A Life of Struggle (fwd)

[Phil CashCash]

A Life of Struggle
Don Andrés: Elder of Mexico’s Indigenous National Congress

By Annalena Oeffner
Narco News Authentic Journalism Scholar
September 29, 2003
http://www.narconews.com/Issue31/article876.html

Sitting on an old, worn-out bed in a tiny, broken-down shack whose floor
is covered in red corncobs, Andrés Vasquez de Santiago, 93 years old
and maybe one meter forty (4 feet 7 inches) in height, looks fragile.
He has the coffee-brown skin of the Mexican Otomí-indigenous,
strikingly full and white hair and is dressed in old green trousers,
sneakers, a white shirt and a towel thrown on his shoulders. Asked to
tell about his life, he laughs and says, there is nothing to tell
about. But then he begins anyway. Don Andrés, as people call him, has
struggled all his life for the rights of the indigenous people in
Mexico. He is one of the founders of the Indigenous National Congress
(CNI in its Spanish acronym) and its oldest delegate. And he is a
walking history book about the indigenous' situation of the last
century.

"A lot has changed," observes the man born in 1910, the year of the
Mexican revolution against the leadership of General Díaz, led by
Francisco Madero, Pancho Villa and Emiliano Zapata. Many indigenous
rights supporters (including don Andrés' grandson, Juan) gathered this
summer of 2003 in Oventik, Chiapas to see the birth of the latest
progress of their cause: the formation of regional, autonomous Good
Government Councils, which have assumed roles in the self-management of
communities formerly handled only by the State. Although many of don
Andrés' colleagues from the Indigenous National Congress were present
in Oventik, seven years after its foundation the organization remains
an enigma to a lot of the global and Mexican supporters of the
indigenous cause. It has no office, no paid staff, and it does not
receive grants. Like the Zapatista Army of National Liberation, the CNI
has often gone for many months in silence, without making a public
statement. But in Oventik, for the first time since the Zapatista march
to Mexico City in 2001, it suddenly reappeared again, at center stage
of the struggle, an important voice that joins 56 of Mexico's 62
indigenous ethnicities.

The struggle of the indigenous people in Mexico has a long history and
is still ongoing. Despite programs by the government and international
organizations aimed at the indigenous population, their situation is
far from what don Andrés, the CNI delegate, thinks it should be.
Speaking with don Andrés, the long history begins to unfold for the
outsider.

"His memory goes back 90 years," a good friend of his and fellow
delegate of the CNI, Miguel Alvarez, explains. "Many indigenous have
good memories because of all the bad things that have happened to them.
You don't forget those things." Alvarez, who describes himself as
"mestizo con corazón" ("mestizo with heart" – mestizo meaning someone
of mixed indigenous/white ancestry), portrays don Andrés as "very wise
and very, very intelligent." He is tiny, but "his real greatness is in
his head." Don Andrés went to school for only a year and has been a
campesino (peasant farmer) all his life. Asking Miguel Alvarez when don
Andrés started to engage in politics, he replies: "At the age of
reason, when he was about nine years old."

Don Andrés has been an elected town council leader for Apaseo el Grande,
Guanajuato. "I have always been with the campesinos, with those who
don't have capital," he says. "They respect me, they are my people. I
was always in opposition to the political figures." He also explains
that he would accompany people whenever they had problems with the
authorities. For the last three years, however, he has not gone. "I
can't. I don't hear, I see very little." Still, even in recent years,
he participated in various national meetings of the CNI, the Zapatista
caravan of 2001, delivered remarks at last February’s drug legalization
summit in Mérida, and worked as a professor there and on Isla Mujeres
with the Narco News School of Authentic Journalism.

Don Andrés is poor, in the economic sense of the word. This becomes
obvious immediately when squeezing one's way through the crooked wooden
gate, crossing the bumps, holes and mud of the small strip of garden to
his house with its crumbling walls. There is hardly any furniture
inside. Having been a peasant farmer, don Andrés does not receive any
government aid. Those people like him without family do not have any
source of income. Yet, don Andrés says, a lot has improved since the
time when he was little: "After the revolution [of 1910] came the
hunger, we didn't have anything to eat, all the people were hungry. We
only lived of wild herbs such as nopales (cactus) and beans, well, bean
soup because we didn't have enough. It was all natural, we didn't have
mills or tortilla makers. Even when the revolution had finished, there
was a lot of food shortage and illness and many people died of it. In
the year 1920, when I was ten, we boys earned 18 centavos daily, so
that we would not go to school, because the priests did not want us to
go to school. So they paid us 18 centavos for a whole day. It was a
misery. Like nowadays, those who knew how to read could escape
slavery."

"I hate the priests," don Andrés says. "I consider them traitors to
human beings. They were brought by the Spaniards and were the most
powerful weapon you can imagine. And they are still being used as such.
The priests came to intimidate us, talking about excommunication and
hell. 'You will condemn yourselves, my children,' they would say at
those times, 'if you take over land. The rich have the land, because
they worked for it.'"

Up to 1935, don Andrés recalls, the campesinos never wore trousers. Then
the governor of Querétaro, the nearest city, decreed that he would
imprison anyone who did not wear trousers. Because of this "rat", as
don Andrés calls him, many people were never able to go to the city.

Don Andrés was born to parents who spoke Otomí-Ñahñú, the language of
the Otomí-indigenous. In Miguel Alvarez’ opinion, the government
figures undercount the number of Otomí-speakers (about 292,000 in 2000,
according to the Mexican National Institute of Geographic and
Information Technology statistics, given that there are still five
million people with Otomí roots in Mexico.  Some of those continue to
live according to old traditions in secluded communities often
difficult to access. When he first met Miguel Alvarez in 1992, don
Andrés "had lost contact with his people and believed that the Otomís
had disappeared and their language become extinct. He lives very
isolated and doesn't speak Otomí anymore, but he understands it. His
parents spoke Otomí, but the children were not allowed to speak it in
school. If they did, their teachers would beat them. People thus lost
the relations with their ancestors, their customs etc." According to
the Christian Science Monitor, Yolandra Lastra, a Mexican linguist,
argues: "Some people think a language can die out, but the culture and
the knowledge will persist. I do not. I think the language and culture
die together."

Nobody can tell me exactly how many descendants the old man has. He has
eleven children and is by now great-great-grandfather. Many of his
family live in his little village, San Bartolomé Aguacaliente, in the
state of Guanajuato, a half-hour's drive from the city of Querétaro,
north of Mexico City. Don Andrés was born there in 1910. The number of
human lives lost during the 11-yearlong revolution that began the same
year varies from "official" estimates of circa six percent to about a
fifth of the population (according to Robert McCaa from the University
of Minnesota Population Center). That revolution, says Mexican author
and La Jornada columnist Raquel Gutiérrez Aguilar, was the beginning of
the modern Mexico. Its product was the "ideal nation": la nación
mestiza. In this nation, everyone was supposed to have the same
opportunities, as a popular saying illustrates: "My father was a slave
on a farm, and I am a revolutionary, my children set up a store, and my
grandson is a government functionary." In the 1980s, the Mexican
markets were opened to foreign competition, neoliberalism made its way
to Mexico. The situation for many people worsened, as educational
programs (such as grants for university education) were stopped. "The
rich became richer, the public facilities started deteriorating," says
Raquel Gutiérrez.

In 1992, the U.S. Congress established a Columbus Quincentenary Jubilee
Commission for the celebration of Columbus Day on October 12. It was
the year of the 500th anniversary of the "Encounter of the Two Worlds."
According to Miguel Alvarez, many indigenous did not accept the
celebrations in memory of the invasion of their lands, and instead
protested. He says, "the Spaniards and the other Europeans came to
steal. They didn't bring anything, they just took. They didn't bring
more than the sword and they imposed their religion by force. They
didn't know how to talk. They enslaved the people, took pure gold and
brought little mirrors and beads in exchange."

All these factors led to the rising up of the Zapatistas in 1994 in the
southeastern state of Chiapas to demand indigenous autonomy over their
land and ways of living. Previously, there had only been indigenous
organizations of national significance that fought for their rights as
peasant farmers as opposed to indigenous rights. There was a government
office for indigenous people, called Instituto Nacional Indigenista.
Raquel Gutiérrez describes how it assisted people in selling their
handicrafts, benefiting the market. "They helped them not to be
indigenous. So these people were beginning to become someone else." In
her point of view, only when the Zapatistas appeared on the scene did
Mexicans truly realize that there were so many indigenous in their
country. Also, "we began to feel that we were indigenous too, that they
were our ancestors. It was really the Zapatistas who managed to make
people aware of that."

In 1996, the San Andrés Accords were signed but have never been
implemented. They set out the restoration of autonomy to all aspects of
indigenous life, such as control over local government, its form and
judicial processes, the media and, most importantly, their land and its
resources. The same year, leaders of the various indigenous groups met
in Mexico City. Among them were the Zapatista Comandanta Ramona and don
Andrés. This was the first Indigenous National Congress. Although the
vast majority of its members are poor farmers, they have nevertheless
managed to meet several times since then.

The CNI acts as umbrella organization for most indigenous ethnic groups.
Its main goal (identical with that of the Zapatistas) is the compliance
with the San Andrés Accords. The PRI government's failure to enact the
agreements was a major factor for the ending of the party's reign after
71 years in 2000. Present president Vicente Fox, who had pledged to
solve the Chiapas conflict (in effect the question of indigenous
self-rule) "in fifteen minutes," has not, however, kept his promise.
The reform the Mexican government did ratify in April 2001 was rejected
by the Zapatistas and the CNI, for it ignored the main demands of the
indigenous peoples.

According to Raquel Gutiérrez, the CNI can be both weak and strong:
"It's an organization that's not really an organization. Only when
everyone meets, it exists. If not, well, it exists because it can exist
again." When the Zapatistas marched to Mexico City in 2001, for
example, they asked the CNI to mobilize the communities outside
Chiapas. "But when the Indigenous Law was introduced, the CNI didn't
appear. So it is sometimes strong and sometimes not." The problem
Gutiérrez sees is the "lack of capacity to struggle on a local level."
Each community has distinct forms of living, of producing food etc.
Other ones may have a similar organization, but they are not related to
each other. "At the CNI meetings are regional leaders that are very
representative of their communities, who live there and talk to the
people. But at the meetings, they will speak about their very specific
problems and they just don't see a little bit wider. The CNI, as
compared to indigenous movements in Bolivia and Ecuador for example,
doesn't have the capacity to work on a regional level, to link between
communities."

Concerning the indigenous population, the Fox government "is doing
stupid things," claims Raquel Gutiérrez. Policies such as continuing to
open the markets to foreign competition have resulted in "huge
organizations of peasant farmers to demand that frontiers be closed for
agricultural products." An example of a government aid program for
indigenous people is Procampo, which has since 1996 made payments to
farmers based on their historical production and to make more efficient
use of their resources. Gutiérrez points out that it serves the
government's interests far more than the people at whom it is aimed.
"They go to the communities, register everyone and then give the women
about 200 or 300 pesos [20 to 30 US dollars] per child. These children
are being weighed and measured every two months. If they don't grow and
gain the weight expected by the government, they are forced to leave
the program. Instead of giving the children more, since they are
lacking, they are being punished for their parents' 'bad use of the
money'. All of a sudden, these women have become rivals and start to
fight among themselves. To administer such program is stupid. They are
simply handout-programs, which don't serve the people. Instead, they
create conflict within communities, making it more difficult for the
people to unite and to struggle for common objectives. This form of
giving money is a way of controlling people. The government doesn't
only have a perfect list of them and knows what is happening, but it
has a way of causing trouble, of controlling the rebellions."

In a report for the Canadian International Development Agency, Raymond
Obomsawin mentions a study in a Mexican village which revealed that
Otomí school-age children knew the names and uses of 138 plants,
compared to 37 for non-Amerindian children, but were considered
'ignorant' and in need of an education. He quotes L. Arizpe, who said
that "focusing on culture and on the preservation of people's knowledge
is central in the fight against poverty."

>From personal experience, Raquel Gutiérrez talks about the "development
aid" given by nongovernmental organizations (NGOs) in Mexico: "They
impose their own political agendas, or worse, the agendas of those who
support them. Instead of listening to the people about their needs,
they do things that were decided in other places, with other interests.
When you live with indigenous, you learn and you give. But it should be
an interchanging relation. You could offer to teach them one thing,
maybe how to use a computer, and they might teach you in return which
plants are good for you when you have a cold. You have to build up a
relation where you respect the people. I've seen many NGO workers who
are good people, well-intentioned, but who do stupid things. If I only
give to you and give to you and give to you, I end up treating you like
a child, a minor, like someone who doesn't know what's good for him."

Treating the indigenous like minors, calling their knowledge "ignorant"
- nothing could apply less to don Andrés, by now a living embodiment of
the history of the indigenous struggle in Mexico. Whoever has met don
Andrés will have nothing but respect for the wisdom of this man,
acquired during 93 years of surviving in a world that does not give the
same rights to everyone. And they will laugh with him when he claims
there is nothing in his life to tell about. After a life on the fields,
don Andrés knows how to predict the weather, he knows "when it will
rain." "The air is changing," he explains, "next year will be a good
year." Nevertheless, looking at the present situation of the indigenous
people, a lot still has to be done for the next years to be "good
years" for everyone in Mexico. The life-long struggle of don Andrés and
many others might have led to improvements, but, as he points out: "The
poor continue being poor."