La Jornada
March 17, 2000
By Angeles Maricscal, Correspondent

Tuxtla Gutierrez, Chiapas -- To facilitate the entrance of the army to Las Casadas of Oscosingo, where it has been impossible for them to enter or settle, dozens of heavily armed Federal Prevention Police (PFP) arrived to La Candelaria and threatened the Tzeltales with forced evacuation if they did not voluntarily leave their settlements in the reservation of the Lacondona Jungle. Claiming that the inhabitants are provoking "severe ecological damage" to the Montes Azules biosphere, an internal commission of state and federal authorities issued the order to evacuate a dozen of the agrarian groups which were set up, after 1994, as bases of the Ejercito Zapatista Liberacion Nacional (EZLN) and located in Las Casadas in the Lacondona Jungle.

The communities located within Amador Hernandez are part of the settlements the federal authorities want to connect with the highway that divides San Quinton and Guadalupe Tepeyac.

In lieu of the communities' refusal to permit the construction of the highway , which provoked a confrontation between the army and Zapatista bases of Amador Hernandez last August. The Environment, Natural Resources, and Fishing Ministry (Semarnap), rapidly conducted a study that determined that the twelve settlements situated in the Lacondona Jungle have caused "ecological damages," and for this reason, they should be removed.

The federal authorities have refused to explain on what basis they suddenly determined that after thirty years, these communities, which constitute an obstacle in the construction of the military corridor from San Quinton to Guadalupe Tepeyac, damage the ecosystem. Ruperto Urieta Zepeda, representative of Casadas Candelaria, explained that after the confrontation between the inhabitants of Amador Hernandez and the army, the settlements of Santa Elena, El Jardin, Valle de Las Rosas, Ocotal, El Ojos Azules, Salvador Allende, Corozal, Israel, San Gregorio, San Antonio Miramar and Buen Samaritano were visited by civil servants of the government who notified them they were going to be relocated.

The twelve settlements, located between San Quinton-Ocosingo and Guadalupe Tepeyac-Las Magaritas, Urieta Zepeda explained, were among the first colonies founded in the Lacandona jungle in the 1970's. Within these settlements are some 739 families, more than 8000 people, and they have never had agrarian nor ecological problems due to the 15,000 hectometers of virgin land with horse paths being the only points of access.

"Since our fathers arrived to colonize the jungle, we have never had any deal with the Government, because as far as they were concerned, we did not exist. Now, at any given moment, after 30 years of being ignorant, we are accused of causing ecological damages," questioned Urieta Zepeda.

Along with other representatives of the communities which are considered important parts of the EZLN bases, Urieta Zepeda believes counterinsurgency is the army's true intention, because the army and authorities have not been able to enter the community, nor successfully offer social work and productive projects in exchange for abandoning the rebel ranks. "The is part of their counterinsurgency strategy; We constitute an obstacle for the incursion and instillation of the military, to whom entrance has been denied," underscored Urieta Zepeda, who is also director of the Rural Association of Internal Collectives (ARIC-Independent).

Last weekend, as a means of persuasion, almost fifty agents of the Federal Prevention Police (PFP), armed with high-powered weapons, arrived at the community of Candelaria, where they had arranged to meet representatives of the twelve settlements to discuss the Government's offer of relocation.

"The civil servants who accompanied them, headed by Martin Lazos of SRA, threatened us with a violent evacuation if we did not abandon our settlements voluntarily," accused Urieta Zepeda. In exchange they offered an agreement with other institutions to negotiate an adequate place for resettlement but "nothing concrete." Under the threat of a forced evacuation, a permanent assembly to resist any aggression was declared by the settlements.

Translated by Wade Thomson