Introduction and Foreword
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Personal Introduction
On February 9, 1995, while traveling south on curvy, mountainous Chiapas Highway 173, we encountered a long, heavily supplied Mexican military convoy, carrying hundreds of armed soldiers. Among the new uniforms and equipment, I believed I recognized U.S. material, armored personnel carriers among them. The convoy moved north towards Simojovel, the highland's village we had just left. Later I learned that we had seen the beginning of a major military offensive which ravaged many communities, and whose goal was the capture of Zapatista leaders.
Only a few days earlier, on January 31, 1995, U.S. President Bill Clinton had begun orchestrating the controversial $50 billion bailout of the then collapsing Mexico economy. Though Congress opposed the deal, Clinton was adamant. He bypassed Congress and facilitated the fiscal relief package through other channels: loans from discretionary public sources and from the International Monetary Fund (IMF) and other international funds.
Thsi of the economy is considered the primary national security interest of both Mexico and the United States. Social and economic justice are given mere lip service. The ecology is further destroyed. Nonetheless, as national security interests are seen as threatened by the cries of the poor, the United States government increases aid to Mexico to thwart and eliminate the threat through counterinsurgency and unprecedented action suggests the high stakes involved in assuring a "healthy," stable Mexican economy so important under the North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA) and the new corporate global economy that NAFTA promotes and requires. I have come to understand that this kind of economy is defined and driven by various international speculators, domestic wealthy interests, and World Bank and IMF theorists and programs. As I began to see more of Mexico it has become apparent that the vast majority of the people are experiencing ever more poverty and misery under this kind of economics.
Mexico has a history of resisting U.S. military aid, a kind of old fashioned notion of maintaining her independence, her sovereignty. So why was the United States now involved in helping the Mexican government chase its own citizens around the jungles of Chiapas? And why was Mexico allowing it to happen?
I returned to Mexico ten months later, in December 1995, to study Spanish and to learn about the lives of the people, to understand what the Mexican government was doing to its poorest citizens. Driving 4400 miles round trip by car, I traveled through eighteen of Mexico's thirty-one states. Arriving in Chiapas, I began four months of language study in San Cristobal de las Casas. During my stay, I visited a number of ancient Mayan sites and visited more than thirty indigenous communities in the "conflict zone," where the Zapatistas and the Mexican army maintained a tense truce. Twice I flew over the conflict region in a small Cessna plane, observing much of the scarred jungle and numerous military outposts. I experienced extended visits in four communities, and was fortunate to meet and talk with many citizens of Chiapas-small farmers, business people, anthropologists, church and human rights workers, and various people I met on the streets of San Cristobal.
The impact of the many stories people told me was crushing. My heart ached as it had in war-ravaged Vietnam, Nicaragua and El Salvador. The troops I had seen-troops all over Chiapas during the February 1995 offensive-were operating as a terrorist force. And police and paramilitary units were involved as well. The army's strategy in the 1995 offensive was simple and cruel. Soldiers would enter a Zapatista community and drive the people out and into the mountains with just the clothes on their backs. Soldiers would burn some buildings, destroy crops, damage precious water supplies, then leave. Costs are low, few soldiers are endangered, nothing makes the newspapers in the cities. But small vibrant communities of human beings are devastated. This style of warfare was sickeningly familiar to me. It is another U.S. export and it is called "low intensity" warfare. It has been taught at the U.S. Army's School of the Americas in Ft. Benning, Georgia. I was not surprised to find that the Mexican army had been sending officers to the School for many years.
But terror was not limited to the countryside. In February 1995 I had witnessed the aftermath of an attack on a human rights office in San Cristobal-equipment, supplies for the countryside, and documents strewn around and destroyed. The staff was filled with terror, so afraid to go home that they slept in our hotel rooms that night.
The attack was carried out by non-uniformed goons in unmarked cars. Such paramilitary squads have also routinely attacked and smashed efforts by indigenous people throughout Chiapas to establish alternative economic cooperatives such as for weaving or organic products.
Poor people in the villages of Chiapas are also subjected to a mighty, oppressive everyday military presence. The army is everywhere. Convoys rumble through villages, with soldiers pointing machine guns--metrietas--at children and their mothers. Military helicopters fly low over villages, sometimes with the metrietas visible through the open doors. These villages are very simple. They have no automobiles, scarce food supplies, minimal health resources, inadequate educational services, and few material possessions. It is tragic that so much costly military is being used to preserve such deep poverty.
In the face of all this, the survival of spirit among the Mayan people of Chiapas is wonderful to witness. This spirit has survived throughout the 500 years of the Conquest. The people remember how to play music, sing, laugh, and dance. They find hope in the worst of circumstances, in the hardest of times. I was welcomed at a number of joyful fiestas. The people remember how to celebrate.
All of these experiences strengthened my resolve to investigate the U.S. military involvement in Mexico. As a military officer in Vietnam, and during my many travels in Latin America, I have been anguished by the obvious correlation between the extent of U.S. economic and military involvement in a country and the misery and poverty of that country's people.
My commitment is to do everything I can to prevent that horrible pattern from continuing in Mexico. I am participating in this effort with the courageous military veterans of the Bill Motto Veterans of Foreign Wars Post #5888, Santa Cruz, California, who have consistently questioned the legality and morality of U.S. foreign policy and have advocated for a just and honest society at home in the United States.
S. Brian Willson
March 1997
Introduction to First Revised Edition
Important new information incorporated into this revision: (1) Creation by the Mexican Defense Ministry of "Chiapas '94" in October 1994, a comprehensive counterinsurgency plan that included creation of paramilitary groups, the "neutralizing" of the Zapatistas, censorship of the media, and muting any effects of human rights groups and NGOs; (2) Conclusion by U.S. analysts of Mexico's inability to successfully combat the Indigenous insurgency at the time Clinton was orchestrating the $50 billion bailout of Mexico's collapsed economy in January 1995, leading to a mutually agreed upon plan for the U.S. to provide substantial training, including extensive counterinsurgency preparations and military equipment, that would assure Mexico's ability to contain, if not eliminate, the Zapatistas; and (3) Commission of the December 22, 1997 massacre by paramilitary units at Acteal, Chiapas, a predictable outcome of President Zedillo's (with Clinton's encouragement) policy of promoting a strong military solution encircling Indigenous communities while masquerading under a peace process, and further, creating unaccountable paramilitary units to reign terror with virtual total impunity.
It bears repeating here: The U.S. is an empire with less than 5% of the world's population striving to continue to collectively consume upwards of 50% of the world's resources. Like other empires in history it insists on continuing this privilege, no matter how unfair and totally unsustainable. The documented, historical record of U.S. foreign policy/intervention is that it perpetuates brutal repression, often insidiously, against popular movements seeking self determination (democracy) and protected justice. The policy invariably preserves political elites and capitalist interests at the expense of the majority of the people. It is always publicly conducted under a rationale, a pretext, that is considered noble. Upon scrutiny, it is virtually always ignoble, often demonic.
William Blum has described the truthful (no "bullshit") goal of U.S. foreign policy in his book title, Killing Hope: U.S. Military and CIA Interventions Since World War II (Monroe, Maine: Common Courage Press, 1995).
S. Brian Willson
April 1998
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Foreword
The Bill Motto VFW Post #5888 adopted the following resolution at their first regularly scheduled meeting in 1997-New Years night:
CEASE U.S. MILITARY AND SECURITY AID OF ANY KIND TO MEXICO WHILE SUPPORTING GENUINE DEMOCRATIZATION AND SELF DETERMINATION FOR ALL PEOPLES OF THE MEXICAN SOCIETY
Members of the Post are deeply concerned about the influence and role of the United States government that might be worsening the lives of the Mexican people and interfering with their national sovereignty. The U.S. has been increasingly providing military and security assistance to assure the Mexican government's capacity to maintain the kind of political "stability" necessary to sustain confidence in the corporate profitability of Mexico's NAFTA-driven "free market" economics. This normally means, in effect, the preservation of poverty for the majority of the people.
Section I describes the extent and nature of U.S. military and security assistance to Mexico as could be discovered from available sources and eyewitnesses. Section II unmasks the drug war which to date serves as the primary pretext or cover for the military aid. Section III delineates the extent of poverty and misery in Mexico and how the NAFTA-driven economy is aggravating the plight for the majority of Mexico's people. Section IV reports the escalating militarization of the domestic Mexican society and the corresponding rise of repression against the people who are determined to struggle for genuine democratization and justice for their country.
In a nutshell, this report portrays a very familiar, sad story. A people's uprising—growing out of widespread injustices and continual poverty not only unaddressed but actually promoted by their government—is met by harsher repression from that government. Paramilitary forces protecting wealthy interests assist in the repression with total impunity. The stability of the corporate economy is threatened by the uprising. The "health" of the economy is considered the primary national security interest of both Mexico and the United States. Social and economic justice are given mere lip service. The ecology is further destroyed. Nonetheless, as national security interests are seen as threatened by the cries of the poor, the United States government increases aid to Mexico to thwart and eliminate the threat through counterinsurgency and "low intensive" warfare operations. The repression of the people becomes ever more institutionalized. The people are forced to continually struggle for survival and dignity. More and more repression is necessary to maintain "stability" for the economy. U.S. military aid is increased. And the cycle goes on and on!
The U.S. is sliding perilously down the slippery slope of tragic intervention with a policy that is unconscionable and immoral. People are suffering and they cry out for help, saying enough is enough. The cries become wails. Will the United States feel the cries enough to transform its policy? Or will it continue to be an arrogant imperial power exacted at the expense of justice and dignity for the people and for the earth herself?
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