The peasant movement fights back
The peasant demonstration that took place on April 10, 1985, was an extra-ordinary event in Mexican political history. Organized by the "Plan de Ayala" National Coordinating Committee CNPA), the Independent Federation of Agricultural Workers and Peasants (IOAC), and the Red Federation of Workers and Peasants of Mexico (UGOCM-Roja) this national mobilization culminated in a march on Mexico city from all over the country and in a demonstration that assembled more than 50,000 persons. At the same time, more than seventy regional peasant demonstrations were held around the country. According to the media, these various initiatives mobilized
These results represent a major victory for the independent peasant movement in several respects. First of all, despite the repression suffered by the peasant movement, with more than 130 peasants arrested and a systematic refusal to meet the demands of the peasant mobilizations, the movement has grown considerably in strength over the past 15 years.
The April 10 demonstration was the expression of this slow accumulation of strength, as well as of the organizational level of the peasant's fighting structures and the extent of the unity achieved among the peasant forces. This action was an historic event, since it is the first time in recent years that such a about a million peasants nationwide. Margarito MONTES PARRA
The April 10 demonstration was an effective counterattack against the government's antipeasant offensive that was accelerating in the days that preceded this initiative. On the very day of the peasant mobilization, the secretary of state for agrarian reform, was obliged to issue a statement, published as a paid advertisement in the national papers, in which he said that the peasant movement had no cause to mobilize, that the action was not a genuinely peasant mobilization, that the motivations for the protest did not in any way correspond to the peasants' demands but rather reflected the electoral objectives of the political parties supporting this initiative.
The breadth of the mobilization of Mexican peasants clearly refuted the government's claims that the April 10 demonstration bi was not genuinely representative of the peasant population.
It should also be noted that April 10 is a significant date in Mexico, representing to an extent what May l does for the international workers movement. It was on April 10, 1919, that Emiliano Zapata was assassinated in Chinameca in the state of Morelos. This murder marked the end of the cycle of the Mexican revolution, and the government has always sought to appropriate Zapata's prestige to consolidate the regime's official ideology.
So, every year, the government organizes demonstrations to pay homage to Zapata. But since 1979, the regime has lost its ability to wrap itself in Zapata's banner. In the past, it was the president himself who honored Zapata on this occasion. But as the CNPA grew and pushed a policy of opposition to this exploitation of the memory
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Usele
MEN large number of peasants have mobilized in this way.
of the revolutionary
• leader, the official ceremonies lost a lot of their impact.
In recent years, for example, the speeches were no longer given by the president but only a secretary of state. This last April 10, it was an undersecretary of state who gave the address, showing the extent to which this official ceremony has lost legitimacy.
So from the ideological standpoint also, the April 10 demonstration was a big success, inasmuch as it removed any credibility from the government's attempt to steal Zapata's mantle.
Another aspect of this demonstration was its clearly national character. It represented a confluence of a peasant movement that is developing at the same time in various regions of the country but not always in an even way. The April 10 march focused peasant discontent throughout the country, giving it a national and simultaneous expression. This represented an advance in the development of the peasant movement.
The divisive role played by some forces in the peasant movement that were clearly manipulated by the press and the government has to be pointed out. These forces tried to create the impression that there were two CNPAs, one of them independent and the other controlled by the Revolutionary Workers Party (PRT), the Mexican section of the Fourth International.
This operation was a total failure, because the peasant organizations that went along with this maneuver were unable to assemble more than 3,000 or 4,000 persons, despite the fact that they had very considerable means at their disposal, while the three peasant organizations mentioned before brought out nearly a million peasants throughout the country.
The failure of this maneuver was a setback for sectarianism in the peasant movement, and it opens up new possibilities for consolidating the unity of the movement and broadening it.
A people's agrarian law
From the programmatic standpoint, the peasant march represented a significant advance for the movement. In addition to the traditional demands for the land, increases in the prices guaranteed for peasant products, cheap credit, and the release of the political prisoners, the peasant movement posed two important axes for the demonstration. The first was for equal rights to the land for peasant women, that is, the inclusion of the demands of peasant women in the demonstration. This was something new.
Secondly, the peasants demanded an alternative agrarian reform law. Nearly a year ago, PRT activists began raising this slogan, and today it has become one of the principal axes of the peasant mobilizations.
At the second congress of the CNPA, which was held last November, it was proposed that the peasants themselves draw up a new agrarian law designed to break with bourgeois legality in the countryside. It was not to be a simple alternative bill to be presented to parliament but an initiative coming from the peasants themselves.
It was for the peasants to say how they wanted the campaign organized, what the limits of private ownership of the land should be, what sort of legal relationships should prevail, what the rules should be for the functioning of the peasant organizations, how the
International Viewpoint 29 July 1985
native people should be dealt with, etc. They had to decide all these questions to come up with an agrarian law that would break radically from the present legislation.
Today, the agrarian laws provide for the exploitation of the countryside by the cities, the exploitation of the peasants and agricultural workers by the capitalists, and for state control over the native communities. The present legislation maintains a situation where the courts try Indians in Spanish and not in their own languages. Moreover, it institutionalizes discrimination against women as regards rights to the land, to work, and as regards the rights of peasant women relating to production and family life.
The Alternative Agrarian Law, on the other hand, was to be the result of a discussion starting at the grass roots of the peasant organizations, because the laws that presently govern the situation in the countryside were not drawn up by the peasants, and, by this fact alone, could not reflect their interests.
In order to gain legitimacy in the eyes of important sections of the peasantry, this Alternative Agrarian Law has to begin to be put into concrete operation immediately in the countryside through peasant mobilizations, independent even of their official representatives in parliament.
The Indian communities are a very important factor in the peasant movement. For example, in the state of Chiapas, the Totzil, Tojolabajales, and Zeltales communities are structured in the Emiliano Zapata Peasant Organisation, which is part of the CNPA. In Michoacan, the Purepecha Indians are organized in the Union de Communeros Emiliano Zapata. In Oaxaca, the Zapotec Indians who live on the isthmus of Tehuantepec are grouped in the Workers, Peasants, and Students Coordinating Committee of the isthmus, which also includes members of the Triqui Unification Movement, which represents the Triqui native communities.
Indians form the backbone of the movement
So, a number of sections of the native peasants have formed their own organizations for representation and defense which join in mobilization massively with the other peasants defense organizations. For example, the Independent Revolutionary Peasants Coordinating Committee (CCRI) mobilizes members of the Nahuatl communities in Copalillo and San Francisco-Acuitlapan. These two communities, which are located every near Mexico City, are fighting to regain their communal lands.
In general, in the April 10 demonstation most of the corteges coming from the south, the southeast, and the north of the country were from Maya and other Indian communities, notably from Buay Siacobe. So, there was a very large representation of the native communities in this demonstration.
In fact, it could be said today that the native communities are the backbone of the Mexican peasant movement. They are, perhaps, the sections of the peasant population that have gone furthest toward rebuilding independent peasant organizations, such as the National Confederation of Peasants, which is linked to the government party. the Institutional Revolutionary Party (PRI).
The organizations that have grown up in the Indian communities have managed to build autonomous leaderships and to find methods of expression and organization based on community cohesion and solidarity, which represent very important advances. Their first demand is for the restoration of their former communal lands. This is a special interest of theirs and distinguishes them from the rest of the peasant movement.
While the other peasants who want the land are demanding the expropriation of the big land owners in order to distribute their holdings among the
The PRT and the peasants movement
The Revolutionary Workers Party (PRI), Mexican section of the Fourth International, has been an integral part of the Mexican peasant movement. Its activists work within it in various ways. The first and most important way is by participating the leadership of various independent peasant organizations on both the regional and national level. A good number of the first-rank leaders of the peasant movement are members of the PRT. At the same time, the PRT Central Committee includes a large number of these peasant leaders. The PRT leaders and their many supporters participate in united work with other political currents in the activity and leadership of the "Plan de Ayala" National Coordinating Committee (CNPA).
The political ideas and proposals of the PRT have gained a lot of ground in the CNPA. At the Second Congress of the CNPA, the PRT put forward three axes - greater organizational centralization of the CNPA based on democratic methods; building alliances in the peasant movement; and the need for a programmatic advance through drawing up a democratic and people's Alternative Agrarian Law, worked out by the peasants on the basis of their platform of demands.
This political orientation has been adopted, first by the various peasant organizations that belong to the CNPA and then by the Second Congress of the CNPA. The proposal for an Alternative Agrarian Law has been taken up today by other peasant organizations outside the CNPA and was adopted as a central slogan in the April 10, 1985 mobilization.
The PRT has also linked its electoral campaign to the peasant movement. It has made a very broad election agreement with various peasant organizations, some of which are members of the CNPA and others not. Notable in this respect are the agreements concluded with the Independent Mexican Peasants Coordinating Committee (CCRI), the Organization of Highland Villages (OPA), the People's Defense Committee (CNP), the Triqui Organiztion for Unity and Struggle (MULT) the Regional Union of Communal Lands and Communities in the South of the State of Puebla (URECSEP), the IndepenInternational Viewpoint 29 July 1985 dent Peasant Union (ICI), the Mixteca Auxaquena Union of Villages (UPM), the Mexican People's Agrarian Vanguard (VAPM), and various local groups of peasants.
Moreover, an agreement was also reached in several states with the party of the Socialist Revolution (PRS), a recent split from the United Socialist Party of Mexico (PSUM, an organization based on the CP), which has essentially a peasant base.
These accords provide for common candidates in the elections for federal deputies and for elected representatives in several states. A number of plans for common campaigns have been worked out. In turn, these common campaigns can strengthen the peasant organizations by building their regional and national implantation and making them known as an alternative to new groups of peasants in their regions, and so forth.
Finally, the PRT as a party is waging an extensive campaign in support of the peasant movement and its demands. It has integrated these demands into its electoral platform, its national propaganda, its presentations on radio and TV. At the same time, it is participating actively in the peasant campaigns and mobilizations.
With this policy, the PRT has gained a major role in the peasant movement, to the extent that the government thinks that the PRT completely dominates the CNPA. This is false. The PRT works together in a united way with other political forces in the leadership of the CNPA. And, more important, the PRT respects the organizational and political autonomy of the CNPA and all the regional peasant organizations. It respects their decisions and their leaderships, whether or not those involved are members of the PRT.
The PRT puts forward its political orientation through its activists, but it does not try to impose it on anyone. If the peasant organizations adopt it, the PRT activists devote themselves to carrying it out. If it is rejected, they respect this decision, because this is the best way to maintain democratic political relations between these mass organizations.
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peasants, the native communities start from the fact that their ancestral communal lands have belonged to the Indians since time immemorial. To back up their claims, these Indian communities have produced communal land titles that are very old, dating from the sixteenth or seventeeth centuries.
These peasant communities express themselves through forms of organization that are bound up with the cultural traditions of the native people. They communicate in the languages of the Indian communities and identify with these languages and cultures. They argue that within the peasant movement the Indians make up a sector that is not only exploited, like the other peasants, but also oppressed.
The Indians are repressed not only as peasants mobilizing for the land but also because they are Indians and therefore subjected to another sort of discrimination. So, they are fighting for recognition as communities with special features of their own.
The Indian communities every day are more clearly aware of their own identity, of the oppression that they suffer because of what they are, and the repression that prevents them from vindicating their identity. But it is interesting to note that in Mexico we have not seen the development of an "ethnicist" consciousness. There is of course a growth of ethnic consciousness, but this has not led to a separatist attitude toward the rest of the peasant movement.
Indians defend their land
To the contrary, the native communities always proudly claim their place as a leading force in the reorganization of an independent peasant movement in which they participate on the same basis as the other peasants.
In the peasant movement, we have always striven to make sure that the program clearly included the demand for the autonomy of the Indian communities and defense of their internal organization and their communal and organizational structures relating to their own land, their language, and their culture.
After the April 10 demonstrations, very violent clashes occurred between the police of the state of Mexico and the Santiago Tequisquiac community, a community that lives about an hour's drive from Mexico City, and which holds titles dating back to 1595 to lands that have been stolen from them.
This community saw its right to the ownership of these lands reconfirmed by Zapata's army on December 5, 1914. It has been fighting now for more than 65 years against expulsion from its lands. Recently, a land owner of Spanish origin took over 180 hectares belonging to this community, very good land with 10
102s hot: Indian women are mobilising (DR) irrigation facilities and well suited to intensive stock raising. The Indian community mobilized to regain its lands.
Police repression was very violent. Some 800 policemen were sent in, along with a helicopter that spread teargas. But the people were not passive in the face of this assault. They fought back, and 13 police were wounded. The Mexico City chief of police went into a coma.
After this attack, after the community had taken care of its wounded and buried its dead, it reorganized to build a march on Mexico City. In fact, today in front of the State Secretariat of Agrarian Reform, there is a picket of 500 peasants demanding the release of the prisoners, calling on the government to take responsibility for the care of the wounded, to punish those responsible for this repression, and to confirm their titles to their communal lands.
The government has been obliged to negotiate on these demands, whereas formerly it purely and simply denied the rights of Indians against whom it launched this violent repression. The power of the community organizations rooted in tradition is so imposing that they have managed to force the government to sit down to the negotiating table to seek a settlement of the peasants' demands.
New attacks on the horizon
Despite everything, the peasant movement is going to face grave difficulties, like the workers and people's movement. The economic crisis is hitting the mass movement with full force. In applying its austerity plan, the PRI government has resorted to severe repression against the workers movement. It has suppressed the right to strike, attacked collective bargaining, and laid off tens of thousands of workers.
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This offensive is designed to break up the cohesion of the workers movement in order to undermine its capacities for resisting the austerity policy. The working class movement, has in fact, been very hard hit, and is unable to respond union by union, factory by factory to the government's attacks.
We have seen massive expressions of discontent, such as last May Day, when nearly a million workers raged at the president, hooted at him and whistled at him. (1) But no union on its own can fight back effectively against the regime. Unions such as the Mexico City subway workers, the telephone employees, and the electrical workers have suffered major setbacks.
Moreover, the movement of the "colonos," the people of the poor neighborhoods of Mexico City, have also come in for severe blows. They have been attacked violently by the police, encircled, and expelled from the land that they occupied. The government has tried to break up the coordination of the urban people's movement.
In this context, through the CNPA and the alliance established with the CIOAC and the UGOCM, the three organizations that initiated the April 19 demonstration, the peasant movement is the only section of the masses that has been able to organize a national mobilization. And the government wants to break its cohesion, it wants to deny it any legitimacy by claiming that it is not based on genuine demands and that its only objective is to create confliets in the countryside.
So, it is no accident that there have been so many murders of peasant activists since April 10. The government is trying to hit every organization separately on the regional level in order to intimidate them, to disorganize them, to keep them from mobilizing. It wants to make 1. See International Viewpoint' No 52, May 7, 1984.
International Viewpoint 29 July 1985
the CNPA a hollow shell without a social base. The peasant march on April 10 was an initial response to the government's offensive. It has opened up possibilities for new forms of coordination attracting other peasant forces into a solider and broader alliance.
However, we have to remain conscious of the fact that in the coming months we are probably going to see another government offensive like the one last year against the peasant movement. It may be an even stronger one. The government this time may even escalate its attacks beyond the regional level and hit the CNPA as a whole, that is, strike at the heart of the movement.
In fact, during the wave of repression in Tequisquiac, the government tried to go after several key members of the "Plan de Ayala" National Coordinating Committee by accusing them of attacks, conspiracy, violation of property rights. If these accusations were pressed in court, they could lead to sentences of 12 to 40 years for these peasant leaders.
In the past, the government has already resorted to such means against other peasant leaders. To take the case of the CIOAC, Comrade Ramon Danzos Palomino, a veteran peasant leader, was accused of the same offenses in 1973 and jailed for a year. The government's aim was to disorganize the peasant movement. From that standpoint, it suffered a total failure, because the movement reorganized outside the CIOAC itself, and what is today the CNPA gained strength.
However, it would not be surprising if today the government wanted to strike at the head of these organizations in order to break them, combining this with local repression against the peasant movement.
The Mexican peasant movement is becoming a real beacon for the poor masses of the country. The conditions have been assembled for developing a broad democratic alternative representing a united response by the peasant organizations. This can be done by building a national peasant assembly to discuss the Alternative Agrarian Law and a plan of struggle for the peasantry as a whole.
A National Peasant Assembly
If such a national peasant assembly can be held in conditions similar to those that marked the April 10 mobilization, this would represent a qualitative leap in the advance of the peasant movement toward establishing still broader forms of unity and centralization.
While repression may put the independent peasant movement in a very difficult situation, it has already attained a level of experience and strength that International Viewpoint 29 July 1985 should enable it to continue the struggle even if it finds itself facing more trying conditions in which to operate.
Today, the Mexican peasant movement is not something that can be easily disorganized. Even if a very harsh repression is launched against it, it will be able to confront these new conditions, perhaps by different forms of struggle. If the present mobilizations manage to modify the relationship of forces to the advantage of the peasant movement, it will then be possible to build real mass action in the country.
It seems possible now to set up permanent, structured coordination among the various peasant groups. This may not at the beginning embrace the majority of the peasantry, it will be less than a single peasant union. But it will be coordination on a scale sufficient to give firm and consistent backing to the local or partial demands of the peasants.
For example, on the April 10 march, for the first time, specific questions. were raised, such as the demand for application of the presidential resolutions concerning awards of land. In fact, this land has not yet been given to the peasants, although the decrees granting it have already been promulgated.
Discussions with the government have begun for the release of the imprisoned peasants. Negotiations have gotten off the ground with various government authorities, which may give the peasant movement an opportunity to strengthen its position. Interestingly, it was after the April 10 march that top-level officials began meeting with peasant leaders. That never happened before.
In the same week, the government met with representatives of the CNPA. It was the government that proposed that
The banner of the PRT held high (DRJ the peasants submit their demands to various state agencies - the Secretariat for Agrarian Reform, the Secretariat for Agriculture, the director general of the Rural Credit Bank, the director of Agricultural and Stock-Raising Insurance etc.
Thus, the demonstration had enough impact to force the government to try to channel the peasant discontent by meeting with the leaders of these more ments and listening to some of their specific demands.
If the mobilization manages to combine political, economic, and agrarian demands coherently in a single framework, this could give a very powerful expression to the peasant movement. There is no guarantee, of course, that things will develop this way. But there is a real perspective for that.
In the present situation, it is in fact possible, with a policy that makes it possible to respond to what is taking place, to achieve major advances in mobilizing the peasants. In this regard, we must not rest content with the capacity for mobilization that already exists, nor can we remain passive in the face of the government's attacks, which are certainly going to recur. Because the regime is not going to confine itself to negotiating with the peasants.
Historically, the Mexican government's response to the demands of the peasants has always been two sided. It has involved both repression and partial concessions. This will probably happen again. On some points there will probably be concessions, while other demands will be met with repression. So, it will be necessary to be able to take advantage of the concessions to strengthen the peasant mobilization so that it can resist the various forms of repression that will be unleashed against the peasant movement.
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DOMINICAN REPUBLIC-