While in Chiapas Mexico, during the travel seminar, our guide Julio Cesar acted as a mentor and teacher. He gave plácticas (talks or lectures) as we were traveling. He talked both at an indigenous school named CIDECI and at Caracol IV - Morelia after we talked with the Junta de Buen Gobierno. The following is a summary of what Julio said and my reactions. Additionally, I write about the impact of these experiences on my future partially because the Zapatistas asked us about what we were going to do with our lives after this trip and because I am trying to figure out what kind of person I want to be (as corny as that sounds, in a capitalist society jobs can be used to define a person).
Driving in Chiapas we saw many military checkpoints and it fascinated me how the military is able to suspend people's rights by installing themselves in what ever territory they please. I learned from Don Julio that the military serves a territorial purpose, que pueden ver cuanta gente se mueve y quien...el ejercito es cerca de communidades indígenas y por eso hay menaza, repressión, y invasión de territorio. Apparently, declaring a state of emergency, while not constitutional, serves to further the military and government's goals. With time, military presence becomes almost normal, but citizens are not supposed to justify why they are moving within their own country. I had previously thought that paramilitaries were completely separate from the military, yet Julio Cesar said that the military recruits Indigenous youth to join paramilitary groups to create terror. Rules that are supposed to curtail military behavior, especially in regards to violations of human rights, do not seem to apply to paramilitary forces. In my life I want to learn the roles that paramilitaries have played in creating chaos whereas the official military is depicted as bringing order and security.
I want to learn more about the ways in which governments display and enforce their power; how seemingly innocent actions morph into a police-state. It was fascinating to compare what democracy and its ideal form look like: the Zapatista Junta de Buen Gobierno is actually democratic in the sense of who is represented, how decisions are made, which voices are heard and their impact, while the democracy Mexico and the United State espouse seems like a farce. Does reform come from the outside, such as the creation of numerous autonomous communities, or is large scale fair and just government realistic? Personally, I do value the idea of big government with social services (I am not an anarchist or a libertarian). I think the concept of guerra interna is helpful, that Mexico is in state of war, in that it reveals that the War on Drugs is not actually why the military is employed as it is. I will probably use the term to illustrate to others that the Mexican government is fighting against its own people, not drug runners from the outside.
In relation to migration, I will keep in mind throughout my future how intimately connected the military, neoliberalism, and the creation of fear and desperation are to creating the environment for migration. I had not realized the extent to which the Mexican military is implicated in indigenous migration; not only due to genocide, but also because of using territorial power to move people off of their lands and destroy (or attempt to) their cultural knowledge as it relates to their rooted place. I've realized that I can not view an action, such as checkpoints as an isolated issue, that they are indicative of how a government relates to its people. It speaks to how Mexicans are portrayed as helpless, poor, ignorant, drug users who simply need the help of their benevolent gobierno to rescue them. Julio Cesar made some comments about the PR campaigns in which the government appears to give indigenous people dignity and a better life. In my job and life, I want to be conscientious of how institutions depict people. I want to be critical of how I frame people or how I might subconsciously view their abilities as limited- that I don't view people as in need of saving, as the Mexican government does.
I don't know to what extent what I learned from Julio Cesar will impact my job per-say, but I will focus more attention on how norms are established and how governments can simultaneously bleed the power from their people, squelch autonomy and resistance, and view their people as inferior/needing the assistance of the government. Of course, governments are supposed to aid their people, but they are not supposed to destroy the ability of people to take care of themselves. It is not transparent of the government to act as if indigenous people are situated as they are, isolated from the military's actions. Erasing history is a powerful tool, but as Julio Cesar showed, there is enough resistance to overcome the government's attempts, and norms are not permanent.
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