Zapatistas & Desire for Mod Cons (was Re: Foster responds)

[Yoshie Furuhashi <furuhashi.1@xxxxxxx>]

Michael Perelman wrote

> Why does it have to be black and white.  There are some gains and some
> losses.  I don't know if I would rather be a serf in 1500 or in a factory
> in 1750.  Both were difficult and unpleasant occupations.  I would rather
> work in a Ford plant today than either of the other choices, but my
> standard of living would still depend upon the relationship between the US
> economy and the rest of the world.
>
> Can you really get far by arguing about the situtation of a small group at
> a particular point of time -- especially when your knowledge is limited?
> Probably not.
>
> On the other hand, it is useful to take into account that the indigenous
> people that we see today are the survivors who have been pushed to the
> margins.  They may not be representative of life in other, more fertile
> places.
>
> Again, the evidence is contradictory.  The Native Americans suffered from
> diseases, but the Plains Indians were the tallest people in the world --
> often taken as an indication of health.
>
> I would like to learn more about this sort of stuff, but the invective
> here makes it too painful to learn.

Leaning about gains & losses can be indeed interesting & important,
but such learning has to take into account _political demands of the
masses today_.  Take the Zapatistas, for instance.  In an eloquent
essay on the losses suffered by the indigenous people of Chiapas
titled "Chiapas: The Southeast in Two Winds, A Storm, and a
Prophesy," Subcomandante Marcos makes clear the devastating impact of
capitalism on people & the land in no uncertain terms:

*****   A handful of businesses, among them the Mexican state, take
the wealth of Chiapas and in exchange leave their mark of death and
disease: in 1989, the financial fang got a filling worth
1,222,699,000,000 pesos [$407,566,000], and only left behind
616,314,000,000 [$205,433,000] in credit and works.  More than
600,000,000,000 pesos [$200,000,000] went to the stomach of the beast.

In Chiapas there are eighty-six fangs of Pemex sunk into the
municipalities of Estacion Juarez, Reforma, Ostuacan, Pichuacalco,
and Ocosingo.  Every day they suck out 92,000 barrels of petroleum
and 516.7 billion cubic feet of natural gas.  They take the gas and
oil and leave the trademark of capitalism: ecological destruction,
agricultural waste, hyper-inflation, alcoholism, prostitution, and
poverty.  The beast is not satisfied, and extends its tentacles to
the Lacandon jungle: eight oil fields are now under exploitation.
The jungle is opened with machetes, wielded by the very same
campesinos whose land has been taken away by the insatiable beast.
Trees fall and dynamite explodes in lands where only the campesinos
are prohibited from felling trees to plant crops.  Every tree a
campesino cuts can cost him a fine worth ten day's salary and send
him to jail.  Poor people cannot cut down trees, but the oil company,
more and more in the hands of foreigners, can.  The campesino cuts a
tree in order to live, the beast cuts to plunder....

The tribute that capitalism extracts from Chiapas has no historical
parallel.  Fifty-five percent of the nation's hydroelectric power
comes from this state, as well as 20 percent of all the electric
energy.  Nevertheless, only a third of all Chiapan houses have
electricity.  Where do the 12,907 kilowats produced annually by
hydroelectric plants in Chiapas go?

(_Shadows of Tender Fury: the Letters and Communiques of
Subcomandante Marcos and the Zapatista Army of National Liberation_,
NY: Monthly Review Press, 1995, pp. 33-34)   *****

However, Marcos & the EZLN use such facts of exploitation, not to
mourn the demise of Aztec Mexico, but to make demands for
modernization for the benefit of the impoverished masses.  Among
other demands ("truly free and democratic elections"; land for "the
indigenous people and campesinos who work it," not for "the
latifundistas"; "political, economic, and cultural autonomy"; and so
on), the EZLN makes the following demands:

*****   Six.  As a producer of electricity and oil, the state of
Chiapas pays tribute to the federation without receiving anything in
exchange.  Our communities do not have electric power; the export and
domestic sale of our oil doesn't produce any benefit whatsoever for
the Chiapan people.  In view of this, it is vital that all Chiapan
communities receive the benefit of electric power and that a
percentage of the income from the commercialization of Chiapan oil be
applied to the agricultural, commercial, and social-industrial
infrastructure, for the benefit of Chiapans....

Ninth.  We want hospitals to be built in the municipal seats, with
specialized doctors and enough medicine to be able to attend to the
patients; we want rural clinics in the _ejidos_, communities, and
surrounding areas, as well as training and a fair salary for health
workers.  Where there are already hospitals, they must be
rehabilitated as soon as possible and include complete surgical
services....

Eleventh.  We want housing to be built in all the rural communities
of Mexico, including basic services like: electricity, potable water,
roads, sewer systems, telephone, transportation, etc.  And these
houses should also have the advantages of the city, like television,
stove, refrigerator, washing machine, etc....   (_Shadows of Tender
Fury_, pp. 157-8)   *****

Far from denying or rejecting the gains of capitalism, they want to
benefit from them.  Somehow this desire for modernization --
including desire for mod cons pooh-poohed by some Greens in rich
nations -- that animates mass struggles everywhere in the world is
often ignored or dismissed in PEN-l discussion of colonialism, out of
touch with present-day reality.

Yoshie