Mexico faces ironies of post-Cold War rebellion

By Harris Whitbeck
CNN Mexico City Bureau Chief

SAN CRISTOBAL DE LAS CASAS, Mexico -- The highlands of southeastern Mexico are part of the same Guatemalan mountain range that served as one of the Cold War's bloodiest battlefields during the 1970s and '80s.

Mexico worked hard to keep the Guatemalan conflict from spreading. The government maintained a policy of non-intervention and resolved to solve conflicts through diplomatic channels.

Cuba's ambassador to Mexico, Abelardo Curbelo, describes his country's relations with Mexico as "exemplary" during some of the most difficult periods of the Cold War.

"Mexico did not join what happened in the rest of Latin America in the sense that everybody broke relations," Curbelo says. "While the rest of the Latin American countries took the side of the United States in the confrontation between the two blocs, Mexico stepped aside and distanced itself from the conflict."

In the name of neutrality, Mexico became a haven for many leftist movements. The Guatemalan and Salvadoran guerrilla organizations maintained offices in the capital. The country welcomed thousands of refugees from Central and South America. And Mexico helped broker peace between the warring sides in El Salvador and Guatemala.

However, while Mexico was helping find peaceful solutions for its neighbors, social and economic conditions at home were breeding a similar armed conflict within its own borders.

On January 1, 1994, the day the North American Free Trade Agreement took effect, Mexican leaders got a dramatic wake-up call. The Zapatista National Liberation Army staged an uprising in Chiapas and took over the main town of San Cristobal de Las Casas. Their goal was to remind the government that the inhabitants of Mexico's poorest state were not being included in the bounty that free trade promised.

The Chiapas uprising raised the specter of new, violent confrontations between leftist demands for social justice and capitalist desires for economic growth. Mexican writer Carlos Fuentes calls it "the first post-Cold War rebellion, because it's a rebellion that can no longer be satanized, or demonized as pro-communist, pro-Soviet or whatever."

After just two weeks of fighting, Mexico's government tried to apply the same diplomatic tactics it had used during the Cold War. According to Emilio Rabassa, Mexico's coordinator for peace talks in Chiapas, Mexico is "the first or only country in the world who has had this sort of conflict, that has unilaterally stopped or given a government cease-fire just 12 days after the uprising and immediately entered negotiations."

But today the conflict is far from over. Conditions that sparked the Zapatista rebellion still exist.

Entire communities in Chiapas have been displaced by violence. Roberto Perez and his family are one of about 90 families from their village, Yibeljoj, who now live in a refugee camp. They have to walk four hours a day to pick the coffee on their own land.

"The (government) paramilitary groups threaten us," he says. "They shoot at us everywhere in our community. That is why we had to leave. We aren't looking for trouble with anyone. We're just trying to fight for change, but peacefully. "

Conflicts like this did not end with the Cold War. As Fuentes explains, they were just put on hold. "For 50 years we postponed urgent social economic and cultural problems, because if you brought up those problems you were immediately labeled pro-communist, a puppet of the Soviet Union," he says.

"To a certain extent," according to Rabassa, "it was the atmosphere of the Cold War that shaped the mentality of some of the leaders during the '60s and '70s, when they came to Chiapas and started to organize their movement."

Today the Zapatistas draw from the romanticism of leftist guerrilla movements from the past but use the tools of modern capitalism to spread their message.

In the tourist markets of San Cristobal de Las Casas, Zapatista souvenirs are everywhere. You'll find Zapatista dolls, key chains and even T-shirts emblazoned with in-your-face Zapatista propaganda. And through their Web site, their struggle has attracted support from all over the world.

It's not the kind of free trade the Mexican government necessarily had in mind -- but that is just one of many ironies in today's Mexico. While the end of the Cold War has brought a relative peace to its neighbors, Mexico is caught up in the type of conflict it managed to avoid during much of the Cold War. So as Mexico works to lead Central and South America in trade and development, it must also work to resolve its own social conflicts that have been brewing for decades.