 or 515 1794 vicente@fox2000.org.mx
or
radio@presidencia.gob.mx or go to
www.gob.mex and from there to interactivo@ to send a message. If you have
access to a fax
machine and are able to get through, the fax method, being less impersonal,
is probably more
effective. If you live in Ottawa or in a city where there is a Mexican
consulate, they will almost certainly be
willing to forward a fax to President Fox's office on your behalf.
Lic. Pablo Salazar Mendiguchía
Gobernador del Estado de Chiapas
Palacio de Gobierno, Tuxtla Gutiérrez
Chiapas, MEXICO
FAX: 011 52 961 20917 salazarp@prodigy.net.mx
Please send copies of your letters to President Fox to the following government officials:
Lic. Victor Lichtinger (Minister of the Environment)
Secretario de SEMARNAT
Lateral de Anillo Periférico No. 4209
Jardines de la Montaña, delegación Tlalpan
C.P. 14210, Mexico D.F., MEXICO
vlichtinger@semarnat.gob.mx
Lic. José Ignacio Campillo García
Procurador Federal de Protección al Ambiente
Periférico Sur No. 5000
Col. Insurgentes, Cuicuilco
Delegación Coyoacán
C.P. 04530, Mexico D.F., MEXICO
jcampillo@correo.profepa.gob.mx
Lic. Mariclaire Acosta, Subsecretaria de Derechos Humanos y Democracia
FAX: 011 52 55 117 4334 or 327 3195 afranco@sre.gob.mx or macosta@sre.gob.mx
Her Exellency Maria Teresa Garcia Segovia
Ambassador for Mexico
45 O'Connor St, suite 1500, Ottawa, Ont. K1P 1A4
FOX 613 235 9123 info@embamexcan.com
FOR CANADA:
Hon. Bill Graham
Minister of Foreign Affairs
FAX: 613 996 9607 Graham.b@parl.gc.ca