March 28th, 2003
Approximately a year ago, we sent an urgent appeal regarding the situation in the Montes Azules Biosphere Reserve in Chiapas where more than forty indigenous communities, the majority of which are either part of the Zapatista's civilian support base or have ties to the independent campesino organization ARIC-Independiente, have been threatened with expulsion by the Mexican government. Since that time, one small and especially impoverished community reluctantly agreed to leave – under duress and with a government escort. (Subsequently, despite its grandiose plans, the government has been unable to find a suitable property in which to relocate the few families involved.)
Very recently, Judith Brisson, long–time SJC supporter and former board member, was part of an international fact–finding delegation to Montes Azules. We are forwarding the very important urgent action that she has prepared following her visit.
Recent reports in La Jornada as well as independent observers, have warned that the Mexican government will soon be taking action to remove the Indigenous communities residing in the Montes Azules Biosphere Reserve (RIBMA) in southern Chiapas, Mexico.
The evictions, planned since before the election of the incumbent state and federal governments, pit the Indigenous residents of the forest –Choles, Tzotziles, Tzetzales and Tojolabales– against their own governments and the interests of multinational corporations.
An international delegation organised by Global Exchange (an American non–governmental organisation with United Nations consultative status) has recently returned from the area. The delegation visited with members of four communities of the campesino organisation ARIC–Independiente, who reside within the Reserve and are slated for removal, and with the displaced community of Arroyo San Pablo, forcibly evicted from Montes Azules last December. This urgent action is a follow–up response to the delegation's visit to the area.
The members of the community of Arroyo San Pablo agreed to leave the RIBMA, once it was clear that they were surrounded, and after they had negotiated a compensation of 20 hectares of land per family. Recent arrivals to Montes Azules, they had fled paramilitary atrocities in Marquez de Comillas, and sought refuge in the cover of the rainforest. The officials of PROFEPA, the government agency responsible for the enforcement of environmental laws, have stated that the eviction was peaceful. According to the people who were removed, the Federal Preventative Police, arriving by helicopter, and the Mexican Navy, arriving by boat, carried out the evictions. Eye–witnesses say that the forces were armed, and that they surrounded the community, ordering the residents to leave. Today the twenty–nine members of the community are housed in a crowded and dismal shelter in the city of Comitan; dispirited and regretful of having left their community, they wait for the government to follow through on its promise to provide new lands
The SEMARNAT (environmental secretariat) has laid some 16 charges of environmental destruction, a very serious crime that can lead to jail sentences of up to eight years, against the communities of the RIBMA. These communities, some having been established in the region for over thirty years, assert that they are not the ones responsible for the destruction of the rainforest. The members of ARIC–Independiente, with whom this delegation met, established a management plan three years ago to further their long–standing quest for land titles. The San Gregorio Management Plan forbids the clearing of new land, the use of slash and burn agriculture, the use of agricultural chemicals and pesticides, or the planting of transgenic crops.
According to Miguel Angel Garcia, a representative of the non–governmental organisation "Maderas del Pueblo", environmental crimes should be settled by criminal charges or fines laid against individuals or perhaps particular communities, not by a wholesale eviction of all the residents of the forest.
According to the Covenant 169, the Indigenous and Tribal Peoples Convention, of the International Labour Organisation, of which Mexico is a signatory, (Article 16) "the peoples concerned shall not be removed from the lands which they occupy". The Covenant also states that it is the responsibility of the government to ensure that adequate provision is made for settling land claims. In the case of Montes Azules, many land claims predate the establishment of the Reserve. Overflights of the RIBMA by this delegation ascertained the extent of the destruction of the rainforest. The delegates observed overwhelming destruction in the northern region, near the limits of the Reserve, where logging and cattle ranching have taken place. CONFOLASA (a government–owned timber company) and privately owned large cattle ranches have left the northern extremity of the forest quite barren. According to Dr. Rocio Rodiles, of the Colegio de la Frontera Sur and President of the Advisory Council for the Biosphere Reserve, it is these activities that pose the greatest threat to the forest. In addition to this, the delegation observed the destruction caused by the establishment of military bases, especially near San Quintin (strategically located near the Zapatista strongholds in las Cañadas). This delegation observed hundreds of acres of scrub in the vicinity of San Quintin.
The delegation also heard accounts of an event that took place in 1998, where helicopters passed low, at night, over the area of Flores Magon (autonomous community); shortly thereafter fires stared in the forest. Twenty–five thousand hectares burned in forest fires around the Laguna Miramar area (visible in satellite photos). This was followed in 1999 with 7000 soldiers entering the area to "reforest".
The destruction caused by small Indigenous communities, that this delegation was able to observe, amounted to a few acres of clearing for the settlements, and an additional few nearby for growing crops. There are close to forty such settlements in the RIBMA that are slated for eviction.
It is apparent from our observations, that the destruction of the rainforest cannot be the motive for removing these communities, as they do not appear to pose a great threat to the integrity of the Reserve. For that reason, it is important to examine the other motives that the government has for removing them.
Firstly, twenty–six of the communities facing eviction are Zapatista support–bases. In 2001, the head of PROFEPA, Ignacio Campillo, cited the region as one of nine areas of ungovernability, and that this was a "matter of providing security to possible investors". He even went so far as to say that he would accept the possible participation of the army in removing the settlements. According the Mexican non–governmental organisation, CIEPAC, there are some 38 military positions in the vicinity of the Montes Azules and the Lacandon Jungle, with about 25,000 troops therein.
In addition to the counterinsurgency efforts, there are many investment possibilities for the profit–minded. Biological genetic resources, oil reserves, uranium, and hydroelectricity are all nearly untapped resources in this still–virgin forest, and are being opened up to investors under the auspices of the Plan Puebla Panama (PPP).
Conservation International (CI), an American non–governmental organisation supported by dozens of transnational corporations, has established, with Grupo Pulsar, a Mexican biotechnology giant, several bioprospecting stations in the region in pursuit of potentially lucrative genetic resources. CI also provided satellite intelligence for the Lacandons, who hold title to the Reserve, and who appear to have been persuaded to seek the expulsion of the communities in question. According to COMPITCH, a Mexican NGO of traditional medics and midwives, Conservation International has requested that Mexico remove the residents of Montes Azules. This same organisation, COMPITCH, which previously had worked on a common project with CI, asserts that the US government had provided for CI (through USAID) the planes and surveillance equipment in order to assist the PROFEPA and the military in evicting the residents from the Reserve.
This delegation also saw evidence that the Israeli Defence Force (IDF) is providing cellular and satellite systems to aid local authorities in searching, locating and preventing "tree theft". According the Hermann Bellinghausen of La Jornada, Ben Avilhun, a war telecommunications expert with Tadiran Electronics Systems, recently led delegation through the area (November 2002). Shortly thereafter, the Israelis sold 198 Galli assault rifles to the Chiapas state government for police in the countryside. Israel, which has been giving military training and advice to Guatemala since the Carter administration suspended aid to the county in the 1970's, provided, through Tadiran, essential telecommunications equipment during that country's dirty war against its own population.
Part of the overarching plan of the PPP is to provide the energetic and transportation infrastructure to service the yet–to–be–established maquiladoras (dubbed "fabricas de miseria" in Latin America) throughout Central America. To that end, at least three hydroelectric dams are planned for the Usumacinta River, the pristine waterway delineating the sout–eastern border of the Lacandon jungle. Critics of the project state that thousands of hectares of forest will be flooded, as well as dozens of Indigenous communities and at least one archaeological site (Yaxchilan).
To reiterate the position of the Social Justice Committee on the PPP, as expressed in the Urgent Action #987, of March 25th, 2002: the mega–development scheme is an economic programme for removing Indigenous people and campesinos from their lands, so that the wealth of those lands can be used for the benefit of large corporations and so that the campesinos and Indigenous people can become low–waged industrial or plantation workers.
There is little doubt that the Lacandon forests, including the RIBMA, need to be protected. This center of diversity of flora and fauna is one of the few intact engines of evolution left in North America. It is the position of this delegation, that it is the Indigenous people of the forest who are best able to protect the environment and that they need to be given the legal and administrative tools to do so.
Recommended Actions
Please write to the Mexican government to express your alarm over the government's recent statements with regard to the situation in the Montes Azules Integral Biosphere Reserve. Please stress that the forcible eviction of the communities from the Reserve constitutes a violation of the rights of indigenous peoples that are guaranteed under ILO Covenant 169, which Mexico has ratified, and would cause major violations of the social and economic rights of the members of the affected communities. Moreover, there is a grave danger that a physical confrontation of this kind could lead to very serious violations of civil rights. Please request the Mexican government to agree to the proposal of the indigenous communities to the effect that it be the communities themselves who assume responsibility for the protection and management of the Reserve.
Please remind the Mexican government of the importance of complying with the San Andres Accords on Indigenous Rights and Culture on the basis of the COCOPA proposal, noting that the San Andres Accords, if incorporated into the Constitution, would provide a proper legal framework for the resolution of situations such as the one that now prevails in the Montes Azules Reserve.
Please write to the Canadian government requesting that they do all that is diplomatically possible to persuade the Mexican government to avoid a physical confrontation between the security forces and the indigenous communities in the Montes Azules Integral Biosphere Reserve. Please ask the Canadian government if it would be possible for them to share with the appropriate branch of the Mexican government any useful knowledge that they may have acquired with regard to the role of government in promoting and respecting community-based forest management and protection. ADDRESSES:
Lic. Vicente Fox Quesada Presidente de los Estados Unidos Mexicanos Residencia Oficial de Los Pinos Col. San Miguel Chapultepec, Mexico D.F., C.P. 11850, MEXICO FAX: 011 52 55 522 4117 or 516 9537 or 515 1794 vicente@fox2000.org.mx or radio@presidencia.gob.mx or go to www.gob.mex and from there to interactivo@ to send a message. If you have access to a fax machine and are able to get through, the fax method, being less impersonal, is probably more effective. If you live in Ottawa or in a city where there is a Mexican consulate, they will almost certainly be willing to forward a fax to President Fox's office on your behalf.
Lic. Pablo Salazar Mendigucháa Gobernador del Estado de Chiapas Palacio de Gobierno, Tuxtla Gutiérrez Chiapas, MEXICO FAX: 011 52 961 20917 salazarp@prodigy.net.mx
Please send copies of your letters to President Fox to the following government officials:
Lic. Victor Lichtinger (Minister of the Environment) Secretario de SEMARNAT Lateral de Anillo Periférico No. 4209 Jardines de la Montaña, delegación Tlalpan C.P. 14210, Mexico D.F., MEXICO vlichtinger@semarnat.gob.mx
Lic. José Ignacio Campillo García Procurador Federal de Protección al Ambiente Periférico Sur No. 5000 Col. Insurgentes, Cuicuilco Delegación Coyoacán C.P. 04530, Mexico D.F., MEXICO jcampillo@correo.profepa.gob.mx
Lic. Mariclaire Acosta, Subsecretaria de Derechos Humanos y Democracia FAX: 011 52 55 117 4334 or 327 3195 afranco@sre.gob.mx or macosta@sre.gob.mx
Her Exellency Maria Teresa Garcia Segovia Ambassador for Mexico 45 O'Connor St, suite 1500, Ottawa, Ont. K1P 1A4 FOX 613 235 9123 info@embamexcan.com
FOR CANADA: Hon. Bill Graham Minister of Foreign Affairs FAX: 613 996 9607 Graham.b@parl.gc.ca
Indigenous Communities in Montes Azules Integral Biosphere Reserve in Chiapas Threatened With Forcible Eviction
Approximately a year ago, we sent an urgent appeal regarding the situation in the Montes Azules Biosphere Reserve in Chiapas where more than forty indigenous communities, the majority of which are either part of the Zapatista's civilian support base or have ties to the independent campesino organization ARIC-Independiente, have been threatened with expulsion by the Mexican government. Since that time, one small and especially impoverished community reluctantly agreed to leave – under duress and with a government escort. (Subsequently, despite its grandiose plans, the government has been unable to find a suitable property in which to relocate the few families involved.)
Very recently, Judith Brisson, long–time SJC supporter and former board member, was part of an international fact–finding delegation to Montes Azules. We are forwarding the very important urgent action that she has prepared following her visit.
Recent reports in La Jornada as well as independent observers, have warned that the Mexican government will soon be taking action to remove the Indigenous communities residing in the Montes Azules Biosphere Reserve (RIBMA) in southern Chiapas, Mexico.
The evictions, planned since before the election of the incumbent state and federal governments, pit the Indigenous residents of the forest –Choles, Tzotziles, Tzetzales and Tojolabales– against their own governments and the interests of multinational corporations.
An international delegation organised by Global Exchange (an American non–governmental organisation with United Nations consultative status) has recently returned from the area. The delegation visited with members of four communities of the campesino organisation ARIC–Independiente, who reside within the Reserve and are slated for removal, and with the displaced community of Arroyo San Pablo, forcibly evicted from Montes Azules last December. This urgent action is a follow–up response to the delegation's visit to the area.
The members of the community of Arroyo San Pablo agreed to leave the RIBMA, once it was clear that they were surrounded, and after they had negotiated a compensation of 20 hectares of land per family. Recent arrivals to Montes Azules, they had fled paramilitary atrocities in Marquez de Comillas, and sought refuge in the cover of the rainforest. The officials of PROFEPA, the government agency responsible for the enforcement of environmental laws, have stated that the eviction was peaceful. According to the people who were removed, the Federal Preventative Police, arriving by helicopter, and the Mexican Navy, arriving by boat, carried out the evictions. Eye–witnesses say that the forces were armed, and that they surrounded the community, ordering the residents to leave. Today the twenty–nine members of the community are housed in a crowded and dismal shelter in the city of Comitan; dispirited and regretful of having left their community, they wait for the government to follow through on its promise to provide new lands
The SEMARNAT (environmental secretariat) has laid some 16 charges of environmental destruction, a very serious crime that can lead to jail sentences of up to eight years, against the communities of the RIBMA. These communities, some having been established in the region for over thirty years, assert that they are not the ones responsible for the destruction of the rainforest. The members of ARIC–Independiente, with whom this delegation met, established a management plan three years ago to further their long–standing quest for land titles. The San Gregorio Management Plan forbids the clearing of new land, the use of slash and burn agriculture, the use of agricultural chemicals and pesticides, or the planting of transgenic crops.
According to Miguel Angel Garcia, a representative of the non–governmental organisation "Maderas del Pueblo", environmental crimes should be settled by criminal charges or fines laid against individuals or perhaps particular communities, not by a wholesale eviction of all the residents of the forest.
According to the Covenant 169, the Indigenous and Tribal Peoples Convention, of the International Labour Organisation, of which Mexico is a signatory, (Article 16) "the peoples concerned shall not be removed from the lands which they occupy". The Covenant also states that it is the responsibility of the government to ensure that adequate provision is made for settling land claims. In the case of Montes Azules, many land claims predate the establishment of the Reserve. Overflights of the RIBMA by this delegation ascertained the extent of the destruction of the rainforest. The delegates observed overwhelming destruction in the northern region, near the limits of the Reserve, where logging and cattle ranching have taken place. CONFOLASA (a government–owned timber company) and privately owned large cattle ranches have left the northern extremity of the forest quite barren. According to Dr. Rocio Rodiles, of the Colegio de la Frontera Sur and President of the Advisory Council for the Biosphere Reserve, it is these activities that pose the greatest threat to the forest. In addition to this, the delegation observed the destruction caused by the establishment of military bases, especially near San Quintin (strategically located near the Zapatista strongholds in las Cañadas). This delegation observed hundreds of acres of scrub in the vicinity of San Quintin.
The delegation also heard accounts of an event that took place in 1998, where helicopters passed low, at night, over the area of Flores Magon (autonomous community); shortly thereafter fires stared in the forest. Twenty–five thousand hectares burned in forest fires around the Laguna Miramar area (visible in satellite photos). This was followed in 1999 with 7000 soldiers entering the area to "reforest".
The destruction caused by small Indigenous communities, that this delegation was able to observe, amounted to a few acres of clearing for the settlements, and an additional few nearby for growing crops. There are close to forty such settlements in the RIBMA that are slated for eviction.
It is apparent from our observations, that the destruction of the rainforest cannot be the motive for removing these communities, as they do not appear to pose a great threat to the integrity of the Reserve. For that reason, it is important to examine the other motives that the government has for removing them.
Firstly, twenty–six of the communities facing eviction are Zapatista support–bases. In 2001, the head of PROFEPA, Ignacio Campillo, cited the region as one of nine areas of ungovernability, and that this was a "matter of providing security to possible investors". He even went so far as to say that he would accept the possible participation of the army in removing the settlements. According the Mexican non–governmental organisation, CIEPAC, there are some 38 military positions in the vicinity of the Montes Azules and the Lacandon Jungle, with about 25,000 troops therein.
In addition to the counterinsurgency efforts, there are many investment possibilities for the profit–minded. Biological genetic resources, oil reserves, uranium, and hydroelectricity are all nearly untapped resources in this still–virgin forest, and are being opened up to investors under the auspices of the Plan Puebla Panama (PPP).
Conservation International (CI), an American non–governmental organisation supported by dozens of transnational corporations, has established, with Grupo Pulsar, a Mexican biotechnology giant, several bioprospecting stations in the region in pursuit of potentially lucrative genetic resources. CI also provided satellite intelligence for the Lacandons, who hold title to the Reserve, and who appear to have been persuaded to seek the expulsion of the communities in question. According to COMPITCH, a Mexican NGO of traditional medics and midwives, Conservation International has requested that Mexico remove the residents of Montes Azules. This same organisation, COMPITCH, which previously had worked on a common project with CI, asserts that the US government had provided for CI (through USAID) the planes and surveillance equipment in order to assist the PROFEPA and the military in evicting the residents from the Reserve.
This delegation also saw evidence that the Israeli Defence Force (IDF) is providing cellular and satellite systems to aid local authorities in searching, locating and preventing "tree theft". According the Hermann Bellinghausen of La Jornada, Ben Avilhun, a war telecommunications expert with Tadiran Electronics Systems, recently led delegation through the area (November 2002). Shortly thereafter, the Israelis sold 198 Galli assault rifles to the Chiapas state government for police in the countryside. Israel, which has been giving military training and advice to Guatemala since the Carter administration suspended aid to the county in the 1970's, provided, through Tadiran, essential telecommunications equipment during that country's dirty war against its own population.
Part of the overarching plan of the PPP is to provide the energetic and transportation infrastructure to service the yet–to–be–established maquiladoras (dubbed "fabricas de miseria" in Latin America) throughout Central America. To that end, at least three hydroelectric dams are planned for the Usumacinta River, the pristine waterway delineating the sout–eastern border of the Lacandon jungle. Critics of the project state that thousands of hectares of forest will be flooded, as well as dozens of Indigenous communities and at least one archaeological site (Yaxchilan).
To reiterate the position of the Social Justice Committee on the PPP, as expressed in the Urgent Action #987, of March 25th, 2002: the mega–development scheme is an economic programme for removing Indigenous people and campesinos from their lands, so that the wealth of those lands can be used for the benefit of large corporations and so that the campesinos and Indigenous people can become low–waged industrial or plantation workers.
There is little doubt that the Lacandon forests, including the RIBMA, need to be protected. This center of diversity of flora and fauna is one of the few intact engines of evolution left in North America. It is the position of this delegation, that it is the Indigenous people of the forest who are best able to protect the environment and that they need to be given the legal and administrative tools to do so.
Recommended Actions
Please write to the Mexican government to express your alarm over the government's recent statements with regard to the situation in the Montes Azules Integral Biosphere Reserve. Please stress that the forcible eviction of the communities from the Reserve constitutes a violation of the rights of indigenous peoples that are guaranteed under ILO Covenant 169, which Mexico has ratified, and would cause major violations of the social and economic rights of the members of the affected communities. Moreover, there is a grave danger that a physical confrontation of this kind could lead to very serious violations of civil rights. Please request the Mexican government to agree to the proposal of the indigenous communities to the effect that it be the communities themselves who assume responsibility for the protection and management of the Reserve.
Please remind the Mexican government of the importance of complying with the San Andres Accords on Indigenous Rights and Culture on the basis of the COCOPA proposal, noting that the San Andres Accords, if incorporated into the Constitution, would provide a proper legal framework for the resolution of situations such as the one that now prevails in the Montes Azules Reserve.
Please write to the Canadian government requesting that they do all that is diplomatically possible to persuade the Mexican government to avoid a physical confrontation between the security forces and the indigenous communities in the Montes Azules Integral Biosphere Reserve. Please ask the Canadian government if it would be possible for them to share with the appropriate branch of the Mexican government any useful knowledge that they may have acquired with regard to the role of government in promoting and respecting community-based forest management and protection. ADDRESSES:
Lic. Vicente Fox Quesada Presidente de los Estados Unidos Mexicanos Residencia Oficial de Los Pinos Col. San Miguel Chapultepec, Mexico D.F., C.P. 11850, MEXICO FAX: 011 52 55 522 4117 or 516 9537 or 515 1794 vicente@fox2000.org.mx or radio@presidencia.gob.mx or go to www.gob.mex and from there to interactivo@ to send a message. If you have access to a fax machine and are able to get through, the fax method, being less impersonal, is probably more effective. If you live in Ottawa or in a city where there is a Mexican consulate, they will almost certainly be willing to forward a fax to President Fox's office on your behalf.
Lic. Pablo Salazar Mendigucháa Gobernador del Estado de Chiapas Palacio de Gobierno, Tuxtla Gutiérrez Chiapas, MEXICO FAX: 011 52 961 20917 salazarp@prodigy.net.mx
Please send copies of your letters to President Fox to the following government officials:
Lic. Victor Lichtinger (Minister of the Environment) Secretario de SEMARNAT Lateral de Anillo Periférico No. 4209 Jardines de la Montaña, delegación Tlalpan C.P. 14210, Mexico D.F., MEXICO vlichtinger@semarnat.gob.mx
Lic. José Ignacio Campillo García Procurador Federal de Protección al Ambiente Periférico Sur No. 5000 Col. Insurgentes, Cuicuilco Delegación Coyoacán C.P. 04530, Mexico D.F., MEXICO jcampillo@correo.profepa.gob.mx
Lic. Mariclaire Acosta, Subsecretaria de Derechos Humanos y Democracia FAX: 011 52 55 117 4334 or 327 3195 afranco@sre.gob.mx or macosta@sre.gob.mx
Her Exellency Maria Teresa Garcia Segovia Ambassador for Mexico 45 O'Connor St, suite 1500, Ottawa, Ont. K1P 1A4 FOX 613 235 9123 info@embamexcan.com
FOR CANADA: Hon. Bill Graham Minister of Foreign Affairs FAX: 613 996 9607 Graham.b@parl.gc.ca