The Politics of Marginalization: Poverty and the Rights of the Indigenous People in Mexico.

• Author: Menocal, Alina Rocha

Interviewed on 13 June 1998

by Alina Rocha Menocal

for the Journal of International Affairs

The Journal spoke with Bishop Samuel Ruiz on 13 June 1998, a week after he resigned as president of the Comision Nacional de Intervencion (CONAI), the peace commission that had until then mediated the conflict in Chiapas between the Ejercito Zapatista de Liberacion Nacional (EZLN) and the Mexican government. In this interview, Bishop Ruiz links the situation in Chiapas--which many, including the Mexican political and economic establishment, would like to see as an isolated, local problem that requires local solutions--to the national need to democratize Mexico and address the enormous problems of inequality that are pervasive throughout the country. Bishop Ruiz underscores the importance of political structures in perpetuating the cycle of poverty among the indigenous communities and the inextricable link between poverty, democratization and the rights of indigenous people.

Journal: How does poverty manifest itself in indigenous communities in Chiapas and what are the obstacles that indigenous people face in meeting their everyday needs?

Ruiz: Before we speak about the indigenous people of Chiapas, I believe it is important to note that when somebody wants to define who the indigenous people are on the continent, there is almost no exception to the premise that indigenous people are at the bottom rung of society. With very few exceptions this premise is the common denominator among all indigenous people on the continent. However, it is clear that it is impossible to explain this continental phenomenon simply by assuming that the indigenous people lack education or are lazy or irresponsible. It is impossible that an explanation of this nature could apply to indigenous people in so many different places. So it follows from the outset that poverty is not a problem that is reproduced by the will or the laziness of the indigenous people, but a problem of social structure.

In Chiapas, the social indicators in the last census were the lowest in all of Mexico, so it is not surprising that the volcano of social frustration and protest that wanted to burst throughout the country should have erupted in Chiapas in January 1994. The problem is not a local one. The reason that social frustration has manifested itself more forcefully in Chiapas is, rather, that structurally speaking that state has the highest indices of marginalization.

We are speaking about a poverty that is the consequence of a social environment. This environment encompasses all levels of subsistence, although we cannot generalize and assume that the indigenous person who plants coffee, the one who attempts to raise cattle, or the one who sustains himself in the tierras frias(1) only from what he cultivates during the growing season, are all equal and all face the same challenges. There are some cases in which peasants and indigenous people are beginning to create trading cooperatives to facilitate the exchange of agricultural products between them. The three coffee cooperatives in Chiapas that are in the hands of the indigenous people are good examples. The one that was founded most recently is in Palenque, in the Chol lands, and it began to export coffee to Germany last year. There is also a cooperative called Cafe de la Selva in the area of Las Margaritas, which has four or five well-established coffee shops in Mexico City, as well as a well-equipped coffee shop in San Cristobal that is very modern and offers good service. The oldest and largest cooperative in Chiapas is the Cafe Mam, in Motozintla. A priest has been involved with this cooperative throughout the years, but it is completely in the hands of the indigenous people. Of the three, this is the cooperative that is doing the best, because of its access to the infrastructure that INMECAFE(2) used to have, which it is now utilizing.

In 1993, there was a sharp decline in the international price of coffee, and this severely affected the four municipalities that rebelled against the state--in fact, this decline was a critical factor in pushing many indigenous people in Chiapas to rebel in 1994. Nevertheless, these cooperatives were able to endure the subsequent financial hardships caused by the decline in coffee prices with relative ease. None of them remained trapped in that situation. I am mentioning this not to make the point that the indigenous people have many economic opportunities. What I want to illustrate through these examples is that the problem is structural. There is nothing that the indigenous people have in their blood that condemns them to a life in poverty. There are numerous examples of the entrepreneurial capabilities of the indigenous people in the economic realm.

The three cooperatives that I have mentioned were advised by Usiri, a cooperative that was formed in Tehuantepec by a man from the Netherlands. This man, a theologian, felt that it is not adequate to speak of an opcion por los pobres(3) only in books, but that one has to experience poverty first hand to learn what it means in practice, and not only in reflection. He founded an export cooperative there to help the Tehuantepec Indians who live in a very remote area. Today, Usiri exports top quality coffee to Holland and other European countries. The coffee is organic, that is to say, it is grown without any chemicals.

Returning to your question against this background, it must be recognized that in the areas where the indigenous people live--areas into which they have been forced over the years because their best land has been either sold or taken away through violent or questionable means--the land is frequently unfarmable. There are many rocks and the terrain is hilly, so that the land must be cultivated by hand in a precarious manner, and the indigenous people can only hope that there will be sufficient rainfall during the season. These areas depend on the cultivation of maize and beans for survival. They are the areas that constantly face the worst conditions. The people who live there have been forced to migrate toward the coast to find work. They go in large numbers to work in the coffee plantations that were first owned by people from Holland, then by the British and now are in the hands of the Germans. These plantation owners employ indigenous peasants from Chiapas as well as from Guatemala for the cultivation of coffee. So when there is a drought, there is an exodus from all these places towards the coast.

When I first got to Chiapas in 1949, there was a system in place known as enganchamiento, an exploitative system through which a plantation owner asked a labor contractor to provide, say 500 workers, to give an example. The plantation owner then gave a certain amount of money to the contractor to transport all of the laborers. But the contractor would use the money intended to contract 500 indigenous peasants to hire 1,000, which meant that he offered the peasants recruited through this system worse conditions in terms of both transportation and salary. So, rather than travelling by bus, the laborers were transported in cattle trucks, and once they reached the crossroad that led to the plantations in the direction of Tapachula, they were placed in cages in which animals are normally transported.

The tierras frias have always presented the harshest living conditions for the indigenous people of Chiapas. Those who live in coffee lands can defend themselves a little better, although they are dependent on the fluctuation of coffee prices, which are not determined in Chiapas or in Mexico, but are subject to international conditions. Additionally; there are people in the north and in the south of the state who raise cattle. In some parts of the jungle, campesinos have also begun to experiment with cattle, although only to a limited extent. This is the agrarian panorama in Chiapas.

Journal: What are some of the structures or mechanisms that perpetuate poverty among the indigenous people in Chiapas and elsewhere in Mexico?

Ruiz: It must be recognized that the level of poverty in Chiapas contrasts sharply with the state's abundance of natural resources. We have coffee and we produce cacao--together with the state of Tabasco, we produce one-third of the national output. Additionally, there are cattle in the north and the south of Chiapas. We produce enough energy to supply all of Mexico. In addition to meeting the energy needs of the rest of the country; Chiapas also sells electricity to Central American countries.

Extensive natural resources are...