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Friends United Meeting |
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April 1998
News: Nonviolence in Chiapas, Mexico
One of several general news stories from the April Quaker Life.
CHIAPAS, MEXICO A ten-person Christian Peacemaker Teams delegation visited the southern Mexican state of Chiapas to visit survivors of a December 1997 massacre there.
The Bees are a six-year-old ecumenical pacifist group of Tzotzil Maya Indians in Chenalho county, Chiapas. Forty five of their members were brutally murdered by a paramilitary group December 22. Not a single shot was fired in return. Facing continued threats from paramilitary forces, desperate conditions in improvised refugee camps, and the Mexican government's lack of will to assure a safe return to their home communities, the group is in the process of re-evaluating the efficacy of relying only on nonviolent means in their struggle for dignity and survival. Prior to the tragic massacre in December 1997, the Bees had requested support from international groups like CPT.
"They hope to keep their nonviolence but they have to have justice.
We are trying to learn from their struggle, seeking ways to deepen our
commitment and sharpen our witness," said Suzanne O'Hatnick, a Quaker
from the Baltimore area who has been a member of the reserve corps for
over a year.
A delegation including four Quaker women from New York Yearly Meeting which carried out a work camp at the San Carlos Hospital in Chiapas last summer reported on the roots of the struggle there. Speaking of the indigenous people of Mayan heritage, Mary Way reported, "Government forces are gradually taking over their land. This land was granted to them after the last revolution. They owned it communally and although the government never gave them deeds, the land was protected from sale by the Mexican constitution. More recently because of NAFTA, the constitution was changed to permit the sale of native lands. This allows the forest to be cut down to provide grazing land for beef cattle help satisfy the foreign demand for beef."
The work team traveled to Chiapas to work at the hospital, run by the Sisters of Charity, under the auspices of the Latin American Concerns Committee of New York Yearly Meeting. The committee has contributed to the hospital for the past five years.
Mary Way reported, "The hospital has been under siege by armed troops because of its policy to treat anyone seeking medical care, including the Zapatistas (native rebels) whom the nuns cared for, as well as government soldiers wounded during the January uprising in 1994. While we were there the harassment was present in the form of a blockade which prevented some people from coming to the hospital. We saw convoys of troops being transported to the villages nearby."
Copyright (c) 1998 Friends United Meeting
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