The Chiapas conflict is a low-level war that has been underway in the state of Chiapas in the far south of Mexico since the beginning of 1994. The conflict ultimately has longer roots which stretch back to the very foundations of the Mexican state and colonial conflict between people of primarily Spanish heritage and indigenous groups. These ethnic tensions led to economic, social and political disparities that have never been fully remedied in Mexico. In the case of the Chiapas conflict these simmering tensions burst into a violent uprising on New Year’s Day 1994 known as the Zapatista Uprising. The 1995 Zapatista crisis followed. Ever since there have been periods of renewed unrest and violence as the Zapatista Army of National Liberation (EZLN) has waged a war against the Mexican government. Despite many efforts to reach a ceasefire and a sustainable peace over the years, the EZLN remains active and the government has been accused of employing paramilitary irregulars to crush dissent in the region in recent times. The Chiapas conflict has led to the displacement of tens of thousands of people over the last three decades.[1]
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Chiapas conflict chronology of eventsChiapas conflict chronology of events
The Chiapas Conflict is the result of centuries of clashes between different ethnic groups within Mexico. This is a diverse country. It was colonized extensively by the Spanish from the 1520s onwards, though at the same time indigenous groups persisted here in contrast to the Caribbean where the introduction of diseases like smallpox and measles largely wiped out the native Carib and Taino people. Within Mexico there were different ethnic groups, notably Nahuatl-speaking people such as the Aztecs, as well as the Mayans and Zapotecs. Smaller demographic groups prevailed in particular regions. One such in the south of the country were the Chiapanec people or Chiapas. Many of these groups declined enormously in number over the centuries, while indigenous people often intermarried with Spanish settlers to create a mestizo (mixed) colonial population within this part of the Spanish Empire.[2]
Despite this intermixing of colonists and natives, groups of broadly greater amounts of Spanish heritage acquired more prominent positions in the governance and the economic life of the Viceroyalty of New Spain, one which continued after Mexico obtained its independence in 1821. The opposite side of the coin was that indigenous groups that remained ethnically homogenous and did not mix with the Spanish to a significant extent were marginalized in colonial times. As a result, these indigenous groups in rural provinces like Chiapas are generally poorer and less politically represented in modern-day Mexico. These divisions had found expression in Chiapas on several occasions such as the Chamula Rebellion of the late 1860s.[3]
The economic status of the indigenous groups in Mexico caused resentment and frequent bouts of violence. Indigenous groups, for instance, played a prominent role in the Mexican Revolution of the 1910s. These long-standing divisions within Mexican society started to bubble over in Chiapas in the early 1990s. Constitutional amendments to Article 27 of the Mexican constitution in 1991 created the impression that the government was interfering in traditional systems of landholding. Then Mexico negotiated to join the North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA) with the United States and Canada, a move which many believed would negatively impact on poor farmers in rural Mexican states like Chiapas. It was no coincidence that the Zapatista Uprising began on New Year’s Day 1994, the very same day that NAFTA came into effect.[4]
The Zapatista Army of National Liberation had been established in 1983 as a far-left militant group to agitate for indigenous and poor people’s rights in southern Mexico. This was a period of pronounced militant activity in Central America, with the Nicaraguan Revolution underway and the Guatemalan Civil War at its height just south of Chiapas. The EZLN took their name from Emiliano Zapata and the agrarian militant movement he had led during the Mexican Revolution. They were the driving force behind the Zapatista Uprising of January 1994, a twelve-day clash in which key locations in urban centers across the state were occupied and battles were fought with army and police forces.[5]
A ceasefire was brokered on the 12th of January 1994, but the Zapatista Uprising was not the end of the disturbances in Chiapas. Fresh clashes broke out in 1995 when the government identified the leader of the EZLN, Rafael Sebastián Guillén Vicente, then known by the title of Subcomandante Marcos, and took steps to arrest him and other leaders of the movement. This reignited the conflict. In this next phase of the war, the EZLN achieved a series of successes and the government relented by agreeing to the San Andrés Accords in 1996, which made a large number of concessions to Chiapas.[6] The fragile peace was again broken a year and a half later when the Mascara Roja, a paramilitary group operating under government orders, carried out the Acteal Massacre of 45 peace campaigners in Chiapas on the 22nd of December 1997.[7]
The Acteal Massacre ensured that no lasting peace agreement was concluded or sustained in the late 1990s. Thereafter the conflict became a low-level one in Chiapas, with the EZLN periodically engaging in campaigns against the government and operating as the de-facto power in large parts of the state. As is so often the case in contemporary Mexico the conflict was further complicated in the 2000s and 2010s through the involvement of narco-terrorist groups such as the Sinaloa and Jalisco New Generation Cartels. A fresh bout of assassinations and unrest in 2020 reignited the conflict and recent years have seen growing violence again.[8]
Extent of migration and demographic impact of the Chiapas conflictExtent of migration and demographic impact of the Chiapas conflict
The Chiapas Conflict has been a low-level war between the Mexican state and the EZLN. Approximately 300 people died in the initial Zapatista Uprising in January 1994. It is believed that around 1500 lives had been claimed by it by the end of 1997.[9] Thereafter it becomes difficult to put a figure on the death toll, in part because the general unrest of Mexican society and narco-terrorism creates issues concerning classifying the causes of deaths. These caveats aside, thousands more people have died since and the war has created a large degree of unrest in the state of Chiapas. In addition to the mortality level, the conflict has also led to the displacement of tens of thousands of people over the last thirty years. This has escalated in recent times, with reports of some 12,000 people being displaced in the Tila region alone in the summer of 2024.[10]
See alsoSee also
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- Mexico, Baptisms, 1560-1950 records collection on MyHeritage
- Mexico, Marriages, 1570-1950 records collection on MyHeritage
- Mexico, Deaths, 1680-1940 records collection on MyHeritage
- Padrones of the Past: Colonial-era Censuses of Mexico at Legacy Family Tree Webinars
- Newspapers in Mexico at Legacy Family Tree Webinars
- Traditions of Death and Burial in Mexico at Legacy Family Tree Webinars
References
- ↑ https://www.internationalaffairs.org.au/news-item/the-zapatista-movement-the-fight-for-indigenous-rights-in-mexico/
- ↑ Jacques Lafaye and James Lockhart, ‘The Origins of Modern Mexico - Indigenistas vs. Hispanistas’, in The Americas, Vol. 48, No. 3 (January, 1992), pp. 315–330.
- ↑ Nicholas P. Higgins, Understanding the Chiapas Rebellion (Austin, Texas, 2004).
- ↑ https://adst.org/2016/05/trouble-chiapas-zapatista-revolt/
- ↑ Lynn Stephen, ‘The Zapatista Army of National Liberation and the National Democratic Convention’, in Latin American Perspectives, Vol. 22, No. 4, Redefining Democracy: Cuba and Chiapas (Autumn, 1995), pp. 88–99.
- ↑ https://www.internationalaffairs.org.au/news-item/the-zapatista-movement-the-fight-for-indigenous-rights-in-mexico/
- ↑ https://nsarchive2.gwu.edu/NSAEBB/NSAEBB283/index.htm
- ↑ https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-latin-america-68067681
- ↑ https://bep.carterschool.gmu.edu/containing-the-armed-conflict-in-mexico-chiapas/
- ↑ https://nacla.org/mass-displacement-and-paramilitary-resurgence-chiapas